Yes, I know this isn’t the first time I have posted about this money trail, and rest assured, it won’t be the last.  You can read up on earlier posts here. I don’t care what Party or sub-group any of these elected officials come from, I will follow the money and make sure as many people as possible know what is going on here.

Ryan Powers, in an excellent piece “Getting What They Paid For:  The Health Insurance Industry and the Blue Dogs” has compiled data from OpenSecrets and put it into this nifty graph displaying the shifts in the contributions from Insurance Inc. away from the Republicans and toward the Blue Dogs.

David Sirota writes in his eye-popping piece “13 in Congress control Health Care debate:”

Here we have a major congressional push to fix a health care system that leaves one-sixth of the country without coverage. Here we have 535 House and Senate delegates elected to give all 300 million of us a voice in the solution. And here we have just 13 of those delegates holding the initiative hostage.
In the Senate, both parties have outsourced health care legislation to six Finance Committee. Meanwhile, seven mostly-Southern House Democrats have been threatening to use their Commerce Committee votes to gut any health care bill, regardless of what the American majority wants.

These lawmakers, hailing mostly from small states and rural areas, together represent only 13 million people, meaning those speaking for just 4 percent of America are maneuvering to impose their health care will on the other 96 percent of us.

When tyranny mixes with legalized bribery, constituents’ economic concerns stop mattering.

Here are the 13 Congresspersons who have control of the Health Care debate.

The 7 Blue Dogs in the House Commerce Committee:

John Barrow (Dem-GA)

Bart Gordon (Dem-TN)

Jim Matheson (Dem-UT)

Charles Melancon (Dem-LA)

Mike Ross (Dem-AR)

Zachary Space (Dem-OH)

The 6 Senators in the Finance Committee:

Max Baucus (Dem-Montana)

Kent Conrad (Dem-N.D.)

Jeff Bingaman (Dem-N.M.)

Mike Enzi (Repub-Wyo.)

Charles Grassley (Repub-Iowa)

Olympia Snowe (Repub-Maine.)

If anyone here is from any of these states, you might want to contact these representatives.

Now, this is not meant to be a Hit Piece bashing Blue Dogs.  Yes, I am fully aware that we are actually quite fortunate to have ANY Democrat elected in most of these states.  Yes, I am aware that Olympia Snowe is shockingly sane for a current-day Republican and sides with us on many issues.

This is merely to point out a couple of facts:

A.  The Health Care debate will be decided by 13 members of Congress representing only 4% of the nation.

B. The Health Care debate will be decided by supposed experts in COMMERCE and FINANCE

C. The Insurance Industry has all but bought and paid for many of these 13 people (see Max Baucus).

D. It is interesting to note the recent shift in the contributions toward a few Blue Dogs.

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Related posts:

1. Meet the Blue Dog Coalition, members of Congress standing in the way of health care reform
2. Health care discord is a good sign
3. Young Spoiled Bratz Won’t Buy Health Insurance
4. Plan Afoot to Stall Public Health Care
5. The market will not health care reform make