BUSINESS AS USUAL
Clockwise from top: House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi
signing a resolution to
continue funding the federal
government; former Senator
Joe Donnelly, President
Biden’s pick to serve as
ambassador to the Vatican;
and the U.S. Capitol.NEWSWEEK.COM 11
Former Senator Blanche Lincoln,
Democrat of Arkansas, a public
option opponent who lost in 2010,
quickly joined a lobbying firm before
launching her own outfit, the Lincoln
Policy Group, a few years later. Once
a proponent of allowing Medicare to
negotiate drug prices, she has been
lobbying for Pfizer on “issues related
to drug pricing.”
Lincoln has also led the fight
against Democrats’ plan to undo some
of the GOP’s 2017 tax cuts and raise
the corporate tax rate as an adviser for
the RATE Coalition. The group’s mem-
bers include companies like AT&T,
CVS Health, FedEx, Lockheed Martin,
Home Depot and Walt Disney.
“As Congress navigates the question
of how to fund the worthy goal of re-
pairing our infrastructure, I strongly
urge my former colleagues to avoid
raising the corporate rate,” Lincoln
wrote in an op-ed this summer. “Any
increase would blunt the trajectory
of our country’s economic recovery
and serve as a barrier to the critical
goal of Building Back Better.”
Another public option opponent,
formerer Senator Mary Landrieu,
Democrat of Louisiana, took a job at
the lobbying firm Van Ness FeldmanLLP in 2015 after losing her reelec-
tion race. Landrieu has been lobby-
ing on behalf of Enterprise Products
Operating LLC, a pipeline firm, over
a provision in Biden’s budget that
would raise taxes on publicly traded
fossil fuel partnerships.
Former Arkansas Senator Mark
Pryor, a conservative Democrat who
helped negotiate a watered-down
public option proposal before the
party dropped the idea altogether,
became a partner at the law firm
Venable LLP months after he lost
his seat. Pryor is now a shareholder
at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck.
The firm describes him as “D.C.’s
go-to lobbyist to get things done,”
and says he “earned a reputation
on Capitol Hill as a ‘voice of rea-
son.’” Pryor has been lobbying on
Democrats’ reconciliation bill for
the American Petroleum Institute,
electric utility Duke Energy, AT&T
and General Motors.‘My Door is Open’
max baucus, a montana democrat
who chaired the powerful Senate fi-
nance committee for much of the
Obama era, led the process of writ-
ing the ACA and helped keep a public
option out of the bill. He later served
as Obama’s ambassador to China.
Baucus now has a consulting firm,
the Baucus Group. It’s not clear who
his clients are, but the firm’s web-
site does feature a picture of Baucus
saying: “My door is open.” In recent
months, he has spoken against efforts
by Democrats to close two different
tax loopholes for the wealthy in order
to fund their reconciliation bill.
Former Nebraska Senator Ben Nel-
son, a Democrat who prominently
opposed a public option, immediate-
ly joined a public affairs firm after re-
tiring in 2013 and also launched his
own consulting company. The public