“ 'It’s time Congress get serious about taxpayer funding of corporate cheats, crooks, and criminals. Last month Congress took action to defund a non-profit serving poor Americans, but failed to act against the corporate crooks that are actually guilty of felonies – including defrauding taxpayers. Why are companies that break the law as a business strategy allowed to receive taxpayer funds? A government contract is a privilege, not a right. If a company commits a felony against the people of the United States, then that privilege must end,' Congresswoman McCollum said."

Instead of getting bogged down in the ACORN hypocrisy while the corporate fraud continues against taxpayers, McCollum has the health care industry in her crosshairs.

As Jeremy Scahill writes in The Nation:  

"McCollum's bill cites the 2008 Corporate Fraud Task Force Report to the President, which found that in fiscal year 2007, 'United States Attorneys' offices opened 878 new criminal health care fraud investigations involving 1,548 potential defendants. Federal prosecutors had 1,612 health care fraud criminal investigations pending, involving 2,603 potential defendants, and filed criminal charges in 434 cases involving 786 defendants. A total of 560 defendants were convicted for health care fraud-related crimes during the year.'

"Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius called it a "historic settlement" and said the government is looking 'for new ways to prevent fraud before it happens. Healthcare is too important to let a single dollar go to waste.'

"Yet, despite all of these tough statements--and many more by top officials--Pfizer and its vast network of subsidiaries continue to win massive government contracts. Last year Pfizer made more than $40 billion in profits, and in 2007 it had more than $73 million in federal contracts.

"McCollum's legislation would limit the amount of lobbying expenditures by "corporate felons" to $1 million a calendar year. In 2009 Pfizer has already spent $11,720,000 on lobbying.

"ACORN does not have high-powered lobbyists, and its 400,000 member families do not give major campaign contributions. If they did, the Defund Acorn bill would never have passed Congress. The question for those Democrats who voted to go after this community organization on dubious allegations is a simple one: will you apply that standard to actual corporate felons with real-life rap sheets whose actions have actually harmed ordinary Americans and ripped off taxpayers?"

And then we have a hypocritical President Obama who made a deal with BigPharma thieves and fraudsters for price cuts.  Guess how much it saves?  A whopping 2%!  That's right, only 2%, while the Pharma crooks continue to rake in billions.

As Greg Palast explained a few months ago: 

"The Big Pharma kingpins did not actually agree to cut their prices. Their promise with Obama is something a little oilier: they apparently promised that, over ten years, they will reduce the amount at which they would otherwise raise drug prices. Got that? In other words, the Obama deal locks in a doubling of drug costs, projected to rise over the period of "savings" from a quarter trillion dollars a year to half a trillion dollars a year. Minus that 2%.

"We'll still get the shaft from Big Pharma, but Obama will have circumcised the increase." 

Obama continues to be such a great disappointment.

Real Democrats in Congress with guts and spine need to overcome the handicap of a weak, Republican lite president, pass HR 3679, and put strong teeth into holding corporate criminals accountable for defrauding government of, by, and for the people.