Affordability

The working and middle class are the backbone of America. Many of us are immigrants or sons and daughters of immigrants. We have built America into the greatest country the world has ever known. But the world around us is crumbling. We feel it every day in our pocketbook — at the grocery store and gas pump, in our bones. Particularly if we are young, we can no longer buy a home.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the middle class grew faster and outperformed all other groups. We gained in income and wealth — and earned it. But our share of the economy has been in steady decline for 50 years. It is time for a comeback. It is time to put America back on track and to bring back the American Dream.

Restore Affordability

As your Congressman, I will fight to restore affordability by reducing the cost burden of life’s necessities:

• Enacting free or nearly free universal childcare.
• Passing single-payer Medicare for All (age 55+) and restoring and improving Obamacare for everyone else.
• Forgiving most student loans.
• Restoring Social Security benefits to cost-of-living levels of seniors in the 1950’s, or at least the 2010’s, and abolishing federal taxes on most Social Security benefits.
• Rescinding Trump’s “beautiful” tax give-away to the rich.
• Passing ‘Fair Taxes’ based on a progressive tax schedule, with far greater minimum taxes for high earners and corporations, and closing most loopholes favoring the rich — forever avoidance of inheritance taxes, shell-corporation shenanigans, and parking income abroad.
• No federal taxes for those at the poverty line, and limiting federal income taxes to 5% for those earning at twice the federal poverty level.
• No longer favoring investment income over wages and salaries: treating federal taxes on investments and salaries/wages equally.
• Passing sweeping housing and education bills for everyone, modeled on the GI bills passed just after World War II — making the American Dream of home ownership real again, especially for young and first-time home buyers.
• Enacting a new higher federal minimum-wage law, with the minimum set by metro area to reflect significant regional cost-of-living differences.
• Securing sufficient funding for Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid to assure survival for the next 3 generations of Americans.

Grow the Economy

To grow the economy, I will support and stimulate job growth in all industries — especially manufacturing, green electro-tech, and 15+ frontier industries. To avoid a dystopian AI future, I will invest smartly in education and retraining for everyone, on a scale not seen since the federal education benefits for American GI’s returning from World War II.