On Friday, October 2, 2009, Rep. Jim Cooper spoke on a panel at the 2nd annual Health Care Business Alliance conference at Vanderbilt University - a sold-out conference that was sponsored and attended by major private sector industry leaders.

In an answer to a question about whether he thinks meaningful health care reform can take place this year and overcome the intransigence of "vested interests" in the industry, Cooper clearly stated his conception of how it should work - letting the "vested interests" in the private sector write the bill, and having Congress simply "ratify" it:

"So how do we solve some of these problems? We can do it. There's ways to do that. With the business minds in this room, we could do it. I threatened to lock the breakfast group in the room until they came up with a solution. And that's really the ideal way for it to work - and then present a solution to Congress and we'll ratify it. But, where's the private sector solution?"

It isn't surprising that Cooper is comfortable outsourcing the entire legislative process on health care reform to private sector lobbyists - he has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from those same interests over the course of his career, and took the lead role in defeating President Clinton's health care reform in 1994 on their behalf.

But in a front page article in today's New York Times, Cooper is quoted prominently lamenting the state of the legislative process on health care:

"The lobbyists are winning," said Representative Jim Cooper, a conservative Tennessee Democrat who teaches health policy.

Just days earlier, he was advocating that business interests be allowed to write the entire bill, allowing Congress to simply "ratify" it.