[JurisDictum]

Warren went on to tell the story of Billy Tauzin, the former Republican congressman from Louisiana. From within Congress, Tauzin helped to engineer the passage of Medicare Part D, which authorized the government to pay more than a hundred billion dollars in prescription-drug costs. He then got hired to lead the pharmaceutical lobby in Washington. “Billy delivered,” Warren said. She continued, “Sometimes the payoff comes upfront. Goldman Sachs handed Gary Cohn over a quarter of a billion dollars on his way out the door to become the head of President Trump’s National Economic Council. A quarter of a billion dollars to help quarterback a tax package that included giveaways worth just over a quarter of a billion to Goldman—in the first quarter of 2018 alone.” The Trump Administration, Warren said, “has given us the most nakedly corrupt leadership this nation has seen in our lifetimes. But they are not the cause of the rot—they’re just the biggest, stinkiest example of it.” She had recently introduced the Accountable Capitalism Act, a bill to reform the largest American companies, in part by requiring that forty per cent of the seats on their boards of directors be selected by employees. In business, as in government, she had noticed “a pervasive culture of soft corruption that colors virtually every important decision in Washington