"Look, I smell blood in the water," Casar said of the current political moment, marked by rising public anger against corporate price gouging that's fueling the nation's cost-of-living crisis.
"Let's take this opportunity to finally build a new consensus within the Democratic Party that we should be uninvited from those lobbyist dinners and instead do what the voters are asking us to do," added Casar, who is partnering with Rep. Josh Riley (D-NY)—a swing-seat representative and member of the centrist New Democrat Coalition—on a new bill to crack down on utility giants' price increases.
That's just one element of the CPC's new 10-plank agenda, 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's 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.
"I welcome their hatred," Casar, in a nod to Franklin D. Roosevelt's famous line, said of corporations and their allies standing in the way of the affordability platform.
"In my lifetime," Casar continued, "a 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's why we have this new agenda."
Casar stressed that the 10th and final plank of the New Affordability Agenda—"Getting Big Money Out of Politics"—is critical because "corporations being able to buy politicians and buy elections is a huge driver of what's made things more expensive."
The plank calls for passage of Rep. Summer Lee's Abolish Super PACs Act, which would cap contributions to super PACs at $5,000 per calendar year. Super PACs, an outgrowth of the Supreme Court's notorious Citizens United decision, can currently raise and spend unlimited sums on political campaigns, giving them massive sway over elections.
Casar said Lee's bill would effectively render super PACs "useless, and no different from any other PAC."
"There are going to be a lot of corporate interests who just want Democrats to say the word 'affordability,' but not do much about it. And we have to recognize it's been many of those corporate interests that have gotten us into the problem here in the first place," Casar told Common Dreams. "We've got to have a plan that wins over the voters, because I would rather have the voters than the money."
"This is our chance to move the party. We can’t wait until we’re in the majority to start taking on these interests."
The bills that make up the CPC's agenda stand no realistic chance of passage as long as Republicans 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—including among those who backed President Donald Trump in the 2024 election.
New polling by Data for Progress shows that every plank of the New Affordability Agenda won "majority support from at least 3 in 5 voters." Among Trump voters, the CPC's proposals to guarantee at least two weeks of paid vacation to all full-time workers and combat price hikes by for-profit utility companies enjoy at least 75% support.
The broad appeal of the policy agenda makes sense, said Casar, given that much of it grew out of "progressives doing town halls in Republican-controlled districts where voters say that they're already sick and tired of Trump's lies, but they want to know whether the Democratic Party's really going to fight for them."
"We need to fight against Trump, but we need to do more than that and fight against the big corporations that are screwing you over," said Casar. "Trump 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, which is driving up the cost of prescription drugs. And so we're 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."
The New Affordability Agenda is already facing some opposition with entrenched elements of the Democratic establishment, such as the corporate-funded centrist think tank Third Way. Jim Kessler, the group's executive vice president for policy, told The New York Times that "there’s obvious things to do on affordability that they ducked," such as repealing Trump's far-reaching tariffs. (Casar responded that "of course progressives have been for getting rid of" Trump's "reckless" tariffs.)
The Times reported that Kessler also claimed the CPC agenda was missing "more ambitious changes necessary to reduce costs, such as overhauling regulations."
"I understand that corporate funded think tanks have to try to say something negative here," Casar replied, "but [Kessler] didn't sound like he opposed anything in the agenda."
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.
Asked if the CPC agenda has garnered support from the upper ranks of the Democratic Party, Casar said he is "talking to leadership and rank-and-file members about changing not just our message, but also our priorities as a party."
"This is our chance to move the party. We can't wait until we're in the majority to start taking on these interests," said Casar. "We 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."
