Capitol's revolving door breaks down trust

As U.S. Rep. Billy Tauzin used the revolving door that now connects Congress to the industries the government is supposed to regulate, he said the strangest thing.
Tauzin, who a year ago was fighting tooth and nail to preserve the profit margins of the pharmaceutical industry, is taking the job of president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America -- Phrma. That will make him the chief spokesman and lobbyist for the drug industry.
What he said, according to The New York Times, was this: "This industry understands that it's got a problem. It has to earn the trust and confidence of consumers again."
From any other spokesman, that might pass for candor. Coming from Tauzin, it's outrageous. How is a man who sells out the public's trust in Congress going to restore confidence in an industry?
Unrealistic expectations
The people of the United States provided a very comfortable living for Tauzin for 26 years, paying him more than $150,000 a year at the end and giving him a health care and retirement package that most of his constituents could only dream about. For that, the people had a right to expect that Tauzin would go to work every day with their best interests at heart.
Instead, he went to work mindful of how he might someday be able to parlay his congressional service into some real money. And that's what he's done.
Neither Phrma nor Tauzin will say what he'll be paid in his new job, but it is reliably estimated at $2 million a year. And for what Congressman Tauzin delivered to his future employers, he was cheap at twice the price.
As chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Tauzin was a principal author of the Medicare drug-benefit law. Phrma couldn't have written itself a better bill. The net result will be an increase in premiums paid by Medicare recipients, and an enormous increase in the amount paid by the federal government for drugs. At the same time, the law prohibits price controls on drugs and even prohibits the government from negotiating with the pharmaceutical companies for discounts.
The next battle
Volume discounts, by the way, are aggressively pursued by Canada, which is one of the reasons drugs are much cheaper north of the border. And one of the first things Tauzin will do is begin fighting any effort in Congress to relax restrictions on reimportation of low-priced drugs from Canada. By law, Tauzin cannot directly lobby his former colleagues for a year, but he can use his inside knowledge to draft Phrma's battle plan and he can direct his lobbying troops.
If members of Congress were truly concerned about what voters thought of them, Tauzin and all the others who are cashing in on the contacts they made while in "public service" would be shunned when they came calling. Of course, that won't happen, because all too many congressmen have their eyes on the shiny brass rings that dangle outside the revolving door.
The Founders, who envisioned a nation run by citizen legislators, would be unnerved by the class of professional politicians that has evolved in a Congress where incumbents are almost impossible to unseat. They would be appalled by the political prostitution that is being practiced today, under which incumbents don't retire, they just switch sides and take home bigger paychecks.