A policy guide to the Massachusetts Democrat running for the White House
Sen. Elizabeth Warren is running for president on proposals to transfer corporate power to workers, have the government produce prescription drugs and create millions of new homes through federal intervention.
Warren (D-Mass.) has touted her policies as a way to use government to shift the benefits of economic growth from big businesses and the rich to the middle and working classes.
“America’s middle class is under attack,” Warren said in a video sent to supporters as she announced the creation of her presidential exploratory committee Monday. “How did we get here? Billionaires and big corporations decided they wanted more of the pie. And they enlisted politicians to cut them a bigger slice.”
Warren does not see herself as a socialist and has in interviews rejected the label by saying she is a “capitalist to my bones.” The senator does support some proposals to have the federal government take over certain industries, and she has signed on as a sponsor of a bill from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to federalize national health insurance.
But of the key policies Warren is championing, most aim to use the federal government’s power to restructure markets, rather than have the government take them over directly. These policies reflect her perspective that a handful of concentrated economic interests have come to unfairly dominate certain sectors and that federal intervention can reform markets to make them fairer by opening them up to greater competition.
Her housing bill, for instance, includes trying to repeal restrictive local zoning codes rather than building new federally owned housing, as some on the left have proposed.
Warren has focused on breaking up what she sees as monopolies in the technology sector and other industries through new antitrust enforcement, and she has accused large technology companies of anti-competitive behavior.
