• 2 months ago
In 2017, billionaire Steve Ballmer founded USAFacts, a nonpartisan civic initiative that collects, cleans up, and publishes reams of official data about everything from the economy and education to crime and immigration. It started with the goal of producing an annual “Government 10-K,” modeled after the documents that public companies must file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. For seven years, Ballmer has personally funded the project.

Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kylemullins/2024/10/20/how-steve-ballmer-has-spent-100-million-in-a-new-twist-on-political-giving/

0:00 Introduction
3:24 Ballmer's Latest Money Moves
7:00 Steve Ballmer's Political Affiliations
8:45 Here's How Much Steve Ballmer Has Given To USAFacts

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Transcript
00:00Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis, a reporter here at Forbes. Joining me now is my colleague,
00:08Forbes' money and politics reporter, Kyle Kahn Mullins. Kyle, thanks so much for coming
00:12back on.
00:13Always great to be here, Brittany. Thanks for having me.
00:16You have some really interesting reporting. You write how former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer
00:21spent millions of his own money in a new twist on political giving. So give us the backstory
00:27here. What was the catalyst that led Steve Ballmer to found a political cause?
00:33So Steve Ballmer, like you said, former CEO of Microsoft. Also, I should note just at
00:37the top here, somewhere between the 10th and 11th richest person in the world, depending
00:41on the day. You know, the ranking shifts every now and then, and the stock price shifts.
00:46But he is one of the wealthiest people in the world. He's worth over $100 billion. And
00:51so after he left Microsoft in 2014, his wife, Connie, the way he tells it, she basically
00:57said, all right, now that you've left, now that you've retired, you've got to get involved
01:00in philanthropy. I've been doing philanthropy for years. You've got to get moving on this.
01:05And Steve was like, oh, I mean, I already pay taxes. Like, isn't that good enough? Like,
01:09do I really have to get involved? And she was like, no, that's not going to cut it.
01:12So he started to look into the data and he wanted to know, like, okay, I am paying these
01:17taxes. Where's my money going? Where can I best get involved in philanthropy? So he started
01:22to look into the data and he found that the government data, it's not that it wasn't
01:26there. It's just that it wasn't presented in a very effective way. It was kind of lacking.
01:31He found it, it wasn't answering the questions that he was coming to it for, or he, you know,
01:37it just wasn't presented in a way that was easily accessible. And so he decided he was
01:41going to do something about that. And so again, this is in his telling. That's why he founded
01:45this website, USAFacts.
01:47And so that's how USAFacts was born. But before we get into what exactly it is, give us some
01:53precedent here. Obviously, we've seen most recently Elon Musk join former President
01:58Donald Trump onstage at various rallies. But is there a large group of billionaires wading
02:04into politics?
02:05Absolutely. And I mean, I feel like the only way you could be more involved than Elon Musk
02:12at this point, who is actively campaigning for for President Donald Trump, is if you
02:16are a billionaire who runs for president yourself. Of course, Donald Trump is a great example
02:19of that. You've also got folks like Mike Bloomberg, Tom Steyer. They both ran for the
02:23Democratic nomination in 2020. You had Ross Perot, who was an independent billionaire
02:28candidate in the 90s. Steve Forbes actually ran at one point in the 90s as well.
02:36So there's this long history of billionaires who are very actively involved in politics.
02:40The majority of billionaires, though, they're not actually interested in getting into political
02:43office. What they want to do is put lots and lots of their money behind the causes
02:49that they care about, whether it's, you know, Charles Koch, you know, pushing for free market
02:55libertarianism type things or, you know, go back to Mike Bloomberg, for example, gives
03:00lots of money to groups that back gun control efforts. Lots of billionaires have pet issues
03:05that they really care about. Lots of them have partisan affiliations that they feel
03:09really strongly about. And they are very actively involved in our politics today.
03:14And what's different about Steve Ballmer is this is not partisan. This is a nonpartisan
03:20group, USA Facts. What is it?
03:24So very simply, USA Facts is a website that Steve Ballmer started up in 2017. And the
03:30goal is to collect, clean up and then republish in a more effective and accessible way government
03:36data. And they started out with the goal of creating these government 10-Ks, they call
03:42them, basically these those documents that public companies have to file with the SEC
03:47every year. They wanted to do that for the government as well. And they do that. They
03:51publish an annual report. They call the government 10-K. But they also do other stuff. They publish
03:56all these data reports. And they also this year, they really ramp things up.
04:03Talk about that a little more, because essentially what they're doing is making government data
04:06more digestible, more easily accessible, more viewer friendly. How so? What exactly
04:13does the content look like that they're producing?
04:17So this year, what they really leaned into is this six video series that they're calling
04:22Just the Facts videos. And these are videos that are hosted by Ballmer. They have six
04:27videos. Each one has a different topics. That's immigration, the budget, the economy, energy,
04:34health care, and then a catch-all one that's America by the numbers. These are videos again
04:38hosted by Ballmer. He's on the screen presenting data just like he would have at a Microsoft
04:43shareholders presentation, right? So many years ago. And they have aired on natural
04:50news channels. The first two on immigration and the budget aired on Fox News. And then
04:54the rest aired on News Nation. And they've also been heavily advertised on social media.
