The Democratic budget resolution being voted on today in the U.S. Senate calls for the largest investments in decades in health care and clean energy—spending that was fought for years by large corporations and their lobbying groups.
The resolution from Senate Budget Committee Chair Bernie Sanders is accompanied by reconciliation instructions calling on committees to put forward drug price-lowering measures fought by the pharmaceutical lobby, Medicare expansion opposed by the health insurance companies, decarbonization steps resisted by the fossil fuel industry, and corporate tax levels battled by the behemoth business lobby. Under special rules for legislation impacting spending and revenues, these measures would be put forward in an omnibus reconciliation package that would be protected from filibusters.
Next, the $3.5 trillion budget resolution and a smaller, roughly $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill will head from the Senate to the House, where conservative and progressive Democrats are in a brewing standoff over the sequencing of the votes. Conservative Democrats want to quickly pass the infrastructure bill on its own, while progressives say they will only consider voting for the infrastructure bill after the House passes the reconciliation package.
Business lobbies have allies in a group of nine moderate House Democrats, who in a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi raised concerns over the spending levels proposed in the budget resolution and called to delay a vote on its passage.
The nine Democrats signing the letter represent overlapping groups of House moderates. Seven of them are current members of the conservative Blue Dog Coalition: co-chair Rep. Ed Case, with Reps. Jim Costa, Henry Cuellar, Jared Golden, Vincente González, Josh Gottheimer, and Kurt Schrader. Signer Filemon Vela, a leading critic of Speaker Pelosi in years past, recently left the Blue Dog Coalition after joining in 2015. The three Texas Democrats—Reps. Cuellar, González, and Vela—were among the founding members of the Congressional Oil and Gas Caucus in 2017.
The ninth signer, Rep. Susie Lee, is a member of the moderate New Democrat Coalition, which counts 95 members out of the 220 Democrats now in the U.S. House, including all of the above-mentioned Blue Dogs save for Rep. Golden of Maine. Update, Friday Aug. 13, 12pm ET: a new version of the letter from House moderates has the signature of Blue Dog member Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux, but not Rep. Susie Lee.
Seven of the nine reps—Golden, with Bourdeaux, Case, Gottheimer, González, Lee, and Schrader—are among the 28 Democratic members of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, of which Gottheimer is the Democratic co-chair.
Both the Blue Dogs and New Dems have PACs that raise millions of dollars every cycle from hundreds of corporate PACs, then send maximum donations of $10,000 back out to their members and more business-friendly Democratic House candidates, sometimes helping Democrats like Golden dodge a pledge not to accept corporate PAC contributions.
Members of the Blue Dogs and Problem Solvers are also bolstered in their careers by outside spending in their races by caucus groups that raise large donations from business interests. The Blue Dogs have been affiliated with a nonprofit, Center Forward, that has a super PAC that takes in millions in large donations from pharmaceutical companies and spends millions on ads to help re-elect the coalition’s members. The Problem Solvers Caucus was founded by the organization No Labels, which according to records reviewed by The Daily Beast has been funded by Republican megadonors like John Catsimatidis and Nelson Peltz, as well as by hedge fund and private equity moguls . No Labels’ super PAC spent over $3.7 million in the 2018 election cycle supporting Democratic candidates, according to OpenSecrets.
Delaying or blocking a House vote on the Democratic budget resolution could be a way for corporations to weaken or knock off provisions they oppose, as House Democratic moderates push for a vote first on the smaller levels of spending in the bipartisan infrastructure package that is coming over from the Senate. The Budget Committee says its reconciliation instructions allow the Senate to put the U.S. on the path to achieve 80% clean electricity and 50% economy-wide carbon emissions reductions by 2030, as well as to advance legislation to lower the price of prescription drugs.
Here are some of the corporate PACs that donated to the Blue Dog PAC from January through June of this year, along with their lobbying groups that have thrown up blockers to elements of the Democratic budget plan.
Big Pharma
On prescription drug affordability, the budget resolution is accompanied by instructions in line with H.R. 3, which would allow the government to negotiate with drugmakers over the prices of top Medicare purchases, a measure opposed by leading pharmaceutical industry trade group PhRMA. In May, Gottheimer and Schrader were among 10 Democratic signers of a letter to Pelosi who echoed pharma industry talking points in raising concerns over H.R. 3’s provisions after having received sizable contributions from pharma PACs in the last election cycle.
In the previous Congress, then-chair of the Blue Dog Coalition Rep. Anthony Brindisi led a charge that would have protected the group’s pharmaceutical industry donors against greater competition from generic drugs.
