U.S. Congress

While the presidential race is getting all the attention, voters in Indiana and North Carolina also selected their parties' nominees for their 22 House of Representatives seats and one Senate slot on Tuesday. Each seat's incumbent is running for reelection, but this is a turbulent election year, and the three high-school teachers, three attorneys, several small business owners and elected officials, and one TV weatherman challenging them could give them a run for their money. The Democrats are defending twelve House seats to the Republicans ten, plus Elizabeth Dole's seat in the Senate.

Each candidate and incumbent has a profile within Congresspedia's Wiki the Vote project, which you can find at the Indiana and North Carolina portals, or through the full listing of the primary victors below. We need your help to find out more about these candidates, so remember that these profiles are editable by anyone and jump right in. You can always contact one of the staff editors for help.

"Prozac Nation: Revisited," a show that aired on U.S. National Public Radio member stations, "featured four prestigious medical experts discussing the controversial link between antidepressants and suicide. ... All four said that worries ... have been overblown." But the show did not disclose that all four "have financial ties to the makers of antidepressants," or that the series that produced the show, "The Infinite Mind," has received "unrestricted grants" from drug companies including Eli Lilly, the makers of Prozac. One guest, Peter Pitts, heads the industry-funded Center for Medicine in the Public Interest and is "senior vice president for global health affairs at the PR firm Manning Selvage & Lee," which counts among its clients Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer and "more than a dozen other pharmaceutical companies." In other drug news, Congressman Bart Stupak held a hearing titled "Direct to Consumer Advertising: Marketing, Education or Deception?" Stupak said "he wants to lay the groundwork for future legislation to tighten controls on drug marketing," reports the Wall Street Journal. The hearing addressed such "recent controversies" as ads for Pfizer's Lipitor, where artificial heart inventor Robert Jarvik "appears to be giving medical advice," and ads for Johnson & Johnson's anemia treatment Procrit that promote off-label uses for the drug.

The big action in Congress this week was on bills with big price tags: the $290 billion Farm Bill and a new $300 billion housing crisis bill. It also passed a law banning employers and insurers from using your genes to discriminate against you. And, of course, the race for Democratic superdelegates continues between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, with both picking up several endorsements.

The 2007 Farm Bill looks like it might be ready for a final vote as the House and Senate negotiate between themselves and with President Bush to find a bill that hits all the right political constituencies and has the right price tag. The latest version of the bill, which at $290 billion over ten years is $10 billion over the congressional budget rules and $4.5 billion more than President Bush wants, contains most of the usual subsidies and conversation programs of years past but adds several key provisions. Bush is pressing Congress to lower the income limits on farmers who can receive subsidies from the current $1.95 million to $200,000, well short of Congress' currently proposed $500,000. But Bush also supports keeping $5.2 billion in direct subsidy payments to farmers despite record crop prices, so he's not exactly uniformly thrifty. Also included in the current version of the bill is a $5 billion trust fund for farmers hit by disasters including floods, droughts and fires, a key demand of farm state Democrats and Republicans alike.

However, Bush has taken a hard line on the total price tag for the bill, and has raised a veto threat that Democrats say may be designed to bolster Sen. John McCain's anti-spending credentials. While it remains to see who will blink first, the extension that funds the farm programs is running out and some type of vote is imminent in the next week or two.

For more on this week's legislation and an update on Superdelegate endorsements, click through

Listen to this week's edition of the "Weekly Radio Spin," the Center for Media and Democracy's audio report on the stories behind the news. This week, we look at corporate welfare daddies, activist orangutans, and update the Pentagon's pundit scandal. In "Six Degrees of Spin and Fakin'," we travel back in time to Watergate, and campaign donations in small unmarked bills. The Weekly Radio Spin is freely available for personal and broadcast use. Podcasters can subscribe to the XML feed on www.prwatch.org/audio or via iTunes. If you air the Weekly Radio Spin on your radio station, please email us at editor@prwatch.org to let us know. Thanks!

