Billy Tauzin

Wilbert Joseph Tauzin II (born June 14, 1943) is an American lobbyist and politician.

He served as the President and CEO of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), a pharmaceutical company lobby group.

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.

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.

Tauzin began his elective career in 1972 when he was elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives and served four full terms as a Democrat.

In his first term, he served alongside fellow Democrats Dick Guidry and Leonard J. Chabert.

In 1979, David C. Treen, the U.S. representative from Louisiana's 3rd congressional district and the first Republican representative from Louisiana since Reconstruction, was elected as the state's first Republican governor in more than a century.

Tauzin was also a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1980 to 2005, representing Louisiana's 3rd congressional district.

Of Cajun descent, Wilbert Joseph Tauzin II is a lifelong resident of Chackbay, a small town just outside Thibodaux.

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 Senator Anthony Guarisco Jr.., of Morgan City and another Democrat-turned-Republican, Jim Donelon, of Jefferson Parish.

Tauzin then won a full term in November 1980 with 85 percent of the vote against minimal opposition.

For 15 years, Tauzin was one of the more conservative Democrats in the House of Representatives.

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.

After 1980, he was re-elected twelve more times without major-party opposition, the first nine of which were completely unopposed.

In 1987, Tauzin ran for governor of Louisiana but lost to a colleague in the U.S. House, Buddy Roemer, as the incumbent, Edwin Edwards, had a weakened second-place showing and withdrew from a runoff election.

Others in the race were Republican U.S. Representative Bob Livingston of the New Orleans suburbs and two other Democrats: former U.S. Representative Speedy Long and Louisiana Secretary of State James H. "Jim" Brown.

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.

However, on August 8, 1995, Tauzin himself became a Republican and claimed that conservatives were no longer welcome in the Democratic Party.

He soon became a deputy majority whip and thus became the first representative to have been part of the leadership of both parties in the House.

Regardless of party, Tauzin remained popular at home.

During his tenure, Wilbert Joseph Tauzin II left his mark on issues ranging from natural gas, airline, trucking, and electricity deregulation to the Clean Air Act, Superfund, and the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

In addition, he was an original author of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act and the Cable Act, both of which became law despite a Presidential veto.

In 2003, he was inducted into the Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame in Winnfield.

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 even went so far as to appear 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).

a powerful trade group for pharmaceutical companies.

Tauzin was hired at a salary outsiders estimated at $2 million a year.

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.

Five years later, he announced his retirement from the association (as of the end of June 2010).

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.

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 heavy pressure from the drug companies.

Tauzin received $11.6 million from PhRMA in 2010, making him the highest-paid health law lobbyist.