On Wednesday, the Congressional Progressive Caucus introduced a wide-ranging agenda in advance of the midterm elections that rivals the breadth of the Republican Contract with America put forward by Newt Gingrich in 1994.

At a time of stagnant employment and rising inflation that is poised to worsen as the Strait of Hormuz crisis continues, the agenda focuses on affordability in many forms, proposing bills that would lower the cost of housing, electricity, gasoline, child care, prescription drugs, groceries, and consumer goods and services where the price is set through the extraction of personal information.

The legislative package, called the New Affordability Agenda, would also tackle the wage side of the affordability equation, benefiting workers through mandates for guaranteed double time for overtime and two weeks of paid vacation. And it is designed to place limits on the scads of money that makes all these policies impossible to advance through Congress, by capping super PAC spending in elections.

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In an interview with the Prospect, Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX) called the agenda a direct response to the impression that the Democratic Party had strayed too far from its New Deal and Great Society roots. “After the 2024 election loss, Democrats from across the ideological spectrum were saying that we lost the trust of working people,” he said. “This is our chance to regain that.”

Most of the ideas are relatively new; stalwart concepts that Democratic candidates run on across the country like banning congressional stock trading are likely to come later. Casar, in his first term as Progressive Caucus chair, called the agenda “the tip of the spear” and said the caucus would obviously be fighting for more than ten bills next year. But he saw the opportunity for a package the entire party can come together on.

Two of the co-authors of the legislation, Reps. Seth Magaziner (D-RI) and Josh Riley (D-NY), are not Progressive Caucus members; Riley represents a swing district. And the New Affordability Agenda is backed up with polling from Data for Progress showing broad appeal, with all the policies having at least 65 percent support, including between 59 and 78 percent backing from Republicans.

“This agenda can help us build a new consensus this year within the Democratic Party,” said Casar, who has begun talking with all the top Democrats in the committees of jurisdiction, who would chair the committees if Democrats take the midterms and would be in a position to pass the bills. He’s engaged House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) on the agenda as well, along with rank-and-file members.

“We need to be more than an anti-Trump party. We need to be a pro-worker party.”

Rep. Greg Casar

The caucus spent close to a year deputizing its members to come up with the slate of policies, enlisting assistance and advice from current and former policymakers, union leaders, and progressive economists. Twenty-two organizations endorsed the agenda.

“At a time when Americans are facing not just an affordability crisis but also a deep sense of economic precarity, we need a policy agenda that will deliver real relief and take on corporate abuse,” former Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan said in a statement. “It’s terrific to see a legislative plan that will address these pain points and steer towards an economy that is more fair and competitive.”

Casar previewed the agenda last year in a profile in the Prospect, calling it the “battleship bill.” He explicitly saw it as something that could be used in blue, red, and purple districts during the elections, and that could be passed if Democrats take back the House. Any resistance from the Senate or President Trump would clarify the stakes of the next election and build a mandate for success in 2028. “Voters can see us fighting for things we care about and blame Republicans for blocking it,” Casar said.

Throughout its history, the Progressive Caucus has traditionally endorsed blue-sky legislation like Medicare for All or the Green New Deal, topics that do not necessarily have majority support in Congress. While the caucus still supports those bedrock issues, this is a different tactic.

“When I go do town halls in Republican districts or in a union hall with building trades members that voted for Biden and then Trump, they say, ‘We’re sick of Trump but what are you guys actually for? Are you going to say affordability over and over or do something about it?’” Casar explained. “We need to be more than an anti-Trump party. We need to be a pro-worker party.”

The other innovation in the agenda is that practically all of the bills tee up a special-interest villain that would oppose a popular reform. Pharmaceutical companies, oil drillers, seed monopolies, Big Tech and AI firms, big-box stores, investor-owned utilities, low-wage employers, and the billionaires who try to influence politics would all be put on the same side. “When Biden said ‘nothing will fundamentally change’ at a big donor event, that was a big problem,” Casar said. “Voters want fundamental change … Trump villainized immigrants, Trump villainized the LGBT community. If Democrats want to fight back against that scapegoating, we need to take on the real villains taking your money.”

What follows is a rundown of the pieces of the agenda:

Public drug production: The Affordable Drug Manufacturing Act by retiring Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) would create a program to directly make medications like insulin for diabetes, inhalers for asthma, opioid overdose treatment naloxone, epinephrine for anaphylaxis, and more. The drugs would then be sold to the public at a discount. The caucus estimates that insulin prices would drop to $50 a vial, and naloxone prices would fall by more than half. Republicans support this (at 72 percent) at even higher rates than Democrats (68 percent) in Data for Progress polling.

