Lobbyists Drafting History

From the "Is anyone possibly still surprised by this?" department comes today's NYT story on over 40 House members, Republicans and Democrats alike, who basically had the same section of their health care speeches written for them by pharmaceutical giant Genentech -- in some cases verbatim.

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.”

Members of Congress submit statements for publication in the Congressional Record all the time, often with a decorous request to “revise and extend my remarks.” It is unusual for so many revisions and extensions to match up word for word. It is even more unusual to find clear evidence that the statements originated with lobbyists.

The e-mail messages and their attached documents indicate that the statements were based on information supplied by Genentech employees to one of its lobbyists, Matthew L. Berzok, a lawyer at Ryan, MacKinnon, Vasapoli & Berzok who is identified as the “author” of the documents. The statements were disseminated by lobbyists at a big law firm, Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal.

In an e-mail message to fellow lobbyists on Nov. 5, two days before the House vote, Todd M. Weiss, senior managing director of Sonnenschein, said, “We are trying to secure as many House R’s and D’s to offer this/these statements for the record as humanly possible.”

He told the lobbyists to “conduct aggressive outreach to your contacts on the Hill to see if their bosses would offer the attached statements (or an edited version) for the record.”

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.”

Yeah, and if you believe there's "no connection" between Genentech telling congressional staffers exactly what House members should put in their official statements on legislation and the money they get in contributions from lobbyists like Genentech, you've even dumber than Congress thinks you are.

Keep in mind that while Obama's domestic agenda, including health care reform, is nice and all, remember that no matter which party is in power, the people in charge are lobbyists and always will be.