Holtz-Eakin

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see tax fdn

see am action network /forum c3 shuffle?

dark money launder, calls itself thinktank and does do BS # for fox

note oldest trick in gop playbook is to make up some BS white paper w/ # to discredit green efforts

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mma

Fox News economist panel agrees Trump tariffs are bad for consumers 02/14/25

February 14, 2025, edition of Fox News' America Reports

SANDRA SMITH (ANCHOR): President Trump's looking to reshape trade with the signing yesterday of reciprocal tariffs. It comes just days after a hotter-than-expected CPI report showing that pressure is not letting up. For more on this let's bring in Doug Holtz-Eakin, former Congressional Budget Office director and American Action Forum president, and Jared Bernstein, former chair of the council of economic advisors. Thanks to both of you. Jared, it's nice to have you back on the program. So what do you think, by the way, so far of this administration's economic policies, having worked in the last administration?

JARED BERNSTEIN (FORMER CHAIR, U.S. COUNCIL OF ECONOMIC ADVISERS): I'm worried about the extent to which the tariff agenda is going to hurt American consumers. There is no question in my mind, and economist broadly agree on this, that tariffs work like a sales tax for the consumers of the country that's putting those tariffs on those imports. And to the extent that we have, already, a problem getting inflation back down to where we want it to be and especially given that the price level, what things actually cost — and trust me, I'm a veteran of this, I've have been through this for a bunch of years now — consumers really don't like that. Trump will not be able to keep the promises you just heard about getting prices down, and tariffs push the wrong way.

SMITH: Well, with all due respect, many say inflation is the ultimate tax on the American consumer. And most of that did happen under your watch during the administration.

Austan Goolsbee, who I don't consider a right-leaning economist by any stretch, formerly with the University of Chicago, now with the Chicago Federal Reserve, he was on this program this week and he said this about inflation ticking up in that latest number. Watch.

.....

SMITH: I was interested in that moment, Douglas. Your thoughts.

DOUGLAS HOLTZ-EAKIN (PRESIDENT, AMERICAN ACTION FORUM): I think you'd have to agree with Austan, you should be for growth, you should be for productivity and any supply side improvements that ease pressure on inflation and the price level.

But I'd have to concur with Jared that the tariffs is not the answer to that — those challenges. There is nearly universal agreement that those tariffs will be upward pressure on costs and consumers will ultimately pay them. The president's tariff agenda is very ambitious; it's not just a modest increase like his first presidency. This is every country, in a very complicated fashion, setting tariffs and essentially letting the other country dictate how high they go. Because if they raise taxes, we raise our tariffs. And so, I don't like giving up control of economic policy, and I don't like this aspect of the administration's portfolio.

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off bs

American Action Forum (AAF), led by former Director of the Congressional Budget Office Douglas Holtz-Eakin, proudly leads the center-right on economic, domestic, and fiscal policy issues. It combines timely analysis and modern communications strategies to promote innovative, free-market solutions to build a stronger, more prosperous future.

Since its 2009 founding, AAF has provided data-driven insight into the United States’ defining domestic policy challenges in health care, taxes, immigration, trade, labor, technology & innovation, regulations, and more. Its policy experts, both in-house and in its broad external network, analyze the issues and propose relevant solutions to engage policymakers, thought leaders, academics, media, and the general public.

AAF is an independent, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization; it is not affiliated with or controlled by any political group. Its focus is to educate the public about the complex policy choices the country faces, and to explain as cogently and influentially as possible why solutions grounded in the center-right values that have long guided the country still represent America’s best way forward. AAF will stay neutral in elections, and by and large will leave its sister organization, the American Action Network (AAN), to engage in any appropriate direct legislative advocacy in support of the policy proposals it discusses. AAF welcomes policy ideas consistent with its center-right values from any source, regardless of party affiliation, and aims to make its educational materials available to members of the public of all political stripes.

As an organization, AAF does not take policy positions. The views expressed on this site are those of its individual policy experts.

LEADERSHIP

• DOUGLAS HOLTZ-EAKIN

President

• LAUREN MADDOX

Chairman, American Action Forum

• SENATOR NORM COLEMAN

Of Counsel, Hogan Lovells US LLP

• AMBASSADOR BOYDEN GRAY

Founding Partner, Boyden Gray & Associates

• KEN KIES

Managing Director, Federal Policy Group

• BOBBIE KILBERG

President, Northern Virginia Technology Council

• GOVERNOR JOHN R. MCKERNAN

Chairman & CEO, McKernan Enterprises

• REPRESENTATIVE SUSAN MOLINARI

Former U.S. Representative, New York’s 14th District

• STEPHANIE MONROE

President, The Wrenwood Group, LLC

===

https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/article/disappearing-data/#the-pandemic

RELEASE FORECASTS THAT WOULD HAVE SHOWN A SEVERE ECONOMIC DOWNTURN

01.02

For over 40 years, the White House has published economic forecasts, including on growth and unemployment, as part of its midyear budget update to Congress. But this year, the White House decided to omit such projections. Officials told The Washington Post that the volatility caused by the pandemic made it difficult to model economic trends and that “there is no statutory requirement to release this information, just precedent.”

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office and a Republican adviser, criticized the move for getting the White House “off the hook for having to say what the economic outlook looks like.”

Trump has repeatedly predicted a rapid rebound for the economy ahead of November’s election, but projections by the CBO, Federal Reserve and outside economists suggest that a full recovery may take years. As of early October, more than 12 million Americans were formally unemployed—double the number before the pandemic struck—and another 7 million Americans wanted a job but were not actively seeking employment. Congress and the White House have been unable to agree on the size and direction of a second stimulus bill that would aid workers and businesses.

