Elizabeth Warren is the senior United States senator from Massachusetts. She is a member of the Democratic Party.
Warren was a candidate in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries, ultimately placing third behind Bernie Sanders, and eventual winner Joe Biden.
Widely regarded as a progressive, she was previously a registered Republican, changing her registration to Democrat in 1996. According to Warren, in the six presidential elections she voted in before 1996, she cast her ballot for just one GOP nominee—Gerald Ford in 1976. Her conservatism at the time was not rooted in social issues like abortion or gay rights, but rather on economic policy.
Economic policy Warren believes that America has both a short-term and a long-term jobs problem. She notes that China spends 9% of its GDP on infrastructure, and Europe spends about 5% of GDP, while the US is spending only 2.4% and is looking for cuts. She supports a small tax increase on those making more than $1 million per year to pay for jobs such as rebuilding the roads, bridges, and water systems. She believes that the added money in circulation would help to build the economy as well.
Warren has a long record of working to assist self-employed workers and small businesses. She believes small business owners "need straightforward rules that any small business can deal with" rather than the present situation of "complex regulations that take an army of lawyers to work through." Warren supports making it easier for workers to organize for better wages, for better health care, and for better working conditions.
Warren has proposed an economic program based on "economic patriotism," which includes investing $2 trillion in climate-friendly industries, creating a new Department of Economic Development, and implementing measures to support exports. Her plan aims to support American workers and manufacturing, echoing President Trump's goal, but not his means such as tariffs and tight immigration restrictions.
Agriculture In March 2019, Warren was one of thirty-eight senators to sign a letter to Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue warning that dairy farmers "have continued to face market instability and are struggling to survive the fourth year of sustained low prices" and urging his department to "strongly encourage these farmers to consider the Dairy Margin Coverage program."
Warren opposes the growing dominance of foreign entities in the U.S. agricultural sector, saying “no foreign country should be able to purchase farmland in America.”
Warren has been critical of concentrated animal feeding operations. In 2019, Elizabeth Warren publicly endorsed a federal moratorium on new factory farms and the expansion of existing ones, signaling support for more stringent regulation of industrial agriculture. That year, she also cosponsored a bill that would have imposed such a moratorium. At the time, Warren said: “For years and years, giant multinational corporations have been crushing competition in the agricultural sector and seizing key markets while regulators have looked the other way,” adding that “[t]he Covid-19 crisis is making it even easier for Big Ag to get even bigger and gobble up small farms — leaving farmers out in the cold and consumers facing higher costs and fewer choices.”
Antitrust, competition and corporate regulation Warren has cosponsored the Reward Work Act of 2018, to reform U.S. labor law and corporate law by guaranteeing the right of employees in listed companies to elect one-third of the board of directors. In August 2018, Warren introduced the Accountable Capitalism Act, which would require 40% employee representation on boards of corporations with over $1bn income, require such enterprises to obtain a "federal charter of corporate citizenship" which would mandate social responsibility by enshrining a kind of triple bottom line, and require 75% shareholder and board member approval for political donations. It would also set limits on executive sales of company stock received as compensation to at least five years after reception, and at least three years after a stock buyback.
In March 2019, Warren outlined a plan for greater regulation and competition in the tech sector. The plan encompassed measures to roll back consolidation of the tech market, and rules forbidding the sharing of user data with third parties and barring large online retailers from participating in the marketplaces they offer with their own products/services. The plan would levy more stringent regulations on the largest tech companies while sparing smaller ones. In a statement announcing the plan, Warren said the measures were intended "[to] restore the balance of power in our democracy, to promote competition, and to ensure that the next generation of technology innovation is as vibrant as the last" and called for the "break up [of] our biggest tech companies".
In March 2019, Warren was one of six senators to sign a letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requesting it "use its rulemaking authority, along with other tools, in order to combat the scourge of non-compete clauses rigging our economy against workers" and espousing the view that non-compete clauses "harm employees by limiting their ability to find alternate work, which leaves them with little leverage to bargain for better wages or working conditions with their immediate employer." The senators furthered that the FTC had the responsibility of protecting both consumers and workers and needed to "act decisively" to address their concerns over "serious anti-competitive harms from the proliferation of non-competes in the economy."
