1999-2000

Three harmful bills that Public Citizen opposed became law: Permanent Normal Trade Relations for China; "NAFTA for Africa" legislation that benefits multinational corporations at the expense of African countries; and legislation that limits the legal liability of high-tech companies that developed products with Y2K defects.

On the plus side, while no major legislation became law, significant progress was made toward our goals of enacting meaningful campaign finance reforms, a pro-consumer Patients’ Bill of Rights, a prescription drug benefit for Medicare recipients and legislation to reduce drug prices. It often takes several years to achieve such major results, so we will be back next year working for these initiatives.

An overview of Public Citizen's top legislative priorities in the 106th Congress follows.

Campaign Finance Reform
In 1999, the House of Representatives passed, for the second year in a row, the bipartisan Shays-Meehan campaign finance reform bill (H.R. 417). One-quarter of House Republicans bucked their leadership to help approve this significant reform bill. In the Senate, progress was made as three additional Republican senators joined the effort to advance the McCain-Feingold reform bill (S. 1593). Despite majority support (55 senators supported one or both versions of the bill), reformers fell five short of the 60-vote super-majority needed to overcome the Republican leadership’s filibuster.

On a more positive note, both the House and Senate approved legislation by overwhelming margins that requires secretive, tax-exempt organizations that raise and spend tens of millions of dollars to influence the outcome of elections to disclose the source of their funding. Such organizations, which included Leadership PACs of members of Congress and corporate front groups, used this loophole to skirt campaign finance laws and raise unlimited sums from special interests to affect elections.

Health Care
As drug costs and industry profits continued to soar, Congress considered legislation that would reform the Medicare program so that millions of senior citizens and people with disabilities could get prescription drug coverage. The drug industry worked with its mostly Republican allies in the House to pass an anti-senior bill (H.R. 4680) that would offer limited drug coverage through private insurance companies and HMOs. Democrats in the Senate offered Medicare drug benefit legislation that had some strong pro-consumer elements but lacked meaningful measures to rein in drug costs; however, it was defeated largely along party lines.

On a brighter note, a strong majority in the Senate voted to permit wholesalers and pharmacists to import drugs from abroad that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration and sell them in the U.S. Since such drugs often sell at half the U.S. price it is hoped that consumers will get much wider access to lower-cost drugs.

Finally, a broad coalition of consumers and medical providers overcame the deep pockets and well-connected lobbyists of the managed care industry to pass a pro-consumer Patients’ Bill of Rights in the House (H.R. 2723). The bipartisan bill included the right for consumers to hold their HMOs and other managed care plans accountable in state court for the denial of needed care. Unfortunately, the Senate blocked this same bill by only two votes.

Legal Rights and Civil Justice
Congress continued to propose bills to erode the rights of individuals to pursue legal justice against corporate wrongdoers. High-tech companies demonstrated their clout by persuading Congress and the President to enact into law a Y2K immunity bill (H.R. 775, S. 96) protecting themselves from liability for defects they had knowingly created in their products. The House passed legislation (H.R. 1875) that would move most state class actions to federal court, which are viewed by big business as more hostile to consumer rights. Another bill passed by the House (H.R. 2005) would prohibit workers injured by older, defective products from suing the manufacturer for harm caused by the defects.

Regulatory Protections
The House narrowly approved legislation that would continue to block the federal government from issuing workplace ergonomic standards to help protect millions of workers from getting repetitive stress injuries. The House also passed two other bills by paper-thin margins that would limit the power of federal agencies to protect the public. H.R. 350 would create procedural hurdles in the legislative process to make it tougher for Congress to pass new public protections that cost industry money to implement. H.R. 391 would weaken enforcement of worker safety, pollution control and public health laws by creating a blanket waiver of penalties for small businesses that are first-time violators (under the bill "small" could mean up to 1,500 employees).

In the Senate, Republicans defeated a bill by one vote that would overturn a Texas court case and allow the federal government to shut down meat and poultry plants that fail to reduce dangerous bacteria and viruses in their products.

Trade and Economic Globalization
This Congress’s most expensive and intensive corporate lobbying effort resulted in House and Senate passage of a resolution granting Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) status to China. The legislation would reward companies operating in China with permanent, unconditional access to the U.S. market for their goods at the lowest tariff rate despite China’s abysmal record on human rights, child and prison labor, environmental conditions, and nuclear proliferation violations.

Despite a vigorous campaign led by a small coalition of pro-Africa groups, African-American ministers and Public Citizen, Congress passed and the president signed into law legislation (H.R. 434) that provides paltry trade benefits to sub-Saharan African nations if they meet U.S.-imposed conditions, such as cutting local health and education spending and domestic taxes on corporations and providing new rights for foreign oil and mining companies. The law also provides special access to the U.S. market for Latin American and Caribbean textiles and apparel but without even NAFTA’s weak labor and environmental side pacts.

Another trade-related initiative during this Congress was a measure that would prevent spending federal funds to enforce World Trade Organization (WTO) and NAFTA rulings against state and local laws. It failed by a small margin in the House.

Safe and Clean Energy
Congress held few votes on energy initiatives, making it difficult to gauge whether U.S. energy policy is becoming cleaner or dirtier. Budget surpluses are allowing Congress to fund programs for nuclear and fossil fuels as well as programs for energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies.

The Senate rejected an amendment that would have encouraged the tightening of fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks (known as corporate average fuel economy, or CAFE, standards). CAFE standards have not been improved since 1989, and this has led to an increase in gasoline consumption, sprawl and air pollution.

Congress passed legislation (S. 1287) that would create a dump in Nevada to store deadly waste from the nation’s commercial nuclear plants. President Clinton vetoed the bill, which would have allowed 100,000 shipments of high-level radioactive waste, now located at 77 sites across the country, to be transported through 43 states over the next 25 years. Fifty million Americans would be put at risk as nuclear waste moves past homes, workplaces, recreational areas, schools and hospitals.

Corporate Welfare
There was a Senate Republican initiative to block the Interior Department from charging private companies a fair royalty for the privilege of drilling on public land for oil or gas. Private companies have used accounting gimmicks to shortchange the federal treasury by $66 million a year in oil royalties. Subsequent legislation wiped out this corporate subsidy.

Congress is so beholden to special interests that consumers could not even get the House to approve corporate welfare accounting legislation requiring the government to tally the costs and benefits of providing subsidies to U.S. businesses and to identify the companies benefiting from Uncle Sam’s largesse.

Money, Money, Money
The vote chart includes information about campaign contributions to each member of Congress from political action committees (PACs), other contributions (including those by individuals, party committees, the candidate and loans taken out by the campaign) and total contributions. The data, compiled from summary data available from the Federal Election Commission as of July 1, 2000, covers the first 15 months of the 1999-2000 election cycle for representatives, and for senators the 1995-1996 and 1997-1998 election cycles, as well as the first 15 months of the 1999-2000 cycle (because senators are up for election every six years). The data do not include contributions received by senators’ or representatives’ presidential campaigns.