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Healthcare Lobbyist Hosts Ben Nelson Fundraiser

One of the big questions left as healthcare reform moves toward the Senate floor is whether a small group of Democrats from red states, most with heavy ties to business, will attempt to filibuster the final bill. Among them is Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska), who reportedly was telling folks back home he would not filibuster in June, but now might help block a vote.

Just in time to celebrate this change of heart, Nelson's having a little get-together tomorrow, hosted by a former Republican Congressman and a health insurance lobbyist... and you're invited!* 

The Sunlight Foundation obtained an invite for the event, which is being held at the "UPS Townhouse", a popular place for these kinds of functions.

So what's it all about? Perhaps getting to know our hosts a little better would help:

• Amy Tejral- once Nelson's Legislative Director, Tejral has found more lucrative work representing insurers like Aetna, United Health Group, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Bravo Health and pharmaceutical giant Medco at lobby-shop Avenue Solutions, which specializes in "creating opportunities the private sector needs in Washington."  As the firm's website says: "We maintain relationships for the long haul and for the hot issue... Among Democrats, we have relationships with all the key players, from the Leadership, to Committees, to the newest Members." 
• Henry Bonilla- a former Republican Congressman from Texas, now a lobbyist for The Norman Group.
• Sheryl Bonilla- wife of Henry, who lobbies for UPS on Healthcare, among other issues.

Should be an interesting event, particularly because there's no telling who the guests, each ponying up $1000 for lunch, will be. It's a safe bet, however, that more than a few of them will have some involvement with the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, looking to curry favor with show their steadfast support for Senator Ben. 

*If you've got $1000 to donate to Nelson's 2012 Senate bid.

Update 1: Turns out that Nelson was working very hard today to wreck the public option by reviving "triggers". Sure to please at least a few of tomorrow's donors.

Getting Harder to Track Lobbying

OMB Watch and the Center for Responsive Politics have published an important report on the very high volume of lobbying "deregistrations" in recent months and what it means:

The OMB Watch-CRP study found 1,418 "deregistrations" of federally registered lobbyists during the second quarter of 2009, a marked increase for any reporting period during all of 2008 and 2009. This occurred shortly after President Barack Obama issued Executive Order 13490, which created new restrictions on former lobbyists appointed to the executive branch. Guidance was then issued in March which marks the start of the 2nd quarter reporting, which enacted a gift ban and further restricted the kind of communications lobbyists could have about stimulus and TARP funds. Via a recent blog post, the White House also announced, “it is our aspiration that federally registered lobbyists not be appointed to agency advisory boards and commissions,” a practice that is common today...

The study also indicates that since the beginning of 2008, the number of lobbyists filing termination reports has generally outpaced the number of newly active lobbyists – a trend that considerably accelerated during this year's second quarter. All told, there have been 18,315 lobbyist termination reports filed since January 2008. Meanwhile, only 15,310 lobbyists became active again after previously filing termination reports. This leaves a total of 3,005 lobbyists who have effectively “deregistered,” of which more than half (1,691) have come since April 2009.

This might be the report's most important finding (emphasis mine):

Another troubling issue highlighted by the organizations is that the thousands of lobbyists who appear to have left their line of work may not have actually done so. At the federal level, many people working in the lobbying industry are not registered lobbyists, instead adopting titles such as "senior advisor" or other executive monikers, thereby avoiding federal disclosure requirements under the Lobbying Disclosure Act.

Chevron Drops By The White House

Mother Jones reporter Kate Sheppard has a good post out today about how Exxon-Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson has been visiting the White House-- three times in recent months-- and questioning why he's meeting high-ranking officials while his company is trying to discredit climate change. 

However, in a quick review of White House visitor records, I've found he's not the only energy exec who dropped by, nor the most frequent.

The winner: Chevron's CEO, David J. O'Reilly, who dropped by for five meetings with high-ranking administration officials:

• On February 10, 2009: a meeting with Larry Summers (plus one).
• On February 10, 2009: a meeting with Carol Browner  (plus two).
• On February 13, 2009: a member of the audience for the Business Council Speech.
• On September 17, 2009: a meeting with Rahm Emanuel, one-on-one.
• On September 18, 2009: a meeting with Larry Summers (plus two).

