How to stop "corporate welfare"

Email from Russ Feingold this morning:

With every penny of spending so tightly contested during the last-minute "fiscal cliff" deal -- even threatening middle-class earned benefits -- how and why did pharmaceutical giant Amgen end up with a $500 million giveaway from Medicare?

Hint: Because Amgen leveraged 74 Washington, D.C., lobbyists, the revolving door between former top Senate staff and big corporate jobs, and massive contributions to the campaigns of influential senators.

This is lavish and corrupt corporate welfare at its most insidious, and it's not just a problem with Washington. We may not have our own lobbyists, but Amgen owes it to us -- their customers -- to use their own expensive lobbyists to give back the very giveaway they just wheedled out of Congress.

And if we build enough public pressure, we can make it impossible for Amgen to ignore.

Sign our petition telling Amgen Chairman and CEO Robert Bradway to give back the taxpayer dollars his company extorted in the recent fiscal deal.

Amgen's strategy to achieve this coup was certainly brilliant -- and a perfect example of the kind of corruption that permeates our government and cripples public trust.