===

mma

https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/03/18/Dont-believe-right-wing-media-when-they-say-the-Green-New-Deal-would-cost-93-trillion/223140

no lnx twt

Don’t believe right-wing media when they say the Green New Deal would cost $93 trillion

Politico calls the analysis "bogus," and even its lead author won't defend it

Blog ››› March 18, 2019 9:44 AM EDT ››› EVLONDO COOPER

Melissa Joskow / Media Matters

Right-wing media outlets have repeatedly asserted that the Green New Deal would come with the absurd price tag of "$93 trillion" or "$94 trillion," uncritically repeating claims from a back-of-the-envelope, deeply flawed analysis produced by the American Action Forum, a conservative think tank. Politico recently determined that the $93 trillion figure was "bogus," and quoted the lead author of the AAF analysis, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, admitting that he had no idea how much it would cost to implement the Green New Deal.

American Action Forum has ties to the fossil fuel industry

The American Action Forum, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and its 501(c)(4) “sister organization,” the American Action Network (AAN), have been funded by a who’s who of the polluter syndicate.

AAN has received at least $250,000 from the American Petroleum Institute, a trade association for the oil industry that has donated to groups in the Koch network. And AAN has received at least $35,000 from the American Natural Gas Alliance, a pro-fracking gas industry trade group. Dow Chemical has given at least $250,000. AAN has also been funded by other Koch-connected groups such as Americans for Job Security, Donors Trust, and the Wellspring Committee. It's gotten money from Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS too. AAN has in turn donated millions to AAF.

Though some information about its funding has been made public, AAN has generally refused to disclose its donors. In 2014, MSNBC called AAN a "dark money power player," noting that it had been running numerous attack ads against Democratic candidates. FactCheck.org noted that same year that AAN has spent tens of millions of dollars supporting Republican candidates.In 2018, a watchdog group filed suit against AAN for violating campaign finance laws and abusing its nonprofit status.

AAF's Green New Deal cost analysis is problematic from top to bottom

Considering the think tank’s connections to the fossil fuel industry, it’s not surprising that the American Action Forum’s report found the Green New Deal untenable. What is surprising is how flippant Holtz-Eakin, president of AAF and former head of the Congressional Budget Office, was about the rigor of the analysis he co-authored. When challenged about the accuracy of the report’s claim that the Green New Deal would cost some $93 trillion over 10 years, Holtz-Eakin told Politico, “Is it billions or trillions? Any precision past that is illusory.”

The Green New Deal resolution introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) on February 7 is just a broad, 14-page outline of goals with no policy specifics, so determining a price tag was a fanciful exercise. AAF's claims of a $92.9 trillion total cost, or $653,000 per household, have no basis in reality. As Politico reporter Zack Colman put it:

When they set out to put a price tag on the Green New Deal last month, Holtz-Eakin and his associates had no real policy or plan to evaluate, so they made one up to perform back-of-the-envelope calculations.

…

And the AAF study does not distinguish between government and private-sector spending, nor does it attempt to quantify the benefits of reducing pollution or other policies. For example, Stanford University civil and environmental engineering professor Mark Jacobson estimated that eliminating the electricity sector’s carbon emissions would avoid $265 billion in annual U.S. damages beginning in 2050.

Colman also pointed out that more than $80 trillion of the alleged $93 trillion total cost would come from implementing a jobs guarantee and universal health care -- policy ideas that have no direct relation to greening the economy, even though they are in the Green New Deal resolution.

Politico declared that the $93 trillion figure is "bogus" -- or, in an earlier version of the article published behind a firewall, "essentially vapor."

The fact-checking project PolitiFact also found the $93 trillion figure to be untrustworthy, calling it "only about as strong as a clothespin in high wind." It noted that "the [AAF] report itself is full of assumptions, qualifiers and caveats," and when a fact-checker reached out to Holtz-Eakin, the AAF president "made it clear to us that the report aims to provide very rough estimates on a plan that’s only partially developed." PolitiFact rated as "false" this claim from Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA): "At $93 trillion, the Green New Deal would cost more than the entire recorded spending of the U.S. since the Constitution went into effect in 1789."

Other journalists have also pointed out major problems with the AAF analysis. Paul Blest at Splinter noted that AAF used cost estimates for a universal jobs program ("$6.8 trillion to $44.6 trillion") and universal health care ("$36 trillion") that are vastly higher than estimates produced by other think tanks. AAF also failed to account for how much money programs like universal health care could save. According to Blest:

[AAF's] ballpark estimate on a federal jobs guarantee has a range of $38 trillion. The centrist Brookings Institution’s estimate last year, by the way, put the high end on a job guarantee at $543 billion a year, or $5.4 trillion over 10 years.

On Medicare for All, too, the AAF’s number is substantially higher than previous estimates. The libertarian Mercatus Center’s estimate set out to prove last year that Medicare for All would bankrupt the country, and inadvertently found that Medicare for All would eventually save about $2 trillion in national health expenditures. Even Mercatus, however, put the cost of Medicare for All at $32.6 trillion over 10 years.

The ClimateDenierRoundup column at Daily Kos pointed out another problem with AAF's jobs-program estimates:

The jobs price tag is wrong because it’s double counting: many of those jobs would be created by the other parts of the GND. Improving energy efficiency and building a clean energy economy will create a lot of jobs, which are counted in the GND’s green policy price tag tally. But then AAF simply counts those jobs again in the jobs guarantee portion, as though none of those promised jobs would be used to put the green in the Green New Deal.

Green New Deal sponsor Markey called out major flaws in the report too, starting with the basic premise: "Putting a price on a resolution of principles, not policies, is just Big Oil misinformation." Markey pointed out that AAF calculated the cost of "policies that aren't even in the resolution," such as eliminating air travel:

Ed Markey

?

