A wireless company profiting from the so-called “Obama phone” giveaway program is run by a prominent Democrat donor whose wife has raised more than $1.5 million for the president since 2007.

Last week a video of a President Barack Obama supporter in Ohio claiming to have received a free phone from the president -- “[Obama] gave us a phone!” -- went viral, prompting media outlets to investigate.

Since 1985 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has operated a program called Lifeline, originally designed to provide free landline phone service for low-income individuals. The government subsidizes telecommunications firms providing the service, and those firms also pass on costs to customers via the “Universal Service Charge” on their phone bills.

The program expanded to include cell phones in 2008. That change has rapidly increased the cost to the federal government -- $1.6 billion in 2011, up from $772 million in 2008. The number of Lifeline beneficiaries rose from 7.1 million to 12.5 million during the same period; cell phones account for roughly half of that 12.5 million.

One of the major providers of the free cell phones -- 3.8 million subscribers as of late 2011 -- is Miami-based TracFone Wireless, a company whose president and CEO, Frederick “F.J.” Pollak, has donated at least $156,500 to Democrat candidates and committees this cycle, including at least $50,000 to the Obama campaign.

Pollak’s wife, Abigail, is a campaign bundler for Obama who has raised more than $632,000 for the president this cycle, and more than $1.5 million since 2007. She has personally contributed more than $200,000 to Democrat candidates and committees since 2008.

The Pollaks hosted Obama at their Miami Beach home in June for a $40,000-per-plate fundraising dinner, and hosted a similar event with Michelle Obama in July 2008. The couple personally donated a combined $66,200 to Obama’s reelection effort that year.

Visitor logs indicate that Frederick and Abigail Pollak have visited the White House seven times. In 2009, the president appointed Abigail to serve on the “Commission to Study the Potential Creation of a National Museum of the American Latino.”

TracFone, a direct financial beneficiary of the Lifeline program, receives $10 a month for each subscriber in the form of federal subsidies. The company can make an additional profit selling extra minutes to Lifeline subscribers who exceed their monthly allowance of 250 prepaid minutes.

TracFone and other wireless providers claim that revenue from selling additional minutes to Lifeline customers is low, but decline to publicly release such figures.

The program’s rapidly increasing costs have attracted the attention of Republicans and Democrats in Congress, and have prompted calls for reform. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), for example, found that the program was “ripe for fraud.” In some cases, McCaskill noted in a December 2011 press release, the government was issuing multiple free phones to the same individuals.

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Editor's Note: Robbing the Treasury to bribe the "entitlement class" to vote for them in elections...Simply put, Progressives -- especially Chicago Progressives -- suck.


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