Warren outlines tax on federal lobbying

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a 2020 White House hopeful, on Wednesday announced a plan to “end lobbying as we know it” with a proposed tax on any corporation or organization that spends more than $500,000 annually in lobbying the federal government.

Her plan calls for a 35 percent tax rate on corporate and trade organization spending on lobbying totaling between $500,000 and $1 million, 60 percent for expenditures between $1 million and $5 million, and 75 percent on all spending over $5 million.

{mosads}“Corporate lobbyists are experts at killing widely popular policies behind closed doors,” Warren wrote in announcing the proposal.

The presidential candidate has focused much of her campaign on government corruption and social inequality.

Her previously announced anti-corruption plan would prohibit most federal officials from serving as lobbyists after leaving the government, prevent lobbyists from donating to candidates and ban lobbying in Washington on behalf of foreign entities.

Warren’s campaign said if her new proposed lobbying tax would have been in place over the past 10 years, it would have applied to more than 1,600 organizations, generating $10 billion in the process.

Warren said that with the revenue from the lobbying tax, she would create a “lobbying defense trust fund” to help congressional agencies in the effort to curb corporate influence.