While Congress has been shaping health care legislation that will affect every one of us, and while individual Americans attended townhall meetings across the country to at least try to make their voices heard, health care special interests and their lobbyists have been busy behind the scenes giving key Senators and Representatives campaign contributions. Lots and lots of campaign contributions. And as a former Chief of Staff to a Congressman, a former fundraiser and current lobbyist, I can tell you four things. For the most part:
1) Special interests and their lobbyists give campaign contributions in order to ensure access to Members of Congress and their senior staff members when they need to communicate on an issue.
2) They give campaigns contributions in order to increase the likelihood that Members of Congress will help them when they need help on an issue.
3) When big donors call, Members of Congress and/or their senior staff members always pick up the phone and, whenever possible, deliver the help that is needed.
4) When individual Americans who are not big donors call, they get access to the most junior of congressional staff members — interns and staff assistants at the front desk.
I’m not saying contributions are given in exhange for specific help on specific issues. They’re not. But what I’m saying is this: Members of Congress and senior staff members don’t have time to talk to everyone, and don’t have time to help everyone who asks for it. So, naturally, they prioritize their time and help. Their prioritization policies are such that they talk to their fundraisers and big donors whenever they call, and make sure to help them as much as possible, because they want them to keep raising and giving money. Over and over again. And they allow the junior staff members to communicate with individual Americans who call to voice their opinions.
Understanding this, let’s take a look at the special interests and lobbyists that have been giving big money to key Senators and Representatives in order to get as much help as possible when it comes to the health care legislation.
The Sunlight Foundation and the Center for Responsive Politics performed a joint investigation and uncovered “never-before-seen webs of campaign contributions from outside lobbyists and their clients, who are all important players in the health care reform, to key members of Congress.” Quoting from their findings:
We found that Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee and author of the main health care reform bill now being debated in the Senate, was one of the biggest beneficiaries of this one-two punch from lobbyists and the interests they represent. Between January 2007 and July 2009 (the period we studied), Baucus collected contributions from 37 outside lobbyists representing PhRMA, the pharmaceutical industry’s chief trade association, and from 36 lobbyists who listed drug maker Amgen Inc. among their clients.
In all, 11 major health and insurance firms had their contributions to Baucus boosted through extra donations from 10 or more of their outside lobbyists.
Nor was Baucus alone—other members also received contributions from the employees, their family members and political action committees of health care firms and from the outside lobbyists that represented them. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., collected lobbyist “bundles” from 14 major health care organizations. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., actually led the list, with 22 organizations—though much of that money was directed at his presidential campaign last year. (see the full list.)
And in another post by Sunlight:
In total – which you can see broken down in our animation… – Max Baucus has received more than $453,000 from the health care industry – or 20% of his cash on hand. How would that affect your decision if you were debating an issue?
In many ways it boils down to this: information regarding who is meeting with whom, who is receiving money from whom – who is having influence on whom – on Capitol Hill should be public information.
To us, “public” means that information is placed online in as close to real time as possible – allowing all of us to hold our elected officials accountable. We’re not there yet – or really even close – but we’re working on it, and this health care data is just the first in a series we’ll be releasing around this new way of looking at special interests and their ‘real’ influence.
Here is a good video from this Sunlight article:
I’d like to see Congress go even further than requiring such information to be made public. I think the House and Senate should pass new rules that prohibit Senators and Representatives from taking campaign contributions and fundraising assistance from political actions committees (PACs that are set up by special interests for the specific purpose of giving campaign contributions), and from registered lobbyists.
People who are paid to influence our Senators and Representatives should not be allowed to give them campaign contributions. Period. It’s just not proper, and We the People should not allow this any longer.
This is one of the proposed new policies for the EMPLOYEE HANDBOOK FOR MEMBERS OF CONGRESS. This Handbook is our chance to list out the principles, policies and procedures we want Members of Congress to live and operate by while they hold the powers of our government. This is where We the People can tell them how we want them to do their jobs. This is the tool for us to make them accountable to us, to make them answer to us, and nobody else.
We the People are Sovereigns, not subjects. Let’s start acting like it.
JOIN US. CONTROL GOVERNMENT. BE FREE AND INDEPENDENT.
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