Lawmakers scrounging for budget savings to offset the cost of health care overhaul have set their sights on existing tax breaks for health spending -- especially breaks seen as encouraging excess health-related spending.

But one person's excess is another person's livelihood, and many of the affected interest groups -- including some new to the Washington lobbying game -- have beaten a hasty path to K Street. The Dallas-based National Association of Dental Plans, concerned that Congress will begin taxing workers on some or all of the value of their employer-provided health plans, has taken a straightforward approach. NADP filed a federal lobbying registration for the first time in May -- signing up both its own staff and the firm Brown Rudnick; it reported spending $150,000 in the second quarter.

Meanwhile, worried that Congress may limit or do away with flexible spending accounts, which let workers pay some out-of-pocket health care costs with pre-tax dollars, the San Mateo, California firm Wage Works made it's Washington lobbying debut in June by spending $30,000 with Patton Boggs.

Wage Works, which describes itself as the "nation's largest independent provider of consumer-directed" benefit programs, is a member of the more-seasoned Washington trade group Employers Council on Flexible Compensation, which has hired and spent $80,000 on Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti to lobby on this issue over the first half of this year.

Wage Works and the trade group have teamed up in hiring Hyde Park Communications to create a website called "SaveMyFlexPlan.org." The website bills itself as home to "a national grassroots advocacy campaign" giving "a voice to the millions of Americans who rely on FSAs." The site has scads of personal testimonials about the value of FSAs, as well as talking points and tools for sending e-mails and making phone calls to Congress, but nary a mention of the site's sponsor.

                                                                                                       -- Julie Kosterlitz