• Create a Medicare for All, single-payer, national health insurance program to provide everyone in America with comprehensive health care coverage, free at the point of service.
• Expand Medicare to include: dental, hearing, vision, and home- and community-based long-term care, in-patient and out-patient services, mental health and substance abuse treatment, reproductive and maternity care, prescription drugs, and more.
• Forgive all medical debt.

Healthcare is a human right. Every man, woman, and child deserves to live a happy and healthy life, and we must not create barriers between individuals and their healthcare needs. Our current healthcare system treats healthcare as a privilege instead of recognizing it as an unalienable right.

Any profit-driven system will, by necessity, operate based on the restriction or denial of services, and the health insurance industry is no different. The profit model of health insurers is to deny, deny, deny. Any claim that they can deny, no matter how necessary the procedure, will be denied. Shouldn’t we allow doctors to be the arbiters of what care is needed, rather than allowing outside bureaucrats to stand in the way? We need a healthcare system in which you can see a doctor without wondering if you can afford it: no premiums, no copays, no deductibles, no out-of-pocket expenses whatsoever.

• Guarantee tuition and debt-free public colleges, universities, HBCUs, minority-serving institutions, and trade schools to all.
• Cancel all student loan debt, and place a cap on student loan interest rates going forward.
• Invest in private, non-profit HCBUs and minority-serving institutions.
• End equity gaps in higher education, and ensure students are able to cover non-tuition costs of attending school.

Roughly a century ago, we agreed as a society that universal primary and secondary education should benefit everyone. We agreed that education ought to be free and available to every child in this country, in order to ensure that they are intellectually and practically prepared as they enter adulthood. As we evolve in our society, we must recognize that primary and secondary education are no longer sufficient to adequately prepare our children. We must now unite in the agreement that universal higher education is also beneficial to our whole society. We must make it free and available to all.

• Transform our energy system to 100 percent renewable energy, and create jobs needed to solve the climate crisis.
• Ensure a just transition for communities and workers, including fossil fuel workers.
• Ensure justice for frontline communities, especially under-resourced groups, - communities of color, Native Americans, people with disabilities, children and the elderly.
• Save American families money with investments in weatherization, public transportation, modern infrastructure and high-speed broadband.
• Commit to reducing emissions throughout the world, including rejoining the Paris Agreement and reasserting the United States’ leadership in the global fight against climate change.
• Invest in conservation and public lands to heal our soils, forests, and prairie lands.
• End the greed of the fossil fuel industry, and hold them accountable.

We have a responsibility to ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren to preserve a clean, healthy, and habitable environment in which we can all live and prosper. We must rapidly transition to a green economy and infrastructure. With the Green New Deal, we take a bold stand, and make a firm commitment to the health and safety of our world now and in the future. With this commitment, we will also commit to the creation of millions of well-paying jobs for people throughout this country who are in desperate need of meaningful and gainful work. We will commit ourselves to protecting and repairing devastated and at-risk communities, both physically and economically.

• Institute a moratorium on deportations until a thorough audit of past practices and policies is complete
• Reinstate and expand DACA and develop a humane policy for those seeking asylum
• Break up ICE and CBP and redistribute their functions to their proper authorities
• Dismantle cruel and inhumane deportation programs and detention centers and reunite families who have been separatedDismantle cruel and inhumane deportation programs and detention centers and reunite families who have been separated
• Guarantee legal residency to all who have been imprisoned in the border camps
• Create a clear pathway to citizenship/permanent residency for all undocumented immigrants

We are a nation of immigrants, and it is our responsibility to ensure that all who come here, whether for a short time or to make a new life, are treated with humanity and dignity. We must transform our immigration system into one that acknowledges and promotes the right of all people to make their way in a new place, where they can live in peace, happiness, and safety.