@SenMarkey

The AAF analysis of the #GreenNewDeal spends some time doing basic multiplication on the impact of making all air travel unnecessary, a concept mentioned nowhere in the resolution text.

Ed Markey

?

@SenMarkey

Any so-called "analysis" of the #GreenNewDeal that includes artificially inflated numbers that rely on lazy assumptions, incl. about policies that aren’t even in the resolution is bogus. Putting a price on a resolution of principles, not policies, is just Big Oil misinformation.

Markey also noted that AAF did not provide any support for its cost estimate for a low-carbon electricity grid.

Ed Markey

?

@SenMarkey

Another example, the $5.4 trillion it estimates to transition our electric grid comes seemingly from thin air, as NO SOURCES are documented for their generation cost assumptions.

Ed Markey

?

@SenMarkey

The AAF analysis of the #GreenNewDeal spends some time doing basic multiplication on the impact of making all air travel unnecessary, a concept mentioned nowhere in the resolution text. https://twitter.com/SenMarkey/status/1100099740316942336 …

As The New York Times recently put it, "For now it’s impossible to pin down dollar figures on the plan." FactCheck.org agreed, writing that "the experts we spoke to said it’s not possible to put a specific price tag on the Green New Deal."

Perhaps most egregiously, AAF’s analysis of the Green New Deal completely ignored the enormous cost of not fighting climate change. Just last year, climate disasters and extreme weather events cost the U.S. an estimated $91 billion. According to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a 1.5 C rise in the global average temperature would cost $54 trillion. Things only get more expensive (and catastrophic) from there. According to Axios:

You think $54 trillion is a lot? That number comes from research that also says that a 2.0°C increase will cause $69 trillion of damage, and a 3.7°C increase will cause a stunning $551 trillion in damage.

$551 trillion is more than all the wealth currently existing in the world, which gives an indication of just how much richer humanity could become if we don't first destroy our planet.

Current policies in place around the world have us on track for about 3.3 C of warming by 2100 if we don't dramatically change course.

AAF's analysis also ignored the significant economic benefits that would come from taking addressing climate change. "Bold climate action could deliver at least US$26 trillion in economic benefits through to 2030, compared with business-as-usual," according to a recent report from the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate.

Fox News and other right-wing outlets have been hyping the $93 trillion figure

Right-wing media have been heavily citing the AAF report since its release on February 25 -- and they have often used the $93 trillion figure without noting that it's at the top end of a range AAF provided. Fox News has been particularly eager to amplify the huge estimate. Hosts and guests have cited price tags between $91 trillion and $94 trillion on Fox News shows including Fox & Friends, The Greg Gutfeld Show, and Watters’ World, and on Fox Business Network shows including Varney & Co., Trish Regan Primetime, Making Money with Charles Payne, and Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo. Sean Hannity has cited the AAF report at least three times on his Fox News show. He typified Fox's incurious reporting on AAF’s analysis during the March 5 episode of Hannity:

SEAN HANNITY (HOST): They are going to eliminate fossil fuels, gas, and oil. They're going to destroy the lifeblood of our economy. They're going to get rid of planes, mandate you rebuild your home. Who's paying for that? The estimates now are as high as $94 trillion in 10 years --that's their proposal.

Many other right-wing media outlets have also uncritically amplified AAF's enormous estimate, including The Daily Caller, The Daily Wire, and the Washington Free Beacon.

Some Republican politicians such as Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso have also latched onto the $93 trillion estimate and publicized it through mainstream and right-wing media. Barrasso issued a press release with the figure, wrote an opinion piece about it for USA Today, and made an appearance on Fox News to promote it. During Barrasso’s interview on Fox's America's Newsroom, co-host Sandra Smith falsely claimed that “the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office” was behind the $93 trillion figure and Barrasso failed to correct her error. (Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt also falsely credited the report to the CBO.) From the February 28 episode of America’s Newsroom:

SANDRA SMITH (HOST): The Green New Deal, all the rage on the left. But a new study finds that it comes with a staggering price tag: the plan estimated to cost is as much as $93 trillion. That breaks down to $600,000 per household. Those are some big numbers. Joining us now, Sen. John Barrasso, a Republican from Wyoming who chairs the Committee on the Environment and Public Works. Been hearing you talk a lot about this, sir, and this price tag. It is a lofty one. This is the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that did a study on this and came up with those numbers: $93 trillion, $600,000 per household. What do you think?

SEN. JOHN BARRASSO:Well, this Green New Deal is a big green bomb that will blow a hole in our strong economy. It will destroy the energy independence we now have from foreign countries. It will destroy what we’ve been doing to actually lower emissions. The cost to families -- electricity alone would go up by about $3,600 per family, per year. This is something, Sandra, that we cannot as a nation afford. The economy can't afford it. Our nation can’t survive it.

Some Fox News personalities and Republican politicians, includingPresident Donald Trump, have cited an even larger unsubstantiated figure for Green New Deal costs: $100 trillion. As Dave Anderson recently reported for the Energy and Policy Institute, that number originated from a flippant Twitter thread by a Manhattan Institute senior fellow. The Manhattan Institute has been funded by ExxonMobil, and the chair of its board is also the CEO of a hedge fund that is the top shareholder in Peabody Energy, a major coal company. The $100 trillion figure was mentioned by Fox host Charles Payne during an interview with EPA chief Andrew Wheeler on March 4 on Your World with Neil Cavuto, and it was also cited on other Fox programs and right-wing sites like Townhall.

