U.S. Congress

Listen to this week's edition of the "Weekly Radio Spin," the Center for Media and Democracy's audio report on the stories behind the news. This week, we look at the poor being used as fronts, product placement on the news and battling ad buys. In "Six Degrees of Spin and Fakin'," we look at the pro-drilling front group "Americans for American Energy." The Weekly Radio Spin is freely available for personal and broadcast use. Podcasters can subscribe to the XML feed on www.prwatch.org/audio or via iTunes. If you air the Weekly Radio Spin on your radio station, please email us at editor@prwatch.org to let us know. Thanks!

"Washington's largest lobby, the pharmaceutical industry, racked up another banner year on Capitol Hill in 2007, backed by a record $168 million lobbying effort," reports M. Asif Ismail. The spending, from companies and trade associations including Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America and the Biotechnology Industry Organization, jumped 36 percent over the previous year. Much of the increase went to Democrats, after they became the majority party in Congress. "In the current election cycle so far, for the first time on record, the pharmaceutical and health products industry has given slightly more money to Democrats than Republicans," Ismail notes. Just two years earlier, "Democrats received only 31 percent of the contributions from the industry, while the Republicans received 67 percent." The industry's lobbying successes have included "thwarting congressional efforts to restrict media ads for prescription drugs," "blocking the importation of inexpensive drugs from other countries," and "ensuring greater market access for pharmaceutical companies in international free trade agreements."

Both the Democratic and Republican conventions are bringing in millions of dollars in corporate sponsors, but there is no reporting requirement for either the political parties or the companies. There are a reported 146 organizational and corporate donors, but less than a quarter have chosen to disclose information about their donations. Some of the lead donors are telecom companies that just weeks ago received retroactive immunity from Congress for participation in the Bush spy program. AT&T is such a large scale donor that their logo is placed prominently on the attendees' welcome bags. Other identified donors include Motorola, Coca-Cola, Google, Qwest Communications, Comcast, and nuclear energy giant Xcel Energy. Stephen Weissman of the Campaign Finance Institute, explained that "to have that speech come off well, to have the lighting and the rigging and all of the sound and the Broadway producers who do it, to have the production and the setting look just right, to have specially built podiums and so forth, that will earn gratitude."

With three weeks left before the August recess, both parties are scrambling to pass something - anything - addressing the two issues at the fore of everyone's minds and evening newscasts: the housing/mortgage crisis and high gas prices. The former seems to be a broad-based, serious effort that may help the situation, but the latter has devolved into the usual kabuki political theater.

The major housing/mortgage crisis relief bill may receive final votes in both the House and Senate this week. The Bush administration asked Congress last week to include help for government-sponsored mortgage buyers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the form of a higher credit limit with the U.S. Treasury and the possibility of a government buy-up of their stock. In exchange, congressional Democrats reiterated their support for a $4 billion program to provide funding to local governments to buy up, refurbish and sell foreclosed homes, which President Bush had previously threatened to veto the bill over. Now it's a question of who blinks first.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) are also each trying to pass their own legislation to address high gas prices. Democrats have decided to target oil speculators through bills like the Energy Markets Emergency Act of 2008 while also trying to freeze out efforts by Republicans to open the Outer Continental Shelf and Alaska National Wildlife Refuge to drilling. Neither approach is likely to have much effect on gas prices in either the long or short run, however, so at this point both parties are just trying to avoid the wrath of voters and head into the August recess having passed something (or at least have a good story about the obstructionism of the other side).

The House will also likely take up the global aids funding bill passed by the Senate last week and consider a $1 billion, 10-year plan to systematically inspect and repair the nation's bridges and tunnels.

Complete schedules of the week's committee hearings are beyond the jump.

Hearings Schedules:

Listen to this week's edition of the "Weekly Radio Spin," the Center for Media and Democracy's audio report on the stories behind the news. This week, we look at rock star Guard members, protection for journalists and a bizarre "honor" for Jesse Helms. In "Six Degrees of Spin and Fakin'," we look at Senator Elizabeth Dole. The Weekly Radio Spin is freely available for personal and broadcast use. Podcasters can subscribe to the XML feed on www.prwatch.org/audio or via iTunes. If you air the Weekly Radio Spin on your radio station, please email us at editor@prwatch.org to let us know. Thanks!

