Elizabeth Warren wants to tax the teeth out of corporate lobbying

"This tax will reduce the incentive for excessive lobbying, and raise money that we can use to fight back against this kind of onslaught when it occurs," Warren wrote in a Medium post explaining the strategy.

First unveiled in broad strokes last month, Warren's plan would impose a 35% tax on lobbying expenditures between $500,000 and $1 million. The cost would escalate from there, with a 60% rate placed on every dollar beyond $1 million that rises to 75% once a company's lobbying costs surpass $5 million.

The proposal represents the newest piece of Warren's broad anti-corruption platform, which she has made central to her candidacy. It is the subject matter that Warren is most fluent in discussing and passionate about on the trail, where she often jokes that the "good news" is she has "the biggest anti-corruption plan since Watergate," before waiting a beat and adding: "Here's the bad news, we need the biggest anti-corruption plan since Watergate."

In this chapter of her wider agenda, Warren stresses that the issue goes beyond Congress, lawmakers and the "revolving door" between Capitol Hill and K Street -- and addresses lobbyist influence on regulatory bodies.

Lobbyists "also target our federal departments like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau," the agency she built during the Obama administration, Warren writes. "These agencies exist to oversee giant corporations and implement the laws coming out of Congress -- but lobbyists often do their best to grind public interest work at these agencies to a halt."

The campaign, crunching numbers from the non-profit, nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, estimates that its proposed tax -- had it been in effect over the past decade -- would have raised $10 billion from more than 1,600 corporations. Among them: pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, retailer Walmart, the US Chamber of Commerce and Koch Industries -- all of whom, and dozens more, would have paid at the 75% threshold.

As an example, the insurance company Blue Cross/Blue Shield would have paid $163,368,515 on its $233,491,353 in lobbying expenditures between 2009 and 2018, according to Center for Responsive politics data.

In her Wednesday post, Warren said the new revenue would be cycled back into what she is calling the "Lobbying Defense Trust Fund." That cash will, in turn, be doled out to what she describes as underfunded and lobbyist-besieged government agencies.

"Every time a company above the $500,000 threshold spends money lobbying against a rule from a federal agency," Warren writes, "the taxes on that spending will go directly to the agency to help it fight back."

Regulatory agencies are often bombarded with "comments" from parties likely to affected by a proposed rule change. When those efforts counter corporate interests, companies often seek to overwhelm the process, defeating or delaying new regulations -- and, on occasion, outlasting the presidential administration that sought to implement them in the first place.

The new revenue brought in by the tax would also be used to fund Warren's proposed Office of the Public Advocate, which she unveiled as part of an earlier release. Its purpose would be to facilitate citizen interaction -- and, potentially, pushback -- to government efforts to either implement or roll back certain regulations.

As Warren explains, the goal of the plan is twofold: first to dissuade big business from investing in lobbyists, then to use their own money against them.

"My new lobbying tax will make hiring armies of lobbyists significantly more expensive for the largest corporate influencers like Blue Cross Blue Shield, Boeing, and Comcast," she writes. "Sure, this may mean that some corporations and industry groups will choose to reduce their lobbying expenditures, raising less tax revenue down the road -- but in that case, all the better."