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.

Why take the money, Senator?

by: Jay Stevens

Tue Jul 21, 2009 at 09:43:25 AM MST

Imagine that Baucus is, at best, bemused by the lobbyists and corporate chieftains autographing checks in a futile effort to purchase his affections. Why let them? Baucus is from Montana. It's one of the smallest states in the country. It has a cheap media market. And Baucus -- who faced no serious competition in his last campaign -- isn't up for reelection until 2014.

Baucus could have shut off his fundraising operation and avoided the appearance of any and all impropriety. Instead, on June 10, he held his "annual fly-fishing and golfing weekend in Big Sky, Mont., for a minimum donation of $2,500." Sometime this month he'll preside over "Camp Baucus," a "trip for the whole family" that touts horseback riding and hiking on the list of activities. The problem with this is not that it necessarily influences Baucus's thinking on health-care reform. It's that all this industry money reduces his credibility to make necessary concessions and hard decisions. And there's no reason for it. He doesn't need the money.

I will say that Klein is asking this completely out of context, as if Baucus hadn't been in office since 1978 and survived several close challenges and a long, dark conservative shift in state politics.

Win by winning

by: Jay Stevens

Thu Jul 09, 2009 at 12:27:17 PM MST

Reporting from Waukon, Iowa -- One is a thrifty soybean farmer from Iowa with a penchant for righteous speeches about government waste. The other is a Stanford-educated lawyer from a Montana ranching family who looks uncomfortable leading a debate.

Despite more than 60 years in Congress between them, Charles E. Grassley, the Iowa Republican, and Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat, are outsiders -- loners whose independent streaks make colleagues wary, sometimes even mistrustful.

But unlikely as it may seem, the partnership between these two slightly eccentric men may hold the key to overhauling the nation's sprawling healthcare system -- a legislative grail that has eluded the giants of the Senate for more than half a century.

In the face of strident criticism from colleagues in both parties, Baucus (chairman of the Senate Finance Committee) and Grassley (the panel's senior Republican) are laboring to fashion a series of compromises on healthcare that might win the support of a bipartisan majority on Capitol Hill.

(A) There will be no bipartisanship on health care reform, because the Republican party's goal is to sabotage any and all reform. I'm am completely flabbergasted by Baucus' continued attempts to rope Grassley into the process. It...will...not...happen.

(B) The report kept mentioning the "middle ground" in health care. Let's be frank. A fully accessible and robust public option for health insurance is the "middle ground" - among the American people. The "middle ground" batted so casually around here is the ground between right-wing Republicans and pro-corporate Democrats.

When this happens -

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Tuesday ordered Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) to drop a proposal to tax health benefits and stop chasing Republican votes on a massive health care reform bill.

- you know you're really banging your head against a brick wall. I mean, it's not as if Harry Reid has been aggressively progressive on this issue...or any other issue for that matter.

A lot of folks who dislike Max Baucus' stance on health care often cite the amount of money our Senator receives from health care industries. I don't think it's the money. I think Baucus was being honest during his interview with John Adams when he said, "Money means nothing to me. I pay no attention to campaign contributions. Nothing. Makes no difference." I think it's who he talks to.

From the Sunlight Foundation:

Lobbying disclosure filings for the first quarter of 2009 reveal that five of Baucus' former staffers currently work for a total of twenty-seven different organizations that are either in the health care or insurance sector or have a noted interest in the outcome. The organizations represented include some of the top lobbying organizations in the health sector: Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Researchers of America (PhRMA), America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), Amgen, and GE Health Care.

The former staffers turned lobbyists include two former chiefs of staff, David Castagnetti and Jeff Forbes, and one former legislative assistant, Scott Olsen. Other former staffers working with health care portfolios include Angela Hoffman and Roger Blauwet.

The murky world of Washington is filled with enemies and lunatics, and I suspect those our lawmakers trust most are those people who have worked with them down in the trenches of political warfare, during their toughest times. The staffers. And these people are very bright, and they know a lot about issues, probably more than Baucus himself does. So when they come a-knockin', Baucus listens.

And I suspect that's why the "middle ground" is staked out on some barren turf, far, far from where everyday Americans stand on the issue.

Ironically, one of the reasons politicians like Baucus listen to these lobbyists and pursue the "middle ground" is that they're constantly running scared, looking over their shoulders at critics and always anticipating the next election. In Baucus' case - who's been in office since the 1970s and survived the long, long Republican infestation of Montana - that's doubly so. Staking out the "middle," thwarting progressives and appeasing business has been a staple in the Senator's electioneering playbook. And to be fair to his political strategists, it's been a winning formula.

