Monday, March 09, 2009

Both of AZ's U.S. Senators are in the top 10. That's a good thing, right???

Well...it depends what category's "top 10" we are talking about...

From ConsumerWatchdog.org -
WASHINGTON D.C. -- Health insurers and pharmaceutical manufacturers contributed $5.5 million to the top 10 recipients in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives during the last two election cycles - a period in which health care reform dominated political discourse, according to the nonprofit, nonpartisan Consumer Watchdog.

Health insurers contributed $2.2 million to the top 10 members of the U.S. Senate and House. Drug manufacturers contributed $3.3 million to the top 10 recipients in each legislative body. In all, health insurers and drug manufacturers contributed $24,220,976 to the current members of Congress in the last two election cycles.

The top 1o Senate recipients of Health Insurer Money (note: due to formatting issues, a direct copy and paste wasn't possible here) (emphasis mine) -

John McCain (R-AZ) - $251,834
Mitch McConnell (R-KY) - $200,200
Max Baucus (D-MT) - $183,750
Joe Lieberman (I-CT) - $101,400
Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) - $98,600
Susan Collins (R-ME) - $96,500
Jon Kyl (R-AZ) - $90,450
Mark Warner (D-VA) - $89,700
Orrin Hatch (R-UT) - $85,903
Ben Nelson (D-NE) - $83,300

Top 10 Senate recipients of Drug Co. Money -

John McCain - $294,603
Max Baucus - $229,020
Mitch McConnell - $225,200
Joe Lieberman - $196,540
Arlen Specter (R-PA) - $179,650
Robert Mendez (D-NJ) - $147,243
Mike Enzi (R-WY) - $134,500
Jon Kyl - $118,350
John Cornyn (R-TX) - $115,900

So should we be proud that AZ is the only state where both members of our delegation to the U.S. Senate are in the "top 10"??

BTW, and this is certain to tick off commenter Thane and a few other folks - data like this, data that shows the bipartisan impact of industry legalized bribes "campaign contributions" have on public policy only serves to strengthen the argument in favor of taking Arizona's system of publicly financed elections to the next level.

Later...

3 comments:

Stephen said...

Are you sure that money wasn't just the insurance distributions for McCain's medical treatments?
I mean his medical file was as thick as a phonebook last year when the press was given just a couple of hours to look at it.

Thane Eichenauer said...

I'll just keep my eye on
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/select.php?ind=F03
It just goes to show you that the Republicans and Democrats are in the pockets of the commercials banks.

Craig said...

Thane -

I think we can both agree that there is some serious institutionalized corruption in D.C., and it isn't limited to any one political party.

I don't expect my elected officials to be saints, or to agree with me all of the time (though since I'm always right, that would be a good idea :)) ), but I do expect them to place the interests of the country and their constituents above all else.

There were Dems in those lists of the biggest recipients Big Insurance's and Big Pharma's largesse. As disappointing as that fact is however, none of them made both top 10s the way that Kyl and McCain did.