Newt for sale
STEIN, KEN SILVER
Newt for Sale Gingrich takes influence peddling to new heights BY KEN SILVERSTEIN A few weeks before last fall's mid-term elections, Newt Gingrich met with a group of high-powered Washington...
...Anxious to curry favor with their new leader, businesses made the event a sell-out...
...For a meager $5,800 Hewlett-Packard was labeled "one of the great companies in American history" ("it does very interesting things"), while Milliken & Co., whose own Roger Milliken has shelled out $300,000 to GOPAC, was honored as "the most effective, most productive textile company in the world...
...By the time an FDA investigation forced the product off the market in 1986, Pfizer had racked up $100 million in profits and 750 people worldwide had been killed by the valve...
...While Gingrich is a natural ally of business groups, the House Speaker seems to give special attention to the needs of big Republican Party contributors, especially donors to Newt's own web of fundraising vehicles, including the Progress and Freedom Foundation, GOPAC, his political action committee, and "Renewing American Civilization," Professor Gingrich's satellite college course...
...Backers insist that pharmaceutical firms have become so frightened at the prospect of frivolous lawsuits that they no longer dare innovate...
...Executives from the Indianapolis-based Golden Rule Insurance Company contributed more than $115,000 to GOPAC between 1991 and 1993...
...Under several current product-liability bills sponsored by the Republicans, Bjork-Shiley victims could have sued Pfizer for only compensatory, not punitive, damages...
...Dismissing ethics complaints that have been filed against him concerning a number of violations of House rules, Gingrich said they were "spurious charges" concocted by his "defeated opponents, various embittered Democrats...
...Newt for Sale Gingrich takes influence peddling to new heights BY KEN SILVERSTEIN A few weeks before last fall's mid-term elections, Newt Gingrich met with a group of high-powered Washington lobbyists and informed them that the Republicans would not look kindly upon political contributors who waited to see how the vote went before sending in their checks...
...The Republicans' take: $11 million, a new record for a political event.* Ken Silverstein is co-editor of CounterPunch, a twice-monthly Washington-based newsletter about national politics...
...Gingrich rarely bothers to cover up the links between political donation and personal action, perhaps because such clarity encourages further flows of money...
...The House Speaker has personally intervened with the FDA in behalf of at least one firm, Solvay Pharmaceuticals...
...Newt told students that HealthSouth, a company that has made $11,000 in contributions to Gingrich-linked outfits, does "a remarkable job in helping people with rehabilitation...
...Their real concerns are seen in cases like Pfizer's Bjork-Shiley Heart Valve...
...A recent report by the watchdog group Public Citizen sheds new light on the bogus nature of the Republicans' attack on the FDA...
...Lurking behind these and other anti-regulatory thrusts are several well-endowed corporate front groups...
...Already sensing a mammoth defeat for the Democrats, the lobbyists and the private interests they represent promptly responded to Gingrich's appeal...
...Pfizer learned of problems with the valve shortly after putting it on the market in 1979, but sought to keep defects hidden, even writing the FDA to urge the agency not to notify the public, according to documents obtained by the Consumers Union...
...Last July, then-minority whip Gingrich and a colleague, Representative Cass Bal-lenger, Republican of North Carolina, wrote the agency to ask why it had not yet approved Luvox, a Solvay-produced drug used to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder...
...That's because the FDA, acting on insufficient data supplied by the company, had approved the device...
...In criticizing regulation, these groups adopt the pose of defenders of the American consumer...
...The Foundation—whose president, Jeffrey Eisenach, is one of Gingrich's closest advisers—is also proposing that private industry be given responsibility for many of the FDA's duties...
...Under questioning from Democratic members of the subcommittee, Gray conceded that he didn't know what nitrazepam was used for...
...The message has certainly reached the business community...
...were regularly plugged...
...Not content with merely rushing new drugs onto the market, Gingrich and the Republicans (and some Democrats) are also pressing ahead with product-liability "reform," which would sharply limit corporate responsibility in cases where the FDA had "generally recognized" a new product as safe...
...As the Daily Report for Executives noted in a recent story about the current euphoria among corporate lobbyists, "Some [companies] believe Gingrich is driving a locomotive that is leaving the station, and they may as well bundle everything on their wish list...
...Between October 1 and November 28, the Republican Party— which had raised far less money than the Democrats since President Clinton took office—raked in $16.2 million in contributions, versus a relatively paltry $4.2 million garnered by the President's demoralized party...
...Contributors to Gingrich's pet causes can count on more concrete assistance as well...
...The group's founder is W.R...
...f The Alliance for Reasonable Regulation—which includes representatives from the National Association of Manufacturers, the Chemical Manufacturers Association, Edison Electric Company, and the American Petroleum Institute—is pushing the peer review bill...
