This Will Make You A Little Barfy

Posted on 11/15/2009 at 12:17 pm by Bob Cesca

Remember when we were watching the floor debate before the healthcare vote last week? Here’s a little back story:

WASHINGTON — In the official record of the historic House debate on overhauling health care, the speeches of many lawmakers echo with similarities. Often, that was no accident.

Statements by more than a dozen lawmakers were ghostwritten, in whole or in part, by Washington lobbyists working for Genentech, one of the world’s largest biotechnology companies.

E-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that the lobbyists drafted one statement for Democrats and another for Republicans.

The good news is that I doubt George Miller’s excellent remarks were written by lobbyists. I think.

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  • Stranahan

    As Bill Hicks pointed out – different puppets, same puppet master.This is why I voted for Barack Obama to try and stop the influence of lobbyists on health care legislation. He didn’t even try; he cut deals with them. Same thin on the financial sector. This is not what Obama told us to expec.

  • http://politicalpartypooper.wordpress.com/ Political Party Pooper

    Interestingly (or not), this is how it’s done with commercial and industrial building specs, as well. The manufacturers and contractors write the specs for the architects, and engineers for equipment and special construction.Glad to see our politicians are every bit as reliant on their real constituents as our builders.Lee, you get a more honest lobbying reform by getting the money out of lobbying and PAC’s. I said a while ago it might have been better had we tackled lobbying reform first.Many of the larger issues of our day might have been solved more efficiently and honestly if we had. For now, we have the very best legislation that bribery can buy. We’re going to have to settle for it, because until we get serious about the way business in Washington is done (didn’t Pres. Obama say something about that, too?), we’ll never get honest legislation.Our elected official are very good at mak,ing excuses and financial contacts. They’re not so good at honest reform. How can they be, when even if they want to be honest, it still LOOKS like they’re on the take?

  • http://nanotyrnns.blogspot.com/ Nanotyrannus

    We have nothing to fear from various industries exerting enormous influence on congressional staff members, with congressmen completely oblivious to it, but we must have immediate investigations into the same practice, albeit at a much lower level of influence, if the organization practicing it is Muslim in origin. Great.And every time Congress attempts lobby reform, we end up with more loopholes than before that allow all kinds of money and influence to pour in. I’d almost rather them stay out of it next time we tackle the issue.

  • Allonfla

    Lee, Obama told all of us that he is not going to get everything done in his first year or even his first term. Did you miss that part? Knowing what you think you know about Washington, why does anyone think that Obama was going to be able to fix it all so quickly?In any case, I sent an e-mail to my reps in Congress over this and the other crap that’s happened in the past couple of weeks. I can’t wait until this bill is signed already and then we can move on to another divisive issue.

  • Stranahan

    It’s not that Obama didn’t fix everything right away…The problem is that he did exactly the opposite of what he said he’d do – instead of opening negotiations to C-SPAN, he actually helped backroom negotiations with insurance industry and drug lobbyists. That’s why so people declare the health care reform bill as a huge victory for the insurance industry.Let’s be clear – this is about holding Obama to the standard he set.

  • bibimimi

    Aw, eff me with a chainsaw, will ya?!