Joe Sestak presidential campaign, 2020

Jobs & Economic Protection
There is no task more important for policymakers than ensuring that all Americans can find quality jobs with fair wages. As President, I promise to do everything in my power to make certain the United States will be able to compete in an increasingly globalized world. I will always be committed to building a world-class infrastructure, educating and training (and re-training) American workers, securing for small businesses the tools and funding they need to succeed, developing new green industries, and reinvigorating the manufacturing base of our economy.

Priorities:

• Rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure.
• Supporting small businesses as the primary engine of economic growth.
• Investing in American manufacturing.
• Developing new sustainable industries to fight climate change.
• Educating workers for the jobs of the future with a national commitment to workforce “Training for a Lifetime.”
• Establishing fair trade deals with foreign countries.

America’s Critical Infrastructure: The Backbone of Our Economy
A great many of the proudest achievements in our country’s history have been triumphs of infrastructure: the Erie Canal, the Hoover Dam, iconic bridges from Brooklyn to the Golden Gate, the Transcontinental Railroad, and the Interstate Highway System. Such public works projects stand as physical monuments to that great American notion that together we can defy gravity, rise higher, and each one of us go further. But today we too often simply stand and watch as our infrastructure crumbles all around us. From the levees of the Mississippi River to countless bridges and dams across this country, far too many lives and livelihoods have already been lost or forever changed due to our failure to maintain and rebuild key structures that keep people safe and keep our economy moving. Over 66,000 of America’s bridges are structurally deficient. In my home state of Pennsylvania, a full third of our bridges are officially considered deficient. This is a problem we must solve.

I propose a public investment in infrastructure expansion of $1 trillion over 10 years. It has been estimated that failure to spend such funds would cost us 150% of that sum in congestion costs alone due to the results of decaying transportation infrastructure, so it is an investment we can’t afford not to make. I also propose the creation of a national infrastructure bank for loans and credit support for public-private partnerships; a Build American Bonds program; and an expansion of the New Markets Tax Credit for underserved communities.

A national infrastructure bank would finance a wide range of infrastructure projects by providing public loan guarantees to encourage private capital to make market-based investments in partnership with local, state, regional, and federal entities. Beyond roads and bridges, a national infrastructure bank would help prepare our national freight system for the expected 88 percent increase in tonnage by 2035. It would help avoid the $22 billion our economy loses every year due to airport delays and congestion, and the hundreds of millions more caused by interruptions at our inland waterways’ locks and dams. It would allow us to expand our seaports to handle increased imports and exports. This concept is rooted in the recognition that public resources are limited and that securing private-sector partners as investors in our shared national venture — provided there are benchmarks for accountability along the way and fair systems in place to assure public use — will help us make the sweeping upgrades necessary to shore up critical infrastructure across our country.

Finally, we must affirm that in this global economy broadband Internet is as important to our economy as roads and bridges. Research has shown that for every 1% increase in broadband penetration, employment increased by 0.2 to 0.3 percent per year. Unfortunately, millions of rural Americans are still without access to broadband Internet, and those with access in urban areas face higher bills for lower speeds than our global competitors. Access for all to low-cost, high-speed Internet is being hindered by a nationwide duopoly in the market. With over 27 million subscribers, Comcast controls the wired market in 16 of the 25 largest U.S. cities. Their main competitor, Charter (the successor to Time Warner), has over 25 million subscribers, and controls most of the other regional markets. The bottom line is that Washington has been rewarding Internet providers’ poor performance with tax breaks, lax regulation, and sweetheart deals. Rather than coddling the cable companies, we should be holding them accountable for letting us slip from having the fastest Internet to having some of the slowest Internet among developed nations.

Small Business: The Engine of Job Creation
After my election to Congress, I was surprised to find that few members of Congress were interested in serving on the Small Business Committee. I was thrilled by the opportunity and quickly became its Vice Chair. I already knew, from my time as the Admiral “CEO” overseeing the Navy’s five-year $350-billion warfare requirements programs, that small business is a “force multiplier” to do their nimble ability to innovate projects and processes with speed and ingenuity. In my service on the Small Business Committee, I learned just how integral small businesses are for creating jobs and growing our economy: 98% of all American manufacturing is done by firms with less than 50 employees; our 28 million small businesses create roughly 70 percent of new jobs; and more than half of our nation’s workforce is employed by firms with less than 500 employees. Yet relatively fewer people are starting small businesses today than in prior generations. In 1977, there were 35 new small businesses created for every 10,000 working-age citizens. By 2009, that number had fallen roughly by half to just 18. This is like keeping our economy’s “star running back” on the bench for half the game.

We must do more to support existing small businesses and incentivize would-be entrepreneurs to start new ones. This will require ensuring better access to capital, relieving regulatory burdens, and encouraging the export potential of small businesses. We can start by creating tax incentives to encourage angel investors and venture capital groups to lend money to people with great ideas. Wisconsin offers a great model: in 2005, it created a tax credit for its residents to invest in startups, and by 2012 the number of angel investor groups had quadrupled. The regulatory burden on small business — studies show that regulations cost small businesses with fewer than 20 employees some 40% more than large firms with 500 employees or more — can be relieved by creating a system of tiers in regulation. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office provides a model for this kind of policy, with reduced filing fees to smaller businesses.

We must also work hard to level the playing field and encourage more people from historically marginalized communities to start small businesses. Studies show that minority small business owners are disproportionately denied credit by banks, making loans from the Small Business Administration (SBA) all the more important. Some 80% of SBA loan applications from minority business owners are for $150,000 or less, and we impose a 2% loan guarantee fee on such loans. When the SBA waived this fee there was a 15% increase in these small loans. By making that waiver permanent we can enable more people to share in our collective prosperity. We should also increase the maximum SBA loan guarantee for rural communities, given the increased costs of operating farms and rural businesses in the context of increased consolidation and globalization. The best way to reinvigorate American industry and manufacturing is by fostering the growth of small businesses.

