[Pharm-policy] Leahy Urges Hatch to Fire Aide Over 'Anonymous' Flap

[James Love]

http://www.rollcall.com/pages/news/00/06/news0629h.html

June 29, 2000
Leahy Urges Hatch to Fire Aide
   Over 'Anonymous' Flap

   By Paul Kane

   Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said Senate Judiciary Chairman Orrin
   Hatch (R-Utah) should consider firing some members of his staff
   if they were circulating a patent-extension bill without Hatch's
   knowledge. 

   The suggestion set off a bitter exchange of words between
   Hatch and Leahy, who serves as ranking member of the
   Judiciary panel.

   [snip]


   Leahy at first said he would "take him at his word" that Hatch
   wasn't behind the entire effort to help out Schering-Plough, the
   maker of Claritin. But Leahy said in a subsequent interview that
   Hatch's explanation for the entire snafu didn't suffice.

   "If he wants to say this is the staff's mistake, then fire the
   staff," Leahy declared.

   Told of those comments, Hatch went to Leahy Tuesday to voice
   his displeasure and accused him of taking potshots at the Utah
   Senator's staff. "Staff are human beings," Hatch complained.

   Hatch added in an interview: "I have to say that I was not
   pleased with anybody making suggestions about what I should
   or shouldn't do with my staff. They should worry about their
   own staff."

   Leahy didn't back down, but he then focused his ire more on
   Hatch himself. 

   "I always take responsibility for whatever goes on in my staff,"
   Leahy said.

   The flare-up comes amid the continuing fallout over the bid for
   patent extensions for Claritin, manufactured by
   Schering-Plough, a large donor to Hatch's campaigns, and for
   Columbia University. Leahy and other Senate Democrats held a
   press conference Tuesday to denounce any patent extensions.

   With so much controversy swirling around the patent issue, the
   conference on the military construction appropriations bill opted
   against including the patent provisions. 

  [snip]

   Hatch reiterated that some lobbyists -- he won't say which
   ones -- had asked him to get some form of Claritin patent
   extension onto a spending bill. "There were people who thought
   they could talk me into putting it onto an appropriations bill," he
   said.

   In 1999, Schering-Plough spent $8.5 million lobbying Congress,
   $6.6 million of which came in the second half of the year, when
   negotiations were most heated over giving hearings and a
   markup to the original Claritin legislation. And the company
   allowed Hatch to fly around the country during his presidential
   campaign on one of its corporate jets for a cut rate.

   Schering-Plough officials deny any connection to the new
   legislation.

   But Hatch said he has not, and will not, try to insert a patent
   extension onto an appropriations bill. And, he said, "to my
   knowledge" no one on his staff talked to the Appropriations
   Committee about getting the Claritin provision into milcon.

   Even if his staff had been maneuvering to put the bill on milcon,
   Hatch said ultimately he would have had to sign off on it. And,
   now that he has finally read the bill, Hatch said he never would
   have approved it because the measure tilts too much toward
   Schering-Plough.

   "It was a mistake for staff to think I would support that
   approach," he said, but refused to find any fault in the effort. "I
   think staff did what they should have done -- try to be
   innovative."

    [snip]

   Hatch countered that any Senator who says he looks over
   every piece of potential legislation on which his or her staff is
   working is either a very bad manager "or a liar." If staff-level
   negotiations move along, at some point Hatch will be brought in
   to examine the legislation, he said.

   Some Democratic staffers privately questioned the validity of
   Hatch's account, about whether or not his staff was pushing
   the language on the milcon bill. 


  [snip]

=======================================================
James Love, Director           | http://www.cptech.org
Consumer Project on Technology | mailto:love@cptech.org 
P.O. Box 19367                 | voice: 1.202.387.8030
Washington, DC 20036           | fax:   1.202.234.5176
=======================================================