What This Country Really Needs

This morning, I was browsing through CBSNews.com, and I read a disturbing fact.

There are three thousand registered health care lobbyist in Washington - that's six lobbyists for every member of Congress.

According to the article, many of these lobbyists are Congressmen who crafted legislation benefitting the health insurance industry.

This led me to an interesting thought: what this country really needs is lobbyist reform. It seems that these days, and perhaps my entire lifetime, what the people want is irrelevant. When election time comes around, the politicans kiss hands and shake babies and pretend that they give a shit about us. After they get elected, our voices are shut out and only the lobbyists have any influence.

Some examples:
- Billy Tauzin, who was "instrumental" in the passage of Medicare Part D. Now works for the drug industry's lobbyist group PhRMA as their president. He is earning ten times what he earned as a Congressmen.
- Sen. John Breaux, fought against allowing drug prices to be negotiated in Medicare Part D. Now runs his own lobbying firm, and has received $300,000 this year to lobby for the pharmaceutical industry.
- Sen. Don Nickles, helped negotiate the final version of Medicare Part D. Earned $120,000 this year to lobby "health care reform issues related to Medicare and Medicaid."
- Thomas Scully, former Medicare chief. Began working for a lobbying firm less than two weeks after Medicare Part D passed.

There are more examples, but I won't bore you with the details. My point is this: how are we supposed to believe that our Senators and Representatives are really working for us, when so many of them migrate to the lobbyists' side of the business soon after leaving Congress? Are we to blithely believe that those job offers came after legislation was passed? That the health care industry and their lobbyists didn't whisper promises of job offers in their Congressional ears before the legislation was passed?

There needs to be a drastic change to laws surrounding lobbyists. I don't have a problem with the industry getting their voice heard. The problem is that, most of the time, it is the only voice that is heard.