The Jobs of the Future
In the face of the climate crisis and environmental degradation, we know that the future of American industry must be green. We also know that green jobs are already growing at a rapid clip. In the energy sector, for every $1 million investment in the oil and natural gas industries, just one new job is created. In the coal industry, just two. By contrast, for every $1 million investment in the wind energy industry, 4.5 jobs are created, and those numbers rise further to 5.4 jobs for solar and 7.4 for biomass. This is largely because more than 1 in 4 green energy jobs are in manufacturing, compared to less than 1 in 10 in the broader economy. These are good, family-sustaining jobs like machinist, sheetmetal worker, welder, and electrician.

One of the biggest drags on the green energy sector is competition with countries like China. Americans invented solar energy, yet China now boasts the world’s largest solar panel industry (and they export 95 percent of their production, including to the United States). The Chinese government offers its solar panel manufacturers low-cost credit, free land and utilities, and discounted materials. They also steal our technology to compete against us. We must work so much harder to protect intellectual property rights that are critically important to manufacturers and small businesses, especially as they develop new green technologies and new sustainable industries. We must do everything in our power to hold our international competitors accountable for their theft of our intellectual property. American businesses simply cannot compete, thrive, and create jobs if lax enforcement in foreign countries continues unabated. This is serious: if China alone were to make a real effort to crack down on intellectual property theft, some 2 million jobs would be added to the U.S. economy.

Our government must help us get back in the game by approving incentives to give the industry the long-term certainty in needs to grow. We can make permanent the Renewable Energy Production Tax Credit (PTC) and Investment Tax Credit (ITC) — both of which are set to expire in five years — which encourage the development of wind, solar, geothermal, closed-loop biomass, and other renewable energy technologies. We should also do more to make small businesses aware of these tax credits, along with the Research and Development Tax Credit, so more businesses will take advantage of them and use them to drive innovation and sustainable development. Our leaders need to stop bragging about their votes to supporter greater R&D and start actually working with small businesses in their districts to make sure they’re claiming the benefits that their big business competitors typically monopolize.

The future is green — but we need our government to make creating green jobs a priority if our country is going to compete with foreign economies.

Job Training & Education: Training for a Lifetime
Education is as important a part of our homeland defense as any counter-terror or missile defense program. In this ever-changing world, we must restructure our national education policy to ensure our workers have all the tools they need to be successful in the 21st century. As President, I will lead our country to make a national commitment to what I call “Training for a Lifetime.” In the military, we constantly train and re-train servicemembers — this explains why the U.S. Air Force runs the largest community college system in the country — because technology changes so rapidly. But while technology might become obsolete, a hard worker never will.

In the United States as a whole, our spending on labor training is .001% of our GDP, the lowest of all developed countries. Yet there are great models around the country that point to ways to improve this situation. In Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Las Vegas, a private non-profit called Tech Impact runs a free 16-week program called ITWorks. The first 11 weeks of the program include education in basic information technology skills, while the last five weeks are an internship with a local company or non-profit, giving trainees some real-life, hands-on experience. So far they have had over 500 young people (ages 18-26) participate, and 75% of participants have found employment after six months, earning an average of $35,000 per year. This free program is supported by foundations, corporations, and state and local governments where it is active. With more support, it could expand further.

In order to improve access to workforce training, we need to implement a wide range of solutions on the federal level, including providing more support for public-private partnerships to increase investment in training infrastructure, more federal funding for state and local training programs, and developing a national apprenticeship program for one-on-one training. When jobs and industries disappear, the government should ensure that workers can access training for the jobs available in their place. If we don’t make workforce training for a lifetime a national priority, our country will not be able to compete with global rivals.

We must also work hard to make higher education available to all who want to go to college. The federal government is projected to make a profit of $127 billion this decade on student loans. The reason for such an excessive figure is that the loan rate is unfairly based on the 10-year Treasury bond. If we instead commit our country to profit-free student loans, it would significantly lower the cost of college. We should also establish a national credit transfer system among accredited colleges. Currently, some 40% of students transfer colleges — in particular from junior or community colleges to 4-year colleges and universities — but nearly half of their courses are not accepted at their new school. A national credit transfer system would save transfer students time and money and get them into the workforce faster.

Smart Trade Policy
The economic pain currently being felt by farmers and others due to the ongoing trade war with China is evidence of the importance of good trade policy to the lives and livelihoods of countless Americans. I believe we must not use tariffs as a weapon in geopolitical disputes that have nothing to do with trade policy. Our national economy relies on a stable global economy that functions under predictable rules of engagement. Businesses make decisions every day that will impact their operations for years to come, so they will only take the kinds of risks that lead to greater success when they know they won’t be taken by surprise with sudden tariffs. Good trade policy is good for business.

Trade can also an important source of geopolitical stability, encouraging peaceful coexistence among nations and incentivizing developing countries to improve environmental standards, worker rights, and intellectual property enforcement. In the 21st century, rapidly modernizing countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America will create a huge new global middle class — and in this globalized world they will be looking around the world for products and services. It is imperative that we be in a position to compete with China, our only major economic rival on the global scene, for their business. China is rapidly pursuing economic expansion around the globe — building roads and dams in Africa and Latin America, and farms and factories from Mexico to Australia to Cameroon — but without the same standards for the environment, labor rights, and intellectual property enforcement that our societal norms and values rightly demand.

I believe we lost an important opportunity to shape the future of global trade when we withdrew our involvement from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. While that trade agreement was far from perfect, it gave us the chance to set the rules of engagement across a critically important region, home to some of the world’s most dynamic, influential, and rapidly changing countries. Our withdrawal also sent a worrying signal to our friends and allies in the region that we are not interested in expanding our engagement with them, and that in the absence of US global leadership, China will inevitably fill the vacuum. As President, I will seek to reaffirm our commitment to the Asia Pacific region by re-joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership while improving the agreement to ensure that it serves our people, not merely our corporations. I will make certain that all future trade agreements and trade policy decisions are made principally for the benefit of the American people.

