Senators Overseeing Health Bill Get Big Dose Of PAC Cash

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December 22, 2009 Tuesday CHASE EDITION

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 8A

LENGTH: 495 words

HEADLINE: Senators overseeing health bill get big dose of PAC cash

BYLINE: Fredreka Schouten

WASHINGTON -- As the health care bill moves toward a critical vote in the Senate, the five senators charged with overseeing the floor debate count health interests among their biggest campaign contributors, records show.

The political action committees and employees of drugmakers Schering-Plough and Amgen have been the top two contributors in the past five years to Montana Sen. Max Baucus, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Baucus chairs the Senate Finance Committee and is one of three senators managing the bill for Democrats.

In all, health care interests have donated more than $2.5 million to Baucus' fundraising committees since 2005, the center's data show. Those donations are second only to the finance, insurance and real-estate sectors.

Health care interests also dominate contributions to Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, giving more than $1.3 million to the five-term senator between 2005 and this year. The political action committee and employees of Amgen top his list of contributors during the same period.

Grassley spokeswoman Jill Kozeny said "there's no relationship" between contributions and legislation. Baucus spokesman Tyler Matsdorf said: "For anything that Sen. Baucus works on, he only has one criteria: Do what's right for Montana and for the nation."

"If you are a committee chair, you get lots of corporate money, which provides the corporations lots of access and clearly distorts the process," said Richard Kirsch of Health Care for America Now, which failed to persuade the Senate to include a government-run insurance option.

Amgen spokeswoman Emma Hurley said the company's PAC contributes "to candidates who are generally supportive of important issues such as patient access to existing and future innovative products and innovation preservation."

The American Academy of Family Physicians gave $5,000 to Baucus this year. Michael Fleming, who chairs the political action committee's board, said his group found itself sidelined in policy discussions before establishing a fundraising arm in 2005.

"Unless you're at the table, you're on the menu," he said. "We now have more visibility directly to members of Congress."

Other lawmakers controlling the health care floor debate:

*Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., who has received $210,050 this year from health-related political action committees, his No. 3 source of PAC money. Dodd served temporarily as chairman of the Senate health committee this year.

*Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, the new chairman of the Senate health panel, received $66,000 from health care PACs this year, more than any other sector and twice the amount he received from agribusiness, an important industry in his home state.

*Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., has received $27,000 from health care political action committees this year, more than any other industry. Health PACs donated nearly $289,000 in 2008, his last election. He is the top Republican on the Senate health committee.

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