Housing affordability: The agenda adopts several ideas from House Financial Services Committee ranking member Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), including $20,000 in down payment, closing cost, and interest-rate buydown assistance for first-time homeowners; significant funding to build affordable and public housing; and an expansion of rental assistance.

Utility rate reform: Reps. Casar and Riley are introducing a bill to address the rising cost of electricity. Among other things, the bill would ban utility monopolies from building into their rate increases reimbursement for lobbying, private jets for executives, or political contributions. (This polls at an astronomical 79 percent support, with nearly equal backing from Democrats, Republicans, and independents.) It also directs the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to set a reasonable rate of return for utility company rate-setting, which takes into account a utility’s monopoly status and stable cash flows. And it would prioritize investments that save money over time like boosting electricity grid capacity, instead of unnecessary capital investments thrown in to allow for additional rate hikes. Customers would save an estimated $500 a year.

Unfair and deceptive pricing: The Fair Competition for Small Business Act by Rep. Waters gives state attorneys general explicit authority to win financial penalties from large retailers engaging in price discrimination, price-fixing, or other anti-competitive behaviors. This would fill the gap of a federal government that has refused to enforce the Robinson-Patman Act, a New Deal–era law which banned price discrimination by chain stores. Separately, the agenda includes Casar’s Stop AI Price Gouging and Wage Fixing Act, which bans surveillance pricing, the use of personal data to target consumer prices individually. The Washington Post was recently caught using data to set subscription prices, and Sony was exposed using differential pricing on the PlayStation Store. Ending surveillance pricing has 70 percent support in polling.

Seed independence: A bill from Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) would eliminate corporate patents on seeds, which force farmers to buy them every year. Instead, seeds could be replanted, reducing input costs on a host of crops and lowering the price of groceries. The provision has 75 percent support.

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Windfall profits taxes for Big Oil: Oil companies are seeing record profits due to Trump’s war in Iran and the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) would attack that with a tax on a portion of large oil companies’ excess profits from the price spike and return the proceeds to lower- and middle-class families, who would get a check for up to $324 per household. This legislation is supported by 69 percent of those surveyed in the Data for Progress poll.

Child care needs: Building on a proposal that didn’t make it into the Biden-era Build Back Better plan, the Child Care for Every Community Act from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) would create a universal child care program capped at 7 percent of household income, with half of all families paying no more than $10 a day. Local providers would administer the program, boosted by federal funding. The Progressive Caucus joined with frontline Democrats in swing seats during the Biden years to ensure universality regardless of income. “This legislative agenda provides a vision for how we as a party can put money back in the pockets of every American and uphold our promises to working families,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a statement.

Paid vacation time: The PTO Act from Rep. Magaziner would give 27 million workers who currently do not get paid vacation access to two weeks off per year. That would be in addition to any paid sick leave or family and medical leave at their employer. The provision would equate to $1,933 per year for a worker making $24 an hour. It’s supported by 79 percent of the public in Data for Progress polling.

Overtime pay: The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 requires all eligible salaried employees to receive no less than time and a half for every hour worked above 40 in a week. This amendment to the FLSA from Casar would expand that minimum to double time. The higher wages would put limits on overworking employees, and there are other provisions in the legislation to safeguard against that as well. The caucus estimates that over 13 million workers would feel this benefit, supported in polling by 69 percent of the public. “True affordability comes when working people earn enough to cover the costs of living with dignity and security,” said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute.

Defanging of super PACs: More than 19 percent of all spending in federal elections in 2024 came from 300 billionaires, most of it uncapped and unaccountable in the form of super PACs legalized by the Citizens United ruling. The Abolish Super PACs Act from Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA) attempts to cap super PAC donations at $5,000 per year, the same way that corporate PACs are capped in their direct donations to individual candidates. The legislation, supported by 71 percent of respondents to the Data for Progress poll, is probably the most important of the agenda, because the rest of it is unlikely to pass if special interests spend millions to influence elections and candidates are too easily bought or chilled into silence by big money. Said Rep. Lee in a statement: “It’s past time we be the party of working people, not the party of corporations.”

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David Dayen is the executive editor of The American Prospect. He is the author of Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power and Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street’s Great Foreclosure Fraud. He co-hosts the podcast Organized Money with Matt Stoller. He can be reached on Signal at ddayen.90.