Healthcare
Healthcare is a deeply personal issue for me. My daughter was first diagnosed with brain cancer at the age of 4, but the quality care that the American people provided my family through the military gave her a chance to beat the disease. When Alex’s cancer came back last year, more than a decade later, we were fortunate to have the same medical heroes who had saved her once, save her again — including a doctor who came out of retirement to perform the intricate brain surgery. I’m running for President so that one day soon all Americans will be able to feel the same sense of gratitude and good fortune my family feels when we think of my daughter’s care and treatment. We must finally make healthcare a right, not a privilege.

Priorities:

• Restore the Affordable Care Act and advance it with a public option to expand access to health insurance.
• Let the success of the public option in cost and quality serve as incentive for the eventual transition of choice to a national healthcare system and begin laying the groundwork for a credible approach to such a system, modeled after the Veterans Health Administration, to establish comprehensive and integrated care across the country.
• Allow Medicare to bargain for the best drug prices directly with the pharmaceutical industry.
• Permit re-importation of less expensive drugs from Canada, while stopping big drug companies from “paying-for-the-delay” of cheaper generic drugs.
• Fix our broken mental health system beginning with full enforcement of the Mental Health Parity Act and key provisions of the Affordable Care Act.
• Increase federal action in the fight against addiction.
• Remedy our shortage of nurses and doctors, particularly primary care physicians, as we change to integrated national healthcare.

Fixing our Healthcare System
As a Congressman, I was proud to vote for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) in order to increase access to quality care, reform the broken health insurance industry, and save lives. By every metric, the ACA was successful at providing more and better healthcare coverage and in lowering costs: more than 20 million previously uninsured Americans now have insurance; average health insurance premiums per family have been reduced by $4,000 per year; insurance companies must now cover pre-existing conditions; parents can keep their children on their health plan until age 26; and overall healthcare spending has kept below pre-ACA projections by a staggering $2.3 trillion dollars over just the first seven years of the program.

Yet not all Americans benefit from the successes of the ACA, for a variety of reasons. Employees are now covering more of the costs of their own insurance (their share of premium costs has gone up some 32% since 2012), many Americans can only afford high-deductible plans, and the costs of prescription drugs and copays continue to climb. In the run-up to the final passage of the ACA I was also proud to vote for a public health insurance option, though unfortunately it was removed from the bill in the Senate and the ultimate law was weaker for it. A public option would further reduce costs across the board. It would create competition in local markets where one or two health insurance companies enjoy a monopoly. And it would allow the government to negotiate with hospitals and pharmaceutical companies to save patients money. I support immediately creating a public option plan to expand access to many more uninsured people and cut costs for everyone.

I believe that the public option is one part of a transition of choice to a national healthcare system. Creating such a system will not be easy, but I believe our country can rise to the challenge. I know from my experiences visiting our wounded warriors at Veterans Health Administration (VHA) facilities across the country that a national healthcare system can work — indeed, it already exists for veterans. The VHA directly provides high-quality medical services to over 9 million people at some 1,250 facilities, employing over 300,000 healthcare professionals. It is the country’s largest integrated healthcare system, providing comprehensive care to its patients whether they walk in to a Vet Center in Fairbanks, Alaska, or a VA hospital in San Juan, Puerto Rico. And it provides medical education and training to over 100,000 people every year, including more than 37,000 medical residents, or 30% of all residents trained across the country each year.

There have been a few unfortunate scandals at the VA, but overall wait times have been significantly reduced — to the point where for primary care services and at least three specialties, VHA wait times are now shorter than wait times for private doctors (according to a 2019 study published by no less an authority than the Journal of the American Medical Association). Furthermore, when compared to the subsidized healthcare the general public receives through Medicaid, studies find the VHA provides better services with better outcomes. It is not a perfect system (and I offer some solutions to the challenges it faces in the Veterans section), but it is remarkably effective at providing care for millions of Americans — and I believe it can serve as one model for any implementation of national healthcare system for all Americans.

I recognize that such a dramatic change in our healthcare system must take into consideration the 255 million Americans who are currently supported by private health insurance today. Many people are happy with their coverage, and are justifiably skeptical of any proposed shift to a national healthcare system. I believe we must study every conceivable option to see how to best achieve this ambitious goal and build as close to a national consensus as possible before deciding the exact contours of any plan. I am optimistic that the success of the public option will increase public confidence in the government’s ability to deliver on such an important issue that can lead to the transition of choice to a nationwide system benefitting all Americans.

Lower Costs, Improve Services
While the ACA has gone a long way toward stabilizing costs, the overall cost of healthcare remains a burden for millions of American families and individuals. I believe Congress and the President should take immediate action to lower costs further. One solution to skyrocketing costs of prescription drugs is to allow the importation of cheaper drugs from Canada where our own pharmaceutical firms often sell the same drugs for lower prices. For years the state of Maine permitted citizens to reimport drugs from Canada — often saving individuals thousands of dollars each year — until a federal court struck down their law in 2013. Now Vermont has passed a law to allow wholesalers to import drugs from Canada, but it is still arguing for the approval of federal government and so has yet to come into effect. To give just one example, Canadians pay just $29 per month on a Nasonex prescription, while in the US we pay $105.

The pharmaceutical companies argue that they need to charge as much as possible to pursue critical research, but I cannot accept that argument when the same drug companies spent $27 billion a year on marketing drugs. That’s enough to buy more than 5,000 Super Bowl ads. Meanwhile, Americans pay more for insulin than people in any other country — $6000 per year — and that price inexplicably doubled between 2012 and 2016. Such profiteering by drug companies must end. One way to force drug prices down is to allow Medicare to bargain directly with drug makers — as Medicate and the VA already do, saving over $15 billion every year. Another is stopping the “pay-for-delay” practice that costs $3.5 billion annually by allowing pharmaceutical firms to pay generic drug manufacturers not to go to market after their brand-name drug patent expires. If these efforts fail to control the costs of drugs, I would be open to the creation of an entity in the United States akin to Canada’s Patented Medicine Prices Review Board, which has authority to determine maximum prices for patented prescription drugs in Canada, and is part of the reason why Canadians pay so much less than we do.

