For lobbyists and their bosses, budget crisis is big winner

Turns out not everybody was distressed that Congress has been tied up in knots for months obsessed with the self-imposed fiscal cliff crisis.

The lobbying industry, which had previously been in the dumps because of the do-nothing Congress, came roaring back to life in 2012, due in large part to the prolonged budget crisis.

According to the Center For Public Integrity, about half of the country’s top 100 lobbying firms spend more in the fourth quarter last year than they did in the third quarter, and about half showed an overall increase for 2012 over the previous year.

The top spender was the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which laid out a whopping $125 million in 2012, an 88 percent increase over the previous year. That doesn’t include the $36 million they paid to influence the outcome of the election. Another big spender was J.P. Morgan, which served up $8.8 million in lobbying and another $784,923 to influence the election.

This increased lobbying activity unfortunately goes on outside public view. Only later can we tally up the damage from this legalized corruption of our democracy – and our pocketbooks.

And when lobbyists win, so do the corporations that pay them big bucks.

I wrote earlier this month about the corporate goodies hidden away in the fiscal cliff deal that represented just a part of the lobbyists’ handiwork – a down payment from members of Congress on their debt to the corporations who foot the bill for their campaigns and other political adventures.

Because there was no grand bargain, Congress couldn’t go all the way on their corporate overlords’ agenda, such as implementing the Social Security and Medicare cuts the CEOs have been hammering away at.

One of the most recent glaring examples of how our government does corporate bidding in secret, contrary to the public good, is the recent favor Congress did for biotech and pharmaceutical giant Amgen, hidden in the fiscal cliff deal.

As revealed by investigative reporters for the New York Times, Amgen received a very profitable gift in that deal – an exemption from Medicare price controls for one its kidney dialysis drugs. It’s the second such exemption Amgen obtained for the drug, Sensipar, which accounted for $950 million in sales last year, an 18 percent increase over the previous year.

So the $7.6 million the company paid for lobbying, and another $1.7 million in political contributions the company showered on both parties, was a small price to pay the government to keep its mitts off the company’s hot property.

At the center of the fiscal cliff deal were two senators, one Democrat, Max Baucus, and one Republican, Mitch McConnell, who are prime recipients of Amgen’s generosity. Since 2007, Amgen has given Baucus $67,500 and McConnell $73,000.

Amgen has also donated $141,000 to President Obama, who signed off on the fiscal cliff deal.

Congress’ secret favor for Amgem is expected to cost Medicare $500 million.

In December, before the fiscal cliff deal was set, President Obama was stressing the importance of reducing Medicare costs.

“I’m willing to reduce our government’s Medicare bills by finding new ways to reduce the cost of healthcare in this country," Obama said. "That's something that we all should agree on. We want to make sure that Medicare is there for future generations. But the current trajectory of health care costs is going up so high we've got to find ways to make sure that it’s sustainable."

The Amgen exemption also highlights the revolving door nature of business in Washington; current lobbyists for Amgen include former chiefs of staff for Baucus and McConnell.

A Vermont congressman has introduced legislation to undo Amgen’s sweet deal. Rep. Peter Welch, a Democrat, told the Los Angeles Times:  “Amgen managed to get a $500-million paragraph in the fiscal-cliff bill and virtually no one in Congress was aware of it. It’s a taxpayer ripoff and comes at a really bad time when we’re trying to control healthcare costs. Amgen should not be allowed to turn Medicare into a profit center.”

Call your representative and senator and let them know how you feel about major corporations like Amgen getting secret favors behind closed doors.

D.C. Disconnect: Whose cliff is this?

Think big money didn’t win in the last election? Think again.

It’s a pretty safe bet that the majority of Americans who voted for President Obama didn’t want unemployment to go up and the safety net shredded.

But we’re now in the midst of some  extended Washington lunacy over the “fiscal cliff” negotiations, with both sides trying to whip the public into a frenzy with scary scenarios of economic hardship

Is this what the majority voted for?

I don’t think so.

This is what America’s CEOs want. If they’re going to be forced to pay slightly more in taxes, they want cuts to Social Security and Medicare in exchange – even if those programs have nothing to do with the federal government’s budget deficit.

If you’re looking for a reason why our leaders would so eagerly flout the will of the majority, you might start with the money spent in the recent election – one of the most expensive in history.

Which brings is back to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling. One of the big mistakes the Supreme Court made in the Citizens United case unleashing corporate spending in politics was in its overly literal definition of how money works in elections.

Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said independent corporate spending does “not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption” and “influence over or access to elected officials does not mean that these officials are corrupt.”

According to the justices, corruption is defined only by a very specific quid pro quo.

Those who are dismissing the role of big corporate donors in the 2012 elections are making a similar misjudgment: Just because some of the most notorious big spenders, Sheldon Adelson and the Koch Brothers, didn’t win.

So the fact that Adelson, the Las Vegas mogul, and the Kochs, the energy magnates, couldn’t buy the election for Mitt Romney, means that the role of big money has been exaggerated, according to some analysts. “Spending by outside groups. it turns out,” the Washington Post reported, “was the dog that barked but did not bite.”

This isn’t the right way to view the 2012 election results, or the influence money has in our politics. Rather than focus on who wins and who loses in a particular race, or whether a particular bill is passed or defeated, we need to examine whose interests benefit, especially over a long period of time.

That’s what those big donors are after – gains over the long term. For example, the financial industry fought for 20 years before it finally won repeal of Glass-Steagall, the Depression-era law that kept separate publicly-insured banking from riskier bank investing.

Most donors and politicians are more sophisticated than to offer flat-out bribes. Elected officials, donors and lobbyists long ago learned to speak in code they understand but sounds innocuous to the public. In the case of Glass-Steagall, the bankers and their backers didn’t say they wanted to make gajillions while leaving taxpayers on the hook for bailouts when the bankers’ bets went bad. No, what they talked about publicly was “modernizing” antiquated banking laws.

A more recent example is the work of the man who Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik dubbed the “influential billionaire in national politics.” He’s not one of the Koch Brothers or Adelson. He’s former Nixon Commerce secretary and retired hedge fund mogul Pete Peterson, who has spent $457 million in the past 5 years in a campaign to convince the politicians and public that “entitlements” are in crisis and need to be cut. He has gathered around him leading politicians, intellectuals and corporate CEOs. What do all they share? The conviction that if there’s a problem with the federal budget, those who are most vulnerable economically should have to suffer to fix it.

That’s why we end up with our current debate and the “fiscal cliff” focused on the government deficit, not creating jobs and repairing the housing mess.

That’s why we end with a political debate that somehow manages to equate cuts to badly needed social programs for people still hurting from the recession with tax increases for the nation’s wealthiest.

Peterson isn’t focused on the result of one election or one skirmish in the battle over the safety net. He’s in it for the long haul.

As for Adelson, he is learning from his 2012 mistakes so he can invest his millions more successfully in pursuit of his anti-government agenda.

While President Obama has criticized the Citizens United ruling and supported a constitutional amendment to overturn it, neither he nor the Democrats are about do without their mega-donors and super-PACs in the meantime, nor are they about to make money in politics it a priority.

In this atmosphere, will the president keep his promises to fight for the interests of the middle class for increased economic security and better jobs?

The politicians’ chase for the big money is like the nuclear arms race of the 1950s and 60s between the U.S. and Russia, which both sides acknowledged was a disaster for their economies. Neither side was willing to give up. Meanwhile, more and more of the expensive, dangerous weapons were stockpiled. There’s an important difference, however: our politicians and corporate chieftains have grown fatter on the current money race in politics. The ones who are facing a dire threat  to our existence are the rest of us.