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Stories tagged with “Peter Welch”

Health

How A Pharma Giant Used The ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Deal To Profit At The Expense Of Elderly Americans

By Sy Mukherjee on Jan 25, 2013 at 2:05 pm

Amgen Inc. — one of America’s largest biotech and pharmaceutical companies — has had a rough couple of months. In December, the firm was fined $762 million for illegally promoting drugs and defrauding Medicare. And now lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are looking to undo a little-noticed provision that Amgen successfully lobbied for inclusion in the recent “fiscal cliff” deal, a measure that gives special regulatory treatment to one of the company’s most profitable drugs.

The “fiscal cliff” deal included a provision exempting the oral drugs for kidney dialysis patients from being subject to Medicare price controls for two years. That means that drugs in that class, including Amgen’s hugely profitable Sensipar, can be sold to Medicare at higher prices than other dialysis drugs with little oversight — which ends up raising the drug’s cost for the seniors in the program. While the exemption is broad enough to affect drug companies other than Amgen, the New York Times reported this week that Amgen lobbied intensely for the provision, and that supporters like Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) have received substantial political donations from Amgen’s employees and lobbying outfits.

As Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT), who introduced the measure to repeal Amgen’s exemption this week, told the LA Times, “Amgen managed to get a $500-million paragraph in the fiscal-cliff bill and virtually no one in Congress was aware of it. It’s a taxpayer ripoff and comes at a really bad time when we’re trying to control healthcare costs. Amgen should not be allowed to turn Medicare into a profit center.”

It’s no mystery why Amgen wanted the exemption so badly — just last year, sales of Sensipar ballooned by 18 percent to $950 million. But the fact that they successfully wedged it into the fiscal cliff compromise is a testament to the firm’s lobbying prowess and the outsized influence of the entire pharmaceutical industry.

Security

Rep. Peter Welch: Gulf Allies Expressed ‘Great Reservation And Caution’ About Attacking Iran

By Eli Clifton on Jan 18, 2012 at 6:02 pm

Rep. Peter Welch

Returning from a congressional trip to France, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates, Deputy House Whip Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT) is bringing back two clear messages from the U.S.’s Gulf allies. In an interview with the Bennington Banner, Welch emphasized that they support strong sanctions “to try and change Iranian behavior” and there is “broad apprehension in those countries about military action” and serious questions about whether a military strike could stop Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.

Appearing on Fox News this afternoon, Welch pushed back against hawkish calls for military action against Iran:

I’d say three things. First, there’s widespread concern … that Iran is dangerous, that them having a nuclear weapon is extremely dangerous. … Two, there’s strong support for sanctions. But three, there’s great reservation and caution about when it comes to the question of using military force, with some apprehension about what that would unleash in the Middle East.

Welch went on to lay out a number of the regionally destabilizing steps that could follow an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities:

If you’re Qatar, where you’re fifty miles across the Strait of Hormuz, they feel they will be on the receiving end of any retaliatory response. Turkey, is very concerned about the loss of access to natural gas that heats their homes in the winter. The UAE, which is a strong U.S. ally, … fears what would happen to it with a response and what happens to the sea lanes and their ability to export oil.

Watch it:

Welch, who is a supporter of the Obama administration’s efforts to built a multilateral sanctions regime against Iran, expressed his concern that congressional efforts to tighten sanctions and push for the “military option” are unhelpful. “Frankly, I don’ think Congress is in a situation to micromanage. It turns into a political debate and one -upmanship,” he said.

Indeed Welch is not alone in identifying the potential dangers of a military strike on Iran’s nuclear program. Former Israeli intelligence chief Meir Dagan referred to an Israeli attack on Iran as “the stupidest thing I have ever heard” and, last week, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta called on Israel to “work together” with the international community, adding to his comments back in November that an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would only briefly delay the country’s nuclear program.

Climate Progress

Climate Hawks Tell Super Committee To Kill $122 Billion In Oil Subsidies

By Brad Johnson on Oct 17, 2011 at 4:38 pm

A group of 35 progressive climate hawks in the House of Representatives want the special deficit committee to end Big Oil subsidies worth $122 billion over the next 10 years. In a letter to committee chairs Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), Reps. Peter Welch (D-VT), Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), and 33 other House Democrats ask for the end of the subsidies because “the United States can no longer afford to give away billions of dollars every year to corporations earning billions of dollars in profits”:

In the current budgetary environment, the United States can no longer afford to give away billions of dollars every year to corporations earning billions of dollars in profits and costing American taxpayers twice: at the pump and through the tax code. We urge the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction to consider eliminating subsidies for fossil fuels as an excellent source of deficit reducing savings. According to a coalition of organizations, eliminating subsidies to the fossil fuels industry could reduce our national debt by up to $122 billion over ten years.

Welch and Blumenauer are members of the House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition. Their letter adds their support to the request made by leaders of 52 national and state organizations on Oct. 5 to the super committee to end “government handouts to the oil, coal and gas industries.”

The list of subsidies includes:

$43.5 billion in federal tax subsidies to oil and gas companies
$2.5 billion in federal tax subsidies to coal companies
$1.3 billion tax credit for refineries
$9.5 billion in royalty-free oil and gas leases
$52 billion in “last in, first out” accounting for inventories, a tax credit that disproportionately helps the oil and gas industry
$10.5 billion dual capacity tax credit, which also largely benefits oil and gas companies

Ending these subsidies would not only help restore fiscal health to the nation, but also take a small step towards repairing the health of the planet’s climate. The fiscal committee needs to go farther and place an explicit price on carbon pollution so that fossil companies pay for their pollution, instead of future generations.

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