Congressman under fire for job offer (Medicare Bonus)

[joeunderdog]

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A congressman who played a leading role in drafting legislation that introduced a prescription drug benefit to Medicare is under fire for considering a job offer from the pharmaceutical industry -- which stands to benefit from the new law.

Louisiana Rep. Billy Tauzin, a Republican, spent months negotiating the bill to overhaul Medicare, often meeting in the basement of the Capitol with a small group of lawmakers, administration officials and industry groups.

One of those groups was Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, PhRMA, which has offered him the leadership job. That post, sources say, would pay more than $1 million a year.

(snip)

"It doesn't look very good," one top GOP House leadership aide said. Despite the concern, the aide said, GOP leaders probably won't ask Tauzin not to take the job. "It's not going to be optically too pleasing."

more...
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/01/26/tauzin.ethics/index.html

Who says Bush isn't creating jobs?

[denverbill]

1. Not 'optically pleasing'? How about 'nasally'?

This friggin stinks. Par for the course for Republicans though. It's not bribery if you can't prove it!

[Bandit]

2. I thought there was a law that stated they couldn't go to work for two yea

after they left Congress with any company they had legislative dealings with? I expect Cheney will be getting his old job with Haliburton as soon as he is sent packing also. Americans think this is good business policy. At least the ones that consistantly vote for these crooks.

[Grins]

8. There WAS!!!

But it was Clinton that put it in (early in his first term I think)!!

So, of course, anything from Clinton has to be a horror to these idiots. It was one of the earliest laws to be pulled by Repubs.

The second one Bush killed was the one that said if a contractor ever defrauded the government (state too...??) they could not bid on federal contracts. Got that nasty one out of the way real quick.

[schultzee]

3. Tauzin is the picture of G.O.P. greed pig corruption, and I

hope he does not run again and an honorable person replaces this horrible congressman.

[UpInArms]

4. ah the honor and integrity of the GOP

how well we know ya

reminds me of dear Wendy Gramm -

http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/06/26/cftc/index1.html

The first victory came in 1993. At that time, Enron's primary business was selling actual energy but the Houston company wanted to get involved in selling energy derivatives. But rather than put up with the oversight requirements of the CFTC, Enron lobbied for an exemption -- the right to trade energy derivatives without being subject to CFTC jurisdiction.

Wendy Gramm, chairwoman of the CFTC from February 1988 to January 1993, agreed. She shepherded the exemption through, and in April of 1993 -- after Gramm quit the CFTC and took a seat on Enron's board of directors -- the CFTC approved the policy Enron favored.

Enron took its exemption to the bank. Its derivatives business grew enormously over the next few years. Eventually, however, the exemption came up once again for debate. By the end of 1997, derivatives contracts of all kinds represented more than $25 trillion in real assets, and many in Congress -- and at the CFTC -- wanted to know more about their effects. Brooksley Born, a Clinton appointee who became the head of the CFTC in 1996, called for oversight.

"In late 1997 and early 1998, she said the emperor has no clothes," says Greenberger. "She said that derivatives are futures contracts and that the CFTC had jurisdiction."

But once again, Enron carried the day. A handful of legislators, including Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas (husband of Wendy Gramm), defeated the forces of regulation, with no small help from the U.S. Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission. All three government agencies, though headed by Born's fellow Clinton appointees, scorned her new CFTC proposal. They even issued a rare joint statement declaring, "We have grave concerns about this action and its possible consequences. We seriously question the scope of the CFTC's jurisdiction in this area."

and

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0203/ridgeway.php

In an apparent response to a 1992 plea from Enron, Dr. Wendy Gramm, then chair of the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission, moved to exempt the company's energy-swap operation from government oversight. By then, the Houston-based Enron was a major contributor to Senator Gramm's campaign.

A few days after she got the ball rolling on the exemption, Wendy Gramm resigned from the commission. Enron soon appointed her to its board of directors, where she served on the audit committee, which oversees the inner financial workings of the corporation. For this, the company paid her between $915,000 and $1.85 million in stocks and dividends, as much as $50,000 in annual salary, and $176,000 in attendance fees, according to a report by Public Citizen, a group that has relentlessly tracked Enron, which in turn has called the report unfair.

Meanwhile Enron had become Phil Gramm's largest corporate contributor —and according to Public Citizen, the largest across-the board donor in its industry. Between 1989 and 2001, the company tossed Gramm just under $100,000.

but then again, who really cares?

[0007]

5. Ah, my favorite folks Wendy Gramm and Bill Tauzin -

Would love to see 'em jailed. One in a Louisiana jail and one in a Texas jail. But like ya said, who really cares?

[priller]

6. Let's not forget

The guy who is in charge of Medicare and who wrote most of the awful new bill, Tom Scully, was openly looking for jobs as a lobbyist while working on the bill. This is a quote from Jim Hightower:

========

http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2004-01-23/pols_hightower.html

Great. George W. gave us Scully, a former corporate lobbyist, to rewrite Medicare, thus giving Scully an advanced degree in corporate servitude, so he can now command an even fatter salary as a corporate lobbyist. There's a Horatio Alger story for you.

Worse, Scully had been out trolling for lobbying jobs while he was inside the back rooms negotiating the Medicare rewrite! Yet, he says this represents no conflict of interest, for he went to the agency's ethics officer and got "a waiver" to the ethics rules that other employees have to follow. Besides, he assures us, "Nobody has ever accused me of being other than honest."

Oh, Tommy, then let me be the first: Scully, you are a scuz, a poster boy of the corrupt, revolving-door scam between government and corporate power that makes most of us Americans sick to our stomachs.

[snippy]

7. How very republican.