Gross Evidence of Rent-Seeking

It’s not often that you get enough evidence of rent-seeking you can actually find it entered into a public record. Leave it to Stupakistan to show the incredible power of insurance and other nondepository financial institutions to leave their fingerprints without shame on the public policy debate over the healthcare payments system. It looks like the middle men are definitely winning on this one. Check out this article at the NYT today by Robert Pea with damning headline “In House, Many Spoke with One Voice: Lobbyists’. “

We have to get corporate money out of politics. It’s essential to preserving our republic with its aspirational democratic roots.

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.

Notice that it’s an equal opportunity rent-seeking opportunity. Lobbyists are carefully crafting their message to play to whatever base will fall for it. If there ever is evidence that public policy is being high jacked by parasites of the market–those third party payers that bring no value and only layers of costs and confusion to the process–this is it. Unfortunately, people are so dependent on their insurance companies, they fail to see they need to rid themselves of the fleas.

The lobbyists, employed by Genentech and by two Washington law firms, were remarkably successful in getting the statements printed in the Congressional Record under the names of different members of Congress.

Genentech, a subsidiary of the Swiss drug giant Roche, estimates that 42 House members picked up some of its talking points — 22 Republicans and 20 Democrats, an unusual bipartisan coup for lobbyists.

In an interview, Representative Bill Pascrell Jr., Democrat of New Jersey, said: “I regret that the language was the same. I did not know it was.” He said he got his statement from his staff and “did not know where they got the information from.”

Yea, right. You’re so frigging busy with things and you have so few staff you can’t actually read the bills, get information on the problems in the market, and find solutions for yourself. You just have to rely on people with stakes in the status quo that are looking for economic profits through rent-seeking.

In recent years, Genentech’s political action committee and lobbyists for Roche and Genentech have made campaign contributions to many House members, including some who filed statements in the Congressional Record. And company employees have been among the hosts at fund-raisers for some of those lawmakers. But Evan L. Morris, head of Genentech’s Washington office, said, “There was no connection between the contributions and the statements.”

Mr. Morris said Republicans and Democrats, concerned about the unemployment rate, were receptive to the company’s arguments about the need to keep research jobs in the United States.

Maybe RD can clear up the connection between what they’re demanding congress keep in their cookie jar and the outsourcing of science jobs to the cheapest market, but my guess is it’s just a convenient excuse unless you actually force them to keep the jobs IN THE COUNTRY in the wording of the legislation. They’ll go where the cheapest options are because corporations have ONLY one goal. That is MAXIMIZING PROFIT. Renting seeking and ruthless cost-cutting play right into that. Also, gaining market share and power so you can manipulate the price and quantity–especially on a price insensitive (inelastic) item like drugs and health care. When you need them you need them and you’re likely to rearrange your budget and everything else to get them; especially if it’s a matter of life and death.

My guess is we have a lot of gullible shills in Stupakistan.

Mr. Brady’s chief of staff, Stanley V. White, said he had received the draft statement from a lobbyist for Genentech’s parent company, Roche.

“We were approached by the lobbyist, who asked if we would be willing to enter a statement in the Congressional Record,” Mr. White said. “I asked him for a draft. I tweaked a couple of words. There’s not much reason to reinvent the wheel on a Congressional Record entry.”

Some differences were just a matter of style. Representative Yvette D. Clarke, Democrat of New York, said, “I see this bill as an exciting opportunity to create the kind of jobs we so desperately need in this country, while at the same time improving the lives of all Americans.”

Representative Donald M. Payne, Democrat of New Jersey, used the same words, but said the bill would improve the lives of “ALL Americans.”

Mr. Payne and Mr. Brady said the bill would “create new opportunities and markets for our brightest technology minds.” Mr. Pascrell said the bill would “create new opportunities and markets for our brightest minds in technology.”

My guess is these brains in congress were the same ones that talked their brainy class mates into sharing their homework and rephrased it just enough to pass the professor’s scrutiny or most like the professor’s grad student’s scrutiny.

There is something incredibly wrong in our governing process when a group of powerful nonvoting constituents get to write the voice of public policy. If your congressman is on this list, find an alternative, FAST!!!

Write the New York Times and ask them to print the names of ALL 42 participants in this sham.

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