Right-wing echo chamber amplifies misinformation by design

The spread of the $93 trillion figure is a textbook example of how the right-wing media sphere disseminates misinformation to stymie climate action (and the spread of the $100 trillion figure too, for that matter). Conservative media outlets have been freaking out about the Green New Deal since even before the resolution was unveiled. AAF rushed out a quickie estimate of its potential costs that even its lead author won't robustly defend. Surely the think tank knew that its ready-made, sky-high number would be quickly picked up and regurgitated by conservative commentators, writers, and politicians -- and it was. It is not likely to matter that AAF's report has been called out as “bogus” and poked full of holes. You can expect right-wing media to keep on promoting it.

Short Link

http://mm4a.org/4Br

Posted In

Environment & Science, Climate Change

Network/Outlet

Fox News, Fox Business

Person

Donald Trump, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Ed Markey, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Sean Hannity, John Barrasso, Sandra Smith

Show/Publication

Hannity, Politico, Daily Kos, Splinter, FOX & Friends, The Five, Your World with Neil Cavuto, Greg Gutfeld Show, Watters' World, Varney & Co., Trish Regan Primetime, Making Money with Charles Payne, Sunday Morning Futures, The Daily Caller, The Daily Signal, The Washington Free Beacon, Townhall

Stories/Interests

Climate Change

==

==

Some senior Republicans who have left the battlefield of electoral politics are starting to go vocal with their worries about their party’s stance on climate change—and to take action to stave off its electoral consequences. They fear, in the words of one GOP operative, “that the party is going to drive itself off a cliff with this.”

Conservative economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a senior adviser on McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign who now heads the American Action Forum, a center-right think tank, is working with the climate-policy advocacy group Clean Air-Cool Planet. The New Hampshire-based group has flown Holtz-Eakin to the state several times over the past few months to talk to voters in small living-room meetings about the economic threats of climate change—and the economic benefits of addressing the problem.

Another prominent Republican, John Warner, the former senator from Virginia and secretary of the Navy, is a senior adviser to the Pew Project on National Security, Energy, and Climate, which focuses on the need to develop alternative energy to combat climate change and lessen U.S. dependence on foreign oil. Warner, who cosponsored a major cap-and-trade bill when he was in the Senate, now travels the country, including stops at military bases, calling attention to the national-security concerns of climate change and fossil-fuel dependence.

Working with Warner on the Pew climate-change project is George Shultz, President Reagan’s secretary of State and an adviser to George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign. Last year, Shultz, who is a distinguished fellow at Stanford University, cochaired the “No on Prop. 23” campaign in California, which successfully defended the state’s pioneering cap-and-trade law against an oil industry-led effort to overturn it.

“My own opinion is that this problem is very real,” Shultz told National Journal. “I recognize there are a lot of people pooh-poohing it. Whether they like the science or not, there’s a huge problem coming at us. There’s a huge melt coming in the Arctic regions. There’s melting taking place.” Of Perry and other Republicans who deny climate science, Shultz said, “They’re entitled to their opinion, but they’re not entitled to the facts.”

Former GOP Rep. Bob Inglis of South Carolina, who lost his primary race last year in part because he acknowledged climate change, gives speeches and lectures across the country about the need for conservatives to do likewise and begin working on solutions to the problem. Otherwise, the Republican Party will be labeled antiscience, he warns. Inglis takes his message directly to conservative strongholds such as Federalist clubs and meetings of the Conservative Political Action Conference.

“Being branded as antiscience is not a good future for us,” Inglis told National Journal. “How can we say to young people, we’re dismissing science? That’s not a good place for our party to be, and it’s not historically where we’ve been. There are conservative voices that will hopefully show the way back to conservatism and away from a populist rejection of science.”

On November 8, William Reilly, who ran the Environmental Protection Agency under President George H.W. Bush, blasted his party’s stance on science in a widely reported speech. “For some of the most prominent leaders of the Republican Party, science has left the building,” he said. “Science doesn’t feature prominently in these debates. Republicans once were the party of science where environmental policy was concerned,” Reilly contended. Of House Republicans’ recent unanimous vote to overturn EPA’s scientific finding that climate change poses a public health threat, he said, “There was no explanation justifying a position at odds with the findings of 11 National Academies of Science, including our own.”

Another longtime GOP ally, Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, is also disturbed by the party’s shift toward science denial. Anderson, who is Tim Pawlenty’s pastor and worked with the former Minnesota governor on his state climate-change initiatives, in 2006 joined with other prominent evangelicals in sending a letter to President George W. Bush arguing that no legitimate scientific debate remained on the merits of climate science and that evangelicals had a moral obligation to solve a problem that threatens the world’s most vulnerable people.

“Most evangelicals in other countries believe that there is climate change and that we need to do something. It seems to be an American position to deny that,” Anderson told National Journal. “It’s curious to me that there are people who have taken strong positions and then changed them. Many of the candidates were expressing concern four or five years ago. Whenever there are sea changes on particular issues and many get on board, you wonder what changed the political or cultural climate.”

===

see Malek pow

formed days after citizens united

primary fuckery 1 22 mofo, evil pending

American Action Network

aa forum is sis c3 c4

mfers running for office

bak

html Ballooned

===

Also lining up behind the effort was the American Action Network, a major conservative nonprofit advocacy group, with $7.9 million in ads. PhRMA gave the American Action Network $4.5 million in 2019, along with $75,000 to the 60 Plus Association, according to tax filings.

AHA  note // direct mail  dark posts neg ads

ref

no lnx

Pharmaceutical industry likely to shatter its lobbying record as it works to shape Democrats’ spending bill

A years-long battle over prescription drug prices reaches its apex as the industry spends tens of millions to alter the plan.

By Yeganeh Torbati and Jonathan O'Connell

November 5, 2021

In September, Rep. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) began noticing mailers arriving at homes across his district, including his own and that of his parents, with an alarming message. The mailers alleged that Kim was intent on preventing Medicare patients from getting the drugs they needed.

