{"id":47962,"date":"2026-04-30T12:20:24","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T19:20:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=47962"},"modified":"2026-04-30T12:20:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T19:20:24","slug":"were-going-to-come-after-you-casar-puts-corporate-interests-on-notice-with-affordability-agenda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2026\/04\/30\/were-going-to-come-after-you-casar-puts-corporate-interests-on-notice-with-affordability-agenda\/","title":{"rendered":"‘We\u2019re Going to Come After You\u2019: Casar Puts Corporate Interests on Notice With Affordability Agenda"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Greg<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

US Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) speaks during a press conference on March 26, 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0(Photo by Heather Diehl\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe need to fight against Trump, but we need to do more than that and fight against the big corporations that are screwing you over,\u201d says the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Jake Johnson<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apr 29, 2026 (CommonDreams.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus sent a message on Wednesday to corporations that are hiking prices on American consumers at the gas pump, the grocery store, the medicine counter, and elsewhere: \u201cWe\u2019re going to come after you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an interview with Common Dreams shortly after the CPC unveiled its New Affordability Agenda<\/a>, Rep. Greg Casar<\/a> (D-Texas) said he believes American voters across the political spectrum are hungry for a concrete policy platform that takes aim at the corporate forces driving price increases across the economy, from the for-profit utility companies raking in huge profits<\/a> off the backs of struggling families to oil<\/a> titans reaping massive windfall gains<\/a> thanks to war-driven oil price surges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cLook, I smell blood in the water<\/a>,\u201d Casar said of the current political moment, marked by rising public anger against corporate price gouging that\u2019s fueling the nation\u2019s cost-of-living crisis<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLet\u2019s take this opportunity to finally build a new consensus within the Democratic Party<\/a> that we should be uninvited from those lobbyist dinners and instead do what the voters are asking us to do,\u201d added Casar, who is partnering with Rep. Josh Riley (D-NY)\u2014a swing-seat representative and member of the centrist New Democrat Coalition\u2014on a new bill to crack down on utility giants\u2019 price increases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s just one element of the CPC\u2019s new\u00a010-plank agenda<\/a>, which aims to unify Democrats behind a set of popular policy demands ahead of the 2026 midterms. The agenda includes legislation to challenge the pharmaceutical industry\u2019s monopoly control over medicine production, confront price-fixing schemes by large grocery chains, profiteering by oil giants, and prohibit unlimited election spending by corporate groups and billionaires hell-bent on maintaining the status quo that enriched them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI welcome their hatred,\u201d Casar, in a nod to Franklin D. Roosevelt\u2019s famous line<\/a>, said of corporations and their allies standing in the way of the affordability platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn my lifetime,\u201d Casar continued, \u201ca populist anti-corporate message has not been the priority of most of the Democratic Party, and this has to be our chance to change it, because the past has failed us. And that\u2019s why we have this new agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Casar stressed that the 10th and final plank of the New Affordability Agenda\u2014\u201cGetting Big Money Out of Politics\u201d\u2014is critical because \u201ccorporations being able to buy politicians and buy elections is a huge driver of what\u2019s made things more expensive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The plank calls for passage of Rep. Summer Lee\u2019s Abolish Super PACs Act<\/a>, which would cap contributions to super PACs<\/a> at $5,000 per calendar year. Super PACs, an outgrowth of the Supreme Court\u2019s notorious Citizens United<\/a> decision, can currently raise and spend unlimited sums on political campaigns, giving them massive sway over elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Casar said Lee\u2019s bill would effectively render super PACs \u201cuseless, and no different from any other PAC.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere are going to be a lot of corporate interests who just want Democrats to say the word \u2018affordability,\u2019 but not do much about it. And we have to recognize it\u2019s been many of those corporate interests that have gotten us into the problem here in the first place,\u201d Casar told Common Dreams. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to have a plan that wins over the voters, because I would rather have the voters than the money.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is our chance to move the party. We can\u2019t wait until we\u2019re in the majority to start taking on these interests.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bills that make up the CPC\u2019s agenda stand no realistic chance of passage as long as Republicans<\/a> control at least one chamber of Congress or the presidency. This is true despite the popularity of the progressive platform among voters across the ideological spectrum\u2014including among those who backed President Donald Trump<\/a> in the 2024 election<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New polling<\/a> by Data for Progress shows that every plank of the New Affordability Agenda won \u201cmajority support from at least 3 in 5 voters.\u201d Among Trump voters, the CPC\u2019s proposals to guarantee at least two weeks of paid vacation to all full-time workers<\/a> and combat price hikes by for-profit utility companies enjoy at least 75% support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The broad appeal of the policy agenda makes sense, said Casar, given that much of it grew out of \u201cprogressives<\/a> doing town halls in Republican-controlled districts where voters say that they\u2019re already sick and tired of Trump\u2019s lies, but they want to know whether the Democratic Party\u2019s really going to fight for them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe need to fight against Trump, but we need to do more than that and fight against the big corporations that are screwing you over,\u201d said Casar. \u201cTrump voters and progressive voters want to see us crack down on the utility companies that are jacking up your bills. They want to see us crack down on Big Pharma<\/a>, which is driving up the cost of prescription drugs. And so we\u2019re using this agenda to say that Democrats have to get away from big donors and fancy parties and start doing something to take on the billionaires and corporations who are ripping people off.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The New Affordability Agenda is already facing some opposition with entrenched elements of the Democratic establishment, such as the corporate-funded<\/a> centrist think tank Third Way. Jim Kessler, the group\u2019s executive vice president for policy, told<\/a> The New York Times<\/a> that \u201cthere\u2019s obvious things to do on affordability that they ducked,\u201d such as repealing Trump\u2019s far-reaching tariffs<\/a>. (Casar responded that \u201cof course progressives have been for getting rid of\u201d Trump\u2019s \u201creckless\u201d tariffs.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Times reported that Kessler also claimed the CPC agenda was missing \u201cmore ambitious changes necessary to reduce costs, such as overhauling regulations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI understand that corporate funded think tanks have to try to say something negative here,\u201d Casar replied, \u201cbut [Kessler] didn\u2019t sound like he opposed anything in the agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The criticism from Third Way underscores another obstacle in the way of enacting the New Affordability Agenda, even if Republicans are swept from power: corporate-friendly congressional Democrats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asked if the CPC agenda has garnered support from the upper ranks of the Democratic Party, Casar said he is \u201ctalking to leadership and rank-and-file members about changing not just our message, but also our priorities as a party.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is our chance to move the party. We can\u2019t wait until we\u2019re in the majority to start taking on these interests,\u201d said Casar. \u201cWe have to organize across the party to get all kinds of Democrats onto these bills. We have to campaign on these ideas and then push to get them on the House floor and passed next year under a Democratic majority.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jake Johnson<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jake Johnson is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Full Bio ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

US Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) speaks during a press conference on March 26, 2026. \u00a0(Photo by Heather Diehl\/Getty Images) \u201cWe need to fight against Trump, but we need to do more than that and fight against the big corporations that are screwing you over,\u201d says the chair of the Congressional… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47962"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47962"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47963,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47962\/revisions\/47963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}