Politics

Partying With Senate Finance Committee Staffers Turned Lobbyists

By Paul Blumenthal

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been looking at the connections between the Senate Finance Committee and the former staffers of committee members turned health care lobbyists. Our previous posts focused solely on those connections — one visualizing the connections to committee chair Max Baucus and another showing the connections for all Democrats. Another way to look at these connections is to look at the fundraisers these lobbyists are throwing for Finance Committee members.

After reviewing the data on Party Time, only four fundraisers for Senate Finance Committee members were found to be hosted by one of the staffers turned health care lobbyists. The four fundraisers were for three senators: Chuck Schumer, Mike Crapo, and two fundraisers for Orrin Hatch.

Unfortunately, the total campaign contribution data for these dates is not yet available due to reporting schedules. Also, the data from Party Time, due to the source of the data, does always contain host information. It is without doubt that there are many more fundraisers occurring for Senate Finance Committee members with their former staffers turned lobbyists as hosts.

As I continue to take a look at congressional committees and their connections to the health care industry, I’ll keep my eye on the fundraisers they are throwing for key committee members and bring that data here.

Full post as published by Sunlight Foundation on July 07, 2009 (boomark / email).