In fact, Rex Tillerson met with Carol Browner two days after O'Reilly, while both men attended the same Business Council speech on February 13th. Tillerson's other White House visit, to see Larry Summers, came in mid-May.

While Chevron might be a bit ahead of Exxon on climate change (in accepting global warming is caused by man), it still labels climate change "a complex subject" about which "uncertainties still exist... such as predictions of future warming and impacts of that warming, pace of technology advancement and forecasts of economic and population growth." With respect to the Kyoto Protocol, Chevron thinks it "asks for emission reductions that are too aggressive too quickly," and doesn't believe "the economic consequences are fully outlined."

Which says nothing of the absolutely terrible behavior Chevron has exhibited in a dispute over its liability for pollution in Ecuador. One Chevron lobbyist actually told Newsweek:

 "We can't let little countries screw around with big companies like this—companies that have made big investments around the world."

All of which makes it necessary to ask: what does meeting with Tillerson and O'Reilly contribute to crafting energy or climate change policy? And what was that one-on-one with Rahm on September 17 all about?

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Here's some more on Chevron's Ecuador entanglements, via 60 Minutes:

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Today's TIME magazine/Aspen Institute Lobbying Salon

For most of today, TIME magazine and the Aspen Institute ran a conference on healthcare reform just a few blocks from the Capitol, an event funded by lobbying group PhRMA and foreign pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca. The "symposium" was billed as "a series of can't miss conversations" featuring "Tom Daschle, Richard Gephardt and other health care leaders to diagnose health care reform battle in final days of the debate."

Instead, this TIME/Aspen Institute event was a who's who of the pharmaceutical industry lobby, with Tom Daschle thrown in for good measure. Not only did the event welcome lobbyists and their opinions with open arms and little disclosure, it literally acted as an on-the-clock opportunity for Gephardt to lobby. 

How do I know? Gephardt has said just as much on his firm's website, which states, "on behalf of our client CAMI, Dick Gephardt joined other health care leaders to diagnose health care reform." Good luck finding a reference to the PhRMA offshoot CAMI anywhere in the Aspen Institute/TIME magazine promotional materials, however.

In fact, here's the description the organizers offer for the panel discussion with Gephardt, moderated by a TIME "senior editor", titled "The Payoff of Medical Research Reform":

Medical science research holds great promise in the delivery of cures and the prospects for economic recovery. How do we maintain a focus on innovation and risk-taking even as we seek to avoid more expensive health care? Our panelists discuss the potential of biomedical research beyond the act of discovery.

Note there's no reference there to the actual payoff going on-- Gephardt's take home from presenting his lobbying agenda (You can find more information on CAMI  and Gephardt's work for them in my recent feature in The Nation).

A few months back, many in Washington's press corps were giddy to eviscerate The Washington Post for a proposed series of off-the-record "salons" between reporters, government officials and lobbyists at publisher Katharine Weymouth's mansion. Certainly, the Post deserved the criticism. However, it is events like this TIME/Aspen Institute "symposium" that do the real damage, allowing lobbyists, veiled in the establishment authority of TIME magazine and the non-partisan non-profit credibility of the Aspen Institute, to get a public stage from which to share their biased, self-serving "expertise". As a means of shaping public perception, that's far more powerful than any private get-together between reporters, lobbyists or government officials-- something that happens, salon or no salon, on a daily basis in DC anyway. 

So, while TIME and the Aspen Institute have done something shameful and compromising (even in simply pairing themselves with a large lobbying group like PhRMA), don't expect to hear anything about it from the Washington press corps, with the exception of glowing reviews in tomorrow's papers describing how these "healthcare leaders" earnestly discussed reform.

Democrats and Lobbyists

Also, for everyone who's asked me these past couple of days whether Gephardt's story is an outlier or representative of a broader trend, I suggest having a look at this Wall Street Journal story from the end of September:

"Lobbyists have donated twice as much to Democrats as Republicans this year -– and corporate PACs have sent 60% of their money to Democrats, according to the data. That’s a reversal from just a few years ago when Republicans controlled Congress and the White House.

The change has left Democratic candidates for Congress with far more money than Republicans as they prepare for the 2010 midterm elections. Democratic candidates raised $153.5 million in the first six months of the 2009-10 election cycle, about 62% more than Republican candidates, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics."