• Increase the federal minimum wage to $15/hour, and index it to future inflation.
• Expand union membership.
• Establish federal protections against the firing of workers for any reason other than “just cause.”
• Provide unions the ability to organize through a majority sign up process, and enact “first contract” provisions to ensure companies cannot prevent a union from forming by denying a first contract.
• Deny federal contracts to companies that pay poverty wages, outsource jobs overseas, engage in union busting, deny good benefits, and pay CEOs outrageous compensation packages.
• Eliminate “Right to Work for Less” laws, and guarantee the right to unionize for workers historically excluded from labor protections, like farm workers and domestic workers.
• Enact a federal jobs guarantee, to ensure that everyone is guaranteed a stable job that pays a living wage.
• Create millions of jobs as part of the Green New Deal, rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and creating a 100% sustainable energy system.
• Create millions of healthcare jobs to support our seniors and people with disabilities in their homes and communities.
• Create new jobs in early childhood education.

Workers deserve better than to live in poverty and insecure employment. We must work tirelessly to ensure that every worker is paid the wages of a decent living, protected from arbitrary firing, guaranteed work when they cannot find it on their own, protected and supported in their efforts to unionize their workplaces, and kept whole in every other way. Workers are our backbone, and we must have the spine to treat them accordingly.

• Abolish super PACs and replace corporate funding with publicly funded elections that amplify small-doner donations.
• Restore the Voting Rights Act and overturn Citizens United.
• End racist voter suppression and partisan gerrymandering.
• Make Election Day a national holiday, secure automatic voter registration, and guarantee the right to vote for every American over 18, including those Americans currently incarcerated and those disenfranchised by a felony conviction.
• Enact mandatory public financing laws for all federal elections.
• Update and strengthen the Federal Election Campaign Act to return to a system of mandatory public funding for National Party Conventions.

Our government must be truly of, by, and for the people. That cannot be the case as long as our elections are funded by a small, wealthy donor class. We must move to a system of clean, publicly funded elections.

• Adopt Equal Pay for Equal Work through the Paycheck Fairness Act.
• Fully fund Planned Parenthood, Title X, and other initiatives that protect women’s health, access to contraception, and the availability of a safe and legal abortion.
• Expand the WIC program for pregnant mothers, infants, and children.
• Oppose all efforts to undermine or overturn Roe v. Wade, and appoint federal judges who will uphold women’s most fundamental rights.
• Immediately reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act.
• Pass the Equal Rights Amendment.
• Fight to end sexual harassment in workplaces, the military, and other institutions.

Despite major advances in civil and political rights, our country still has a long way to go in addressing the issues of gender inequality and reproductive freedom. Right now, extreme forces on the right are launching political attacks and passing draconian laws at both the state and national level with the goal of ending a woman’s right to choose. We must fight back together, and defend a woman’s right to control her own body and economic future.

• Implement a foreign policy which focuses on democracy, human rights, diplomacy and peace, and economic fairness.
• Restore Congressional power to authorize war and prevent unauthorized and unconstitutional interventions overseas
• Hold foreign governments accountable for their persecution of religious, ethnic, caste based and other minorities

• End for-profit greed in our criminal justice system, top to bottom by:
  • Banning for-profit prisons and detention centers, and ending cash bail
  • Making prison and jail communications, re-entry, diversion and treatment programs fee-free
• Ensure due process and right to counsel by vastly increasing funding for public defenders and creating a federal formula to ensure populations have a minimum number of public defenders to meet their needs.
• Cut the national prison population drastically and end mass incarceration by abolishing the death penalty, three strikes laws, and mandatory minimum sentences, as well as expanding the use of alternatives to detention
• Transform the way we police communities by ending the War on Drugs, expunging past marijuana convictions, treating children who interact with the justice system as children, reversing the criminalization of addiction, and ending the reliance on police forces to handle mental health emergencies, homelessness, maintenance violations, and other low-level situations.
• Reform our decrepit prison system, guarantee a “Prisoners Bill of Rights,” and ensure a just transition for incarcerated individuals upon their release.
• Reverse the criminalization of communities, end cycles of violence, provide support to survivors of crime, and invest in our communities.

The federal government can do so much more to end mass incarceration and remove cruelty and greed from the criminal justice system. This year, the people of our district came together and made it clear: Black Lives Matter. The protests were inspirational, but drew attention to how much work needs to be done fighting for fair, humane, and effective ways to keep our communities safe without destroying lives or denying rights in the process.