Finally, we must shore up our entire medical system by taking action against the increasingly dangerous shortage of doctors and nurses in our country. The Association of American Medical Colleges projects that by 2030 we could face a doctor shortage of 120,000, with roughly one-third of them primary care physicians. Especially as we move toward an integrated national healthcare system, primary care physicians play a critical role in our health system as the gatekeepers to specialist care. We can redistribute the $13 billion America’s teaching hospitals receive in federal subsidies toward more primary care residencies, with financial incentives for rural area follow-on assignments, and generally fund additional residency slots. We must also strengthen federal incentives and programs like the National Health Service Corps, the Conrad 30 Waiver Program, Public Service Loan Forgiveness, and Title VII/VIII workforce development and diversity programs which aim to recruit a diverse medical workforce and stimulate doctors to take up specialties with particular doctor shortages and to practice in underserved communities. The nursing shortage can be addressed by increasing training and educational opportunities (such as through fellowships and loan forgiveness for future nurse educators who commit to teaching in underserved communities), and by incentivizing healthcare organizations to conduct internal reviews about policies regarding nursing staff and implement solutions to prevent burnout and turnover.

Focus on Mental Health & Addiction
Too often mental health is considered an issue apart from our broader healthcare system. But we know that mental health is critical to overall health and well being. We also know that our mental health system is failing. While some 43 million Americans suffer from a mental health condition, only 43% of them have received some form of treatment, according to a report from Mental Health America (MHA). The same report found that over 76% of youth with severe depression — some 1.7 million kids — do not get the treatment they need. It’s no wonder that both suicidal ideation and major depressive episodes among our youth are increasing.

Shockingly, nearly half of all psychiatrists refuse to accept Medicare or Medicaid patients, or even patients with private health insurance, instead preferring to see only cash-paying patients. While this is their right, it is incumbent on policymakers at the state and federal level to provide incentives to mental health professionals to do the right thing and take on the patients who need their help the most. We must also increase the number of hospital beds available for inpatient psychiatric treatment, currently at the same level as it was in the 1850s.

The federal government is already required to play a role in assuring that mental health and addiction are covered by health insurers under the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAE)— which requires that restrictions and insurer’s requirements for coverage of mental health and substance use disorders are no more restrictive or onerous than those set for other medical and surgical benefits — but the Act is largely unenforced. Unfortunately it was written without a mechanism to monitor and evaluate its effective implementation, so it must be amended and updated as soon as possible. The ACA did improve coverage for behavioral health patients, but the parity protections of the MHPAE do not extend to Medicare, traditional Medicaid, or certain bare-bones catastrophic coverage plans currently offered. We should extend parity protections so that people in such plans are also able to access mental health and substance abuse treatment.

Finally, we must mobilize as a nation to address the crisis of opiate addiction. According to the data published by the Department of Health and Human Services, some 11.4 million people misused prescription opioids in 2016. Some 2.1 million people had an opioid use disorder. Tragically, nearly 50,000 people died from an opioid overdose. The federal government should be leading a multi-pronged approach to dealing with opioid addiction. We need states to rework their Medicaid programs to boost reimbursements paid to providers of addiction treatment services — as Virginia has implemented with their Addiction and Recovery Treatment Services program — because addiction treatment providers are generally underpaid by health insurers. We also need prisons to improve access to addiction treatment, including all available medications, and we need to increase funding for training programs to help doctors better understand the complexities of addiction care. We should also change federal law to allow doctors and scientists to expand research into the potential of certain psychedelic drugs to complement traditional substance abuse and other mental health treatment. Anti-drug laws should never be an impediment to sound scientific research, but especially not during a public health crisis such as this one.

Climate Change & Environmental Protection
Climate change and environmental collapse are twin problems that threaten the very existence of life as we know it on this planet. Solving them presents our generation with the greatest challenge in human history — and it is imperative that we rise to meet this challenge. The stakes are just too high if we fail. As President, I will make stopping climate change and preventing environmental collapse the key national priorities they need to be. We owe future generations of humanity nothing less.

Priorities:

• Re-join the Paris Accord and restoring our leadership role among the community of nations working together to fight climate change.
• Stop subsidizing fossil fuel industries.
• Implement a fee for carbon polluters, with proceeds being returned to all Americans as a dividend and also devoted to research & development in renewable energy and other climate-stabilizing strategies.
• Ratify the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol committing countries around the world to phasing out the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs).
• Give the EPA full authority to regulate substances (like HFCs) that contribute to global warming, as it has authority to regulate ozone-depleting substances.
• Establish a permanent moratorium on all future offshore drilling and Arctic drilling, including in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
• Stop subsidizing destructive industrial farming practices, and dramatically increase support for carbon-sequestering regenerative agriculture.
• Restore the National Monuments and other public lands opened to extractive industries by the current administration.
• Renew our commitment to fighting deforestation, habitat destruction, and illegal poaching of endangered species around the world.

A Record of Fighting for the Environment
As a Congressman, I built a strong record of fighting for the cause of environmental protection. I co-sponsored the Clean Water Restoration Act — to expand federal jurisdiction in dealing with water pollution to cover all waters of the United States (instead of just “navigable waters”) — and the Clean Water Protection Act — to prevent the use of mining waste as fill material in existing bodies of water — which would have sharply reduced the environmentally devastating practice of mountaintop removal mining. I also co-sponsored a bill to increase oil company and industry liability for industrial spills so taxpayers are not left holding the bill, and voted to increase the amount oil developers must contribute to the oil spill liability trust fund. I was a leader in the fight to pass the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals (FRAC) Act, which would have repealed the exemption for hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”) in the Safe Drinking Water Act and finally required companies engaged in fracking to reveal the chemicals they regularly inject into the ground. When I ran for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, I called for a moratorium on fracking. I was proud to receive a 96% rating from the League of Conservation Voters, and a 100% rating from PennEnvironment.

