How the former chair of the Democratic caucus went to work for pharma

I couldn’t help but do a double take when I saw the news that Rep. Joe Crowley, the 10-term former congressman who until just recently was leading the House Democratic caucus, is now co-chairing a new coalition bankrolled in part by the drug industry that aims to gin up support for President Trump’s renegotiated NAFTA.

The new group is funded by players that are increasingly maligned by progressives: groups like PhRMA and BIO. On top of that, this specific deal has been panned by progressives as a giveaway to the drug industry, largely because it would lock in exclusivity protections for high-cost biologic drugs for 10 years.

So, I had to hear Crowley’s response to those criticisms. Specifically, I asked him: “Can you guarantee to your colleagues … that this deal won’t lead to higher drug prices?”

His response was cagey, to say the least. “I think that it’s for them to make their own decision as to how they’ll vote on this particular issue,” he told me.

At the same time, Crowley didn’t seem shy about singing the praises of the deal’s potential positive impact on the drug industry. “It’s going to ensure that the companies, many of whom are headquartered here in the United States, will have the opportunity to continue to explore and find new opportunities for the development of lifesaving drugs … and [allow] for the companies themselves to recoup the investment that they make,” Crowley said, regarding the intellectual property provisions of the deal, known by its unwieldy acronym USMCA.

Crowley has already been attacked by progressive advocates for his new role working with the drug industry. It’s a message he’s been hearing since his contentious electoral fight with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but Crowley, who in addition to working with the USMCA coalition is now a senior policy adviser for the K Street firm Squire Patton Boggs, brushed off the criticisms.

“I think others will always try to manipulate and to say things that simply aren’t true,” Crowley told me. “They don’t know me and they don't know how I operate and what I’m about.”

To be fair to Crowley, he isn’t the only politician talking about lowering the cost of prescription drugs and at the same time supporting the trade deal. (I’m looking at you, Sen. Chuck Grassley.) Crowley also made the point that having a renegotiated trade deal in place is likely a better scenario for the country than having Trump pull out of NAFTA without a deal to replace it.