Sensing Americans’ enormous frustration with money in politics, Senate Democrats have now signaled they are preparing a “Democracy Package.” Following the lead of President Obama in his final State of the Union address, the senators have begun to assemble a set of reforms to “boost the profile,” first reports indicated, “of campaign finance reform.”

But the details of this package are astonishingly weak, and would represent an extraordinary step backward. The plan is weaker than those of both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. It is weaker than the position of the vast majority of Democrats in the House. And most importantly: It would do little if anything to end the corrupting influence of money in politics.