West Virginia Blue
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To start with, PhARMA, the big pharmaceuticals lobby, is spending 12 million bucks right now on ads promoting the Baucus bill, and they've set aside a total of 150 million bucks for the rest of the campaign. This is part of the 80 billion that the industry has pledged over ten years to reduce pharmaceutical costs (although how this 12 million reduces costs, I don't know... surely they will find a way to bill this expense to the consumer).
"Don't bet against us. We are going to make this thing happen," said Barack Obama to reporters yesterday when he announced that he expected a Senate Health Plan to come out of Max Baucus' Finance Committee by the end of the week.
Obama is committed to having this plan out before Congress takes its August vacation (does it dawn on you that these guys take a lot of time off? I guess when you're collecting from insurance companies and other lobbyists you have to make appearances at their summer gatherings...), and time is running out.
When you wake up in the morning and rub the sleep out of your eyes are you surprised to find a great shadowy figure in the room? We are past the Fourth and the "let's celebrate America" holiday feeling only to find that the lobbyists continued to move forward while we were distracted by fireworks and speeches.
The Wapo points out this morning that a large number of former inner-office employees of Max Baucus and Charles Grassley and other active Congressional committee members are being snatched up by lobbying organizations:
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