Dem
51
GOP
49
While the House is a mess, in the Senate, everything went smoothly this week. The new senators were seated and the new committee chairs were installed. One new committee chairman who is making a lot of lobbyists very nervous is Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who is taking over the chairmanship of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee from Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA). Murray is moving over to take over the gavel at the powerful Appropriations Committee from Pat Leahy, who just retired. Lobbyists are used to sweet-talking committee chairs to get them to be nice to their clients. That most definitely does not work with Sanders, and everyone knows it.
Sanders will now have oversight power over a number of his priorities, including drug pricing, workers' rights, student debt, and medical debt. He is sure to subpoena powerful people in industries within his purview and grill them in public. Assuming the House Republicans finally get their act together and do what their constituents elected them to do—investigate Hunter Biden's laptop—the contrast between the Senate and House will be enormous. There will be parallel stories in the media all the time with a Senate committee asking pharmaceutical executives questions about why drug prices are much lower in Canada than in the U.S. and a House committee arguing about whether to release naughty pictures of Hunter. Might that give some voters ideas about which party cares more about them? We'll tell you when it happens and there are polls about it.
For Sanders, this is a new role. He has demonstrated that he can give rousing speeches and please progressives. Now he has some real power. How will he use it? He might write some legislation the lobbyists won't like, like allowing the importation of (much cheaper) drugs from Canada. Most of it probably won't pass, but some of it might get into must-pass bills. In any event, having actual legislative language in place will make it easier for the Democrats to pass his bills if they regain the trifecta in 2024.
Politico reporters talked to over a dozen lobbyists about Sanders' new power. They were not optimistic about getting much sympathy from him. Some of them thought that by lobbying other members of the committee they might be able to have some influence. Ranking member Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) comes to mind, but it may not be that easy. Sanders and Cassidy have a history of working together and many of the things Sanders wants would help working people in a poor state like Louisiana. In addition, Cassidy is a physician and might well be willing to work with Sanders on issues related to improving health care. Jeff Forbes, co-founder of a lobbying and public affairs company, said: "Does corporate America have to worry? Of course they do. Between a populist Republican like Cassidy and a left-wing chairman like Sanders, they'll have plenty of anti-corporate areas of mutual interest."
Others thought that when bills came up into which they wanted certain language inserted, they would be better off trying to get it into the House version and hope that Sanders wouldn't notice and strip it out in the Senate version. Others said: "If I'm going to be completely honest, we're still trying to figure out what we're going to do."
This is not to say that Murray was a tool of the lobbyists. She definitely was not, but Sanders is 10x more aggressive than Murray. She likes the image of a "little old lady in tennis shoes." He likes the image as "enemy #1 of big corporations." Sanders also doesn't take money from political action committees, so the lobbyists' biggest tool—donating to the campaigns of senators they want to influence—is totally blunted when dealing with him. He doesn't go to corporate fundraisers and generally keeps a large distance away from lobbyists and their clients. He's going to be a very tough nut for them to crack.
Oh, and one other avenue lobbyists like to use won't work either: lobbying the staff. Sanders' staff is experienced, loyal to him, and hates big corporations as much as he does. That's a requirement to get a job with him. One (anonymous) lobbyist told Politico: "It's hard to find a lobbyist [who] has had much success working with his staff." As a general rule, power corrupts, but in Sanders' case, we're not so sure. Neither are the lobbyists. (V)