That was news to Kim, who has made lowering seniors’ health-care costs and expanding their access to Medicare a signature issue. The mailer, along with a slew of digital ads and text messages, was sponsored by a group called A Healthy Future, LLC, and claimed that Kim and other New Jersey Democrats wanted to cut off “access to lifesaving medicines” and shift Medicare money into other social safety-net programs.

Soon after the mailers landed in New Jersey mailboxes, Kim’s office began receiving calls from puzzled constituents.

“I’ve been attacked before, but I’ve never seen one as egregious as this one in terms of ‘Andy Kim’s trying to cut Medicare,’” Kim said. “That’s just so absurd, and I actually think that has affected how the district has responded.”

Watershed or watered down? Democrats’ drug pricing deal leaves many unsatisfied.

Kim was certain the attacks were coming from the pharmaceutical industry, but it was hard for him to be sure. A Healthy Future’s website includes no contact information, and a message to its Facebook page went unanswered. But a nonprofit group called A Public Voice listed A Healthy Futureas being under its control in its 2018 and 2019 tax filings and described the LLC’s primary activity as “supporting a vibrant health care system.”

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A Healthy Future and its anonymous funders, it turned out, had fought previous efforts in Washington to reduce the cost of prescription drugs. According to Google digital ad data, A Healthy Future also paid for ads in fall 2020 arguing against a Trump administration attempt to address prescription drug costs.

Brian Newell, a spokesman for PhRMA, the pharmaceutical industry’s chief lobbying arm, when asked whether the organization had ever had any financial or other relationship with A Healthy Future or A Public Voice, said: “Like most industries and associations, PhRMA engages with groups and organizations that have a wide array of opinions and priorities, including those who do not want the government to come between patients and their medicines.” DENIAL NON-DENIAL ~ WATERGATE b&wOODWARD

The ads targeting Kim and others were one strand of a massive, months-long advertising, lobbying and political donation blitz undertaken by the pharmaceutical industry and its allies, perhaps the strongest of all corporate voices in Washington, to kill a Democratic proposal to lower the cost of prescription drugs by empowering the federal government to negotiate their prices.

That provision to control drug prices became a focal point of the $1.75 trillion spending package Democrats are trying to move through Washington. The measure was in, then out, then watered down, going through a fierce ping-pong of backroom negotiations that is likely to continue once the Senate considers the bill in coming weeks.

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Pharmaceutical industry lobbyists defended their effort, alleging that the Democrats’ proposal would stifle research. They also said many other groups poured millions of dollars into the other side of the debate.

“As we’ve said repeatedly, our advocacy has focused on delivering solutions that will lower what patients pay out of pocket for prescription medicines, while opposing reforms that would ultimately leave patients trapped in a broken insurance system, restrict access to lifesaving medicines, and destroy the development of new treatments,” Newell said.

The influence campaign at times worked through groups whose funding sources are hidden. At least 20 different advertisements were run on television and online across the country. The advertisements were augmented by a campaign byPhRMA, which spent nearly $23 million on lobbying through the first nine months of 2021, according to data compiled by OpenSecrets, which tracks corporate spending and political influence. That puts PhRMA on track this year to beat its own spending recording of $29.3 million in 2019.

“The intensity right now of K Street and the deployment of lobbying and dark money is extraordinary,” said Nick Penniman, chief executive of Issue One, which advocates for transparency in Washington. “It is a frenzied state right now.”

The intense effort is reflective of just how much many companies have at stake in the Democrats’ evolving tax-and-spending bill. This article, which is based on interviews, documents and lobbying and ad spending data, offers a window into the efforts one sector took to shape the bill, much of which was crafted in secret.

The drug pricing provision agreed to by House Democrats this week does not go as far as many Democrats including Kim had hoped. But it still delivers reforms that could cut costs for millions of Americans bycapping out-of-pocket spending for seniors at $2,000 a year, capping insulin costs, preventing price increases that exceed the rate of inflation, and allowing Medicare to begin negotiating prices for some drugs.

“What we’re trying to do is defying one of the most powerful special-interest lobby groups in Washington, D.C.,” Kim said. “The fact that we were able to get something that will meaningfully help people was important.”

Other industries, including tobacco and electric vehicles, have worked aggressively to pare down or reshape parts of the bill in their favor, too. But the effort to fight back on drug-price increases stands out because of the enormous scope of the campaign waged by the pharmaceutical industry and its allies, which have derailed similar proposals for the past two decades, despite how popular many of the changes are with voters, according to polling data.

“They’re the Goliath,” said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of OpenSecrets. She said that aside from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, of which pharmaceutical firms are members, the industry had spent more than any other by a wide margin so far this year, deploying so many lobbyists — 1,600 — that they outnumber members of Congress 3 to 1.

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The industry made $90.6 million of political contributions during the 2020 election cycle, according to OpenSecrets,61 percent of that to Democratic candidates and groups.

The industry’s focus on drug pricing has increased dramatically in recent years as the issue became more top-of-mind for voters. In 2012, lobbyists registered to work on the issue of “drug prices” 69 times for 20 different clients. In 2021 so far, they have filed to lobby on the issue 1,192 times for 242 different clients, according to OpenSecrets data.

While the industry lobbies on many different issues in a given year, the Democratic bill H.R. 3 that would have given the government more expansive power to negotiate drug prices was the bill PhRMA cited most often for lobbying; the bill appeared in its reports 35 times so far this year, OpenSecrets found.

Research by Patients for Affordable Drugs Now, which advocates for lower prices, found that PhRMA and its allies spent at least $26.5 million on television and digital ads attacking proposals on price negotiations between July and early November. That included $2.7 million spent by PhRMA, but also $4.5 million in ads by the 60 Plus Association, which bills itself as a conservative version of AARP anddid not respond to a request for comment.

