Written by John Brock   

The Center for American Progress (CAP) released the names of its corporate donors last December, yet pertinent questions still linger; is story of CAP’s funding symptomatic of much larger problem about role big money plays in political process?

The year of 2013 was not a very good one for the Center for American Progress – multiple stories broke about its reliance on funding from both foundations and corporations, and how that reliance is compromising the integrity of its work. In September the Center provided UN Ambassador Samantha Power a pedestal on which to convince the left that the US needed to attack Syria. Then in December the Center released a list of the names of its corporate donors, the timing coinciding with Senator Elizabeth Warren’s call, just days prior, for large banks to go public with their donations to think tanks. The list of CAP’s donors included such anti-progressive corporate giants as Bank of America, Walmart, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and defense contractor Northrop Grumman.

This information begs the following questions: whose interests is CAP working on behalf of? Is it merely an industry front-group, or pro-Democratic establishment propaganda outlet, or some sort of hybrid of the two?

Thus far in 2014, even more negative news has come out about the Center for American Progress. A survey of the transparency of think tanks by the nonprofit Transparify gave CAP its very worst rating for transparency, even in spite of CAP releasing the names of its corporate donors. Other think tanks in the “least transparent” category include the Hoover Institution, Hudson Institute, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

CAP’s President, Neera Tanden, in a televised debate with Jim Kessler of Third Way (another Democratic-aligned think tank that serves as a mouthpiece for the corporate wing thereof), said that the ties between any organization’s institutional stances and its donors are “overblown,” but such a claim is outlandish, because it can be directly contradicted by not only the very arguments made by CAP for campaign finance reform – namely, that corporate funding and influence of elections is a serious threat to the integrity of the election process, but also by the fact that CAP actually has a program for its corporate donors called the “Business Alliance.” The Business Alliance has various membership levels with different perks, depending upon the level of donation. One of those perks includes meetings with “CAP experts.”

Just what transpires at such meetings may be unknown, but what is known is that the Center has a history of accepting corporate donations and then advocating for policies favorable to such corporations. They did it in the case of First Solar, and in a similar vein CAP took money from the pharmaceutical industry (and still does) while it was the lead organization with “Healthcare for America NOW! (HCAN),” an organization that advocated for healthcare reform, but whose founder was explicitly against implementing a single-payer system; Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) is a health insurance company (and a donor to CAP) that not only stands to gain financially from increased enrollment as a result of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), but one that would lose dearly if a single-payer system were implemented; HCAN is a 501(c)(4) that, like CAP formerly, does not release any information on its donors. If the pharmaceutical industry is bankrolling the Center for American Progress (they have confessed to it), there is a very good chance it is also bankrolling other organizations under CAP’s umbrella.

The Center assures us that corporate donations make up less than 6 percent of its total funding (3 percent for the CAP Action Fund, CAP’s 501(c)(4) organization). Without mentioning where the fine line is between ethically receiving “a little bit” of corporate money and becoming completely bought off, but implying that CAP is under that threshold, CAP is arguing that it is defying the odds and, unlike political parties, political candidates, elected officials and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), corporate funds influence its work in no way. But if that is really the case, why did CAP not release information on its donors long ago, but only did so once pressure was mounting (and a partial list of 2012 donors had already been leaked to The Nation)? This lingering question makes it obvious that CAP’s releasing of the names of 2013 donors was merely an act of saving face, and nothing to do with transparency. Virtually no new information was released by CAP.

Astroturfing has been used to describe the Center for American Progress, who in turn has used the term to describe Tea Party-backed groups. Matthew Yglesias, formerly a blogger with CAP’s ThinkProgress, in a 2009 post responded to the charge of hypocrisy by writing that ThinkProgress and CAP do not claim to be grassroots organizations, so therefore what CAP does is not technically astroturfing. That may be the case, but it is not the case with HCAN, a partner of CAP, which bills itself as a grassroots organization dedicated to healthcare reform (just so long as the reform is suitable to the insurance industry). Moreover, astroturfing is the phenomenon of organizations falsely claiming to speak for grassroots movements (like CAP does with the progressive movement); it does not necessarily mean that such organizations are themselves claiming to be grassroots (which would be laughable in CAP’s case).

CAP bills itself as the lone voice of reason among a sea of otherwise right-wing think tanks. While CAP might not advocate for policies that are as reactionary as the typical think tank, it is nonetheless an organization whose history has shown that it represents the corporate, not populist, wing of the Democratic Party; as such, progressives would be better served by not listening to its disinformation and propaganda. CAP’s silence on issues like the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and its successful attempt at blocking real healthcare reform (like single-payer or a public option) shows why a more appropriate name for the Center for American Progress is Corporate America’s Progress.