Baucus: swimming with sharks...or jumping them?

by: Jay Stevens

Fri Oct 16, 2009 at 10:25:58 AM MST

At a meeting last April with corporate lobbyists, aides to President Barack Obama and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) helped set in motion a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign, primarily financed by industry groups, that has played a key role in bolstering public support for health care reform.

The role Baucus's chief of staff, Jon Selib, and deputy White House chief of staff Jim Messina played in launching the groups was part of a successful effort by Democrats to enlist traditional enemies of health care reform to their side. No quid pro quo was involved, they insist, as do the lobbyists themselves.

...The Democratic officials made no overt demands. Rather, they brought together the players and laid the groundwork for the creation of the coalition, and that was followed by more direct solicitations from an outside Democratic consultant, Nick Baldick, retained by Healthy Economy Now, asking attendees at the meeting to join the coalition and contribute to its ad campaigns.

One ethics expert, however, said the meeting still raises issues. No matter how careful Messina and Selib were to avoid conversation about Healthy Economy Now, their mere presence at what proved to be the coalition's creation raises questions, said Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan, nonprofit group that advocates for greater transparency and ethics in government.

"There's no problem with sitting down at the table and talking," said Allison. "But if they are signaling that they would really like these groups to support health care reform and trying to tell the groups how they'll benefit from the plan, they're laying a 'quid' on the table, and - even if they don't discuss dollar amounts or advertising strategies - they're suggesting what the 'quo' is, which is the groups' support for the plan."

Basically, in exchange for a $150 million ad campaign, Baucus and the White House promised to make reform friendly to the industries that pitched in.

In a recent interview with John Adams, Baucus said, "money means nothing to me. I pay no attention to campaign contributions. Nothing. Makes no difference." And he sounded like he meant it, and it may even be true. But what's also true is that Max Baucus has very strong ties to the industries he's trying to reform. Maybe it's not about the money, it's about who has access to him, and who he listens to. Again, the Sunlight Foundation traced the relationship that Baucus had to the health and insurance industries through his former staffers; there's no doubt that those who he trusts the most - those that were in the political trenches with him over the years - are working for the corporate interests that we're trying to beat back in healthcare reform.

And, as JC reported over a month ago, the author of Baucus' legislation was senior aide, Liz Fowler, who was previously vice president for public policy and external affairs at Wellpoint, Inc, the largest member of Blue Cross/Blue Shield and an outspoken opponent of the public option. ("Cost shifting," by the way, is a bogus argument.)

Of course, the question that stands before us is how much of an influence did all of this have on how healthcare reform played out? Was the legislation bought? Was it the result of a kind of institutional myopia, too much attention to the fortunes of the insurance industry, and a bill that he probably thought would work to "everyone's" benefit? Or was he Obama's agent to keep conservative Senate Democrats on board? A kind of stealth reformer?

To put it slightly differently, if you imagine that Max Baucus was given responsibility for keeping conservative Senate Democrats committed to health-care reform (and that's how his role was often described at the beginning, with Kennedy and then Dodd playing the same role for liberals), it appears he has succeeded. Indeed, if Baucus's schedule partly led to the long month of August, you also have to give him credit for not losing a single Democrat in its aftermath, and for having the savvy to use the release of his bill and CBO score to change the media's narrative and refocus the conversation on the advancing legislative process.

And all the old arguments repeat themselves. Baucus nixed single-payer healthcare because he's a company man. Baucus nixed single-payer healthcare because there's little support for it in the Senate. Baucus did his best to kill the public option. Baucus had the public option in his white paper, but cut it out of his bill - and voted against public option amendments - to get it passed, even if he does, personally support the public option.

But there's that money, that $450,000, that says Baucus and the industries that need reform, at the very least see eye-to-eye on an awful lot of things. Maybe Baucus was tasked to herd the conservative Democratic Senators because the White House knew he'd proffer them palatable fodder, legislation devoid of the spice of audacity, transformation, or effectiveness. We'll never know, of course. I don't think even Baucus himself knows what he knows. Was he the sly, smoke-filled-room dealer who made reform possible? Or the bought-and-paid-for politician keeping an eye out for old friends? Probably the answer is "yes."