Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti, the Democratic nominee for Congress in Pennsylvania’s 8th U.S. House District, has unveiled an ambitious anti-corruption agenda that traces its roots to how she got her start in politics.
The proposed reform policies would put restrictions on the ways members of Congress can use elected office to enrich themselves. In addition to term limits and withholding lawmakers’ pay during a government shutdown, Cognetti’s agenda would ban Congressional stock trading, prohibit corporate PAC donations and bar lawmakers from making prediction market wagers on war, elections and government activity.
Many of the pieces of Cognetti’s anti-corruption policy would require members of Congress to vote for initiatives that would potentially affect their finances. But Cognetti says voters are angry at what they view as widespread government corruption, and their trust in Congress has hit rock bottom.
“We can’t lower costs or expand access to health care if our politicians are too focused on serving themselves,” she said in an email to The Caucus. “We can only change Washington if we change who we send there. We need to elect reform-minded leaders who are interested in public service, not self-service.”
Cognetti pointed to her experience tackling corruption in Northeast Pennsylvania. After serving on the Scranton school board and as a special assistant in the Pennsylvania auditor general’s office, she became the first woman elected mayor of Scranton in 2019, after former Mayor Bill Courtright resigned from office after pleading guilty to federal charges that included bribery and extortion.
She says when she speaks about her agenda on the campaign trail, the response has been positive, in an area where corruption dominated local politics for years.
“Northeastern Pennsylvania has a long, checkered history of political corruption,” she told The Caucus. “People here are tired of politicians who line their own pockets while selling us out.”
Cognetti’s campaign released an ad last month featuring a resident of the district who said he voted for Donald Trump every time he was on the ballot, but plans to vote for Cognetti in November because the local corruption “drives me nuts.”
She says as mayor she turned down the city car and declined a pay raise. “It’s not enough to just tell voters what you are for, you have to demonstrate that you will actually follow through. I have the receipts to prove I’ve taken on corruption here locally, and I’m going to do the same in Congress.”
The anti-corruption agenda proposes eight specific initiatives, some of which would introduce new rules, like the ban on prediction market betting, and prohibits members of Congress from becoming lobbyists or serving on corporate boards after they leave office. She also wants to see changes on how government audits are conducted; while the federal government audits agencies regularly, there are no “meaningful enforcement mechanisms” to address the findings.
Cognetti says if there are parts of the agenda that look like they will be easier to get done than others, passing any of them would be a step in the right direction. “What is not sufficient is taking the teeth out of them so they no longer address the conflict of interest and fail to make any real reform,” she told The Caucus.
She pointed to the Stop Insider Trading Act, which House Republicans introduced earlier this year. Democrats criticized the bill for not going far enough, since it allowed members of Congress to keep stocks they already own, but not buy new ones. The bill passed the House in July but has stalled in the Senate.
“We need real reform that goes after the root of the corruption,” Cognetti said. “We also need leaders who lead by example, even if Washington fails to act.”
(Photo: Paige Cognetti, via Paige Cognetti for Congress Facebook)