| Senator | 2008 Health Sector | Career Health Sector | 2008 Insurance Sector | Career Insurance Sector |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MAX BAUCUS (D-MT) | $1,148,775.00 | $2,797,381.00 | $285,850.00 | $1,170,313.00 |
| JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV (D-WV) | $515,150.00 | $1,674,229.00 | $107,874.00 | $394,074.00 |
| KENT CONRAD (D-ND) | $117,350.00 | $1,331,363.00 | $56,650.00 | $821,187.00 |
| JEFF BINGAMAN (D-NM) | $14,151.00 | $861,841.00 | $1,500.00 | $160,875.00 |
| JOHN F. KERRY (D-MA) | $289,430.00 | $8,145,141.00 | $90,250.00 | $1,397,367.00 |
| BLANCHE L. LINCOLN (D-AR) | $226,753.00 | $1,281,608.00 | $49,500.00 | $440,033.00 |
| RON WYDEN (D-OR) | $96,925.00 | $1,161,488.00 | $45,999.00 | $229,173.00 |
| CHARLES E. SCHUMER (D-NY) | $10,000.00 | $1,402,358.00 | $3,000.00 | $946,400.00 |
| DEBBIE STABENOW (D-MI) | $239,018.00 | $1,188,186.00 | $40,800.00 | $246,750.00 |
| MARIA CANTWELL (D-WA) | $48,951.00 | $573,076.00 | $12,300.00 | $80,850.00 |
| BILL NELSON (D-FL) | $60,015.00 | $1,163,210.00 | $22,500.00 | $520,016.00 |
| ROBERT MENENDEZ (D-NJ) | $81,650.00 | $1,216,476.00 | $67,450.00 | $458,679.00 |
| THOMAS CARPER (D-DE) | $15,450.00 | $452,000.00 | $28,700.00 | $447,984.00 |
Source: Sunlight Foundation,"Visualizing the Healthcare Lobbyist Complex", by way of OpenSecrets.org
I would like to point out that #2 on this list, Senator Rockefeller, has been one of the strongest supporters of the public option. If he can do that while happily collecting more than two-and-a-half million from the healthcare industry, God bless him. I can't say the same for Mr. Baucus.
The main object of that Sunlight Foundation piece is to visualize the connection between the Finance Committee, its former-staffers-turned-lobbyists, and the companies those former-staffers-turned-lobbyists now serve. They even have one such visualization specific to Baucus, I assume because he's the sexiest member of the committee. Though each of his aides is playing the field with several of the biggest names in regressive-rent-seeking-corporate-buggery, It looks like one David Castagnetti is the sobbing Japanese runaway to Boardroom America's campaign contribution bukkake. Boy, if he isn't just soaking up the, uh, attention.
For me, these maps illustrate why protecting the legislative process from business is so problematic. Peter Dorman, on Econospeak, suggests today that, rather than limit the size of donations, a more effective tack to take would be to make them more opaque. All contributions could be required to go through what he calls a "Campaign Finance Administration," a public agency which receives moneys and then cuts a check to their intended recipients. The catch is that the check would be anonymous. The candidate or office-holder would then benefit from someone's largesse without promising anything by his signature de sang.
I like the idea, and, for the record, I think it would go a long way to booting lobbyists out of the affairs of state. But, to return to Sunlight Foundation, there's a non-fiduciary residual that is left unaddressed by it. The Senate Finance Committee staffers who went to work for insurance companies don't have sway with Baucus or Conrad simply because of their wallets' heft. These women and men are of course confidants and, I'll dare to hazard, friends of the senators in question. If everyone on this blog was not a very good friend of mine, I would probably not regularly perform homoerotic pantomimes in sometimes uncomfortably visible circumstances with them (except for Sarah, who I can't interact with because I can't get gay with her). I agree, nay, pursue these theatrics with gusto because I assume that they will generate a substantial pay-off in the form of mutual dependence through the increasingly alienating nature of our behavior. Then I can turn a joke about Dan's butt into a $50,000 investment in an El Paso dog-fighting tournee, or, as it were, a generous wink at my reelection prospects.
My scalpel-sharp point here is that while an institutional solution such as the government-run intermediary proposed above has a lot of potential to shape the environment for institutional giving, it can't be in every restaurant or gentleman's club, unlike Baucus and Castagnetti. But then, of course, we all knew that, and so I suppose I'm not making much of a point. It seems that the problem becomes the irreducible question of values, those that govern the interactive rules of any path-dependent social-institutional setting. If there is a market for Congressional experience, it will suffer no shortage of sellers. One can either hope for a change in ethics--i.e. Americans become good people who recognize the value of restricting their behavior for social rewards--or you can, on paper, legislate away the market. Given how much the health insurance industry opposes options, I highly doubt they'd break bread for either choice.
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That is a neat and very practical idea.
ReplyDeleteIt will therefore never see the light of day. And if it ever was implemented, 99% of all campaign contributions would immediately evaporate. Which would probably be a good thing...shortening the electioneering period and maybe pushing everyone into a publicly funded system, etc.