I'm not a disinterested expert, I just play one on TV

As my feature on Dick Gephardt was going to press, I got an e-mail from a source directing me towards this MSNBC appearance by the former Congressman. At the time, Sam Stein at the Huffington Post wrote up a good summary, with the main take away being Gephardt's calling the public option "not essential". 

Yet, what struck me most in watching the clip was not what Gephardt said, but what Dylan Ratigan didn't: that Gephardt's opinion on healthcare reform cannot be presented without some serious caveats about his lobbying work. Ratigan does some good work from time to time (see, for example, this from just a day or two ago), and I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt here and say this was some oversight in vetting guests. However, there's a great story (like a Pulitzer winning one, say) on how cable news does such a terrible job disclosing the true interests of  its guests and "experts".

I also really like Gephardt's line on being "more confident now than I've ever been" that healthcare reform will pass this year. As I mention in my article, it was only back in April that Gephardt was telling Democrats to throw in the towel and go for incremental reform.

Anyway, if you've read my piece, this clip does a pretty good job proving my point about the way "expert" status can be manipulated.  Fact is, many lobbying firms eagerly advertise their principals as being able to act as experts for the media on issues relevant to their clients, making anything they publicly say or write an extension of their job promoting the narrow interests of their wealthy clients.

So, if you see a lobbyist on TV, he's there for a reason:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Update 1:  Forgot to add earlier that Gephardt also lobbies on behalf of GE/NBC Universal. From Roll Call: 

“What we have found invaluable is his experience,” said Rick Cotton, general counsel for NBC Universal, a client of the firm. “He brings credibility and highly relevant strategic experience that make him stand out.”

Nation Feature: Gephardt's Sellout

Better late than never: my feature on Dick Gephardt's lobbying from the October 19, 2009 issue of The Nation. Went online September 30, 2009.

Dick Gephardt's Spectacular Sellout

by SEBASTIAN JONES

This article appeared in the October 19, 2009 edition of The Nation.

In March, months after the government gave an unprecedented $85 billion to AIG, the insurance giant released a list of counterparties, exposing some of the world's top financial institutions as the real recipients of the bailout. First among its peers, Goldman Sachs got a whopping $12.9 billion, despite having claimed in September to be insulated from AIG's troubles. Based on these revelations, Maryland Democratic Congressman Elijah Cummings, who had dogged the financial industry since the crisis began, told his staff to prepare a letter calling for an investigation.

Two Congressional staffers familiar with the matter told The Nation that a draft was circulated to House members on March 23. Within hours, Cummings's office had received a phone call from a lobbying firm hired by Goldman Sachs, making an "insistent but polite" request for a meeting. Cummings, intending to send the letter regardless, granted the audience, and so it was that top Goldman executives like president Gary Cohen and CFO David Viniar arrived the next day. They brought someone else too, a big-name Democratic politician with serious populist credibility: Dick Gephardt.

Fact Checking Obama on Transparency

[Originally posted at The Nation's Capitolism blog on 7/23/2009]:

During last night's primetime press conference, Christi Parsons of the Chicago Tribune asked President Obama a pointed question about the transparency his administration had often promised during the campaign and seemingly failed to deliver once in power. The President's response, short and direct, was also relatively misleading. Examining the record, we fact-check his remarks.

1) Meeting Health Care Executives

Obama: "Well, on the list of health care executives who've visited us, most of the time you guys have been in there taking pictures, so it hasn't been a secret. And my understanding is we just sent a letter out providing a full list of all executives. But frankly these have mostly been at least photo sprays where you could see who was participating…"

Fact-Check: Until yesterday, that the Obama administration was having meetings with health care executives and lobbyists at the White House as early as February 4th was not public knowledge. When Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a freedom of information request last month for records pertaining to visits by 18 industry executives and lobbyists, their request was denied. An earlier FOI request in May for information on Coal industry executives and their White House visits was similarly denied, both using the same legal arguments that the Bush administration employed to keep Dick Cheney's energy task force meetings out of the public eye. CREW has filed suit in both cases.

Also worth noting is that yesterday's letter released by the White House did not affirm (or satisfy) the FOI request from CREW, but rather was an "exercise of [presidential] discretion"--basically the White House saying that while they believe the public is not necessarily entitled to this information, they'll provide it anyway.

