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neera tanden
Biden National Security Adviser Among Those Crafting 'Project 2029' Policy Agenda for Democrats
"Jake Sullivan's been a critical decision-maker in every Democratic catastrophe of the last decade," said one observer. "Why is he still in the inner circle?"
Jun 30, 2025
Amid the latest battle over the direction the Democratic Party should move in, a number of strategists and political advisers from across the center-left's ideological spectrum are assembling a committee to determine the policy agenda they hope will be taken up by a Democratic successor to President Donald Trump.
Some of the names on the list of people crafting the agenda—named Project 2029, an echo of the far-right Project 2025 blueprint Trump is currently enacting—left progressives with deepened concerns that party insiders have "learnt nothing" and "forgotten nothing" from the president's electoral victories against centrist Democratic candidates over the past decade, as one economist said.
The project is being assembled by former Democratic speechwriter Andrei Cherny, now co-founder of the policy journal Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, and includes Jake Sullivan, a former national security adviser under the Biden administration; Jim Kessler, founder of the centrist think tank Third Way; and Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress and longtime adviser to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Progressives on the advisory board for the project include economist Justin Wolfers and former Roosevelt Institute president Felicia Wong, but antitrust expert Hal Singer said any policy agenda aimed at securing a Democratic victory in the 2028 election "needs way more progressives."
As The New York Times noted in its reporting on Project 2029, the panel is being convened amid extensive infighting regarding how the Democratic Party can win back control of the White House and Congress.
After democratic socialist and state Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani's (D-36) surprise win against former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo last week in New York City's mayoral primary election—following a campaign with a clear-eyed focus on making childcare, rent, public transit, and groceries more affordable—New York City has emerged as a battleground in the fight. Influential Democrats including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) have so far refused to endorse him and attacked him for his unequivocal support for Palestinian rights.
Progressives have called on party leaders to back Mamdani, pointing to his popularity with young voters, and accept that his clear message about making life more affordable for working families resonated with Democratic constituents.
But speaking to the Times, Democratic pollster Celinda Lake exemplified how many of the party's strategists have insisted that candidates only need to package their messages to voters differently—not change the messages to match the political priorities of Mamdani and other popular progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
"We didn't lack policies," Lake told the Times of recent national elections. "But we lacked a functioning narrative to communicate those policies."
Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez have drawn crowds of thousands in red districts this year at Sanders' Fighting Oligarchy rallies—another sign, progressives say, that voters are responding to politicians who focus on billionaires' outsized control over the U.S. political system and on economic justice.
Project 2029's inclusion of strategists like Kessler, who declared economic populism "a dead end for Democrats" in 2013, demonstrates "the whole problem [with Democratic leadership] in a nutshell," said Jonathan Cohn of Progressive Mass—as does Sullivan's seat on the advisory board.
As national security adviser to President Joe Biden, Sullivan played a key role in the administration's defense and funding of Israel's assault on Gaza, which international experts and human rights groups have said is a genocide.
"Jake Sullivan's been a critical decision-maker in every Democratic catastrophe of the last decade: Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Israel/Gaza War, and the 2024 Joe Biden campaign," said Nick Field of the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. "Why is he still in the inner circle?"
"Jake Sullivan is shaping domestic policy for the next Democratic administration," he added. "Who is happy with the Biden foreign policy legacy?"
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To Protect Consumers, Biden Cracks Down on 'Corporate Tricks' Like Hard-To-Cancel Services
"The administration is cracking down on all the ways that companies—through paperwork, hold times and general aggravation—waste people's money, waste people's time," a White House official said.
Aug 12, 2024
The Biden administration on Monday launched a wide-ranging consumer protection campaign called "Time Is Money" aimed at cracking down on hard-to-cancel services, deliberately poor customer service, and other "corporate tricks" that involve overly complicated or burdensome processes, such as in the filling out of insurance claims.
The effort involves a number of agencies and initiatives, some already underway, like a proposed Federal Trade Commission (FTC) rule, first announced in March 2023 and currently under public review, that would require companies to make it as easy to cancel a subscription or service as it is to sign up. At least one regulation the administration included as part of "Time Is Money" is already final: a Department of Transportation rule on automatic refunds for airline tickets that are canceled or significantly changed.
Other changes are forthcoming, the White House says. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) will introduce a rule that would require companies under its jurisdiction to allow callers to escape customer service "doom loops" and speak to a human being by pressing a single button; the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is considering a similar initiative for cable and other communications companies, as well as a proposal like the FTC's proposed easy-to-cancel rule.
"The administration is cracking down on all the ways that companies—through paperwork, hold times, and general aggravation—waste people's money, waste people's time," said Neera Tanden, a domestic policy adviser to President Joe Biden, a Democrat, according to HuffPost.
"For example, you want to cancel your gym membership or subscription service to a newspaper," Tanden said. "It took one or two clicks to sign up, but now to end your subscription or cancel the membership, you have to go in person or wait on hold for 20 minutes."
"These seemingly small inconveniences don't really happen by accident," she added. "They have huge financial consequences."