But now there's health care. And Baucus is suddenly a prominent national figure for reform. He's getting a lot of attention, and he's setting himself up to be the one held responsible for whatever comes out of reform. He has a couple of options, as I see it, before him:

- He can fight for the kind of reform most Americans want. That is a public/private model of insurance with a robust public option available to all. Call this, "giving us what we want."

- He can compromise with private insurers, and create a system that accounts for the uninsured, has some minor progressive reforms that dull the edge of the current system, and implement policies to reduce, or slow, health care costs, and ensure that Americans don't feel much bite in the form of higher taxes. Call this, "fixing leaks without pain."

Based on this Ezra Klein post, and what I know about Baucus' plan, I'm guessing he's trying for the latter. No surprise: it's cautious and "moderate."

But the thing is, we're in a crisis. People are miserable. They hate the way they pay for health care. If most people are untouched by reform, reform will be seen as a bust. If you're cautious and "moderate" on this issue, you will be seen as a failure.

This is one of the rare political issues where you can't win by not losing.

Washington's version of a perpetual motion machine

by: Jay Stevens

Tue Feb 19, 2008 at 13:07:08 PM MST

And why wouldn't ex-lawmakers and aides gravitate to K Street? Lobbying jobs pay at least twice and sometimes three times government salaries. Serving in government is now viewed by many on Capitol Hill as a steppingstone to a lucrative career in bending government to the whims of paying clients. In many ways, lobbying now mimics the government it targets. It has become a bureaucracy, with its own language, its own peculiar ways of doing business and, most important, its own instinct to survive.

Indeed, the last thing any lobbyist wants is to win everything his or her client is seeking. That would mean an end to a retainer, the closing of the feedbag. Success for a lobbyist is not outright victory but, rather, just enough progress to justify the creation of an elaborate and well-funded lobbying apparatus. Even outright failure can underscore the need to lobby harder.

Lobbying is Washington's version of a perpetual motion machine. Once it gets revved up, it rarely stops running. In fact, it tends to grow.

Nice story, written around the travel industry's attempt to get the federal government to foot a $200 million bill to conduct advertising across the globe in order to attract more tourists to the country.

In short, this is what you get in a society where the merit of your ideas is based on how much money you spend, not on the quality of your arguments.

Circus Maximus Politicus And That Urpy Feeling, A Rant

by: bobhiggins

Mon Jun 11, 2007 at 11:03:09 AM MST

Eight faces that I'm thoroughly sick of.

Ten faces that make me vomit, projectile style.

Now, the man on the stand he wants my vote,
He's a-runnin' for office on the ballot note.
He's out there preachin' in front of the steeple,
Tellin' me he loves all kinds-a people.
He's eatin' bagels
He's eatin' pizza
He's eatin' chitlins
He's eatin' bullshit!

Bob Dylan "I Shall Be Free"

I knew this would happen when they started campaigning for the 2008 election five minutes after the 2006 mid terms. I felt it coming, like the feeling I get when I eat a giant sausage sandwich with peppers and onions at midnight, I know that indigestion is in my immediate future.

I'm sick of politics, thoroughly, fed up, to the gills.... Urp!

I know, I know, being sick of politics is like being tired of living, OK so what what what do you do about it? Shut up? Quit bitching? Take up residence in the nearest hermitage? Find a cuckoo's nest and commit to it?

Jerome Anderson: Montana's Nick Naylor

by: Matt Singer

Thu Apr 26, 2007 at 09:22:05 AM MST

PhRMA Scared of Jon Tester; Max Gets a Bounce?

by: Matt Singer

Fri Nov 24, 2006 at 11:05:07 AM MST

It's scandalous, I tell you. Scandalous.

Also, diarist Headwaters makes a nice find: Max's poll numbers surged after his recent stumping with Jon and Brian. In the last month, he went from 61% to 72% approval rating. That comes in large part from strengthened numbers among Democrats, where he went from getting support from 3 in 4 to having approval from 7 in 8.

Being a teamplayer and being seen with a couple populists seems like it was a real good move for the senior Senator. Here's hoping he takes note.

Pharmaceutical Companies: Jon Tester "is expected to be a problem."

by: Matt Singer

Fri Nov 24, 2006 at 09:15:00 AM MST

An internal email from a pharmaceutical company reveals the level of concern, noting that Tester "is expected to be a problem" and that Sherrod Brown's entry into the Senate poses difficulties for the pharmaceutical industry.

What policies are they worried about in particular? Price negotiations and drug reimportation -- two policies that will lower the cost of drugs and save consumers and the government significant amounts of money.