Representative Mark Kirk of the 10th District of Illinois is at the top of my list to see unseated in the next election. Kirk has always tried to play the “moderate” card during his time in congress, but he has always done that when convenient (ie. voting the moderate stance when his vote did not impact the outcome of the vote). His status as a minority whip in the 109th Congress was much more telling of his politics than his voting record and his unimpressive legislative record.
More on the flip…
Now that he has been saddled with minority status in the House, it will be interesting to see how he tries to hide is conservative bent with his moderate label. My efforts over the next two years will be dedicated to exposing his real voting record and build a case for change in 2008…and so it begins with his vote on the bill requiring the government to negotiate better prices with pharmaceutical companies on behalf of the users of Medicare.
Mark Kirk’s week started out with unsurprising moderate votes of "yea" on bills to enact the 9/11 Commission recommendations (HR 1), increase the minimum wage (HR 2), and remove restrictions on federal funding of stem cell research (HR 3). Then came his vote on the Medicare Bill (HR 4), or should I say non-vote. Mark Kirk failed to vote on this legislation, even though he had the cover of the inevitable passage of the bill. Even Kirk’s website has a dedicated paragraph to the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit that he supported in the 108th Congress (this is important to note, since the congressman rarely highlights national issues on his website). So why would he not vote on this legislation?
Well, IL-10 is home to the headquarters of Abbott Labs and Baxter Healthcare. A quick perusal of Kirk’s FEC filings for his fundraising for the last election cycle reveals contributions from Abbott’s PAC of $10,000, Baxter – $9,000, Caremark (another IL 10 company) $8,000, AMGEN $5,000, and SmithKlineGlaxo $1,000. Individual contributions include $4,200 from Abbott CEO Miles White and $2,000 from Baxter CEO Robert Parkinson. Now his non-vote becomes a little more clear. Mark Kirk wants to keep his moderate credentials, but can’t vote for HR4 because it will upset his Big Pharma connections. So even though his vote would not change the outcome of the bill, he is trying to play both sides of the fence by not voting – staying off record. Fortunately, his FEC filings tell the real story.
As an aside, let’s take the two minutes to visit the hypocrisy of the GOP stance on this bill. The GOP, long time defender of free markets and deregulation, believes that it is necessary to interfere with the free market and regulate the government by prohibiting it from using its market power to negotiate better terms for the drugs medicare pays for. If the government was a corporation, its shareholders (taxpayers) would demand an efficient use of its assets (tax dollars). This prohibition is about as un-republican as you can get, but nobody seems to call them on it. Ahh, the hypocrisy.
Cross posted at Courage Makes a Majority