Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images
Demonstrators rally with People’s Action in front of industry group PhRMA’s Washington office to protest high prescription drug prices, September 21, 2021.
The 100-year flood of lobbying cash continues in Washington, and with Congress stuck on a path forward for the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the Build Back Better domestic policy package, those lobby shops are nearer than ever to getting what they’ve hoped for. If there’s one nonprofit that can claim responsibility for the combination of deadlock and intransigence amidst a handful of corporate Democrats’ willingness to impugn the party’s own signature legislation, it’s the dark-money outfit Center Forward, which has played an essential role in channeling money to the party’s most maddening holdouts.
What is Center Forward? The group’s own tagline claims “America is neither right nor left. Republican nor Democrat. The solutions that will move us forward come from where they always have—the Center.” Its online fundraising pitch asks potential donors to “Help Center Forward end the culture of gridlock in Washington.” But Center Forward isn’t in search of solutions, it’s in search of obstructing a Democratic agenda that might take a bite out of the most egregious corporate profiteering, especially in the pharmaceutical sector. And their money has proven remarkably effective thus far.
As Andrew Perez reported at the Daily Poster, Center Forward is heavily funded by the pharmaceutical industry. Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the best-known lobby shop in Washington, pledged $4.5 million to Center Forward between 2016 and 2019. In the 2018 midterm cycle, PhRMA gave Center Forward $1.2 million, and the group disbursed $1.3 million to Democrats. The group has also taken money from CVS (which owns health insurance giant Aetna), as well as Facebook, Coca-Cola, and others.
Not long ago, Center Forward kicked off an ad blitz championing six Democratic House members, nearly all of whom went on to lead the charge to undermine Democrats’ flagship drug pricing reform bill, a multi-cycle priority of the Democratic caucus and of outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi, while also jeopardizing the Biden agenda bill being considered under budget reconciliation. Those reps, now infamous, should sound familiar: Scott Peters (D-CA), Kurt Schrader (D-OR), Kathleen Rice (D-NY), Stephanie Murphy (D-FL), Lou Correa (D-CA), and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ).
What’s now known as Center Forward was formed in 2010 as an attempt to preempt any social welfare program expansion.
Peters, Schrader, and Rice would later team up to down the drug pricing proposal in the House Energy and Commerce Committee; some version of it remains thanks to the Ways and Means committee, despite Murphy voting against it there. Gottheimer has led the charge to force a vote on the infrastructure bill before negotiations conclude on the rest of the agenda; his state of New Jersey has a heavy pharma presence.
Of course, all of these members voted for the exact same drug pricing proposal in 2019. Now, they are the foremost opponents of the plan, which has changed not at all.
These are not swing-district members in difficult seats. Indeed, five actual “frontline” House Democrats penned an op-ed in The Washington Post last week about how vital lowering drug prices was to their districts. Peters and Gottheimer and friends are corporate Democrats who have been rewarded for their loyalty to pharma by the industry’s pet PAC.
Center Forward has gotten even better bang for its buck with Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. The group spent about $600,000 on TV and radio ads celebrating her, just days before she reportedly announced to the White House that she opposed the House’s drug pricing bill, or even the extremely narrow, not-serious replacement proposal put forward by Peters.
The announcement stunned even close watchers. Sinema has basically no history of showing interest in drug pricing in either direction, and no special proximity to Big Pharma as a representative of Arizona that would have her invested in protecting its usurious profits. She even ran campaign ads about lower drug prices when winning elections in the past. The $500,000 she’s raised from the pharmaceutical industry over her career pales in comparison to the $3 million she’s raised from the retired, who would benefit hugely from Medicare negotiating drug prices. Center Forward’s surprise support of her obstinacy may have helped her stake out a position both against the money broadly and against her own constituents.
Of course, putting Sinema, a lightning rod for criticism, out in front of the drug pricing controversy takes focus away from more dedicated pro-pharma members like Peters, Schrader, and Gottheimer. In that sense, Center Forward’s touting of Sinema is even more devious; it leads people to believe that she’s the main obstacle to lower drug prices, while their other paid-for members make trouble in relative obscurity.
THIS, OF COURSE, IS NOT Center Forward’s first foray into a contentious health care debate, one which places them on the other side of an extremely popular proposal.
As Lee Fang reported for The Intercept, Center Forward was responsible for a 2019 luxury confab aimed at coaching up Democrats and Republicans on beating back popular public health care reforms, at a moment in which Medicare for All was an extremely popular proposal nationwide. “Several aides to Democratic leadership filed disclosures showing that they received paid travel to attend the Center Forward retreat, including chiefs of staff to Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md.”
Also in attendance were chiefs of staff of other Blue Dog Democrats, including none other than Kurt Schrader’s, as well as officials from the Blue Dogs, Problem Solvers Caucus (now led by Gottheimer), and the New Democrats. Paid travel organized by registered lobbyists is a violation of ethics rules, but Center Forward escaped infraction on that count because the group’s executive director, Cori Kramer, is not technically a registered lobbyist like the rest of the board.
At that point, Center Forward was pushing to maintain the status quo on Medicare Part D, which bars the government from bargaining for lower prices for prescription drugs. It was a preparation for the fight currently being waged over drug pricing reform. As has been commonly cited, Medicare’s inability to negotiate prices costs the public some $73 billion a year.
That came after the group successfully worked to preserve a tax credit for researching rare-disease medicines known as orphan drugs in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, President Trump’s exceedingly unpopular tax cut. Later on, the group “sponsored 13 House policy staffers on a California junket to visit a biotech company campus and meet with pharmaceutical executives” in November 2019, according to reporting from Sludge. The group has been strategizing around beating back drug pricing reform, targeting willing Democrats, for over two years.
Center Forward was originally known as the Blue Dog Research Forum, a think tank affiliated with the conservative Blue Dog Coalition, which currently counts Correa, Schrader, and Gottheimer among its membership; Murphy is one of its chairs.
What’s now known as Center Forward was formed in 2010 as an attempt to preempt any social welfare program expansion, around the moment of the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Since then, corporate profits for insurers and pharmaceutical companies have skyrocketed to historic levels. The lack of meaningful profit and price controls led to a profit bonanza, as conservative forces within the Democratic Party, including those most proximate to industry groups like PhRMA, won out over progressives.
Whether or not Center Forward will be able to reproduce that outcome is yet to be seen. But the battle over drug pricing reform, which is simultaneously one of the most popular proposals in the bill, a huge money saver in the pay-for category, and a core message for Pelosi’s House Democrats for years, has become one of the defining showdowns of the Biden presidency.
The irony of the Problem Solvers Caucus and its various appendages causing all sorts of problems for the Democratic agenda is surpassed only by the “Take Action” section of the Center Forward website, which calls on visitors to become citizen co-sponsors of the “No Budget No Pay Act,” which “would prevent Members of Congress from collecting their $174,000 salary if they fail to work together and pass a budget.” “Hold Congress accountable,” the site exhorts. Of course, without the influence of Center Forward, the budget would likely have a much easier time getting passed.