Also lining up behind the effort was the American Action Network, a major conservative nonprofit advocacy group, with $7.9 million in ads. PhRMA gave the American Action Network $4.5 million in 2019, along with $75,000 to the 60 Plus Association, according to tax filings.

Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) holds one of Congress’s most competitive seats, having wrested it from Republican control in 2018 and narrowly winning reelection in 2020. She shaped her campaign around a platform of tackling rising health-care costs and has maintained focus on that issue, inviting a Type 1 diabetes patient with sky-high insulin costs to be her guest at the 2020 State of the Union address.

According to data tracked by Patients for Affordable Drugs Now, the American Action Network funded an ad in Slotkin’s district starting in August that accuses Democrats of pushing a “socialisthealth-care plan to control what medicines you can get.”

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Her office is now accustomed to fielding calls from constituents who see ads like that one on television, Slotkin said.

“We can really tell the first couple of days those ads run because that’s when we’ll see a spike in the number of people calling our office,” she said. “We literally write a response that our staff can use to forcefully push back and try to contradict the purposeful misinformation.”

Asked about the accuracy of the advertisement targeting Slotkin, American Action Network spokesman Calvin Moore reiterated its message, saying such proposals amount to “socialist price controls” that could limit development of new prescription drugs. “Stifling innovation to this degree has profound consequences,” Moore said.

Many of the backers of these efforts are difficult to identify because of rules allowing anonymous funding of political groups. A Public Voice, which described itself on its 2018 and 2019 tax forms as the “direct controlling entity” of A Healthy Future, is based in Thornville, Ohio.It listed nearly $5 million in contributions in 2018, though it declined to name its donors, and spent the money on consulting, marketing and funding conservative causes across the country. That year, its donations included $240,000 to Fund for a Working Congress, a political action committee that supported Republican candidates, and $370,000 to Ohio First PAC, which supported a challenge by Republican James B. Renacci against Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio).

A voice mail left at a number listed on tax filings for A Public Voice received no response. Documents filed with the state of Ohio show that the entity originally formed in 2012 as Protect Your Vote Ohio and show its registered agents as lawyers with Langdon Law, a Cincinnati-area law firm known as a nexus for “dark money” groups on the right.

David Langdon of Langdon Law did not respond to an email and voice mail requesting comment.

The approximately 20 digital and television video ads compiled by Patients for Affordable Drugs Now and reviewed by The Washington Post warned viewers about an array of crises that could befall them should Congress allow Medicare to negotiate prices for drugs, among them that the industry could no longer develop new medications, that the government would limit access to prescriptions, that Medicare would be cut or that millions of jobs would be lost.

:{

}:

“They call it negotiation, but it really means government decides what medicines I can get,” says “Sue,” awoman labeled in one ad as a diabetic from Ohio.

:{

}:

“Imagine a future in which a vaccine for covid-19 was never discovered,” says a voice in another spot.

Pro-industry advertising ran during opinion shows on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC, as well as during college football games, according to the advertising data firm iSpot.tv.

Once the drug cost proposal was added to President Biden’s larger legislative package, some advertising took direct aim at Democrats’ spending priorities. One claimed the proposal called for “gutting Medicare” in exchange for “pie-in-the-sky special-interest kickbacks.” It depicts House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) riding atop an animated unicorn, she and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) sliding down rainbows, and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) at a dessert buffet. Another depicts the proposal as a shell game that “loots Medicare.”

Jayapal says Democrats almost have the votes to pass Build Back Better

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) described her frustration with lengthy negotiations on the Build Back Better act in an interview with The Washington Post Nov. 5. (Zach Purser Brown/The Washington Post)

Previous presidents, including Barack Obama and Donald Trump, vowed to pass bills to lower prescription drug costs, only to see their efforts die on Capitol Hill, in part because of a relentless lobbying blitz.

When Montana’s Brian Schweitzer ran for Senate in 1999, he elevated his long-shot campaign by busing senior citizens to Canada so they could illegally buy drugs at lower prices.

:{

}:

He got his first taste of the pharmaceutical lobby shortly afterward, when he said television ads started attacking him for trusting medicines made in other countries. He said in his case, the attacks helped make his political career. “Virtually everybody in America has a friend or family member who is taking that expensive medicine,” he said.

:{

}:

Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pa.) holds anothercompetitive seat, representing an Allentown, Pa., district that narrowly favored Biden in the 2020 election. She said that as she began supporting drug price reform early in her career, lobbyists began relentlessly calling her office, even though she had vowed not to take corporate PAC donations.

:{

}:

“If they’re calling me nonstop, imagine what they’re doing to those who actually do take their money,” she said.

During the most recent negotiations, Wild began receiving automated emails from constituentsworried they wouldn’t be able to get their medicines if the government could negotiate prices. But on Sunday she joined 14 colleagues from other competitive districts, including Kim and Slotkin, to urge Democratic leadership to deliver on their promise to reduce drug prices.

She said she knows what comes next.

“I am quite certain that because I have been so outspoken on this issue, that I am going to face an attack ad,” Wild said. “I have an idea for what it could be, but I don’t want to tell you in case they see it. I don’t want to give them any ideas.”

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2016

RJC gave another $4 million in 2010 to American Action Network, which shares office space in Washington, D.C. with Crossroads GPS.

RJC also shares two board members with American Action: Fred Malek, a former Nixon administration official, and former GOP Sen. Norm Coleman, who is American Action'sboard chairman.

For all the talk about super PACs this election season -- their influence in keeping some candidates afloat, their ability to accept unlimited contributions from almost any source, the handful of millionaires and billionaires who are their primary funders -- they are not at the top of transparency advocates' list of horrors. That's because super PACs have to disclose their donors to the public. 