I was a leader on climate and energy issues as well. I co-sponsored the Safe Climate Act to decrease emissions and accelerate the reduction of greenhouse gases. I also co-sponsored the American Renewable Energy Act, requiring that 25% of all energy generation come from renewable sources. I voted to extend and expand tax credits for alternative energy like solar and wind, and voted for the Energy Storage Technology Advancement Act, which would have increased funding for energy research to improve industrial energy efficiency and energy storage for electrical grids and hybrid vehicles. I also voted to invest $90 billion in renewable energy development and deployment.

Tackling the Climate Emergency
The next few years may prove to be the most important in human history. We can either continue with the head-in-the-sand policies of the current administration, or we can listen to the scientists whose well-studied facts and figures consistently show that global warming is an unambiguously grave threat to humanity and all life on earth. According to our own Defense Department: “Climate change will affect Department of Defense’s ability to defend the Nation and poses immediate risk to U.S. national security.” Already we are seeing climate change play a role in migration, such as from Central America, and in war, such as in Syria. Since this is a global challenge, a global response is necessary, which is why we must immediately rejoin the Paris Accord and reassert US leadership to collectively increase and enforce national commitments around the world.

We must also ratify the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, mandating the phasing out of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) — commonly used as refrigerants — which evaporate as a greenhouse gas 1000 times more potent than CO2. By setting new international standards that match today’s best air conditioner efficiency, the net result of Kigali for the climate would be equivalent to reforesting two-thirds of the Amazon. This is particularly important as currently only 8% of people in the tropics have air conditioning, but eventually most will. Enforcing Kigali in the United States will likely require securing executive jurisdiction over HFCs by passing a law to give the EPA full authority to regulate all substances that contribute to global warming, as it already has authority to regulate substances that contribute to the depletion of the ozone layer. Currently the EPA’s authority in these matters is determined by the discretion of the courts (with one important case still up in the air). And of course we need to install new leadership at the EPA that centers science in all of its decision-making and operates in the interests of the American people, not fossil fuel companies and other corporate powers.

Most critically, we need to break our addiction to fossil fuels as soon as possible. This is why I’m strongly in favor of banning all future offshore and Arctic drilling, increasing fuel efficiency standards, and ending subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, while instead providing more subsidies to the green energy sector. But in the meantime we must act quickly to disincentivize businesses from emitting carbon dioxide through the imposition of a fee on carbon polluters. I favor a program along the lines of the proposed Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act, a bipartisan plan that would set a low initial price on carbon emissions of $15 per ton but which would rise by $10 per year, with the proceeds of the fee returned in equal measure to all Americans as a dividend. It’s estimated that such a policy alone would reduce our carbon emissions by 90% by 2050.

However, unlike the authors of that bill, I believe we should reserve a portion of the dividends for investments into renewable energy research and development. In particular, we should be looking for cost-efficient ways to scale up available technology to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (including even by removing it, re-utilizing it, and removing it again in a continuous cycle). I also believe we should be investing in the potential of nuclear technology based on thorium, which would end the use of plutonium and could lead to much safer nuclear power plants, less toxic nuclear waste, and less opportunities for nuclear weapons proliferation. Nuclear power can continue to help us reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, but in the wake of the Fukushima disaster we must do everything we can to make it safer. In order to reach net zero emissions by 2050, we must leverage every possible resource we can toward technological innovation.

We must also recognize that a huge percentage of global greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture and land use. In fact, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) farming and forestry are just about as responsible for the high level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere as electricity and heat production (agriculture and land use are responsible for 24% of global greenhouse gas emissions, electricity and heat production for 25%), and more so than transportation (which contributes 14% of global greenhouse gas emissions). Modern agriculture, which our country has exported around the world over recent decades, is a huge driver of climate change, especially through annual tillage, deforestation, and livestock management practices. Tilling a field every year releases trapped carbon into the atmosphere and reduces the ability of soil microorganisms to capture carbon in the future (while also causing erosion and the loss of topsoil); deforestation — which is particularly problematic in biodiverse and ecologically sensitive areas like the Amazon basin and Southeast Asia — releases carbon into the atmosphere when it occurs, and often leads to even further greenhouse gas emissions when it is followed by industrial crop farming or large-scale animal grazing; and livestock like cows are also a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, but these can be reduced through sustainable practices like rotational grazing on well-managed pasture land and through the addition to livestock diets of underutilized crops — like sainfoin, which actually reduces the methane emissions of cows that eat it, even when only a small percentage of their diet.

The Rodale Institute has studied this topic for many years and calculates that if we converted 100% of all crop and pasture land to regenerative organic practices, we would remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year than our current carbon emissions level. In other words, we could start reducing excess carbon from the atmosphere through better farming practices. In order to make this a reality we must stop subsidizing emissions-heavy industrial farming — which generally only benefits large corporations and wealthy landowners — and start heavily subsidizing organic and regenerative farming, which would most benefit small family farmers, but would also benefit all of us by cleaning up our water, air, and food supply. Farms big and small must be given the tools and support they need to transition to more sustainable practices. If we incentivize enough farmers to make the switch — and if we devote substantially more resources to research into perennial staple crops, agroecological farming, and soil science — we can make agriculture a potent weapon against climate change, instead of just another driver of it.

Climate change is such a complex problem that we must pursue every possible solution. I believe we need to invest more in mass transit, increase fuel efficiency standards, improve access to electric cars (including by offering cash rebates in lieu of electric car tax credits so lower-income Americans can participate), reduce food waste, increase recycling, and incentivize consumers and corporations to repair electronic devices, like smart phones, rather than simply replacing them. Our disposable material culture has real costs, and we must not allow them to be born solely by future generations.