Republican Senator Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina submitted an amendment to name an HIV/AIDS relief bill after the late Jesse Helms. Helms, Dole’s predecessor in North Carolina, was notorious for being a "strident foe of HIV/AIDS prevention, research and treatment." In 1988, while vigorously opposing the Kennedy-Hatch AIDS research bill, Helms said, "There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy." Later, in 1995, in opposition to refunding the Ryan White Act, he argued that "the government should spend less on people with AIDS because they got sick due to their 'deliberate, disgusting revolting conduct.'" In 1991, seven activists from the group Act Up famously put a giant condom on Helms' Arlington home that said, "Helms Is Deadlier Than A Virus." Helms did announce in 2002 that he’d changed his mind about AIDS funding in Africa; however, his change-of-heart did not extent to American gays, saying that homosexuality "is the primary cause of the doubling and redoubling of AIDS cases in the United States."

Congress this week may send a housing relief package to President Bush for his signature. The other major action in the House and Senate will be on energy-related measures, as both Republicans and Democrats propose fixes for high energy prices. There is also a primary election in Georgia this week, as we prepare for the fall election season.

Federal officials announced early this morning that the government would take steps to shore up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-founded companies that finance about half of the home loans issued in the United States. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said the companies would be allowed to borrow money from the Federal Reserve, and the government might invest directly in the privately-held firms if their situation worsens. The steps are unprecedented, but officials have said the companies’ failure would cause further damage to America’s housing market and the overall economy.

Increased oversight of the firms is a central idea in the housing package approved by the Senate last week.

Former Congressman Curt Weldon's employer Defense Solutions got a good deal in Iraq. So good, that "the deal, for decades-old, equipment, included terms so lopsided, they likely would have been illegal under U.S. law." Defense Solutions got a contract with the Iraqi government in 2005 to refurbish obsolete Soviet-era Hungarian tanks. While U.S. law would dictate that the company's fee be tied to performance, Defense Solutions' contract not only ensures payment, it also gives them a percentage of the total cost. Even the Pentagon admits that "A cost plus percentage of cost type arrangement would encourage the contractor to experience as much cost as possible to receive a greater amount of fee." The status of the tanks is not known, and the amount paid to Defense Solutions is confidential. The contract was signed on the Iraqi side by Ziad Cattan, who was put in place by the U.S. to oversee Iraq's defense procurement. During his time in Congress, Weldon was on the House Committee on Armed Services and chaired the Military Procurement Subcommittee under Armed Services.

The biggest news this week in Congress was the passage and signing of the FISA bill, which expanded the president's surveillance powers (to more closely fit the Bush administration's existing practices) and granted retroactive legal immunity to telecom companies for breaking federal privacy laws when allowing the administration to illegally tap domestic phone lines without a warrant. The Senate also passed a housing legislation package on Friday and Congress gave final passage to a bill preventing a cut in payments to doctors in the Medicare program (at the expense of federally subsidized corporate Medicare programs).

Sheldon Rampton and I could see it coming soon after the Democrats took control of the Congress in 2007. In March, 2007 we pointed out that Speaker Nancy Pelosi, with the support of MoveOn, was advancing legislation that would fund the war in Iraq while giving Democrats PR cover, allowing them to posture against it while the bloody, brutal occupation of Iraq continues. We were attacked at the time by Democratic partisans, but unfortunately our analysis has proven correct and today the war in Iraq is as much of an interminable quagmire as it was when the Democrats took control of the House and Senate in January 2007.

Democratic political activist, columnist and author David Sirota has also strongly condemned this failure of the Democrats and "The Players," DC's professional partisan insiders such as MoveOn. On May 24, 2007 he wrote: "Today America watched a Democratic Party kick them square in the teeth - all in order to continue the most unpopular war in a generation at the request of the most unpopular president in a generation at a time polls show a larger percentage of the public thinks America is going in the wrong direction than ever recorded in polling history. ... That will make May 24, 2007 a dark day generations to come will look back on - a day when Democrats in Washington not only continued a war they promised to end, but happily went on record declaring that they believe in their hearts that government's role is to ignore the will of the American people."

This month, more than a year later, the Democratic controlled Congress once again gave the Bush Administration funding to continue the Iraq war well into 2009. David Sirota now has a new book out: The Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington. In it he expands on his criticism of the Democratic Party and its partisan, professional antiwar activists in the leadership of MoveOn.

Sirota writes in his new book (page 82), "The absence of a full-throated antiwar uprising is tragic at a time when the country appears more skeptical of knee-jerk militarism than ever before. ...