...The president of Citizens for a Sound Economy—C...
...If . . . delays are administrative and not substantive, we feel it is an unfortunate event for this company and for the potential patient population," the two congressmen said...
...His indoor air-quality proposal, which would force companies to sharply reduce workplace contaminants, drew more than 100,000 overwhelmingly hostile comments from businesses, including a few that were forwarded to law-enforcement authorities because of their threatening nature...
...Still, businesses view a number of presidential appointees as anathema, especially Joseph Dear, head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA...
...With lightning speed, big corporations—often working through benignly named front groups—have been pushing a pro-business agenda more extreme than anything floated during the halcyon days of the Reagan Administration...
...The report found that the FDA had kept off the U.S...
...If you've got a problem with the federal government, go see Newt...
...Within weeks of taking charge, Gingrich proposed that Congress devote one day each month, to be called "Corrective Day," to gutting federal rules...
...The measure would also allow companies to have direct access to the review process...
...That's the message that's being sent out...
...Coincidentally, Gingrich has emerged as the chief sponsor of Golden Rule's top legislative priority in the new Congress, a bill that would allow consumers to set up medical savings accounts with pretax dollars...
...In mid-February, the House Speaker was honored at a Republican fundraising dinner held in Washington...
...A letter to the Ford Motor Company contained a pitch from a course official saying that the company could "be assured we'll be talking about your all's experience," a fact which made it "particularly appropriate to have [the company] on board as a sponsor...
...Another Republican-sponsored bill would require federal agencies to conduct cost-benefit analyses before issuing any new rule that costs the economy more than $25 million, a threshold so low that it would require time-consuming studies before virtually any new regulation could be decreed...
...Gingrich's shameless influence peddling has reached new heights since the Republicans took control of Congress...
...Uingrich rarely bothers to cover up the links between political donation and personal action, perhaps because such clarity encourages further flows of money...
...if they can get it on the train...
...One bill introduced under the Contract with America and already approved by the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, would institute an across-the-board moratorium on all new federal regulations until December 31...
...Solvay, it turns out, is a generous contributor to the Progress and Freedom Foundation, Newt Gingrich's think tank, which receives 10 to 15 percent of its funding from big drug firms including, in addition to Solvay, Johnson & Johnson, and Searle...
...Boyden Gray, counsel to the President under George Bush—told a House subcommittee in late January that FDA dawdling "kills American citizens...
...market forty-seven drugs which had been approved for sale in England, France, and Germany, and which were all later withdrawn due to safety problems...
...High on business's priority list is a drastic reduction in federal regulation, even though Clinton has been fairly timid in the area of regulation—Congress approved far more sweeping legislation under George Bush, including the Clean Air Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act...
...Roll Call examined videos of Gingrich's lectures for "Renewing American Civilization" and found that contributors to Newt, Inc...
...The Republicans rejected an amendment to the bill that would have exempted Environmental Protection Agency efforts to control Cryptosporidium, a bacteria in drinking water that has killed more than 100 people and made 400,000 others sick...
...The agency's snail-paced approval of the drug nitrazepam, Gray charged, had resulted in the deaths of nearly 4,000 people...
...Course donors who give $50,000 or more can become "sponsors," and are offered the chance to "work directly with the leadership of the Renewing American Civilization project in the course development process...
...In other words, Philip Morris scientists would be allowed to work with agencies preparing rules on, say, indoor smoking...
...Meanwhile, Gingrich's ability to extract money from business interests will surely grow...
...Gingrich has come to represent the ombudsman for American business," says Charles Lewis, head of the Center for Public Integrity...
...Last October 21, just weeks before the mid-term vote, the company made a $216,000 soft-money contribution to the Republican Party...
...According to The Washington Post, "Gingrich predicted it would become 'fairly expensive' for taxpayers to 'let the Democrats play games with the ethics process.'" But with the Republicans in charge of Congress for at least the next two years, the pay-off for business will likely come at the expense of consumers and taxpayers...
...Representative Richard Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, informed him: insomnia...
...1 Citizens for a Sound Economy—the citizens in question being companies like Amoco, Bell Atlantic, Citibank, General Electric, and General Motors—have targeted the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Consumer Product Safety Commission...
...Agencies cannot "exclude peer reviewers with substantial and relevant expertise merely because they may have potential interest in the outcome," according to the bill...
...Grace & Co.'s J. Peter Grace, the multi-millionaire whose Grace Commission has actively sought to eliminate government regulation and social spending for the poor...
...1 Citizens Against Government Waste is another player active in the drive against "big government...
Vol. 59 • April 1995 • No. 4