BREAKING: Banks, credit card companies, and more will be required to let customers talk to a human by pressing a single button under a new Biden administration proposed rule.
The @CFPB rule is part of a campaign to crack down on customer service “doom loops.”
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) August 12, 2024
Tanden, a former Hillary Clinton aid who has often been at odds with progressives, was careful to clarify that regulations were not aimed at "shaming corporations writ large."
The White House said the new campaign fits with its long-standing effort to improve customer experience with government services. In 2021, Biden signed an executive order calling for federal agencies to streamline and simplify the services they offer. The U.S. State Department has since launched a trial effort to renew passports online, and the Internal Revenue Service has launched a "Direct File" program that's free to use, following a successful pilot.
The "Time Is Money" campaign is also in keeping with the administration's consumer protection agenda. Both the FTC—led by Chair Lina Khan, a favorite of progressives—and the U.S. Department of Justice have stepped up antitrust enforcement. And in October the FTC announced a crackdown on junk and hidden fees.
All of these initiatives have come from the executive branch, making them vulnerable to reversal if Republicans take control of the White House or U.S. Congress next year. Democrats may be hoping the presumed popularity of efforts such as "Time Is Money" help prevent that from happening.
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Critics Say Biden Plan to Cut Drug Costs Too Friendly to Big Pharma
"Federal agencies have shown themselves reluctant to act against unreasonable prices, and this new proposal may give them permission to continue to do nothing," said one expert.
Dec 07, 2023
While welcoming the White House's willingness to tackle pharmaceutical companies' patent abuse and high prescription drug prices, progressive critics argued Thursday that U.S. President Joe Biden must do more to challenge Big Pharma's monopoly power.
The White House on Thursday announced "new actions to promote competition in healthcare and support lowering prescription drug costs for American families, including the release of a proposed framework for agencies on the exercise of march-in rights on taxpayer-funded drugs and other inventions."
Under the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980—legislation meant to promote the commercialization and public availability of government-funded inventions—federal agencies reserve the right to "march in" and authorize price-lowering generic alternatives to patented medications developed with public funding.
The federal government has never invoked march-in rights, which are staunchly opposed by the pharmaceutical and other industries and interests.
"American taxpayers pay more for research than any country in the world: Hundreds of billions of dollars on research relevant to developing new drugs through the [National Institutes of Health] and other agencies," White House domestic policy adviser Neera Tanden said at a Thursday press briefing, according to The Hill.
"But at the same time, pharmaceutical companies charge Americans two to three times—and sometimes even more than that—for the same drugs than what they can charge in other countries," she added.
The White House said Thursday that the Department of Commerce and Department of Health and Human Services "released a proposed framework for agencies on the exercise of march-in rights that specifies for the first time that price can be a factor in determining that a drug or other taxpayer-funded invention is not accessible to the public."
The issue of greedy pharmaceutical companies charging exorbitant prices for publicly funded drugs took center stage during the Covid-19 pandemic, when corporations reaped record profits selling vaccines and other treatments developed fully or partly with taxpayer money.
U.S. SenateHealth, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—a leading congressional critic of Big Pharma greed—called Thursday's announcement "a step forward in the right direction."
Sanders continued:
But, in my view, much more must be done. The American people are sick and tired of seeing hundreds of billions of their tax dollars going to the research and development of new treatments and cures only to end up paying, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. In my view, the administration should reinstate and expand the reasonable pricing clause to require the pharmaceutical industry to charge affordable prices for new prescription drugs developed with taxpayer support. It should also move to substantially lower the price of the prostate cancer drug Xtandi by allowing companies to manufacture generic versions of this treatment. This is a drug that was invented with taxpayer dollars by scientists at UCLA and can be purchased in Canada for one-fifth [of] the U.S. price.
In March, patient advocates blasted the Biden administration's refusal to compel Pfizer to lower Xtandi's price, even though the lifesaving prostate cancer drug—which has a nearly $190,000 annual price tag—was developed completely with public funds.
Peter Maybarduk, director of the Access to Medicines program at the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said: "March-in can be, should be, a powerful tool to support fair pricing and access to publicly funded medicines, as President Biden importantly suggests. Unfortunately, the administration's march-in policy is far more limited than the statute allows."
"It should be quickly revised to recommend use of march-in wherever publicly funded medicines are unreasonably priced," he continued. "Where most drug prices already are egregious and force rationing, few drugs will seem 'extremely' priced by comparison. Federal agencies have shown themselves reluctant to act against unreasonable prices, and this new proposal may give them permission to continue to do nothing."
"Unfortunately, the administration's march-in policy is far more limited than the statute allows."
"The examples the announcement offers evade the main and important use case: Where drug corporations abuse their monopoly power to charge exorbitant prices, ignore the government contribution to [research and development], and charge Americans more than people in other countries," Maybarduk asserted.
"The final guidelines must be adjusted so they explicitly cover these scenarios and establish commonsense criteria for what constitutes an unreasonable price," he added. "Falling short risks doing nothing to lower the prices of taxpayer-funded medicines for patients, and instead perpetuating an unacceptable status quo. Americans have a right to expect not to be price gouged for medicines they paid for in the first place."
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