The book tells Redman's own story of then working on Senator Warren Magnuson's team and getting to know through error and success the machinery of the Senate legislative process.
Redman learns that gravitational forces work differently for a Senator and his or her staff than they do for others in the administration, or the courts, or in the lobbying and advocacy arena.
Senators, if they desire to, don't have to be spineless and passive -- but can make their own weather. They can write and pass laws -- though successful legislating can be an excruciatingly frustrating, irrational process. In the end, Redman plays a tipping point role in getting a National Health Service bill passed.
One can overdo typologies and models in trying to describe social phenomena -- but sometimes they work. When I was absorbing what I could about how the mechanics of politics and policymaking worked, I was influenced by the writing of Ripley and Franklin, who wrote Congress, the Bureaucracy and Public Policy. They suggest that there are many factors -- among them "time," the nature and number of policy actors in a decision, and the regularity or irregularity of the policy under consideration -- that effect legislative and political outcomes.
In other words, Ripley and Franklin argued
that structure and the context in which policy is debated and formed matters -- and Eric Redman shows that empowered political actors who understand the tools and mechanisms of politics and legislative process can have significant impact.
This is a round about way of saying that I am
intrigued by stories of those who try to pass or change
legislation. No matter whether the
impulse for change is outside the system -- like HIV/AIDS activists were during the Reagan administration battling for attention and resources -- or inside, like Senator Warren Magnusson's
legislative assistant -- it's nearly always a byzantine process that changes the roster of winners and losers. It's how American style democracy works, and I find it fascinating.
In part because of America's and the world's growing dependence on China's production muscle, I have been interested in what the US needs to do to prevent its standards from being undermined by lesser standards, poor regulation, illiterate workers, and corruption abroad. What are the legal and regulatory adjustments that need to be made to shore up American standards -- rather than have them slip to levels seen elsewhere around the world?
The US Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, passed in
1938, and only modified in minor ways since was originally introduced because more than 100 patients died because of a highly toxic hospital-administered drug. Today, there
are scores of stories emerging around the world in which counterfeit drugs are proliferating in a
lightly, often corruptly, regulated global drug industry. The media in China, India, countries in Africa and Southeast Asia often run stories about deaths and illness stemming from drugs being taken that are unsafe.
In the past, when the American drug and
pharmaceuticals industry was mostly based inside the borders of the
country, the regulatory and inspection scheme provide by the 1938 Food and Drug
Act was adequate. But those days are gone.
Today, roughly 80% of the
active ingredients for drugs sold inside the United States are manufactured
abroad -- often in lightly regulated environments, or ones where corruption
undermines what is often just a façade of regulation.
The 1938 Federal Food, Drug, and
Cosmetic Act is anachronistic in the sense that the law doesn't give the Food
and Drug Administration (FDA) the resources or authority to adequately regulate
and inspect incoming drug and pharmaceuticals stock from international sources. The vulnerability of US citizens to dangerous drug materials has been increasing -- but virtually nothing (until recently) has been done to wave red flags that U.S.-focused food and drug regulators are no longer really inspecting what U.S. consumers, popping pills made in Xian, China and elsewhere.
Writing about some new possible deals
that might fix this regulatory blind spot and major health risk to Americans,
the New York Times' Gardiner Harris
writes:
Although branded drugs usually have more secure supply chains than those of generics, major pharmaceutical companies have moved aggressively into China in recent years and often rely on rarely inspected suppliers.
Federal officials for years have expressed concerns about the nation's growing reliance on sometimes mysterious foreign drug suppliers, but they had largely despaired of fixing the problem. Congress had never given the FDA the money it needed to inspect these plants, and for nearly two decades the generic industry to pay inspection fees.
The industry changed its stance for several reasons. First, the heparin scandal scared everyone. The fake ingredient was good enough to pass a sophisticated test, so the conspirators probably knew that deaths would result, reflecting a callous level of greed. And the Chinese government refused to allow the FDA to investigate, suggesting that the perpetrators were not only smart but politically well connected.
