"As the debate intensifies in Congress, health care sector contributions to lawmakers on the committees overseeing" proposals for health care reform "are on the upswing," according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. In the first half of 2009, "health care interests donated $19.7 million to all federal lawmakers.

"For America's No. 1 taxpayer watchdog, as Citizens Against Government Waste calls itself, the jet engines seem easy prey. The federal government is already spending billions for Pratt & Whitney to develop engines for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Why spend billions more for General Electric to do the same?

CMD's new Senior Fellow on Health Care continues to hit the road and light up the debate nationally, and our local paper features an extensive interview and notes that soon he'll be right here in our own Wisconsin backyard: "Wendell Potter has emerged as one of the most important truth tellers in the current health care debate.