Preserving the Natural World
With the threat of devastating climate change looming over our planet, it is all too easy to imagine that this is the most urgent environmental crisis we face. But frightening warning signs point to an ongoing environmental collapse that may threaten the stability of society long before climate change renders the equatorial regions of the globe uninhabitable due to extreme heat or floods coastal cities like Miami, New Orleans, and New York. One indicator is the staggering loss of biodiversity already under way, which many scientists have labeled “the sixth extinction,” an event that may ultimately rival the extinction of the dinosaurs. Recent studies demonstrating plummeting populations of insects are particularly worrying, as insects sit at the base of most food chains (for instance, the disappearance of songbirds is a likely symptom of the loss of insect life). So too is the acidification of our warming oceans a troubling sign, leading to the destruction of coral reefs and no doubt the loss of countless species, sometimes before science even has a chance to discover them.

While climate change no doubt plays a role in this global loss of biodiversity — and its role will only become more central as climate change worsens — a great deal of this problem can be traced directly to human behavior, and once again agriculture and land use are strongly implicated. In much of the tropics, palm oil plantations are replacing rainforests at a dizzying rate. In the Amazon, rainforests are replaced by cattle ranches and soybean farms. Here in the United States, consolidation and increasing corporate control of farms have prioritized short-term profits over long-term sustainability, leading to increased use of destructive practices like removing hedgerows and farming from property line to property line (which destroys habitat for beneficial insects and all sorts of other creatures), and overusing nitrogen fertilizers, which lead to toxic algae blooms and oxygen-free dead zones, like the huge one in the Gulf of Mexico. Excessive use of pesticides around the world is believed to be the primary cause of the aforementioned loss of insects, which has ripple effects throughout the natural world.

We can put a stop to this sixth mass extinction event, but in order to do so we must re-double our efforts to preserve the environment by restoring wildlife habitats, make more land off-limits to development, strengthen enforcement mechanisms in the global Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES), incentivize the adoption of sustainable farming practices, and — above all — finally deal with the specter of climate change. As President, I will do everything in my power to make sure our children and grandchildren — and their children and grandchildren, and on, and on — can enjoy all of the beauty and prosperity that this miraculous planet earth has provided for us. It is our solemn duty to be good ancestors for the people of the future.

Education
People are often surprised when I say that “education is our best homeland defense,” given my 31-year service in the military, but I firmly believe that education is the bedrock of a successful society. We need a skilled population that can out-innovate our competitors and create the jobs of the future.

As a father, I know that America’s youth are our national treasure. It is they who will continue to make our country prosper for generations to come. But sadly, too many of our nation’s youth are unable to get a world-class education or training today. As President, I will work every day to improve our educational and training system and ensure that every American can access the high-quality education and skills they deserve.

Priorities:

• Expand early childhood education to all 4-year-olds.
• Support state-led efforts like Common Core to create unified benchmarks for success.
• Increase broadband Internet connectivity across the country, especially in underserved rural and urban areas.
• Increase access to higher education by providing states with grants to support tuition at community colleges and public universities.
• Reduce costs of higher education by making federal student aid and loans contingent upon each university keeping annual tuition increases at or below inflation.
• Restructure federal student loans so the government no longer makes a profit off of students attempting to improve themselves.
• Establish a national college credit transfer system.
• Create a “Training for a Lifetime” program to increase opportunities for job training and continuing education.

Early Childhood Education
By now the benefits of early childhood education are clear to most people, but a recent study in North Carolina put them into even more stark relief. The study out of Duke University tracked over a million students in North Carolina born between 1998 and 2000. Due to differing public school budgets and priorities across the state, some students were able to enroll in publicly funded Pre-K at the age of four, while others were not. Students were followed through the 8th grade, including end-of-year math and reading scores, special education placements, and whether or not they were ever held back a grade. They also tracked a variety of other possible factors that might affect outcomes, including parents’ education, race, socio-economic status, and even birth weights. The results were clear: across the board, regardless of other factors, students who attended well-funded early education at the age of four had significantly higher reading and math abilities throughout elementary and middle school, they were significantly less likely to repeat a grade, and by their 8th grade year they were 30% less likely to be enrolled in special education programs.

It is time to institute a federal mandate for early childhood education to begin at the age of four and to provide necessary funding for states and municipalities that need assistance to fulfill it. As President, I will work hard to ensure we can do so in a deficit-neutral way. Over the long run, this investment in our children’s future will pay enormous dividends to our whole society.

New National Standards and Accountability
My experience in the Navy taught me that the best decisions are made based on facts and data, and that once a decision is made there must be benchmarks and measurements in place to determine the effectiveness of a course of action. I believe that, to a large extent, our national inability to make meaningful policy about K-12 education is the result of a lack of assessable data on what students are expected to know in each grade, combined with each state using measurement systems intended to artificially inflate their own numbers.

A Wall Street Journal report analyzing data from New York provides an example of this problem. In 2009, 86% of the students who took New York’s standardized tests had “proficient or better” scores in math. These results were roundly criticized across the state as being artificially inflated, so the next year New York raised the cutoffs determining what qualifies as “proficient.” Accordingly, 61% of students achieved that rank. Then, in 2013, after New York became one of the first states to use new tests aligned to national Common Core standards, less than one-third of students were found to be “proficient” in math. What this means is that policymakers have been stuck using data without definition. As a result, instead of making decisions about how to increase educational success, states are simply deciding to redefine their terms. Yes, the tests may be standardized, but they haven’t been linked to an actual standard. Teachers can’t measure their methods, parents don’t know if their child is falling behind, and students waste time and tears taking tests that don’t improve their skills.

