Hoping to open yet another channel in the fight to survive cancer, the Austin non-profit foundation Livestrong sent a paid lobbyist to Washington to question the mission and the funding for the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.

The lobbyist visited with a staff member for a congressman on the House Appropriations Committee, the committee, coincidentally, that oversees most of the $15 million annual budget for the agency, the Wall Street Journal is reporting today.

The agency, coincidentally, filed charges late last month against Austin expatriate Lance Armstrong for using performance enhancing drugs to win at least a few of his seven Tours de France.

Armstrong, who responded by suing the Anti-Doping Agency he says is conducting a “kangaroo court” and a “witch hunt” against him, is, coincidentally, the founder of Livestrong.

The Livestrong lobbyist voiced concerns about the fairness of the agency’s process to a staff member for Rep. José Serrano, D-N.Y., the Appropriations Committee member, the story says.

The Appropriations Committee has oversight for the $10 million taxpayer-supported grant from the federal Office of National Drug Control Policy that undergirds the agency’s annual budget.

A foundation spokesman called the account of Serrano’s staffer inaccurate, so incredulous was she that the lobbyist could have strayed so far off topic.

All lobbying, the spokesman says, is supposed to be undertaken “to identify the issues faced by cancer survivors in order to comprehensively improve quality of life for members of the global cancer community,” as outlined at the top of the platforms and priorities page of the foundation’s website.

The priorities page makes no mention of doping, cycling or the French.

The foundation president, Doug Ulman, however, has publicly questioned the “integrity and oversight,” of the Anti-Doping Agency’s proceeding against Armstrong.

The same foundation which stood to raise more than $1 million through a contract with World Triathlon Corporation which, in turn, stood to leverage a personal contract with Armstrong into a lucrative television contract for its ironman triathlon series.

The same company that chose to suspend Armstrong from the ironman competitions while the doping charges against him are being cleared up.

Coincidentally.

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Contact Mark Lisheron at 512-299-2318 or mark@texaswatchdog.org or on Twitter at @marktxwatchdog.

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Photo of Lance Armstrong via a University of Washington supported site, used via a Creative Commons license.