Eric Cantor will become the next head of PhRMA, and the two seem made for each other for all the wrong reasons.
Page F2From§Eachthe breakfast edition — 2 October 2026
Drug lobby hires former House Republican leader as chief executive; the law required zero days of waiting
As it ran on the front
Look for the broken rule. Look twice, if you like. What a trade lobby requires of a former Republican leader of the House is not a repeal, and not a loophole prised open in the dark — it requires an appointment and a salary, and both were perfectly lawful on Tuesday, when PhRMA named Eric Cantor its president and chief executive officer. Chief executive. Not a consultant.
You are reaching for the word swamp. The Federalist reached first: "the swampiest move ever." Advocates for lower drug prices called the hire "a match made in hell." Those are judgments, and a judgment stops no one at the door. The statute he would have to dodge does not exist. Congress wrote none.…
…(cont) And what does the walk through that door cost him? Nothing whatever. The emolument of the new office — the pay that comes with holding it — is handed over by the industry, and owed to nobody else.
Do note when they collected him ... in the middle of a major fight over the government's ability to regulate prescription drug prices. The fight is over whether the government may regulate what a prescription costs.
Each spring the farmer leaves the gap. The fox is not hurried.
“Nothing got broken here, and that is the whole con: Congress wrote no law telling a leader of the House to sit out a year before taking the drug industry's paycheck. He walks into the middle of a fight over whether the government can regulate what your prescription costs, and he walks in on their payroll. The thing on the table is the number on your pharmacy receipt.”
“Look, a private citizen took a private job — that is a labor market, not a scandal. Did I say labor market? That doesn't sound like me. He followed the law to the letter, every letter, and if Congress wanted a waiting rule, Congress could have written one instead of putting out press releases about it.”
The receipts
· 'A Match Made in Hell': Former GOP House Leader to Head Big Pharma Lobby from the morgue, 29 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.