Instead of Rice... but I'm sure you knew that
Complicit.

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/aoc-kathleen-rice-drugs/

After the 2020 election, when it was clear that the House as a whole and key committees in particular would be narrowly divided between Democrats and Republicans, House Democratic leaders were in a position to fill openings on committees with reliable progressives who could be counted on to embrace the bold agenda that the president and key senators such as Sanders were advancing. With the defeat in 2020 of New York Democrat Eliot Engel, a veteran member of the Energy and Commerce member, there was an opening for a representative from New York on the committee.

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New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stepped up. As one of the party’s most prominent advocates for taking on Big Pharma, and a leading advocate for addressing the climate crisis—another focus of the committee—she was a natural choice. And AOC had the support of House Judiciary Committee chair Jerry Nadler, the senior member of New York’s Democratic delegation, as well as other key Democrats from the state.

But the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, the body that oversees committee assignments, passed over Ocasio-Cortez and chose Rice. The surprise move was pushed by Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar, the most conservative member of the caucus, who objected to the willingness of AOC and other progressives to support primary challenges to corporate-tied incumbents. In 2020, AOC endorsed Jessica Cisneros, a human rights lawyer who earned 48 percent of the vote in her challenge to Cuellar.


The steering committee overwhelmingly backed Rice, despite the fact that she had tangled with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and objected to progressive initiatives.

It was a fateful decision.

Had AOC been placed on the Energy and Commerce Committee, the vote for permitting negotiations to lower drug prices would almost certainly have been 30-28. This mess may yet be cleaned up with a manager’s amendment on the House Budget Committee, or by a decision to err on the side of the version of the broader bill approved by the Ways and Means Committee. But there are no guarantees, especially in a moment when pharmaceutical industry lobbyists are pulling out all the stops. One of the most popular pieces of Democratic agenda remains under serious threat.

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“There is no good reason, none, for any member of Congress to block pricing reform. There is especially no good reason for any Democrat, since voters elected Democrats specifically to deliver on promises to bring down medicine prices,” said Robert Weissman, the president of Public Citizen. “There are, however, many very identifiable, bad reasons for members to side with Big Pharma and against their constituents.”

Sanders summed up the bad reasons when he said Wednesday, “The pharmaceutical industry has spent over $4.5 billion on lobbying and campaign contributions over the past 20 years and has hired some 1,200 lobbyists to get Congress to do its bidding. They are the most powerful industry on Capitol Hill. Nonetheless, the American people are demanding that Congress stand up to them and finally lower the outrageous price of prescription drugs by requiring Medicare to negotiate with the pharmaceutical industry. Now is the time for Congress to show courage and stand up to the greed of the pharmaceutical industry. The American people will not accept surrender.”

The combative language is appropriate. This is going to be a battle.

What’s frustrating is that the House Democrats on the steering and planning committee sent a compromising centrist into the fight when they could have chosen AOC and the path of bold progressive resistance to Big Pharma greed.