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ON THE HILL

Sunday, July 31, 2005

By Bruce Alpert and Bill Walsh

Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., was among a bipartisan group of nine woman senators signing a letter to the Food and Drug Administration on Thursday urging the agency to tread carefully before approving the sale of silicone gel breast implants. The warning comes as the FDA appears poised to rule whether implants for cosmetic purposes can be sold for the first time since 1992, when sales were suspended because of health concerns. In April, an FDA advisory panel recommended approval of the Memory Gel implants made by Mentor Corp. of California. But the senators said health studies on the implants were flawed and that the FDA "doesn't know the true failure rate for Mentor's device, nor the implications of implant rupture. . . . We are thus extremely concerned that the risks of this device are far disproportionate to the benefit that a woman undergoing breast augmentation would realize," the letter said. The FDA sent its own letter Thursday to Mentor saying the implants may be approved if it met certain conditions, a step the company called "very encouraging." According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Landrieu has received $27,500 in donations from trial attorneys, who have long targeted implant makers with lawsuits. But not all of the letter writers received money from trial lawyers.

Congress last week completed a little more mop-up work for federal flood grant recipients, such as those in southeast Louisiana. A bill by Rep. Richard Baker, R-Baton Rouge, to prevent federal agencies from counting the grants as income was cleared by the Senate Banking Committee unanimously. It did not get a vote by the full Senate before it shut down for the August recess, but the measure is expected to pass easily when senators return. From an accounting perspective, the grants boosted the incomes of recipients, sometimes rendering them ineligible for other federal aid, such as food stamps, Medicaid and college loans. A House study found that some homeowners were refusing the flood-mitigation grants for fear of losing other federal assistance. President Bush signed a similar bill in April preventing the Internal Revenue Service from taxing grant recipients at a higher rate. He is also expected to sign the Baker bill.

Former Louisiana Elections Commissioner Suzanne Haik Terrell was in Washington recently interviewing for a possible appointment to the Federal Communications Commission. Terrell, a Republican who ran unsuccessfully to unseat Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., in 2002, would not comment. As a member of the New Orleans City Council from 1994 to 2000, Terrell was chairwoman of the committee overseeing telecommunications and cable issues. The FCC regulates television, radio, satellite and cable in all 50 states. Presidents appoint members to five-year terms. As of Friday, no announcement had been made by the White House.

Public Citizen issued a report last week saying 43 percent of the 198 members of Congress who left office since 1998 have gone into lobbying. "Congressional Revolving Doors: The Journey From Congress to K Street" focuses on former Rep. Bob Livingston. After 22 years in Congress, the Metairie Republican resigned in 1999 and opened up a Washington lobbying shop. Despite a prohibition on a members' lobbying for 12 months after retirement, the Livingston Group pulled in $1.1 million in fees the first year. The next year, revenue soared to $4.8 million, and the company has since become the 12th-highest-earning lobbying shop in Washington. The 49-page report details how Livingston used his former contacts in the Republican majority to further his business, including protecting a $1 billion appropriation for Turkey despite that nation's refusal to let the U.S. military use it as a staging area for the Iraq invasion. Public Citizen called for a long and stricter "cooling off" period for former members and a prohibition on their campaign contributions to members they lobby. "People used to run for Congress to serve the greater good and help the public," Public Citizen's president, Joan Claybrook, said. "Now Congress has become a way station to wealth." Livingston declined to comment on the report.

At a recent news conference, Sen. David Vitter, R-La., accused the drug industry of using international trade agreements to try to block his legislation to allow reimportation of cheaper prescription drugs. Vitter said the industry has gotten the U.S. trade representative to add language to recent trade agreements with Singapore, Australia and Morocco to require the consent of drug patent owners to import drugs for sale in the United States, which in effect gives the industry veto power over any reimportation plan. Vitter joined Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and Reps. Anne Northrup, R-Ky., and Rosa Delauro, D-Conn., to propose legislation last week that would bar the U.S. trade representative from negotiating trade agreements that restrict American consumers' access to drug imports. "This bipartisan bill calls for the U.S. trade representative to keep future trade agreements free of patent-related provisions, which only protect pharmaceutical companies and limit consumers access to cheaper prescription drugs," Vitter said. Vitter, who has sponsored one of the drug reimportation bills in the Senate, has been pressing Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., for a vote on the issue. But he and House sponsors of reimportation legislation face a big hurdle: Their proposals are generally opposed by GOP leaders. The leaders have taken up the position of the drug industry, which is that reimportation can't be done safely. Vitter says the safety concerns are a bogus issue to obscure the real concern of drug companies: that reimportation would reduce drug prices in the United States and thereby reduce their profits.

Just like home

Notice anything unusual about the photo last week of Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., meeting with President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, John Roberts? If you did, you really are a Capitol insider. Despite all appearances, the picture didn't take place in Landrieu's Senate office, which is being renovated as part of periodic maintenance. Her temporary space is in the basement of the Senate Dirksen building, and not all that attractive. So Landrieu arranged for her meeting with Roberts to take a place in an unused subcommittee hearing room. But you wouldn't have known from looking at the photo. To make it seem more like an office, her staff arranged for a family photo, a few of her favorite books and her Louisiana state banner to be positioned in the room.

The fight over the Central American Free Trade Agreement, given final approval by the House last week, has been tense on both sides. Sen. David Vitter, R-La., went so far as to suggest that the Bush administration was applying "enormous pressure," using the highway bill to reward supporters and punish opponents. But there was a lighter moment a few weeks ago, just as the Senate was to vote on the measure. Vitter happened to be at a White House dinner, with the president and his wife, along with a few of his congressional colleagues. Toward the end of the evening, according to Vitter, the president suggested that the senators might want to "rush off" to make it back to the Capitol in time to cast their votes on CAFTA. Wendy Vitter, the senator's wife, got a laugh when she suggested that the president might want to keep some of his guests a little longer, alluding, of course, to her anti-CAFTA husband. Vitter did in fact make it back in time for the vote, but it made no difference. CAFTA easily won a 54-45 majority. . . . . . . .

Bruce Alpert can be reached at bruce.alpert@newhouse.com or (202) 383-7861. Bill Walsh can be reached at bill.walsh@newhouse.com or (202) 383-7817.