In June 2019, along with Bernie Sanders and Cory Booker, Warren sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Department of Justice requesting an investigation into the acquisition of 21 regional sports networks by Sinclair Broadcast Group as the senators found Sinclair to have "an explicit interest in, and commitment to, relaying partisan political messages to its viewers — making its recent anti competitive expansion attempts into millions of additional households all the more concerning."
Gambling
Warren said in 2014: "[G]ambling can also be a real problem, economically, for a lot of people. I didn't support gambling the first time around and I don't expect to support it." She opposed Massachusetts' 2011 law implementing Las Vegas-style gambling and she supported its 2014 repeal initiative.
Housing In April 2019, Warren was one of 41 senators to sign a bipartisan letter to the housing subcommittee praising the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development's Section 4 Capacity Building program as authorizing "HUD to partner with national nonprofit community development organizations to provide education, training, and financial support to local community development corporations (CDCs) across the country" and expressing disappointment that President Trump's budget "has slated this program for elimination after decades of successful economic and community development." The senators wrote of their hope that the subcommittee would support continued funding for Section 4 in Fiscal Year 2020.
Labor Warren is in favor of increasing the minimum wage and has argued that if the minimum wage had followed increases in worker productivity in the United States, it would now be at least $15 an hour.
In July 2015, Warren was one of 77 Democratic members of Congress to unveil the Schedules that Work Act, authorizing employees of companies with over 15 workers to have the right to request changes in their schedules without potential retaliation and mandating that employers consider the request if the schedule change is based around child or elder care, a second job, continued education, job training or because of a health condition. Warren said, "A worker who is told to wait around on-call for hours with no guarantee of work hours should get something for his time. It's time to end unfair scheduling practices that hurt workers and families."
In June 2018, Warren was one of eight senators to sponsor a bill amending the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to include a mandate requiring farmers pay workers time and a half for each hour worked past the standard 40-hour work week.
In July 2019, Warren signed a letter to Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta that advocated for the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to initiate a full investigation into a complaint filed on May 20 by a group of Chicago-area employees of McDonald's, which detailed workplace violence incidents that included interactions with customers such as customers throwing hot coffee and threatening employees with firearms and more. The senators argued that McDonald's could and needed to "do more to protect its employees, but employers will not take seriously their obligations to provide a safe workplace if OSHA does not enforce workers rights to a hazard-free workplace."
Taxes Warren supports the Buffett Rule, which would restore the Clinton tax rates on the top income bracket. She believes that the added revenues should be used to make college more affordable and help students pay off their student loans.
In a November 2015 speech to the National Press Club, Warren said, "Only one problem with the over-taxation story: It's not true. There is a problem with the corporate tax code, but that isn't it." She advocated for a permanent increase in the share of long-term revenues paid by large corporations, leveling the playing field between small and big businesses, and promoting investment in American jobs.
In December 2015, Warren and Representative Elijah Cummings called for Congress to compose a set of benefits for low-income families that would be permanent as part of massive package of year-end tax breaks that was being developed at the time. Warren credited the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit as the federal programs contributing the most to the reduction of child poverty while saying that the value of the CTC had eroded due to its credit not having been indexed.
In September 2016, after the European Union ruled that Apple Inc. owed Ireland $14.5 billion in back taxes, Warren wrote an op-ed opining that the door was open for Congress to pass their "own corporate tax code, which has allowed the biggest multinationals to shirk their obligations for decades" and "the commission's announcement was the latest sign that multinational corporations are running out of places to hide from paying taxes." She observed that "the current generation of corporate winners" would have to pay their fair share in order for "the next generation of prosperous American companies" to be ushered in along with investments in "broad-based economic growth" to be feasible.
In December 2016, Warren, Tammy Baldwin, and Sheldon Whitehouse unveiled a bill curbing Trump cabinet nominees from avoiding paying large amounts of taxes upon assuming their positions through the addition of a cap on the amount of capital gains an appointee could defer at $1 million. In a press release, Warren said, "Not only is Donald Trump giving a gang of billionaires control of our government, he's offering them a special tax break just for signing up. This bill would stop billionaires from getting yet another special favor from Donald Trump."