Philly's Rep. Brady caught copying from lobbyists

Rep. Bob Brady is a man who wears many hats around Philadelphia. The one that gets the most hype locally is his longtime role as boss of the Democratic machine that has controlled city politics for nearly six decades. But we also see Brady around here as a staunch pro-union guy, a labor peacemaker, even recently in a failed bid as a mayoral candidate. The only Brady job that we don't pay too much attention to here is his "day job," as one of 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

It's time to start paying more attention to that.

There was a great piece of investigative reporting in the New York Times this morning. It turns out that during the recent House debate on healthcare reform -- you know, only the most significant congressional topic of 2009 -- a number of represenatives either gave speeches on the floor of the Capitol or entered statements into the Congressional Record with oddly similar language. The reason for that, the Times found out, is because the members and their staffers had received the wording in an email.

From lobbyists.

In fact, the email was from the lobbying team related to a major biomedical research firm, Genentech, a company whose lobbyists have made campaign contributions to many House members in recent years. In a sign of how the buying and selling of the U.S. Congress knows no ideology at all, the Genentech lobbyists had almost equal success in peddling its language to Democrats and Republicans, despite that fact that the GOP voted uniformly against the bill and Democrats were largely for it.

One of the Democrats snared in this Times article was Philly's own Brady:

In the standard Democratic statement, Representative Robert A. Brady of Pennsylvania said: "Let me repeat that for some of my friends on the other side of the aisle. This bill will create high-paying, high-quality jobs in health care delivery, technology and research in the United States."

Mr. Brady's chief of staff, Stanley V. White, said he had received the draft statement from a lobbyist for Genentech's parent company, Roche.

"We were approached by the lobbyist, who asked if we would be willing to enter a statement in the Congressional Record," Mr. White said. "I asked him for a draft. I tweaked a couple of words. There's not much reason to reinvent the wheel on a Congressional Record entry."

Frankly, I was a bit surprised to read of this. Surprised that a Philadelphia congressman was echoing a lobbyist? No, surprised that Brady had even gone to the effort of putting something out on an important national healthcare debate. In his 11 years in Congress, Brady -- by his own admission not a silver-tongued public speaker -- has been the ultimate back-bencher, much more focused on local issues than on the big national matters affecting his constituents in one of the nation's more poverty-plagued congressional districts. His lead role these days during his time in D.C. is as chairman of the Committee on House Administration, which deals with weighty issues like office space for members of Congress.

So apparently Brady -- so busy with those Philly responsibilities like mediating the recent SEPTA stike -- simply phoned it in, or emailed it in, on health care. What's more, this isn't the only incident. Earlier this year, the Sunlight Foundation reported that Brady used language that aped one of his largest campaign donors, the Philadelphia-based behemoth Comcast Corp., in opposing net neutrality, the current system that allows everyone to cruise the Internet equally.

Of the 72 lawmakers who signed onto the letter, Brady is the leading recipient of campaign contributions from telecom companies -- since 2007 alone he's received $91,650 just from Comcast, which is based in his district of Philadelphia.

Comcast, which has played an aggressive role in the debate over net neutrality, spent $3 million on lobbying in the third quarter of the year, according to disclosure reports.

Not surprisingly, Brady has a long history of supporting Comcast's policies. And the letter sent to FCC bears a striking resemblance to Comcast's announcement on net neutrality.

At least on healthcare reform, Brady ended up voting for a bill that would benefit his mostly poor and working class constituents. On net neutrality, Brady's pro-Comcast stance places him in support of a big corporation against the interests of Pennsylvania's 1st District, since proposed changes could allow companies like Comcast to create levels of tiered service that could be unduly restrictive to lower-income Internet users.

But perhaps more importantly, taxpayers are providing Brady with some big bucks -- $169,300 a year, plus all the other perks -- to do his job, not copy his homework off some K Street lobbyist. If Brady is a little overtaxed from dealing with ward leaders and union chiefs up here in Philly, maybe it's time he should think about taking one of those many hats off.