Political integrity

Selected direction.

End corporate lobbying and corporate political transfers

Public decisions should answer to people rather than access to corporate money.

The proposal. End corporate lobbying and corporate donations or other transfers of money to politicians.

How it would work. Restrictions must reach indirect transfers and sham entities rather than invite money to be rerouted. The principle that corporations are not people concerns political funding and influence, not automatic removal of every corporate legal right.

Implementation. Define corporate lobbying, indirect transfers, covered entities and enforcement while protecting ordinary citizen advocacy.

Read this alongside The Framework and the Working Guide.

Selected direction.

Ban politicians’ stock-market and real-estate investments while in office

Personal investments can create conflicts with the responsibilities of public office.

The proposal. Ban politicians from making stock-market or real-estate investments while holding office.

Implementation. Specify covered officials, investments, beneficial ownership, existing holdings, and divestment; no exemption for index funds, retirement accounts, or family homes is settled.

Read this alongside The Framework and the Working Guide.

Selected direction.

Cap individual campaign donations at $10,000

A contribution limit aims to constrain influence purchased through large donations.

The proposal. Limit individual campaign donations to $10,000 per person.

Implementation. Define the donation cap’s period and whether it applies per candidate or in aggregate.

Read this alongside The Framework and the Working Guide.

Selected direction.

End unlimited Super PAC funding while protecting citizen organizing

Public authority should not be purchased through campaign financing or political access.

The proposal. End the unlimited-funding Super PAC model and restrict politicians from publicly supporting, endorsing, or affiliating with PACs.

Protected freedoms. Political expression, citizen organizing and genuinely independent advocacy remain protected. The aim is to prevent purchased control of public decisions and keep government authority bounded and justified. Unequal independent influence alone does not establish a reason for government intervention.

Open boundary. Paid advertising, campaign coordination and genuinely independent advocacy still need a coherent legal boundary. Earlier candidate-only advertising and capped-independent-spending options remain unresolved; no new independent-advocacy cap, matching program or voucher mechanism is selected. Affiliation, aggregation, pass-through funding, direct individual spending, donor privacy and enforcement require further design.

Implementation. Address the relevant Citizens United and SpeechNow holdings through constitutional amendment or changed precedent where necessary, while preserving speech, association, and press protections. No exact amendment is proposed here.

Read this alongside The Framework and the Working Guide.

Selected direction.

Tie public officials’ pay to ordinary worker earnings

Public service should connect officials’ material incentives to the lives of ordinary workers, while remaining accessible to people without independent wealth.

The proposal. Set federal legislators’ pay using national median worker earnings adjusted for regional prices in the state they represent. Use state worker earnings for state officials and local worker earnings for local officials. The goal is an ordinary worker’s living standard without an arbitrary premium.

How it would work. Use a transparent, independently reproducible calculation. Earnings measure income from work, not household wealth or net worth. Publish inputs, methods, statistical uncertainty, and revisions. Protect the independence of the people producing the statistics. Distinguish salary from legitimate audited work expenses, and make benefits and retirement costs visible.

Implementation. Choose the worker population, annual earnings and regional-price measures, geographic coverage, reference period, update schedule, corrections, and transition. Full-time, year-round workers including the self-employed are an option, not a settled population. Define treatment of federal offices without a represented state, including the President. Resolve benefits, expenses, outside income, investment restrictions, and the constitutional route for compensation changes. Median-linked pay does not erase existing wealth or prove that officials will raise wages; no asset confiscation, spouse-income ban, or personal spending ceiling is adopted.

Read this alongside The Framework and the Working Guide.

Selected direction.

Encourage policy-focused political communication and fair message access

Voters deserve a fair chance to hear substantive policy choices.

The direction. Give a middle-class candidate and a billionaire a fair opportunity to communicate their ideas. Encourage policy-focused communication rather than personal attacks.

Limits on government. Government authority must have a justified purpose and defined limits. Differences in independent influence do not by themselves justify restrictions. No censorship rule, guarantee of equal election results, or new independent-advocacy cap, matching program or voucher mechanism is selected.

Implementation. Develop lawful access and participation rules while preserving speech, association, press freedom and the existing protections against purchased political control.

Read this alongside The Framework and the Working Guide.

Working proposal. This is a working proposal, not an adopted policy.

Strengthen gift, conflict and post-service lobbying rules

Gifts and future employment can create conflicts separate from campaign donations.

Strengthen rules concerning gifts, conflicts of interest and lobbying after public service. This remains a supporting reform proposal. Covered officials, restrictions, enforcement and transition have not been selected.

Read this alongside The Framework and the Working Guide.

Working proposal. This is a working proposal, not an adopted policy.

Provide strong nonpartisan legislative research staff

Lawmakers need dependable evidence when evaluating complicated proposals.

Provide strong nonpartisan legislative research staff. This supporting institutional proposal needs decisions on independence, access, staffing, funding and accountability; researchers would support elected lawmakers rather than decide policy.

Read this alongside The Framework and the Working Guide.