Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
House Representatives have Speeches Prepared by Lobbyists

In House, Many Spoke With One Voice – Lobbyists’ – NYTimes.com

I have been meaning to get to this for a couple of days, so this is not breaking news today.  In some ways, its not really news.  Is anyone really surprised that lobbyists control the public debate that lawmakers have?

This NY Times article describes how more then a dozen elected officials made statements of record and speeches drafted almost word for word by biotechnology lobbyists.  This crosses party lines, with almost the same number of Republicans and Democrats having their speeches dictated to them.

Ok, so your local congressman is saying what the lobbyists tell them to say.  Big surprise.  What bothers me here is the simple laziness of not changing the text at all.  How hard is that?  And the absolute lack of shame these guys have to be populating house records with speeches and statements paid for by large companies.

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