However, those Common Core standards offer some hope. The final set of data from the New York example, I believe, holds great promise. When 45 states and the District of Columbia adopted the Common Core State Standards — which were developed by teachers, parents, education experts, and school administrators — they did so in part to reform the toxic testing that resulted from the way the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) program was implemented. The high-stakes testing regime of NCLB focused on filling in bubbles on multiple choice exams to assess whether students were “proficient”, but each state’s students were judged against their own state standards. With Common Core, on the other hand, a national standard is set by describing what each student in each grade level should know in English language literacy and mathematics to prepare for college. The standards are benchmarks, not curricula. A school’s curriculum will remain locally developed. The standards say where each student should be, not how to get them there. And once they are adopted, modern testing should focus on problem-solving, instead of bubble-filling, and should take advantage of the kind of adaptive student-centric testing afforded by recent technological advancements in computer testing (tests which more accurately gauge actual skill level by shifting the questions it asks based on students’ answers).

Based on my many conversations with educators and parents, the Common Core standards are not perfectly written — especially in the lower grade levels. I have read many of the distressingly obtuse questions written for Common Core Practice Tests, and we absolutely must do better. But the idea of a common standard is crucial if we are serious about getting reliable data on whether our students have the skills necessary to transition into higher education or enter the workforce upon graduation. Good decisions require good data, and assessing progress requires meaningful benchmarks.

Make College More Affordable
As the father of a daughter in high school, I am particularly concerned about the soaring costs of a college education. When I was growing up, it was possible to “work your way” through college with part-time and summer employment. Today, that is virtually impossible. Between 1989 and 2016, the average cost of a 4-year college education went from $26,902 to an eye-popping $104,480 today. Even after adjusting for inflation, the cost of college roughly doubled during those 27 years. And rising costs are showing no signs of slowing down.

I believe the time has come to take drastic action to make college more affordable: it’s time to make government loan money to colleges and universities contingent upon the institution’s keeping tuition cost increases at or below the level of inflation in the broader economy. Schools may be able to apply for a waiver in some circumstances, but we must ensure fairness and accountability across the board. We can no longer continue to saddle our young people with decades of debt caused by institutional inefficiency and inflexibility.

Along these lines, we must also restructure the way federal student loan interest rates are calculated. At present, the loan rate is based on the 10-year Treasury bond. This is unfair and has led to a situation in which the federal government is projected to make a profit of $127 billion this decade alone on student loans. That is outrageous. Students who take out loans are taking enough of a risk without the federal government making billions off of them. If we instead commit our country to profit-free student loans, it will significantly lower the cost of college.

One more way to address the high cost of college is to take action on behalf of students who transfer from one institution to another by establishing a national credit transfer system among accredited colleges. Currently, some 40% of students transfer colleges — in particular from junior or community colleges to 4-year colleges and universities — but nearly half of their courses are not accepted at their new school. A national credit transfer system would save transfer students time and money and get them into the workforce faster.

Training for a Lifetime
As President, I will lead our country to make a national commitment to what I call “Training for a Lifetime.” In the military, we constantly train and re-train servicemembers — this explains why the U.S. Air Force runs the largest community college system in the country — because technology changes so rapidly. But while technology might become obsolete, a hard worker never will.

In the United States as a whole, our spending on labor training is .001% of our GDP, the lowest of all developed countries. Yet there are great models around the country that point to ways to improve this situation. In Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Las Vegas, a private non-profit called Tech Impact runs a free 16-week program called ITWorks. The first 11 weeks of the program include education in basic information technology skills, while the last five weeks are an internship with a local company or non-profit, giving trainees some real-life, hands-on experience. So far they have had over 500 young people (ages 18-26) participate, and 75% of participants have found employment after six months, earning an average of $35,000 per year. This free program is supported by foundations, corporations, and state and local governments where it is active. With more support, it could expand further.

In order to improve access to workforce training, we need to implement a wide range of solutions on the federal level, including providing more support for public-private partnerships to increase investment in training infrastructure, more federal funding for state and local training programs, and developing a national apprenticeship program for one-on-one training. When jobs and industries disappear, the government should ensure that workers can access training for the jobs available in their place. If we don’t make workforce training for a lifetime a national priority, our country will not be able to compete with global rivals.

Seniors
As Hubert Humphrey once said, a key “moral test” of any government is how it treats “those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly.” With the population of elderly Americans poised to nearly double over the next decade, we need to make sure that seniors can depend on quality healthcare, financial security, and freedom from abuse and neglect for the rest of their golden years. Seniors are vital to our families and our communities, and they are human beings deserving of our respect and admiration. I fought every day for seniors as a Congressman, and I will continue to be their champion in the White House.

Priorities:

• Protect Medicare and Social Security.
• Put a stop to elder abuse.
• Support seniors who want to receive long-term care at home.
• Increase funding to fight diseases of the elderly, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and cancer.
• Reduce costs of prescription drugs by allowing Medicare to negotiate for the lowest drug prices.
• Restore to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau its full powers so it can adequately monitor companies and protect against fraud, scams, and predatory lending.
• Create more opportunities for senior advancement and community involvement.

A Record of Fighting for Seniors
During my time in Congress, I met with seniors nearly every weekend at senior centers, care facilities, and nursing homes across my district. It was an honor and a privilege to listen to their stories and learn from them. I was proud to have the opportunity to fight for them on Capitol Hill, and I built a strong record on issues that impact their lives. I introduced and passed through the House the first Elder Abuse Victims Act in 17 years, which aimed to protect America’s seniors from physical, mental, and financial abuse. If the Senate had passed the legislation, it would have corrected failures in state elder abuse policies and established a Center for the Prosecution of Elder Abuse, Neglect, and Exploitation; funded Elder Abuse Victims’ Advocacy Grants; and established specialized prosecution and research departments for training prosecutors and law enforcement on best practices for handling these cases. We still need to pass similar legislation today.

I consistently supported laws to support senior citizens, including to fund the National Institute of Aging; to provide NIH funding for Alzheimer’s disease research, programs, and caregiver support; to ensure seniors have access to free flu shots and preventative screenings for diseases like diabetes; to stop doctors from leaving Medicare by reversing a 10% decrease in physician reimbursement; and to fund the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which monitors companies for fraud, scams, and predatory lending, and protects seniors from these scammers and fraudsters. I also co-sponsored the Medicare Prescription Drug Negotiation Act to allow Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices. A similar piece of legislation — H.R. 1046, the Medicare Negotiation and Competitive Licensing Act — is currently before Congress, and I urge my former colleagues to pass it. The fact that federal law still prohibits Medicare from negotiating for the best drug prices is disgraceful.

