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Sen. Elizabeth Warren is issuing a challenge to her fellow 2020 competitors with hours to go before the fourth Democratic debate: be transparent about who their donors are, especially if those donors hold positions of power within their presidential campaigns.
Warren — who has made getting money out of politics the centerpiece of her presidential campaign — has published a new plan to tighten campaign finance laws. She also vowed not to accept donations over $200 from executives at large tech companies, including Google and Facebook, as well as big banks, private equity firms, or hedge funds. Former Vice President Joe Biden released his own wide-ranging campaign finance and ethics plan on Monday.
“If Democratic candidates for president want to spend their time hobnobbing with the rich and powerful, it is currently legal for them to do so — but they shouldn’t be handing out secret titles and honors to rich donors,” Warren wrote in a Medium post revealing her plan. She pledged to ban big donors from being made ambassadors or being conferred with other privileges regular people don’t have.
She didn’t mention anyone by name, but it was a clear shot at candidates including Biden, South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and Sen. Kamala Harris, who have all been holding high-dollar fundraisers for their campaigns. From the start of his campaign, Biden has given pooled press access to each of his fundraising events, disclosing the locations, hosts and some attendees.
Biden also laid out a slate of new rules and legislation he plans to introduce to beef up ethics and transparency. His new plan comes after a tumultuous few weeks; President Donald Trump is in the midst of an impeachment inquiry after he asked the Ukrainian president to investigate the activities of Biden himself and his son Hunter Biden.
Trump has made several false accusations that Biden used his vice presidential office to protect his son Hunter and his business dealings in Ukraine. Biden is now taking a proactive step, promising to reform US ethics and campaign finance laws if elected president and pointing out the corruption in Trump’s presidency.
The timing is important; Tuesday’s Democratic debate in Ohio will be the first held since House Democrats began their impeachment inquiry. Warren and Biden, who have been at the head of the 2020 pack for a few weeks, clearly want to make political corruption a focus.
What’s in Warren’s latest plan, briefly explained
Warren’s latest campaign proposal expands on a wide-ranging anti-corruption plan she first released as a bill last summer, and then again as a presidential campaign plan a few months ago. It’s a very detailed plan. Here are highlights from the latest addition:
- Banning federal candidates from taking corporate PAC money.
- Banning foreign-owned or funded companies from influencing American elections by prohibiting US subsidiaries of foreign companies or firms that have a certain percentage of ownership by foreign entities from spending money in US elections.
- Closing loopholes for candidate super PACs. Warren’s administration would consider it coordination if a super PAC is run by someone with political, personal, professional, or family relationships to a candidate.
- Banning lobbyists from donating, bundling and fundraising for candidates.
- Enacting contribution limits and disclosure requirements for presidential inaugural committees.
- Requiring disclosure of major donors, bundlers and finance events in presidential campaigns. Campaigns will have to disclose all donors and fundraisers given titles, including national or regional finance committees, as well as who is on the committees and invitations and the dates and locations of fundraisers. Warren would also work to pass a law to ban big campaign donors from being considered for ambassador posts.
- Updating campaign finance laws to include internet ads in existing rules and regulations electioneering communications, and requiring every organization that spends on elections or campaigns to disclose their big donors, including super PACs and dark money groups.
- Establishing a system to publicly finance campaigns with a voluntary 6-1 match for small dollar donations of less than $200. Warren would also establish public financing for national party conventions.
- Lowering the amounts individual can donate to campaigns, political parties, and PACs. For instance; the current limit for a donation to campaigns would go from $2,800 to $1,000 under Warren’s plan, and the amount for national parties would drop from $35,000 per year to $10,000 per year.
- Restructuring the FEC from six commissioners to five to prevent partisan gridlock, and making sure one of those commissioners is not affiliated with Democrats or Republicans. The FEC’s enforcement power would also be beefed up.
What’s in Biden’s plan, briefly explained
Biden’s plan largely focuses on elections reform and public financing on elections, beefing up ethics laws within the executive branch, and putting in new transparency requirements for lobbyists. It also prevents the White House from meddling in any federal investigations or prosecutions — a direct reaction to the conduct of the current Trump White House.
- A constitutional amendment to eliminate private dollars from federal elections, and proposing legislation to set up public financing of elections, with a public match system for small dollar donations. Biden’s plan doesn’t say what the match would be or set a limit on the amount of the donations.
- An executive order that no White House staff members in a Biden administration would attempt to influence or obstruct a Department of Justice investigation. Biden also pledges to strengthen whistleblower laws and beef up transparency in the DOJ.
- Propose a law to prohibit foreign nationals from attempting to influence American elections. In addition, Biden says his administration would create a new independent agency called the Commission on Federal Ethics to enforce anti-corruption laws.
- Prevent the president and members of the cabinet from letting personal financial interest influence their decision-making. Biden pledges to hold only treasury bonds, annuities, mutual funds, and private residential real estate. He also plans to extend this standard to members of Congress.
- Propose a law to keep super PACs independent from campaigns and political parties and propose a law to require all online ads and the donors who paid for them to be disclosed on a new website called ethics.gov. Establish a single government agency to oversee anti-corruption and ethics, and giving it enforcement powers.
- End dark money groups by proposing a law that would ban 501(c)4’s from spending in elections (these groups are currently classified as “social welfare” groups, but the NRA is also a 501(c)4).
- Work with Congress to pass laws making sure campaigns and any group running ads disclose their contributions 48 hours after the ad runs, and ban corporate PAC contributions to candidates and ban lobbyists from giving money to the politicians they lobby.
- Propose legislation making it so any political party that gets more than 5 percent of the national vote must have its convention publicly financed, to limit corporate influence.
- Require all candidates for federal office release 10 years of tax returns, and codify the Obama-era ethics pledge into law.
- Expanding lobbying disclosure laws to that elected officials must disclose meetings with any lobbyists or special interests every month. Members of Congress would be required to disclose any bill text submitted by a lobbying group, and executive branch officials would have to do the same for regulation text. Biden also plans to lower money thresholds for who must register as a lobbyist and require them to divulge who they are meeting with and the outcomes they’re looking for.
Warren’s and Biden’s campaign finance plans certainly have some similarities. They both ban federal candidates taking corporate PAC money, and ban lobbyists from donating to candidates. They restrict the influence of candidate super PACs, and — as progressive candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders has also promised — they cut down on corporate influence on party conventions.
But the plans diverge in a few ways as well. Warren’s is an update to a much more extensive anti-corruption plan that focuses on reining in the influence of money in politics in all three branches of government.
For now, Biden’s primarily focuses on campaign finance and the executive branch, with some requirements extended to Congress as well.
And while Warren wants a lifetime lobbying ban not just for presidents and vice presidents, but also for members of Congress, federal judges, and Cabinet secretaries, Biden is less prescriptive, simply suggesting beefing up lobbying transparency laws.
But it’s clear that getting money out of politics is a big issue in the 2020 Democratic primary. Even candidates considered moderate, including Biden, are releasing detailed plans to curb money’s influence.
Correction: An earlier headline and version of this story said Warren was issuing a challenge to other campaigns to disclose their donors. The challenge was to disclose donors and fundraisers who hold a title in a presidential campaign.