But 501(c)(4) groups can keep their donors hidden from public view, leaving voters in the dark about who is behind them and the millions they spend on advertisements promoting or attacking candidates. While they are supposed to function as social welfare groups, they can get involved in politics as long as they limit their political activity to less than half of their operations. But "social welfare" is loosely defined, and the groups have thus far escaped much scrutiny by the IRS.

The chart below shows 2010 donations to Crossroads GPS, American Action Network and the American Future Fund from RJC and two other groups that reported grants to the 501(c)(4)s in their IRS form 990 filings. Groups have not yet filed returns showing 2011 activity.

Jim Joseph, a tax partner at the law firm Arnold & Porter, noted that the identities of individuals and corporations who donate to the 501(c)(4) groups such as Crossroads GPS are still a mystery; those donors file tax returns that don't require them to disclose such contributions publicly. However, the forms filed by nonprofits, such as RJC, who give to the groups require them to list the grants.

And the information can be revealing. The board of RJC is loaded with major Republican donors -- figures such as Las Vegas casino owner Sheldon Adelson, who, with his wife, gave $10 million in January to Winning Our Future, the super PAC supporting Newt Gingrich in the race for the GOP presidential nomination. Hedge fund executive Paul Singer gave $1 million to the super PAC that's played a key role in Mitt Romney's bid for the White House, Restore Our Future, while RJC's chairman, David Flaum, has given $100,000 to the same group. Yet another board member Lewis Eisenberg, an adviser to private equity firmKohlberg Kravis Roberts,has donated $25,000 to Restore Our Future. Lobbyist Wayne Berman, who also sits on RJC's board, has bundled $358,000 for Romney's campaign this cycle.

The mission statement of RJC -- which is itself a (c)(4) group and can thus keep its donors' names private -- says that it is "committed to building a strong, effective and respected Jewish Republican voice in Washington and across the country."

RJC itself spent $24,000 attacking Democrat David Weprin in a special election in New York's 9th congressional district last year. The Republican, Bob Turner, won the seat in an upset. Several days ago, it began airing an ad critical of President Obama's Israel policy. Tag line: "Call President Obama. Tell him not to slash funding for Israel's missile defense."

American Action Network also received a $4.5 million grant in 2010 from PhRMA, the brand-name pharmaceutical makers' trade group, IRS forms indicate, and PhRMA gave another $300,000 to the American Future Fund. The latter group continues to be very active, announcing a new anti-Obama ad today that it says it will spend $4 million to air in nine states.

American Future Fund also received a 2010 gift of $2.4 million from the American Justice Partnership,according to the IRS. AJP was established by the National Association of Manufacturers to "battle greedy trial lawyers' scam lawsuits and win legal reform fights in states all across the country," according to its website.

Correction: The table in the original version of this story showed the PhRMA gave $4.5 million to Crossroads GPS. PhRMA gave $4.5 million to American Action Network, not to Crossroads. The text of the story is accurate, and the table has been corrected.

http://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/detail.php?cmte=American+Action+Network&cycle=2010 3/12

JT

Yet, hundreds of these (c)(4)s – mostly right-wing – are flagrantly violating the tax law by operating primarily as political fronts for funneling secret corporate donations into raw, partisan campaigns. How did they get their privileged status as charities? By outright lying to the IRS, then defying the agency to stop them as they dump millions of corrupt dollars into our elections.

For example, American Action Network, a (c)(4) created by Wall Street lobbyists, has spent two-thirds of its revenue on elections, including putting up $745,000 from secret donors to elect Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. How ironic, then, that Johnson is now one of the tea party mad dogs howling at IRS officials. It’s scandalous, Johnson shrieks, that some tea party groups have not been given (c)(4) status, because IRS agents have had the temerity to question whether the groups actually are charitable enterprises – or just rank political outfits fraudulently posing as charities.

Tea Party groups should not be singled out for IRS scrutiny, but neither should they be allowed to cheat by shamefully masquerading as Little Sisters of the Poor. That’s the real scandal.

"Groups Targeted By I.R.S. Tested Rules on Politics," The New York Times, May 27, 2013.

"Five 501(c)(4) Groups That Might Have Broken the Law," www.thenation.com, May 21, 2013.

"Dubious Dealing of Tea Party Groups Could Have Drawn IRS Scrutiny," www.motherjones.com, May 17, 2013

"Whose Welfare?" The New York Times, June 4, 2012.

American Action Network Launches New Issue Advocacy Campaign in Florida

Urges Floridians to Sign a Petition at www.changingcharlie.com Asking Gov. Charlie Crist to Oppose the Obama Agenda and Job Killing Taxes

WASHINGTON, D.C.-- The American Action Network started a new television and internet issue advocacy campaign today with an ad today called “Tattoo.”  The ad highlights Governor Charlie Crist’s flip-flopping on important policies that directly affect Florida’s families and small businesses.  The ad encourages Floridians to sign a petition urging Gov. Crist to commit to the policies and take the actions as Governor that will create jobs in a state that suffers from 11.7% unemployment.

“The Network’s education effort is a call to action for the citizens of Florida that smaller government, lower taxes and jobs creation are the key to a stronger America.  Floridians have the power and ability to take back control of their government and the policies that are negatively impacting their everyday life—they just need to get involved,” said Norm Coleman, CEO of the American Action Network.

“We are asking for the citizens of Florida to sign a petition asking Governor Charlie Crist to stand up to the Obama agenda and stop supporting job killing taxes,” said Rob Collins, President of the American Action Network.  “During these challenging times policymakers must resolutely stand by the time tested center-right principles of lower taxes, smaller government and real job creation.”

View the ad here: www.changingcharlie.com

...

