White House For Sale

Very good piece over at Raw Story. The downloadable pdf file of the report is quite interesting to read. "The selling the White House" is a very apt term for this administration, and what it has done since being taken over by Rove and Cheney.

A Democratic report by ranking Democrat on the House Rules Committee Louise Slaughter (D-NY) declares that Republican ties to lobbyists have cost millions of Americans basic social services, RAW STORY has learned.

The report, available here, blames lawmakers' ties to lobbyists -- who, they say, make an average of $650,000 a year.

"Contractors and corporations have purchased access to a government that is supposed to belong to the people," the Democrats write. The report's bullet points follow.

*14.2 million American seniors (including millions of our sickest and most vulnerable seniors) are stuck in a complicated, expensive, and inefficient Medicare prescription drug program because the Republican Congress and the Bush Administration allowed lobbyists from the insurance and pharmaceutical industries to design this program.

*60 million American families who heat their homes with natural gas and 8 million families who heat with heating oil are paying higher bills this winter, even though the Republican Congress recently passed their "national energy plan" into law. Although this plan gives the energy industry billions in new tax breaks and subsidies, it doesn't lower prices for consumers or make our country more energy independent.

*The 150,000 U.S. troops currently deployed in Iraq may not have the equipment they need because of waste, fraud and cronyism by the Republican Congress and the Department of Defense. While Halliburton and other companies with Republican connections get their contracts, our soldiers still don't have the body armor and armored vehicles they need to fight the war.

*750,000 households in the Gulf region are still displaced today, more than 5 months after Hurricane Katrina hit that region, at least in part because the political hacks the Bush Administration put in charge of crucial homeland security functions were not adequately prepared to prepare for or respond to this disaster.

*More than 10 million students and their families will have larger student loans to repay because House Republicans, led by new Majority Leader John Boehner working hand-in-hand with his commercial loan industry allies, cut $12 billion from the student loan program in the recent reconciliation bill and shifted the costs on to students and their families.