05:01They've really been pushed out there on a variety of different platforms.
05:05If you have a phone, if you have a TV, if you have the internet, essentially if you're a person
05:10that doesn't live under a rock, especially now as we are two weeks away from an election,
05:14you have been constantly fed political information. So in the age of misinformation,
05:20is there an audience for this content?
05:24Steve Ballmer certainly thinks there is. And he has numbers that he says back it up. Ballmer
05:30says that over 45 million people have watched those first four videos that came out. The first
05:37one was released on August 1st. And since then, they've collected 45 million views across YouTube
05:42and other online platforms. That includes 4 million people that he says have watched an
05:45entire video. So he says that's proof that there's some evidence for, there's some interest, rather,
05:52in this kind of content. Additionally, USA Facts has a newsletter that they send out.
05:57And that has over 350,000 subscribers. So we're not talking about small numbers. These are,
06:01there is, there does appear to be some significant audience of people who are looking to collect data
06:06in this sense. As you said at the top of this conversation, a lot of billionaires in particular
06:12who donate to political causes donate to partisan causes. So talk about the nonpartisan nature of
06:19this content. So Ballmer says that USA Facts is strictly nonpartisan. And if you go on their
06:26website, you will see their goal is to present the data. And they say that you can draw your
06:30own conclusions from it. And they're very careful to do that. That's the reason, actually, that they
06:35use only government data. They don't want to use academic studies. They don't want to use think
06:41tanks because those typically come or can come with agendas or certain presuppositions. And they
06:48want to strictly avoid all of that. So the goal is really to be as nonpartisan as possible. They
06:53say, look, here are the official numbers that we have presented in a way for you. We're going to
06:58analyze the numbers, but that's it. Now he's publicly giving to a nonpartisan cause. We'll
07:03talk about just how much in a second. But was he ever political? Was there a time that he
07:08was donating to any politicians of any political stripe? So he has been active in Washington
07:16politics, but at least on the federal level, he's never been one of these big mega donors that
07:21is throwing millions and millions of dollars around here and there. His biggest federal
07:27donation that we have on record is $50,000 to the Obama Inaugural Committee, which helps plan
07:33the inauguration for the president. However, he hasn't been as strictly nonpartisan,
07:39even on donations, as he claims he has. Ballmer has given to candidates. He says he's only given
07:46to candidates that he knows well himself. He's given to five candidates, all Democrats,
07:50congressional candidates in recent years. And he's also given, again, in recent years,
07:55and I'm talking about sort of since USA Facts was started in 2017, he's given about $40,000
07:59to the DCCC, which is the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
08:03You said at the top of the conversation that Steve Ballmer's wife said, you need to get
08:07involved. I'm involved. Is she political? Does anyone in his family donate to political causes?
08:14Yeah, Connie Ballmer is significantly more openly political than her husband is.
08:19Just this cycle has given $1.25 million to groups that are backing Harris for president.
08:27And she, between 2019 and 2022, we found that she'd given $14 million to various liberal groups
08:32during that time. However, I should also note, Steve protests that he does not control his wife,
08:38that they are separate people, that they make separate decisions. So he says that those donations
08:43should not make him more partisan. So now let's talk about the money here
08:47when it comes to USA Facts. How much money has Steve Ballmer poured into this?
08:53He says he's given, or he's put over $100 million into USA Facts so far.
08:58The site has an annual budget nowadays. It's really ramped up since 2017. It's got an annual
09:04budget nowadays of about $20 million. He says that they're on track to spend over $40 million this
09:09year due to all of their various election year demands and everything. They really want to
09:13use this as an opportunity to promote the site and get the data out there in the most important
09:18time that you can. So over $100 million, that would not make him the biggest political donor.
09:25Certainly the folks who the billionaires have run for president and put lots and lots of money into
09:29their own campaigns, like Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer, they would have spent more than him.
09:34But nonetheless, that would put him in the cap.
09:37Well, $100 million certainly is nothing to sneeze at, although it's not topping the charts here.
09:45But does he get any tax breaks from USA Facts?
09:49He doesn't. The group is not organized as a 501c3 nonprofit organization. It's just an LLC.
09:56He compares spending on it. It's after-tax dollars, is what he says. And his spending
10:02on it, he compares essentially to groceries. I guess you can drop $100 million like groceries
10:08when you're worth $100 billion. So he says that it is just a personal expense for him.
10:15So what is, since he is saying this is a personal expense, it's the equivalent of
10:19his grocery bill, what is his ultimate goal for USA Facts?
10:25He says that the goal is to ground political discourse in a nonpartisan arena. So we're not
10:33talking about the partisan explanation for how we got here or a partisan solution for where we go.
10:39We want to talk about what is the situation on the ground today in a nonpartisan way using data.
10:44And I think in, this is my personal opinion, of course, but in the age of TikTok and in the age
10:52of constantly viral misinformation that we see all the time in political campaigns,
10:56it's at least refreshing to see someone putting money and betting on real fact-check vetted
11:01information. Absolutely. Kyle Mullins, per usual, I appreciate your reporting.
11:06Thanks so much for coming on. Thanks for having me, Brittany.

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