and our representatives in congress and senatorsin their exclusive club

are dirty money grubbers, who don't give a tinkers damn about the people

they represent. every so often investigative reporters find proof and we

can only shake our heads and say WTF once again:

Foul Play in the Senate

Saturday, 26 January 2013 09:21

Sens. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), left, and Orrin

Hatch (R-Utah) during a Senate Finance

Committee roundtable discussion in

Washington, June 14, 2012.

The inauguration of a president is one of

those spectacles of democracy that can

make us remember we’re part of something

big and enduring. So for a few hours this

past Monday the pomp and circumstance

inspired us to think that government of, by,

and for the people really is just that, despite

the predatory threats that stalk it.

But the mood didn’t last. Every now and

then, as the cameras panned upward, the

Capitol dome towering over the ceremony

was a reminder of something the good

feeling of the moment couldn’t erase. It’s the

journalist’s curse to have a good time

spoiled by the reality beyond the pageantry.

Just a couple of days before the inaugural

festivities, The New York Times published

some superb investigative reporting by the

team of Eric Lipton and Kevin Sack, and their

revelations were hard to forget, even at a

time of celebration.

The story told us of a pharmaceutical giant

called Amgen and three senators so close to

it they might be entries on its balance sheet:

Republican Minority Leader Mitch

McConnell, Democratic Senator Max Baucus,

chair of the Senate Finance Committee, and

that powerful committee’s ranking

Republican, Orrin Hatch. A trio of

perpetrators who treat the United States

Treasury as if it were a cash-and-carry annex

of corporate America.

The Times story described how Amgen got a

huge hidden gift from unnamed members of

Congress and their staffers. They slipped an

eleventh hour loophole into the New Year’s

Eve deal that kept the government from

going over the fiscal cliff. When the sun rose

in the morning, there it was, a richly

embroidered loophole for Amgen that will

cost taxpayers a cool half a billion dollars.

Amgen is the world’s largest biotechnology

firm, a drug maker that sells a variety of

medications. The little clause secretly

sneaked into the fiscal cliff bill gives the

company two more years of relief from

Medicare cost controls for certain drugs

used by patients who are on kidney dialysis,

including a pill called Sensipar,

manufactured by Amgen.

The provision didn’t mention Amgen by

name, but according to reporters Lipton and

Sack, the news that it had been tucked into

the fiscal cliff deal “was so welcome, that the

company’s chief executive quickly relayed it

to investment analysts.” Tipping them off, it

would seem, to a jackpot in the making.

Amgen has 74 lobbyists on its team in

Washington and lobbied hard for that

loophole, currying favor with friends at the

White House and on Capitol Hill. The Times

reporters traced its “deep financial and

political ties” to Baucus, McConnell and

Hatch, “who hold heavy sway over Medicare

payment policy.”

All three have received hefty campaign

donations from the company whose bottom

line mysteriously just got padded at taxpayer

expense. Since 2007, Amgen employees and

its political action committee have

contributed nearly $68,000 to Senator

Baucus, $73,000 to Senator McConnell’s

campaigns, and $59,000 to Senator Hatch.

And lo and behold, among those 74 Amgen

lobbyists are the former chief of staff to

Senator Baucus and the former chief of staff

to Senator McConnell. You get the picture:

Two guys nurtured at public expense, paid

as public servants, disappear through the

gold-plated revolving door of Congress and

presto, return as money changers in the

temple of crony capitalism.

Inside to welcome them is a current top aide

to Senator Hatch, one who helped weave this

lucrative loophole. He used to work as a

health policy analyst for — you guessed it —

Amgen.

So the trail winds deeper into the sordid

swamp beneath that great Capitol dome, a

sinkhole where shame has all but

disappeared. As reporters Lipton and Sack

remind us, just weeks before this backroom

betrayal of the public interest by elected

officials and the mercenaries they have

mentored, Amgen pleaded guilty to fraud.

Look it up: fraud means trickery, cheating

and duplicity. Amgen agreed to pay $762

million in criminal and civil penalties; the

company had been caught illegally

marketing another one of its drugs.

The fact that their puppet master had been

the subject of fines and a massive federal

investigation mattered not to its servile

pawns in the Senate, where pomp and

circumstance are but masks for the brute

power of money.

Peter Welch, Vermont’s Democratic

congressman, has just introduced bipartisan

legislation to repeal the half billion-dollar

giveaway to Amgen [see the video clip

below]. Its co-sponsors include Republican

Richard Hanna of New York and Democrats

Jim Cooper of Tennessee and Bruce Braley

of Iowa.

The Amgen deal “confirms the American

public’s worst suspicions of how Congress

operates,” Representative Welch told us this

week. “As the nation’s economy teetered on

the edge of a Congressional-created fiscal

cliff, lobbyists for a private, for-profit

company seized an opportunity to feed at the

public trough. It’s no wonder cockroaches

and root canals are more popular than

Congress.”

In his inaugural address, Barack Obama said

the commitments we make to each other

through Medicare, Medicaid, and Social

Security don’t make us a nation of takers.

But the actions of Amgen and its cronies

under the dome on Capitol Hill show who the

real takers are — not those who look to

government for support in old age and hard

times but the ones at the top whose avarice

and lust for profit compel them to take as

much as they can from that government at

the expense of everyone else.