It appears as though the senior senator from Delaware, Tom Carper, in the midst of the Senate Finance Committee markup of Montana Senator Max Baucus’s America’s Health Future Act of 2009, let the proverbial cat out of the bag. While discussing an amendment to be included as part of the president’s health care reform legislation that would have drug companies pay more toward the federal government, he let slip the fact that the Obama administration did indeed make a backroom deal with the pharmaceutical industry, something the White House has long since denied but has been speculated upon within political circles across the country.

Here is the video, provided by the liberal blog, FireDogLake, as well as a transcript of what Senator Carper said:

I’ll tell you — if someone negotiated a deal with me and I agreed to put up say, 80 dollars or 80 million dollars or 80 billion dollars and then you came back and said to me a couple of weeks later — no no, I know you agreed to do 80 billion and I know you were willing to help support through an advertising campaign this particular — not even this particular bill, just the idea of generic health care reform? No, we’re going to double — we’re going to double what you agreed in those negotiations to do. That’s not the way — that’s not what I consider treating people the way I’d want to be treated.

The backroom deal being referred to, of course, was the one made between President Obama and Billy Tauzin, President and CEO of PhRMA, an industry-lobbying group representing the pharmaceutical research and biotechnology companies within the United States. Under the deal the drug industry consented to give Americans a future savings of $80 billion on the condition that President Obama agreed not to negotiate for lower drug prices. The kicker in all of this, however, as Air America, of all political organizations, revealed, was that Obama’s own administration announced that over the next ten years Americans would spend roughly $3.6 trillion for prescription drugs. This made the $80 billion in future savings pretty much a drop in the bucket.

As Jim Geraghty of National Review Online (NRO) points out, FireDogLake is seriously misdirecting their outrage. Are they floored by the fact that a senior senator basically admitted that a man who campaigned as president on the promise that he would not secretly negotiate with lobbying groups behind closed doors went back on his word? Is their anger directed as the fact that he brokered a deal on legislation in exchange for millions of dollars in television advertisement for freshmen Democratic legislators, a clear-cut violation of campaign finance laws? Of course not. They are mad that Senator Carper wants to keep the cost for the drug companies at $80 billion as was agreed upon in secret negotiations; the liberal blog, however, wants to be able to hit them up for much more.

That’s it, liberal blogosphere! Keep you eye on the ball!