February 7th - February 13th

Among the events that I attended this week, a breakfast with Senator John Barrasso was the most interesting. The firms ability to host fundraisers and bring members of Congress into the office is impressive and facilitated by the many former members of Congress that currently work in the firm. Among the most powerful players in this respect are former Senator Lott and former Senator Breaux who were just recently aquired by the firm.

The story behind their acquistion is this. After leaving the Senate, the two Senators listed above started their own Lobbying group with a hand full of others including Senator Lotts' son. Within a few months, the Lott-Breaux Group became hugely successful and moved to 8th most profitable lobbying group in Washington, DC. In terms of the public policy world, this level of success in this amount of time with such small numbers was unheard of. What this shows is former Senators' ability(especially Senators that both held leadership positions) to influence members of congress and current legislation. Apart from influence, knowledge of how the system works, the rules, the people, etc are incredbiliy important as well. For these reasons, and among others, the firm desires people with governmental experience and more specifically Senate Leadership expereience which is why they bought the Lott-Breaux Group last year.
So anyways, Senator Lott (R) brought in Senator John Barrasso (R) from WY into the office Thursday morning. The first thing Barrasso said was how great an influence that Senator Lott has been and reading Senate Lott's book is what encouraged him to run for Senate....

Barrasso was an orthopedic surgeon for 24 years and served as medical director of the Wyoming Health Fairs. He serves as Vice-Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, Chairman of the Western Caucus, Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Environment and Public Works Committee, Indian Affairs, and Senate Foreign Relations. He ranks as the number one most conservative Republican in the Senate, but does not know if he is conservative enough for Wyoming (a joke that was well recieved by his guests). Among the things he spoke about, I found that the environment and health care were the most interesting subjects, and for the most part I agreed with his points.

For the environment, EPA is a fantastic organization so long as it does not hinder the US economy and hurt the American job market. President Obama loves to mention that his new iniatives for renewable energy and sustainability are creating green jobs all across America. What the President doesn't realize is that it is costing Americans red, white, and blue jobs in the process.

For health care, people do not realize where revenue from the bill is actually coming from. It is 10 years of taxes with 6 years of spending. This is how you get $230 Billion and where Democrats get this number if the bill is repealed. The Senator has his weekly "Second Opinion" in front of the Senate to discuss the health care bill's unintended consequences to providers, patients, and taxpayers. His stance has remained strong supporting that the bill is unsastainable, unaffordable, and unconstitutional. A physican for 24 years, he has supported a bill that will allow state officals to challenge Federal Regualtions in order to block the governments effort to overhaul the entire health care system. 

Clearly, there are positons on both sides on the environment and health care debates which I would be love to talk about. 25 inches of snow in Chicago does not support global warming and rising cost of care, losing employer based coverage, and doctors dropping patients at rates never before seen does not justify the health care bill.