Elizabeth Warren’s Plan to Empower Workers

Summary

Judging by the suite of bills Elizabeth Warren has introduced in the U.S. Senate over the past year, many of which have already been woven into the issue statements on her campaign website, the senior senator from Massachusetts is set to have one of the most creative and ambitious policy platforms of any contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. This is not necessarily saying much, since a good number of the eventual candidates are likely not to have any platform whatsoever beyond anti-Trump rhetoric. In Warren’s case, however, her legislative portfolio is in fact genuinely audacious.

Perhaps the most audacious item in that portfolio is the ACA: this time not the Affordable Care Act, but the “Accountable Capitalism Act,” which seeks to radically overhaul corporate governance in the United States and reorient big business away from its single-minded focus on maximizing returns for shareholders even when doing so comes at society’s expense. The audacity of the ACA lies not only in the magnitude of the legal and economic transformation it would bring about, but in what it says about Warren’s views on the ideological debates currently roiling the Democratic Party.