Trump’s Treasury Nominees’ Civil Society Experience

Treasury Secretary Nominee Scott Bessent’s Downtown Charleston Mansion — the Pink Palace —  is currently on the market

My campaign for a position in the Trump administration appears to be ineffective so far.  The President-elect must not have seen my “hire me” post.  One reader said the post proved I was using a public forum for private gain. That’s only something a nonprofit nerd would say. If that’s true, it ain’t working and I am apparently not that good at graft and corruption. Still, I took it as a compliment that someone thinks this blog is a pubic forum.

On Wednesday, Trump introduced William Hollis “Billy” Long as his nomination for IRS Commissioner.  Before that he nominated Scott Kenneth Homer Bessent to serve as the next Treasury Secretary and Michael Faulkender as Deputy Treasury Secretary.  Both Bessent and Faulkender have moderate ties to Civil Society. Faulkender is an academic and an administrator at the University of Maryland so he might understand why Universities can’t and shouldn’t just arrest student demonstrators.  Bessent can be described as a wealthy philanthropist with ties to several different causes, according to his Wiki page:

Bessent sits on the university council at Yale University. Bessent and his sister donated the Bessent Library to Yale University. Bessent has endowed three scholarships at Yale: one for students who are first-generation college matriculants, one for students from South Carolina, and one for students from the Bronx.

Bessent chairs the investment committee and is a member of the executive committee on the board of trustees of Rockefeller University. Bessent formerly served on the board of God’s Love We Deliver, an organization founded to deliver meals for homebound people with AIDS. He is a trustee of Classical American Homes Preservation Trust (renamed the Richard Hampton Jenrette Foundation), and a former board member of the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina. Bessent is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Bessent opened two foundations in 2022, and created the McLeod Rehabilitation Center at the Shriners Hospital for Children in Greenville, South Carolina. He also supports the Prince’s Trust in London and the Harlem Children’s Zone in New York City. Bessent has supported restoration of the Nathaniel Russell House, a National Historic Landmark in Charleston, SC.

These guys don’t sound too bad.  Neither strikes me as ideologues.  Bessent donated to Trump’s campaign but he has previously donated to both Hilary and Barack too.  He hardly seems like the guy who will lead a purge of nonprofits.  He, his husband and their kids live in a big pink mansion in Charleston, South Carolina.  John Ravenel, the original owner, built the mansion with kidnapped African people and then forced them to remain on and work the plantation without compensation until the Civil War disrupted the southern full employment system. Of course, Bessent had nothing to do with any of that.    

For his part, Billy Long is a former congressman and auctioneer from Missouri.  Elizabeth Warren thinks he is entirely unqualified but Billy’s had occasion to think about Civil Society.  When he was in Congress, he signed on to a letter to the Commissioner seeking an investigation of the Clinton Foundation.  The letter said President Clinton and another board member were using a Clinton Foundation jet for personal purposes.  Private inurement type stuff.  In another letter, he asked the Inspector General to investigate the Humane Society of the United States for substantial lobbying activities:

We certainly understand that 501(c)(3) organizations are allowed to part1c1pate in lobbying activities, so long as it does not constitute a substantial part of its overall activities. However, lobbying not only is a substantial part of HSUS’s overall activities; it often appears to be the main reason for HSUS’s existence.

HSUS continually seeks donations through advertisements that claim the money will be used to help neglected or abused animals. The commercials deliberately lead the public to believe direct aid to animals is the main activity of the organization, as does the misleading similarity between the name of HSUS and the hundreds of local hands-on animal sheltering humane societies across America, which are wholly unaffiliated with HSUS and receive zero funding from it. However, a line-by-line review of HSUS’s 2008 Form 990 by HumaneWatch.org showed that less than one-half of one percent of HSUS’s $99.8 million budget goes towards hands-on sheltering activities, and in 2009 that number rose only to 0.8%.

In contrast, HSUS’s own Financial Operations Report for 2009, attached as Exhibit C, shows that it spent $26,264,166 for “Advocacy and public policy,” which is over 28% of its total non-overhead expenditures. Several of the report’s other expenditure categories are vaguely named and may also include activities that would fall into the IRS’s lobbying definition, such as “Strategic communications” or “International animal programs,” so the percentage may be even higher. Indeed, by its own admission, HSUS spends more than twice as much on “Advocacy and public policy” than any other category of expenses. To any objective observer, lobbying activities appear to “constitute a substantial part of its overall activities.”

In Missouri, voters passed “Proposition B,” a ballot initiative increasing restrictions on dog breeding facilities, in the November 2010 election with 51% of the vote. The campaign was heavily financed by HSUS. Campaign disclosure forms filed December 2, 2010 show that HSUS donated over $2.1 million of the $4.8 million raised by proponents of the measure.

Maybe he’s still interested enough to help lift the rider preventing the Service from issuing guidance on substantial lobbying.  One media outlet thinks Billy’s attack against the Humane Society is just further evidence that Trump intends to use HR 9495 to shut down nonprofits:

If former Missouri Republican Rep. Billy Long is confirmed to run the Internal Revenue Services (IRS), he would be in a position to strip — and effectively shut down — the tax status of such nonprofit groups whose missions he disagrees with. And Long could have new powers to do so if Congress enacts a pending House-passed bill to grant the Trump administration new powers to rescind the tax status of groups it deems “terrorist supporting organizations.”

I am still not so sure that HR 9495 helps that effort.  

darryll k. jones