Sen. Elizabeth Warren released a major new plan to reduce legal corruption by getting big money out of politics—and she issued a new set of commitments about her own campaign fundraising to go along with those policy plans. In addition to her existing refusal to hold big-money fundraisers, take money from federal lobbyists or PACs, or take contributions of more than $200 from fossil fuel or big pharma executives, Warren will now also refuse contributions over $200 from executives at big tech companies, big banks, private equity funds, and hedge funds.
But, as Warren writes, “voluntary changes aren’t going to be enough to clean up the corruption in our elections.” That’s where the policy plan comes in. Warren would end the money-for-influence system that, she writes, is at the root of so much inaction on key issues such as the climate, guns, or student loans. She’d prohibit corporate PACs from giving to federal candidates. She’d especially ban foreign corporations from funneling money into U.S. candidates and elections. Just as she’s pledged not to appoint her donors as ambassadors, she’d ban that practice entirely—the practice that has a rich Republican with no actual diplomatic background like Gordon Sondland occupying the role of ambassador to the European Union.
There’s more, of course. Warren would ban single-candidate super PACs that allow billionaires to funnel unlimited money to support their chosen candidate. She’d ban lobbyists from donating to or fundraising for candidates. And she’d apply contribution limits and disclosure rules to inaugural committees.
All of that is ending money-for-influence. Warren would also dramatically expand campaign finance disclosure rules. She’d “bring dark money into the light” by forcing super PACs and other dark money groups to disclose donors. And she’d make Mark Zuckerberg angry again with a pledge to “modernize campaign finance law for the digital age by including internet ads in rules regulating electioneering communications, requiring large platforms to keep a ‘political file’ with information about ad buys, just like TV and radio broadcasters do, and requiring large platforms to make reasonable efforts to prevent illegal ad buys by foreign nationals.”
On top of all those limits on what big money can do, Warren would empower smaller donors, instituting six-to-one matching funds for contributions under $200, to be “funded by penalties coming from corporate malfeasance and major tax crimes.” She’d also lower contribution limits from $2,800 per candidate per election to $1,000. These two changes “will make it less valuable to spend time raising money from big dollar donors and more valuable to spend time with ordinary voters.” She’d restructure the Federal Election Commission, which is currently not functioning at all. And she’d put workers and shareholders in charge of the limited corporate political giving she allowed by requiring shareholders and board members (who under her labor policy would include worker representatives) to sign off on corporate giving.
This is, yet again, a plan that would require Democratic control of Congress and then some. But you can’t say Warren isn’t dreaming big and bold, offering us proposals that would actually fix the things so many of us say we hate about politics.