daniel green
11-08-2009, 04:20 PM
Take health-care reform. From the time the bill hit Congress, Republicans found themselves opposite big industry interests. From the drugmakers to the doctors to the insurers, every major player in the health-care battle declared themselves willing to work with Democrats to enact some variant on reform. Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, were almost universally opposed. Health-care reform advocates eventually dug up a handful of Republican notables to support reform, and in a radio address, President Obama singled out four for special notice: former health and human services secretaries Louis Sullivan and Tommy Thompson and former Senate majority leaders Bill Frist and Bob Dole. But, as reported by The Washington Examiner's Timothy Carney, it turned out that each of those Republican defectors had direct financial connections to the health-care industry, either as lobbyists or corporate consultants. In other words, these were folks whose allegiances to industry trumped their allegiances to their political party. Nor is the health-care fight an outlier. Scan the big legislative battles of the past year or those on the horizon, and you start to see a pattern: the Republican Party on one side, entrenched big-business interests on the other.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/219880
http://www.newsweek.com/id/219880