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Senator Elizabeth Warren Unveils Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act
With faith in our government and our democracy at historically low levels, it's important to recognize there are progressive warriors in Washington fighting for us we believe in our individual and collective futures.
To Warren, the Trump administration’s nepotism is emblematic of everything that is wrong with Washington. But she doesn’t just want to replace Trump and his administration with better actors; she wants to blow up the existing system and start from scratch.
The Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act is a wide-ranging bill that focuses on getting money and lobbying out of politics in all three branches: executive, legislative, and judicial.
Her proposed fix envisions a Washington where the president, vice president, Cabinet members, and congressional lawmakers have a lifetime ban on becoming lobbyists, and other federal workers have restrictions — albeit less severe — on entering lobbying firms. The act would also bar federal judges from owning individual stocks or accepting gifts or payments that could potentially influence the outcome of their rulings.
Corruption by Trump's cronies and Congressional Republicans is at a level where a week rarely passes that new indictments do not emerge. “Let’s face it: There’s no real question that the Trump era has given us the most nakedly corrupt leadership this nation has seen in our lifetimes,” Warren said to an audience at the National Press Club. “But they are not the cause of the rot — they’re just the biggest, stinkiest example of it. Corruption is a form of public cancer, and Washington’s got it bad.”
Warren’s plan — laid out in a new bill called the Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act — this would all be overseen by a new US Office of Public Integrity, which would go after violators and usher in a new era of ethics law enforcement. The idea is to “isolate and quarantine the ability of big money to infect the decisions made every day by every branch of our government,” she said....
Here's a summary of what's in the Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act:
- A lifetime ban on lobbying for presidents, vice presidents, members of Congress, federal judges, and Cabinet secretaries.
- Federal employees (both Congressional staffers and employees of federal agencies) would also have multi-year lobbying bans. The span of time would be least two years, and six years for corporate lobbyists.
- Requiring the president and vice president to place assets that could present a conflict of interest — including real estate — in a blind trust and sell them off.
- Requiring the IRS to release eight years’ worth of tax returns for all presidential and vice presidential candidates, as well as requiring them to release tax returns during each year in office. The IRS would also have to release two years’ worth of tax returns, and require them to release tax returns for each lawmaker’s year in office.
- Banning members of Congress, cabinet secretaries, federal judges, White House staff, senior congressional staff, and other officials from owning individual stocks while in office.
- Changing the rulemaking process of federal agencies to severely restrict the ability of corporations or industry to delay or influence rulemaking.
- Creating a new independent US Office of Public Integrity, which would enforce the nation’s ethics laws, and investigate any potential violations. The office would also try to strengthen open records laws, making records more easily accessible to the public and the press.
While it's difficult to imagine a Washington in which this moves forward, that makes it all the more impressive that Senator Warren is trying.
Warren, one of the top potential 2020 presidential candidates who is staking out an early position for herself as a voice of working people, is laying out exactly how she would drain the swamp — in detail. She’s long railed against corruption in Washington, but she’s clearly setting herself up as the anti-Trump, proposing drastic reforms to prove it.