After serving four terms in the State House, Tauzin won a special election to the United States House of Representatives, and served from 1980 to 2005. He was consistently re-elected as a Democrat representing Louisiana's 3rd congressional district until 1995, when he joined the Republican Party and continued to be re-elected to his seat for another decade.[2]
Personal life
Of Cajun descent, Wilbert Joseph Tauzin II is a lifelong resident of Chackbay, a small town just outside Thibodaux. He graduated from Nicholls State University in 1964 with a Bachelor of Arts Degree, where he was a member of Tau Kappa Epsilon Fraternity, and earned a J.D. degree from Louisiana State University in 1967.[3] While attending law school, he served as a legislative aide in the Louisiana state Senate.
Wilbert Joseph Tauzin II is married to Cecile Tauzin and has five children from a previous marriage.
Treen resigned his House seat on March 10, 1980. Tauzin won a special election for the seat on May 17 and was sworn into office on May 22, just five months after winning a fifth term in the state house. He won the congressional race by seven points, defeating Democratic State SenatorAnthony Guarisco Jr., of Morgan City and Jim Donelon, of Jefferson Parish, who had left the Democratic Party for the Republican one.
Tauzin won a full term in November 1980, with 85 percent of the vote against minimal opposition. For 15 years, he was known as one of the more conservative Democrats in the House of Representatives.[4] Even though he eventually rose to become an assistant majority whip, he felt shut out by some of his more liberal colleagues and sometimes had to ask the Republicans for floor time. When the Democrats lost control of the House after the 1994 elections, Tauzin was one of the co-founders of the House Blue Dog Coalition, a group of moderate-to-conservative Democrats.
Finally on August 8, 1995, Tauzin himself became a Republican, claiming that conservatives were no longer welcome in the Democratic Party.[5] He soon became a deputy majority whip. He was the first representative to have been part of the leadership of each party in the House. Regardless of party, Tauzin remained popular at home. After 1980, he was re-elected twelve more times without major-party opposition; the first nine times he was completely unopposed.
Tauzin served as chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee from 2001 to February 4, 2004, when he announced that he would not run for a 13th full term. He has five children from his first marriage and backed his son, Billy Tauzin III, as his replacement. He appeared in ads that were criticized for blurring the lines on which man was actually running for Congress. In spite of his father's support, the younger Tauzin was defeated by 569 votes by a Democrat, Charlie Melancon.
In January 2005, the day after his term in Congress ended, he began work as the head of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA).[7] a powerful trade group for pharmaceutical companies. Tauzin was hired at a salary outsiders estimated at $2 million a year. Five years later, he announced his retirement from the association (as of the end of June 2010).[1]
Two months before resigning as chair of the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which oversees the drug industry, Tauzin had played a key role in shepherding through Congress the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill.[8] Democrats said that the bill was "a give-away to the drugmakers" because it prohibited the government from negotiating lower drug prices and bans the importation of identical cheaper drugs from Canada and elsewhere.
The Veterans Affairs agency, which can negotiate drug prices, pays much less than Medicare. The bill was passed in an unusual congressional session at 3 a.m. under strong pressure from the drug companies.[9][2]
As head of PhRMA, Tauzin was a key figure in 2009 health care reform negotiations that produced pharmaceutical industry support for White House and Senate efforts.[5]
Tauzin received $11.6 million from PhRMA in 2010, making him the highest-paid health law lobbyist.[10] Since 2005, Tauzin has been on the Board of Directors at LHC Group.[11]
Controversies
Jerome Schneider
Tauzin endorsed Jerome Schneider's book The Complete Guide to Offshore Money Havens by dubbing the book, "A serious contender for the best book on offshore banking I've ever seen."[12] Tauzin also spoke at one of Schneider's tax conferences.[13] After Schneider pleaded guilty in 2004 to assisting hundreds of people to avoid taxes through sham offshore banks,[13][14] a spokesperson for Tauzin called his endorsement "a stupid mistake."[13]
Connections to pharmaceutical industry
In his capacity as chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Tauzin "was one of the chief architects of the Medicare bill".[15] Tauzin's appointment shortly afterward (the day after retiring from Congress) as chief lobbyist for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the trade association and lobby group for the drug industry, drew criticism from the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, which claimed that Tauzin "may have been negotiating for the lobbying job while writing the Medicare legislation".[15][16]
It's a sad commentary on politics in Washington that a member of Congress who pushed through a major piece of legislation benefiting the drug industry, gets the job leading that industry.
^Schneider, Jerome (2001). The Complete Guide to Offshore Money Havens, Revised and Updated 4th Edition: How to Make Millions, Protect Your Privacy, and Legally Avoid Taxes [Hardcover]. Prima. ISBN0761535489. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
