ANTI-CORRUPTION PLAN
Read Carolyn’s Full Anti-Corruption Plan Here
Dear Southwest Washingtonians,
For far too long, our political system has been overwhelmed by big money and its corrosive influence on the policies that affect us here in Southwest Washington. This corruption has inhibited our ability to tackle the urgent issues we face in the near term – from ensuring affordable healthcare and prescription drugs to protecting consumers to preserving clean air and water – while preventing efforts to address our most important long-term challenges.
Today, as we face an unprecedented public health crisis that has cast millions out of work, claimed nearly 200,000 American lives, and devastated our economy, it is crucial that we engineer a response that brings forth a true recovery – one where we get back on our feet and build a better world than our previous “normal.” One thing is clear: we won’t achieve this recovery 
with the same corrupt politics that got us here in the first place. To beat this crisis and build a better future for everyone in Southwest Washington, it is imperative that we break past broken, self-interested, divisive politics by addressing the corrosive special interest influence at the center of D.C. politics.
Unfortunately for Southwest Washington, for the past decade we’ve been represented in D.C. by a Congresswoman whose time in office epitomizes this broken system. Rep. Herrera Beutler is a career politician who has spent her decade in Congress taking corporate donations and cozying up
to the special interests that have kept her in office, then voting their way. She has been funded by $1.6 million from corporate PACs, and as a result, has consistently opposed efforts to clean up corruption. She has voted against regulating congressional lobbyists, against getting secret, dark money out of politics, and against cracking down on illegal foreign money influencing our
elections.[1]
I’m running for Congress because I am determined to be a different kind of representative – one who will put people ahead of special interests. That’s why one of my top priorities will be to pass reforms that will end the outsized influence of big money in politics, clean up the revolving door in D.C., and reduce corporate influence on our system – because it is the only way to make our government truly work for us.
By working together, we’ll fight to ban corporate PACs from making political contributions so that our elected officials work for the people they serve, rather than the PAC arms of large multinational companies that fund their campaigns. We’ll pass a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and get rid of Super PACs and the millions in big dollar donations they siphon up to run negative ads that overwhelm the airwaves. We’re going to ensure corporations have to disclose the political spending they make, get rid of secret, dark money, and ensure we prevent illegal foreign money from influencing our elections.
We also must put a stop to the revolving door in D.C. That means banning members of Congress from lobbying for life, eliminating shadow lobbyists, and giving greater power to the entities that police our ethics rules. And it’s also time to put a stop to the current system that lets members of Congress trade individual stocks affected by the votes they take in D.C.
Above all, we’re going to return power to the voters so that D.C. works for families and small businesses in the communities they serve and not for the flood of special interest money that has taken over our political system.
Sincerely,
Carolyn Long
