Posted on 02/13/2010 9:16:37 AM PST by reaganaut1
...
Mr. Tauzin, 66, will retreat, to contemplate the apparent collapse of the grandest in a career of fearless deals — a pact to trade the drug industry’s political support for favorable terms under President Obama’s proposed health care overhaul.
Mr. Tauzin is leaving his $2 million-a-year job as the top lobbyist for the drug industry amid complaints from drug makers that he bargained away their profits too cheaply, spent too much in his $150 million advertising campaign to sell the overhaul and miscalculated in his assessment that the passage of the legislation was all but inevitable.
Other drug industry lobbyists, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said his departure raised questions about whether the drug makers would continue to support the proposed overhaul, which has stalled in Congress.
Several of the lobbyists said Mr. Tauzin was undermined by a rival lobbying powerhouse —Thomas J. Donohue, president of the United States Chamber of Commerce, who had fought the health care proposals from the start and complained to the drug makers that Mr. Tauzin had gone along too easily. A spokesman for Mr. Donohue declined to comment on Mr. Donohue’s behalf and later released a statement from Mr. Donohue praising Mr. Tauzin as “a great friend.”
The agreement that Mr. Tauzin struck on health care — capping the drug industry’s costs at $80 billion over 10 years and turning a perennial foe into a Democratic ally — was in some ways a fitting climax to a career of such capers.
“I don’t know anybody else who could have made a deal like that and could have made it stick,” said Wallace Henderson, Mr. Tauzin’s former chief of staff and one of the lobbyists in his hunting club.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
They can all go to hell.
The American people will not forget who was in bed with this corrupt socialist POS Administration.
LOL, we need Tauzin to be the chief of the UAW.
Well then let's hope we never see his like again. The first thing the pubs should do when they retake the house is repeal the Bush era drug patent extensions. That was a big expensive political box of chocolates and if the drug industry is not going to stay on side then we should take it back.
Pretty sad when it is news that someone who is a rightful failure is fired from his job.
Look at the endangered incumbents like Blanche Lincoln. She has 5 million in her campaign war chest. Harry Reid, something like 8 million. Talk about Bribery!! These Senators and Congresscritters are so corrupt they should be found guilty of treason. THERE IS NO HUMAN WAY TO AMASS THAT AMOUNT OF MONEY LEGITIMATELY.
Don’t forget these cowardly businesses that threw in with the facist instead of their stockholders and customers.
“Pretty sad when it is news that someone who is a rightful failure is fired from his job.”
It depends on whether you think Obamacare would have been good news or bad news for pharma. For all we know, Tauzin knowingly took a bullet for the cause. He might well have reasoned that absent a deal, Obama would have vilified pharma and whipped up populist support for the bill on grounds that big greedy drugmakers were against the bill, hence it must be good for the public. He likewise could have reasoned that had pharma run significant ads FAVORING the bill, this might have turned the suspicious public against the bill for similar reasons. Finally, he might also have figured that once the public learned of this back-room deal, this too would have stimulated further outrage and opposition. And to all appearances, the latter actual did occur: it was not wishful thinking.
In short, cutting a deal may have been motivated by a desire to STOP the bill rather than secure its enactment. Billy Tauzin is an extremely shrewd politician. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the reasoning I’ve speculated about above closely corresponds to the logic underlying his actual behavior.
Billy Tauzin was a Democrat that switched parties in 94. He is from South Louisiana. ...
Billy is a whore is got $2 million a year to screw us. The fact that he was a bad f__k for the industry doesn’t make him a good whore for us.
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