\n\nBernie Sanders speaks while introducing health care legislation titled the “Medicare for All Act of 2019” with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Sen. Jeff Merkley, during a news conference on Capitol Hill, April 9, 2019.
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\nMark Wilson\/Getty Images\n<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/aside>\n
With the Senate majority comes subpoena power, and it\u2019s almost certain that health executives will be called to testify before the committee \u2014 a reputational risk for corporations.<\/p>\n
\u201cSubpoena authority is certainly something that gets people paying attention,\u201d said Rafi Prober, co-head of the congressional investigations practice at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld.<\/p>\n
And conditions are ripe for the HELP Committee to beef up its hearings schedule: The panel has only a few must-do items next session \u2014 reauthorizing both pandemic preparedness legislation known as PAHPA and an animal drug user fee bill \u2014 and Democratic priorities aren\u2019t expected to move, given the GOP-controlled House. This gives Sanders the runway to dig into any issue he wants.<\/p>\n
Most senior members of Congress have relationships with K Street because lobbyists had worked for \u2014 or closely with \u2014 them while serving as Capitol Hill aides, have donated to their campaigns or otherwise have become close with their staff.<\/p>\n
Sanders, meanwhile, isn\u2019t rubbing elbows with executives and lobbyists at fundraisers and doesn\u2019t have a \u201ckitchen cabinet\u201d of donor-advisers he talks with about policy, Crowell and others said. He\u2019s sworn off all money from political action committees \u2014 even ones run by other senators and members of Congress \u2014 to his Senate campaigns.<\/p>\n
Further, most of his staffers have a mix of experience working for him, progressive campaigns and nonprofits and share the aversion to downtown corporate lobbyists.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe prospects of a Sanders-led HELP committee are refreshing and exciting,\u201d said Craig Holman, a lobbyist at Public Citizen who works on money-in-politics and ethics issues.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe chairman will give everyone their due, including lobbyists representing the public\u2019s interest, without being swayed by campaign cash,\u201d he said. \u201cSanders\u2019 new leadership position will help build some equity between the influence of the haves and have-nots, of which Public Citizen and other nonprofits more or less qualify as the latter.\u201d<\/p>\n
But one Democratic lobbyist who advocates before the HELP Committee, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the dynamic, said Sanders\u2019 staff members rarely take people\u2019s meetings.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard to find a lobbyist [who] has had much success working with his staff. If the committee wants to be taken seriously on some very important issues, they\u2019re going to need to be more open to talking with stakeholders \u2014 even ones [they] don\u2019t like,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Not all lobbyists are so down on their prospects. Michael Strazzella, the leader of Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney\u2019s federal government relations practice, said he is optimistic about working with Sanders and his staff.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe can be educated just like every other senator,\u201d Strazzella said. \u201cInfluence is a strong word, to be honest, but I do believe that he is open to continuous education and understands the impact of new policies. \u2026 I don\u2019t think he\u2019s necessarily set in his ways about everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aside from his current staff, much of the dynamic with K Street will depend on who he brings in to work on the committee, several lobbyists told POLITICO.<\/p>\n
Some hope it will be a departure from his traditional hiring patterns, but one lobbyist who has relationships with Sanders\u2019 health care staff said he wants them to stick around.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just hope they stay because we at least know who we will be working with next year and can have conversations with them,\u201d said the lobbyist, who was granted anonymity to speak about the relationship, in an email. \u201cI worry about the staff changing some and not knowing any of the… players coming in and their approach to interacting with downtown.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ben Leonard contributed to this report. <\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lobbyists also worry they\u2019ll struggle to get traction on any push to make changes to a drug discount program involving pharmaceutical companies and hospitals or revisit association health plans after a Trump-era rule around them was voided. \u201cThis will not be business as usual for K Street. It will be harder for companies to get …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39567,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[161],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39566"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}