Making Progress On The Federal To-Do List

"We should be optimistic because we’re making progress, but we still have our work cut out for us. We’ll still need to stand up to the banks, drug companies and the oil industry to win."

We’re checking things off our “to- do” list at the federal level.

We need to lower the cost of higher education so that more of the next generation can earn a college degree. Earlier this session, the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation by California’s Rep. George Miller to cut interest rates on student loans in half. Check.

We need to help taxpayers and seniors by allowing the federal Medicare prescription drug program to negotiate bulk rate discounts on drugs. Currently, such negotiations are prohibited. The U.S. House passed legislation by Rep. John Dingell (Mich.) to permit such negotiations. Check.

We need to end America’s addiction to oil. A critical step in that process is eliminating subsidies for the oil industry. The U.S. House passed legislation to cut subsidies those subsidies by $14 billion. Check.

We need to be able to trust our elected officials to make decisions based on values and ideas, not contributions and bribes. Both the U.S. Senate and the House passed lobby reform measures by overwhelming margins. Check. (We’ll leave this on the list, though. Congress still needs to create an independent ethics body to oversee ethics complaints and violations.)

We need to trust that our food and medicine is safe. The FDA should be preventing future drug safety tragedies like what happened with Vioxx, when Americans died because drug-maker Merck failed to disclose studies showing that the drug posed dangers. Sens. Edward Kennedy (Mass.) and Mike Enzi (Wyo.) introduced legislation to give the FDA greater enforcement powers and provide more information about the safety profile of a drug to doctors and patients. Reps. Henry Waxman (Calif.) and Ed Markey (Mass.) have introduced a stronger, better bill. We won’t cross it off our list yet, but we applaud this progress.

The list goes on, and we remain guardedly optimistic. Mind you, though, we’re not foolishly optimistic because there’s significant opposition to each of these measures.

Big banks oppose cutting student loan rates. Big drug companies oppose the bill to allow negotiations for lower cost prescription drugs, not to mention the drug safety measures. Big oil opposes cutting oil subsidies. Lobbying firms in Washington, D.C., will attempt to use their tricks of the trade to squelch lobby reform.

And there are thousands of ways to prevent any of these good bills from becoming law.

A committee can choose not to hold a hearing on a bill. The House and Senate can pass different versions of a bill and never reconcile the differences. Opponents can add controversial amendments to a good bill to weigh it down.

Or, they can do it the old-fashioned way by voting a bill down in committee or on the floor.

My point is this: we should be optimistic because we’re making progress, but we still have our work cut out for us. We’ll need to stand up to the banks, drug companies, oil industry and their lobbyists to win.

Your support helps us stand up to powerful interests. Your support is the reason we’re able to win major reforms. Thank you for your commitment to CALPIRG.

Sincerely,
Steve Blackledge