2) Putting Health Care Negotiations on C-SPAN

Obama: "With respect to all the negotiations not being on C-SPAN, you will recall in this very room that our kickoff event was here on C-SPAN, and at a certain point you start getting into all kinds of different meetings--Senate Finance is having a meeting, the House is having a meeting. If they wanted those to be on C-SPAN then I would welcome it. I don't think there are a lot of secrets going on in there."

Fact-Check: Regarding C-SPAN, Obama told a crowd at an August 11, 2008 town hall, "What we'll do is, we'll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies." With regards to there not being "a lot of secrets going on" in congressional meetings, this article from today's Roll Call describing the secrecy surrounding Sen. Max Baucus' bipartisan talks would suggest otherwise.

3) TARP transparency

Obama: "And the last question with respect to TARP. Let me take a look at what exactly they say we have not provided. I think that we've provided much greater transparency than existed prior to our administration coming in. It is a big program. I don't know exactly what's been requested. I'll find out and I will have an answer for you."

Fact-Check: Testifying before congress the day before the President's presser, TARP Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky told lawmakers that "although Treasury has taken some steps towards improving transparency in TARP programs, it has repeatedly failed to adopt recommendations that…are essential to providing basic transparency."

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For a comprehensive list of Obama White House transparency short-comings, check out this post from Glenn Greenwald.

Health and Wealth

My contribution to the June 24 issue of The Nation:

HEALTH AND WEALTH: 

As the White House begins a push for healthcare reform, it starts at a significant disadvantage, perhaps as large as $1.38 billion. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures, that's the sum that five industries--pharmaceuticals/ health products, insurance, health services/HMOs, hospitals/nursing homes and health professionals--spent lobbying lawmakers from 2007, the first full year Democrats controlled Congress, to the most recent first-quarter filings for 2009.

In fact, starting in 2006 healthcare interests have spent even more than the financial services industry to sway lawmakers. Since 1998, three of the top ten lobbying spenders have sought to influence healthcare policy; the American Medical Association's $204 million in the past decade was second only to the perennial top lobbyist, the US Chamber of Commerce. Beyond lobbying, hundreds of millions have been spent by healthcare interests in campaign contributions in the past two election cycles alone.

So what does all this money buy? According to Nate Silver, renowned number-cruncher and blogger atFiveThirtyEight.com, a whole lot. Silver crafted a method to measure how lobbying might be shaping Democratic senators' votes on a healthcare bill with a public option--which 76 percent of Americans support, according to a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll--and concluded that the low sum of $60,000 in campaign contributions over the past six years would cut in half the odds of a centrist Democrat supporting the plan.   SEBASTIAN JONES

Murtha in trouble?

Back when I was working for Harper's this summer, I shared a byline with my boss Ken Silverstein on a story about Congressman John Murtha (D-Pa) and  what Ken dubbed "the Murtha rules":

Murtha basically runs a racket. He helps win taxpayer money for companies that support his campaigns and hire lobbyists he approves of–often his former staffers and in at least one case blood kin. Companies that set up shop in his district do better yet, even if they only set up a smaller satellite office, thereby allowing Murtha to pose as a champion of his constituents as opposed to his political cronies. “There’s been no report of Mr. Murtha’s profiting personally,” the New York Times has written. “But the Murtha operation–which has become a model for other entrepreneurial lawmakers–is a gross example of quid pro quo Washington.”

One of contractors that featured in the piece was Kuchera Defense Systems and now, via The Hill, it looks like the company is in a spot of trouble:

Federal agents raided the offices of a Western Pennsylvania defense contractor that has received millions in federal earmarks at the request of Rep. John Murtha, according to local media reports.

The offices of Kuchera Industries and Kuchera Defense Systems were shuttered for the day following the raids, the chief financial officer told the Johnstown Tribune-Democrat. The companies' phone system says they will open again Friday morning, and e-mails sent to top company officials went unanswered.

Based in Windber, Pa., just outside Johnstown, Kuchera won $8.2 million in federal defense earmarks in the 2008 budget. The earmarks came at the request of Murtha (D-Pa.).

Also worth a read is this story

hat tip: Ken

Update: Ken posts some more info on the Murtha-Kuchera connection.