• After

Charlie Crist then broke his pledge not to raise taxes:

“The $65 billion-plus fiscal year FY2010 budget Crist signed requires a $1 per pack cigarette tax increase estimated to cost the taxpayers of Florida $2 billion over the next two years. In addition to the tobacco tax increase, the budget requires an estimated $800 million in ‘fee’ increases, many of which are actually mislabeled tax increases. Because of this, in signing the bill, Gov. Crist broke the Pledge he made during his gubernatorial campaign to ‘oppose and veto any and all tax increases.’  (Americans For Tax Reform Press Release, May 27, 2009; http://www.atr.org/taxpayers-disappointed-crist-pledge-violation-a3319)

“The budget relies on a $1 per pack increase in the cigarette tax and a $900 million infusion of new cash from expanding gambling at the Seminole casinos and parimutuels across the state.

[Crist] said that he doesn't consider the cigarette tax a broad-based tax. ‘I view it more of a health issue than a tax issue,’ he said. ‘Ronald Reagan used to say if you want to kill smoking. Tax it. Maybe it wouldn't be bad if we killed smoking and saved a lot of lives.’” (Miami Herald Blog, “Naked Politics,” May 27, 2009, By Mary Ellen Klas;

http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2009/05/crist-signs-budget-...)

Crist Support of an Energy Tax

Gov. Crist Signs Legislation for Florida’s Cap-and-Trade Program:

“On June 25, 2008, Governor Charlie Crist signed into law House Bill 7135, enacting several new energy and climate change policies.  The policies include the Florida Climate Protection Act, which authorizes the Department of Environmental Protection to develop an electric-utility greenhouse gas (GHG) cap-and-trade program.” (Pew Center on Global Climate Change, “Florida Utility-Sector Greenhouse Gas Cap-and-Trade Program,” http://www.pewclimate.org/node/6020)

“Governor Charlie Crist today announced that California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will provide a keynote address tomorrow during the 2008 Serve to Preserve Florida Summit on Global Climate Change, June 25-26, 2008, in Miami. Governor Crist kicked off the summit with a keynote address during breakfast entitled ‘Green Technology Drives Green Economies.’ Following his remarks, Governor Crist signed House Bill 7135, the most comprehensive energy and economic development legislation in Florida’s history.” (Governor Charlie Crist Press Release, June 25, 2008, “GOVERNOR CRIST ANNOUNCES CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER AS KEYNOTE SPEAKER AT SERVE TO PRESERVE SUMMIT,”http://www.flgov.com/release/10074)

President Obama’s Cap-and-Trade Program Raises Energy Taxes:

“The Obama administration has privately concluded that a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent.

“A previously unreleased analysis prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury says the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year. At the upper end of the administration's estimate, the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year.”

… “The document written by [Treasury Department’s Judson] Jaffee includes this line: ‘It will raise energy prices and impose annual costs on the order of XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.’ The Treasury Department redacted the rest of the sentence with a thick black line.” (CBSNews.com, September 15, 2009, “Obama Admin: Cap And Trade Could Cost Families $1,761 A Year,” By Declan McCullagh;http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504383_162-5314040-504383.html)

Gov Crist Supported the Stimulus Bill Then Denied He Ever Did

• Crist Supports Stimulus Bill:

“‘We know that it's important that we pass a stimulus package,’ Florida's popular Republican governor said amid "Yes, we can!" cheers as he introduced the Democratic president.”  (St. Petersburg Times, February 11, 2009, “Crist, Obama Join to Promote Stimulus,” by Adam C. Smith;http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/state/article974949.ece)

"It's going to help [Floridians'] children. It's going to help their traffic situation. It's going to help produce more jobs here in the Sunshine State. That's a perspective that I have to have as, in essence, the CEO of Florida. And that's why I support it." (MSNBC, February 3, 2010, “Hardball with Chris Matthews”)

“Dear Mr. President, We are writing to express our support for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), which passed last week int eh House and is under consideration currently in the Senate.” (Letter to President Obama, February 3, 2010;http://flarecovery.com/_resources/browse/file/2.3.2009_Potus_Fed_Stimulu...)

• Crist Denies He Supported Stimulus Bill:

WOLF BLITZER: “ Do you have any regrets about endorsing the economic stimulus package?”

CRIST: “Well, I didn’t endorse it. I — you know, I didn’t even have a vote on the darned thing.” (CNN, November 4, 2009, “Situation Room,” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkPwJeGEI68)

Watchdog Group Says Crist “Appears to be Trying to Rewrite History”

“Facing a primary challenge from the conservative wing of the Republican Party, Crist appears to be trying to rewrite history. But there are mountains of evidence that he not only supported the stimulus, he sang its praises.” (Politifact.com, November 5, 2009, “Charlie Crist says he didn't endorse stimulus bill,” By Aaron Sharockman; http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2009/nov/05/charlie-crist/c...)

Ballooned the deficit as a result of the stimulus bill

“On Friday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said this year’s budget deficit is now nearly $1.7 trillion, more than $400 billion larger than it forecast two months ago. Next year’s deficit will be nearly $1.1 trillion, $430 billion more than its prior forecast. And that doesn't count President Obama’s budget plans to cut taxes and increase spending.

“Although the deepening recession is partly to blame for the increase, the nonpartisan CBO says the increases are largely due to the sharp rise in spending (think fiscal stimulus package) and the higher cost of saving the financial system.” (Christian Science Monitor, March 20, 2009, “CBO: US deficit ballooning to record $1.7 trillion,” By Ron Scherer; http://www.csmonitor.com/Money/2009/0320/cbo-us-deficit-ballooning-to-re...)

The American Action Network is a 501(c)(4) ‘action tank’ that will create, encourage and promote center-right policies based on the principles of freedom, limited government, American exceptionalism, and strong national security.

For more information, please visit our Web site http://www.americanactionnetwork.org