From the Center for Responsive PoliticsWhile the U.S. economy has been slowing, lobbyists have been making more than ever. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, "businesses, labor unions, governments and other interests spent a record $2.79 billion to lobby Washington in 2007, up 7.7 percent or $200 million in spending the year before." The automotive industry spent a new high of $70.3 million lobbying Congress in 2007; a 19.6% increase over 2006. The change was due in large part to efforts to oppose the enactment of higher fuel efficiency standards. General Motors was responsible for over $14 million in lobbying expenditures, while Ford spent $7.2 million, followed by Toyota with $5.9 million. But the auto industry was not the biggest spender. Trade groups like AARP and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, topped it. And GM came in fifth in spending by corporations, trailing General Electric, ExxonMobil, AT&T and Amgen. Center for Responsive Politics executive director Sheila Krumholz said, "At a time when our economy is contracting, Washington's lobbying industry has been expanding. Lobbying seems to be a recession-proof industry. In some respects, interests seek even more from our government when the economy slows."

The post-Abramoff lobbying disclosure reforms have started -- and so far, they're underwhelming. "Confusing shortcuts are already being mapped and loopholes mined," reports Jeanne Cummings. "Among the information that is supposed to be available to the public now is a listing of the financial backers of the shadowy coalitions with apple-pie-sounding names," like Americans for American Energy, the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition and Americans for Prosperity. But most weren't listed in either the House or Senate disclosure database, and the few that were didn't "list the paying members of their coalition." Part of the problem is that Congress "exempted the financing of grass-roots lobbying from the law. That created a giant loophole for all advocacy organizations to exploit." In fact, Cummings found more on these groups, "culled from media reports, websites, press releases and Internal Revenue Service documents," on CMD's very own SourceWatch site.

The big stories on Congress last week were the Senate's passage of a housing crisis bill, House Democrats delaying the U.S.-Columbia Free Trade Agreement and testimony by General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker.

President Bush had thrown down the gauntlet on Monday by submitting the Colombia Free Trade Agreement to Congress for approval. Under the Trade Promotion Authority (or "fast track" authority) rules in place, the House had 60 days to give the agreement an up-or-down vote and the Senate had 30 following that. House Democrats, however, were able to parry his move by invoking a part of the Trade Promotion Authority law that affirms "the constitutional right of either House to change the rules (so far as relating to the procedures of that House) at any time, in the same manner, and to the same extent as any other rule of that House," and passed a resolution removing the deadline in this case.

An AFL-CIO ad opposing the free trade dealClumsy maneuvering by Burson-Marsteller CEO Mark Penn -- who met with Colombian officials about the U.S. - Colombia Free Trade Agreement while serving as the chief campaign strategist for trade deal opponent Hillary Clinton -- drew unwanted publicity to the controversial pact.

Colombia's $300,000 a year contract (pdf) with Burson-Marsteller stated the PR firm would "provide ongoing strategic communications counsel to the Ambassador and key Embassy officials"; develop "key messages, talking points and briefing materials"; give "advice and communications counsel to the Ambassador and Embassy staff"; and "co-ordinate media interviews and public events with relevant news media in Washington D.C. on behalf of the Embassy."

Colombia ended the contract after Penn described his meeting as "an error in judgment." But the country isn't hurting for lobbying power in Washington, D.C. -- especially among Democrats.

The mortgage crisis bill was the big action in Congress last week, with other movement on the global AIDS program and endangered species designation for polar bears. Two Democratic congressmen also had big days in court, five superdelegates came out for Obama, too and it wouldn't be 2008 without several members announcing retirement from Congress.

Sens. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) unveiled a bipartisan compromise housing bill that gives $6 billion to homebuilders and other businesses suffering from the economic downturn but provides little relief for struggling homeowners. Dodd and Shelby said the bill was just a starting point and Democrats hope to include a provision stridently opposed by most congressional Republicans and the mortgage industry to allow judges to reduce high interest rates and even loan amounts on "underwater" home mortgages of people entering bankruptcy.

(More after the jump...)

The pro-war lobby is heading to Washington and the halls of Congress Tuesday, April 8, when General David Petraeus testifies on the continuing war in Iraq. The Modesto Bee reports that the Republican front group called Vets for Freedom, "in an extraordinary move suggestive of fairly deep pockets ... will pay all travel, lodging and food expenses" for any recent veteran wanting to lobby with them in DC. The offer attracted Zak Applequist, a local soldier. "He's never been to Washington; until now, he hasn't even been particularly involved in politics. ... 'I heard about it through my mom,' Applequist said, 'and she heard about it through Fox News.'"