It started out for me as a story about Bayowet FT-248. Bayowet FT-248, known more affectionately by industry insiders as perfluorooctanesulfonic acid tetraethylammonium salt, is used as a surfactant (a material that lowers the surface tension of liquid).

It’s exciting, I know. So are Thionyl chloride, Baypure DS, standard grade ferroniobium, Bayowet C4, Disflamoll TOF, Disflamoll DPK, Polyfunctional aziridine, Poly(toluene diisocyanate), Arcol Catalyst 3, Crelan VP LS 2147, Desmodur RF-E, Desmodur R-E, Mondur M Flaked, TSME, Desmodur BL XP 2468, Trimethylopropane tris(3-aziridinylpropanoate), Desmodur HL BA, Desmodur VP LS 2253, Desmodur VP LS 2253/1, Desmodur E 14

They are exciting, actually, to Republican Congressman Tim Murphy. Over the six months, Representative Murphy wrote a separate bill for each one of these chemical substances, providing for the suspension of import duties on each one of them. That’s 20 different bills.

Why has Tim Murphy been such a busy bee? The answer became clear to me when I looked to see what company consistently uses these chemicals: Over and over again, the name Bayer came up.

Bayer is a foreign corporation – a Germany company. However Bayer has a satellite corporate center in the United States as well. Would you be surprised to find out that Bayer’s American corporate offices are located in Representative Tim Murphy’s congressional district? Would you be surprised to discover that Tim Murphy has taken campaign contributions from the Bayer political action committee?

If they knew what Congressman Murphy has been up recently, the people of the 18th congressional district of Pennsylvania might wonder who Tim Murphy is really representing. Representative Murphy hasn’t written any legislation to help the people of his congressional district deal with the housing crisis, or the skyrocketing costs of health care, or food inflation, or gasoline prices. Not a single one. Murphy did find the time, however, to write 20 different bills to enable his patron corporation – a foreign corporation – to import chemicals without any tariffs, thus increasing the national debt.

It seems that Tim Murphy mostly represents the Bayer Corporation in the U.S. Congress.

Ah, but Tim Murphy doesn’t even do a very good job at that. Of those 20 bills for duty-free corporate importation of chemicals like Bayowet FT-248, Congressman Murphy has only managed to get one co-sponsor on one bill.

If I knew how to speak German, I would advise the people back at Bayer worldwide headquarters to spend their money on another member of Congress.