Public Citizen's Robert Weissman Proposes 10 Crucial Public Congressional Hearings

Twenty-four years ago, Business Week magazine conducted a poll of the American people on whether corporations have too much control over their lives. Over seventy percent of them said YES! Since 2000, big businesses and their CEOs have gotten bigger, richer, less taxed and exercised far more power over the lives of workers, consumers, patients, children, communities, the two major political parties and our national, state and local governments.

That reality answers the question of why our corporate Congress has declined to hold public hearings confronting lawless corporate power with proposed legislation – the first step toward shifting more power to the people.

Weissman has put together a powerful legislative agenda to restore the rule of law over raw power.

Robert Weissman, President of Public Citizen, demands ten key Congressional hearings – naming the Committees that can hold them – in the just-published edition of the Capitol Hill Citizen (to obtain a print copy only, go to capitolhillcitizen.com).

Here is a summary of them:

1. Rebuild democracy by ending big money in elections. Besides exploring public financing for elections, the Committees, for example, would make the connections between Big Pharma’s money and charging the highest drug prices in the world, despite the large subsidies given to the drug companies. Also, witnesses would give testimony to strengthen voting rights and eliminate partisan gerrymandering, among other measures.

2. Taxing corporations and the Super-Rich at least to the level of the prosperous 1960s. Tax financial speculation (see: greedvsneed.org), close “a raft of loopholes” and impose a wealth tax on “the outrageously wealthy.” Weissman writes: “How exactly did Jeff Bezos pay $1.1 billion in federal tax from 2006 to 2018, as his wealth grew by $127 billion?” How do so many giant, profitable companies get away with zero income tax for years at a time?

3. Anti-monopoly hearings to strengthen venerable antitrust laws, to catch up with many new forms of monopolization and protect small business, competition and innovation. New legislation should also “restore the rights of victims of anti-competitive practices – whether competitors or consumers – to sue monopolists.”

4. Roll back rampant corporate welfare by exposing the hundreds of billions of dollars a year in subsidies, handouts, giveaways and bailouts. From greatly inflated government contracts – as in the defense industry – to giveaways of public land resources, government-guaranteed giant capitalism must stop, and the savings devoted to public services in great need.

5. More and deeper hearings on corporate-driven climate disruptions. Congressional committees have had numerous hearings, but far more should be regularly held on how the corporate-driven climate crisis is harming people and property around the country, how efficient are the ways to mitigate or prevent such fossil-fuel-led disasters, and how the law must be toughened with stronger enforcement and budgets to forestall this omnicidal destruction that gets worse every year.

6. “Winning Medicare for All” hearings to show how other countries spend far less per capita and get better patient outcomes with far less paperwork, waste, over-billing and denials of care. Weissman notes how conditions are getting worse with “private equity investors rushing to buy up everything from nursing homes to emergency care companies.”

7. Legislative hearings to enact laws that end the over-pricing of prescription drugs in the U.S. that are “roughly three times what they are in other rich countries.” This would build on Senator Bernie Sanders’ hearings by fundamentally changing the conditions that breed ever-worsening “pay or die” unregulated drug industry price dictates.

8. Hearings that place the most obstructive anti-union formation laws in the Western world under reform spotlights. Union-busting law firms and consultants should be subpoenaed to give testimony, produce documents, and answer questions under oath. Long overdue are hearings on the repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act (1947) to allow card checks and faster procedures between union certification and contracts with employers.

9. Also, long overdue are Congressional hearings that “shine a light on the victims of corporate wrongdoing who have been denied their day in court or the ability to obtain fair compensation.” On the table would be a “Corporate Accountability and Civil Justice Restoration Act” that protects the constitutional right of trial by jury that has been severely eroded by corporate lawyers and corporate judges.

10. Hearings by the Senate Judiciary Committee to confront the surging corporate crime wave with a modernized, comprehensive federal corporate criminal law. One that is adequately empowered and resourced to deter, punish and hold corporate crooks and their companies accountable through a variety of proven mechanisms. Present laws are pathetically weak, easily gamed, and allow ever more widespread immunities for these comfortable fugitives from justice.

Weissman has put together a powerful legislative agenda to restore the rule of law over raw power. He has a Congress Watch group staffed by public interest lobbyists who can swing into action daily on Capitol Hill equipped with a combination of invincible rhetoric rooted in irrebuttable evidence to benefit all the American people.

It is up to you the citizens to demand such investigations by your senators and representatives.

I would add serious hearings on the bloated, redundant military budget. Absorbing over half of all federal operating expenditures, this vast appropriation is in violation of federal law since 1992 requiring audited budgets be sent to Congress yearly. The Pentagon is presently out of sight by members of Congress and out of control even by the Army, Air Force and Navy.

Another basic hearing is needed by the Joint Committee on Printing aimed at restoring the printing of Congressional hearings and reports for maximum distribution in depository libraries and use by citizens. Hearing transcripts and very tardy online hearing records give corporate lobbyists an advantage in lobbying Congress. They can afford to pay for rapid access transcripts or personally go to the hearings that citizens may not be able to easily attend. Few citizens can afford such luxuries. (See the February/March 2024 issue of the Capitol Hill Citizen).

By the way, voters should demand that Congress be in session five days a week instead of three days a week with long recesses. More hearings, and the critical information work of our national legislature, requires a full week’s work, for which they get fully paid. (We will have additional proposals for blockbuster hearings in the future.)