Connecting The Dots Between PhRMA And Congress
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Last year, PhRMA spent $28 million lobbying in favor of a health care overhaul, after negotiating a deal with the White House and members of Congress. Had the health care bill passed, the cost-cutting measures negotiated during several meetings at the White House would have saved the pharmaceutical industry $80 billion.
By negotiating the secret deal, writer Paul Blumenthal explains, "the Obama administration got the biggest lobby in Washington and put them on the side of health care reform." Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical industry got a guarantee that "Congress would not legislate any cost-cutting measures that would make a dent in industry profits."
Blumenthal, a senior writer at the Sunlight Foundation, determined that Congress and PhRMA met dozens of times to negotiate that deal. He tells Terry Gross that he learned who attended the meetings by examining Federal Election Commission records, public visitor logs to the White House and the publicly available schedule of Sen. Max Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.
"The major people are President Obama, Rahm Emanuel and Jim Messina," Blumenthal says. "Jim Messina is the former chief of staff and campaign manager to Sen. Max Baucus. You see Jim Messina pop up in meetings between pharmacy CEOs."
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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123889454Here is the Sunlight Foundation's Paul Blumenthal's article:
The Legacy of Billy Tauzin: The White House-PhRMA Deal
By Paul Blumenthal on 02/12/10 @ 12:51 pm | 27 Comments
Set to carry out this agenda were two Capitol Hill veterans, schooled in the monied Washington culture, chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and deputy chief of staff Jim Messina. Emanuel was a former fundraiser, Clinton administration official, investment banker and member of the Democratic leadership in Congress. Messina was the former campaign manager and chief of staff to the powerful Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus. Both were known for their unparalleled legislative abilities.
Because of Obama’s decision to develop a plan operating through the legislative process, members of Congress also played key roles. Early on, the pharmaceutical companies were told to deal directly with Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus. Baucus would be the vehicle for the deal worked out behind the scenes by the White House and PhRMA.
Central to this effort was PhRMA president, CEO and top lobbyist Billy Tauzin, a longtime Democratic member of Congress who switched party affiliations after Republicans gained control of Congress in 1994. By switching parties Tauzin was able to maintain his influence and even rose to be Chairman of the House Committee on Energy & Commerce. Tauzin became the poster child of Washington’s mercenary culture. He crafted a bill to provide prescription drug access to Medicare recipients, one that provided major concessions to the pharmaceutical industry. Medicare would not be able to negotiate for lower prescription drug costs and reimportation of drugs from first world countries would not be allowed. A few months after the bill passed, Tauzin announced that he was retiring from Congress and would be taking a job helming PhRMA for a salary of $2 million.
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Democratic lawmakers were furious. Rep. Raul Grijalva, chairman of the Progressive Caucus,asked, “Are industry groups going to be the ones at the table who get the first big piece of the pie and we just fight over the crust?”
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http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/2010/02/12/the-legacy-of-billy-tauzin-the-white-house-phrma-deal/
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