Sen. Elizabeth Warren wants a new SEC chief because she doesn’t believe that Mary Jo White is a tough enough regulator. The part that most irks Warren is political spending by corporations. In Warren’s opinion White has refused to put in place adequate ways to account for it, still possible despite the leniency granted to corporations by Citizens United.
“Mary Jo White has refused to develop a political spending disclosure rule despite her clear authority to do so,” Warren writes in a letter to President Obama, “and despite unprecedented and overwhelming investor and public support for such a rule.” Where corporations are required to report their (unlimited) contributions to SuperPACs, they can skirt the issue by giving to 501(c) orgs which don’t disclose their donors. Obama appointed White to her post in 2012. The SEC Chair job pays $165,000 a year. White and her husband, both veteran lawyers at elite Manhattan firms, are worth tens of millions.
