Top Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is denying a report by the Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney that Gingrich actively lobbied former Capitol Hill colleagues on behalf of the prescription drug entitlement.
Carney cited multiple Republican sources saying that in 2003 Gingrich privately urged GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill to support the Medicare Part D benefit, a bill strongly supported by the Bush administration. “Newt Gingrich moved votes on the prescription-drug bill, that’s for sure,” Carney quotes one Republican staffer as saying. At the time, Carney reports, Gingrich’s organization was on the payroll of pharmaceutical interests.
Campaigning in New Hampshire, Gingrich called in Monday to Bill Bennett’s radio program. In the course of an interview covering a variety of topics, Bennett asked Gingrich, “The prescription drug benefit…were you lobbying for that, lobbying your colleagues about that?”
“No,” said Gingrich. “I was publicly advocating it. I wrote a book called Saving Lives & Saving Money in 2002, and one of the cases I made from day one was, if we’re willing to give you open heart surgery through Medicare, but we’re not willing to help you get Lipitor so you don’t need open heart surgery, then it’s both anti-human and it’s financially stupid.”
“The reason there wasn’t a drug benefit in the original 1965 Medicare bill,” Gingrich continued, “is that prescription drugs in 1965 weren’t very important and it didn’t occur to people to have one. In the last 50 years, our ability to avoid surgery and avoid bad health has skyrocketed. And it turned out that, because this whole thing was done under a Republican administration as a market-oriented system and because we added health savings accounts and we added Medicare Advantage, it has come in way under budget — much less expensive, one of the cases where you can look and say here’s something where the market actually worked and brought down prices.”
Gingrich told Bennett he still supports the prescription drug entitlement. In response to an earlier question about accusations he lobbied for Freddie Mac, Gingrich said, “We were very strict while I was there, the Gingrich Group did no lobbying of any kind, and I personally did no lobbying of any kind.”
“I am a public citizen,” Gingrich added, saying he was doing well financially and did not have “any need to go and rent my name for something.”
In a separate blog post, Carney reports that Gingrich never registered as a lobbyist and likely stayed within the strict limits of the lobbying laws. But Gingrich “was a paid consultant for drug makers,” Carney writes, and “while some consultants simply provide strategy or advice, Gingrich directly contacted lawmakers in an effort to win their votes.” As a surging near-frontrunner in the Republican race, Gingrich is likely to face more, and more pointed questions, about his efforts.
