Billy Tauzin Quotes
The timing was terrible, and having one disaster after another didn't help. I think the pictures on television of the way in which the disaster was handled also helped to turn off the public and Congress.
Tauzin, Billy. Interview. The Times-Picayune, Advance Publications, 2005.
Much depends on the culture of the people and the power of the rulers. In Pakistan, corruption and one disaster after another occurs and neither the government nor the army—the two ruling elites—does little or nothing to help the people, yet they retain their power and support of the majority of the population. The Palestinians have been led by the PLO, Hamas, and Hezbollah, and with each decision the elite rulers make, the Israeli’s obtain more territory than they were willing to settle for earlier, the standard of living of the Palestinians degrades, their employment prospects deteriorates, and their humiliation becomes greater. Yet, the elites maintain their power.
The George W. Bush administration had been caught ill prepared and with the exception of the Coast Guard, was slow and inadequate in responding to the emergency.
The TPP was the first Trade Agreement that had ever been classified as “Secret” when it was being negotiated. This was one of the most hotly debated policies of the era. Even Congress could not get a look at what was being negotiated although the Senate would have to ratify it when finished for it to become effective. .On the surface, it is outrageous that a non-military or defense activity should be secret in a democracy. What could be wrong with the Congress and the public being aware of a trade negotiation while it was being formulated and negotiated? Kirk and other apologists for the secrecy policy argue that because of the trade-off relationships among different clauses and facets of a trade treaty, there are many proposals that are made just to initiate a bargaining position, and the negotiators themselves neither expect nor intend those proposals to be a part of the final treaty. To then have groups of Americans get upset and start a lobbying position against a treaty when what they object to is not ever going to be in the treaty poisons in the public mind the entire treaty which then could be killed for something that was never real to begin with. A similar thing happened with the Obamacare legislation. Congress drafted the various clauses and many were included as part of the bargaining process or misunderstood because of poor first drafting. Opposition to those clauses set a tone of animosity against the bill as a whole. After the bill was passed, the clauses that were most unpopular or misinterpreted were the main reason that citizens gave for opposing Obamacare even though they were not in the legislation. Advocates of secrecy point out that the original Constitutional Convention was entirely secret with all the delegates agreeing that if each and every proposal that was debated were public, there would develop so much opposition that the result could never be ratified later. Yet it is hard to argue against transparency of government processes in a democracy.
Wilbert Joseph Tauzin II is an American lobbyist and politician. He was President and CEO of PhRMA, a pharmaceutical company lobby group. Tauzin was also a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1980 to 2005, representing Louisiana's 3rd congressional district.