In his interesting Times piece, Gardiner outlines other reasons why the U.S. drug industry and American regulators may be ready to strike a new deal overhauling the out-of-date law. A key reason he highlights is the policy agitating of an individual, Heather Bresch, the recently appointed 42-year old CEO of Mylan Inc., a Pittsburgh-based generic drug firm ranked No. 396 on the Fortune 500.
If Eric Redman were updating his fascinating book, written originally in the 1970s, he might focus on what an outsider like Bresch with insider DNA (her dad is Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia) was doing to change a major regulatory framework and shake up the drug industry and those who regulate it.
Bresch has been with Mylan for about twenty years -- working up the ladder from a job she got typing drug labels at what was then Mylan's sole drug plant in
Morgantown, West Virginia. She knows the drug industry line by line and term by term, all the pharma-speak slang and acronyms. She told me that for decades, the FDA has kept two inspectors on site at the Morgantown facility, which is huge. But through globalization and mergers with other firms, Mylan has operations all over the world today -- but there is no consistent inspection regime overseeing these other facilities.
In late 2011, Bresch was made CEO of Mylan. If her dad were not a U.S. Senator, it would really be a perfect Horatio Alger, from mail room to the top, story -- but spending time with her, it becomes immediately clear that her intellectual dexterity with the details of running a global pharmaceuticals business has nothing to do with family connections. Her father is not my favorite Senator -- having missed a key vote on Don't Ask Don't Tell and as Governor of West Virginia suing to block federal regulatory frameworks that would prioritize the health and safety of miners and protect the environment. Senator Manchin, most likely because of how he reads his state's political currents, is often a regulation foe rather than advocate.
That is what makes his daughter's behavior since becoming Mylan's CEO so interesting. Heather Bresch is leaning into and wants more regulation for her own industry.
When Bresch ascended to her recent perch, she surprised many by not just leaving things as they were when it came to the comfortable, long standing, structured relationship between FDA inspectors and U.S. producers.
Bresch told me she commissioned some work last year that showed that she and the U.S. pharmaceuticals industry writ large were facing enormous liabilities if drugs that they manufactured abroad and sold into the U.S. proved to be fraudulent or 'bad'. She knew after two decades of interaction with FDA regulators at the Morgantown production facility that Mylan's sites outside the U.S. had virtually no regulatory oversight. And this was true for every other major U.S. pharmaceuticals producer.
She also sensed that the unlevel regulatory playing field, added to other cost factors such as skimpy environmental standards and low wage rates abroad, was going to economically gut punch U.S. producers in the long run. Like so much of the rest of American industry that had off-shored to China, India, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and more -- the pharmaceutical producers were going to face cost decisions on regulation that could undermine not only the job base of the U.S. but also the physical health of citizens.
-- Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons
Follow Steve Clemons on Twitter: www.twitter.com/SCClemons
Both Democrat and republican.
It could/should be done over a few years ... and no, legalized term limits are not the solution.
Using Washington State as an example. Patty Murray got elected as a "mom in tennis shoes". That was in 1992. 20 years later she often poses herself as that, but she isn't. Over the last 20 years she has spent more time in DC than in Washington State. And she is NOW in the leadership of the party.
She ran to change the way things are done -- and then became the exact ting she ran to change.
KInd of like the episode of Family Guy where Lois gets elected Mayor and realizes what she has become.
AS I said -- the way to solve this is NOT term limits by law.
Simply look at your representative and if they have over 8 years -- vote them out in the primary.
Senators 12 years. 6 years actually would accomplish most of it. BY then new faces are half of the membership.
And the other half see the writing on the wall and will change or see it continue.
Why? Because a Congressman who serves more than 8 years or a Senator more than 12 do NOT show support of the basic principles of OWS or the TEa Party -- they just show token support until they get what they want