Securing Medicare and Social Security
Beyond lowering drug costs, the government needs to do a better job of reining in the exorbitant costs of Medicare fraud to ensure that the system remains sustainable for future generations. As much as 10% of Medicare spending constitutes fraudulent claims — as much as $60 billion in 2013 — and only $4.3 billion in funds expended on fraudulent claims were recovered. The good news is that we have good programs to track down the fraudsters. The bad news is that Congress in recent years has cut significant funding to such programs. We can recoup $7.90 for every dollar spent on these anti-fraud programs, so these are programs we cannot afford to cut and indeed should expand. We can achieve bipartisan agreement on this, especially when it means our seniors will reap the benefits of a more solvent Medicare system.

We must also work hard to ensure that Social Security remains solvent for future generations. Under President Reagan, Social Security’s taxable income cap covered 90% of all nationwide wage and salary income, with those earning above the cap contributing nothing on that income. Today, just 83% of all income is covered, as earnings above today’s $132,900 cap have greatly increased — and almost all the loss in covered income has gone to the highest earners. We need to increase that cap so it is no longer so regressive — with the burden of paying into the system overwhelming felt by lower-income workers — and look at various other pieces of the Social Security puzzle. I have also proposed increasing payroll taxes for those earning about $250,000 — and while currently the proceeds of such taxes only benefit the Medicare program, they could benefit Social Security as well. Of course, we must also hold the line against Republican attempts to privatize both of these vital programs that have given security and peace-of-mind to seniors for generations.

Treating Seniors with Dignity
As President, I promise to keep fighting for seniors to be able to live dignified lives safe from harm and neglect. Elder abuse remains at epidemic levels, yet it is barely ever discussed. Recent estimates put the annual number of elder abuse victims at 4 million, with the vast majority of cases — a shocking 90% — going unreported. We need Congress to act and pass legislation like the Elder Abuse Victim Act I wrote and passed through the House nearly a decade ago. Such a law would include provisions for advocacy grants, funding for prosecution of elder abuse cases, and evaluate the effectiveness of state and federal programs intended to fight elder abuse. We also need to restore the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to its full powers, which have been gutted by the current administration. The CFPB is a frontline organization standing up for seniors against companies that seek to take advantage of them with fraud, scams, and predatory lending. As President, I will make certain it is able to carry out its important mission.

Another important way to ensure dignity for our seniors is to help them stay in their homes for the long term. Of the 8 million Americans receiving long-term care, almost 60 percent receive their services at home. Many seniors understandably prefer this option because of the comfort and familiarity of home. It is also often less expensive than nursing home care, at least for those who need home care workers to be present for less than 10 hours per day. Yet for too many seniors who would prefer it, home care is not an option, in large part due to a shortage of home care workers. And despite the high demand for home care workers, wages for home care work are quite low, at roughly $10 per hour. There is no single solution to this problem, but by taking a combination of steps we can gradually move toward filling the supply gap and alleviating the financial burden on families.

First, we can raise wages across the board. A higher minimum wage will give more dignity to the home care workers who treat our elders with dignity. It will also make the job more attractive to potential home care workers. Second, we need to consider increasing work visas for foreign home care workers based on analysis of all available data so that immigrant workers are filling a genuine need, not only driving down wages for current home care workers. Third, we should provide adequate tax credits and deductions for family members who provide care for their elders; for example, at present you can only deduct medical expenses that exceed 10 percent of your gross income; this should be lowered to 5 percent. And finally, given that Alzheimer’s disease almost always leads to long-term care, and that one in eight Americans over 65 suffers from Alzheimer’s, we must invest in finding a cure. Not only would a cure save families the pain of seeing a loved one fall victim to this terrible disease — the money invested in finding a cure would generate untold dividends in decreasing the cost of elder care.

Lastly, the government should be making more efforts to encourage and incentivize seniors to take a more active role in their communities. It’s great for seniors, and it’s great for the rest of society, especially young people, to be exposed to the wisdom and experience of our elders. I was proud to author bipartisan legislation to create the “Silver Scholarship Program” which authorized the Corporation for National and Community Service to award grants through public agencies or private non-profits to provide scholarships to volunteers over the age of 55 who perform at least 250 hours of community service. The scholarships could be transferred to another individual, such as a grandchild. I also introduced and passed legislation to enhance the Service Corps of Retired Executives program, a critical Small Business Administration entrepreneurial development program providing business owners with free counseling from former executives. Such programs help make seniors feel valued and appreciated in our society and give young people a tangible reason to value and appreciate them.

Defense & Foreign Policy
During my 31 years in the United States Navy — from the height of the Cold War to post-September 11th world — I traveled to more than 80 countries. I developed a profound and abiding respect for our allies whom I served alongside, and early on came to realize just how interconnected we are with other countries. As Director of Defense Policy under President Clinton and as a U.S. Congressman, I experienced first-hand the challenges of conducting a thoughtful, principled foreign policy in the context of a complicated and dangerous world. I know — deep down in my gut — that America’s prosperity at home is inextricably tied to economic development, stability, and peace abroad. As President, I will work to strengthen our alliances, modernize our military, and ensure peace and security for all Americans.

Priorities:

• Reverse America’s retreat from the global community with a strategy of engagement, and restore our standing in the world.
• Repair our fractured relationships with our closest allies.
• Stand up to belligerent actors on the world stage, from Russia to China to North Korea.
• Re-join the Iranian nuclear deal to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
• Modernize our military by focusing on the capability of cyberspace and no longer measuring our prowess by force structure numbers alone.
• Emphasize the importance of dominating cyberspace, in the realms of both cyber-security and cyber-warfare.
• Support all of our military servicemembers, including LGBT heroes.
• Provide better services and opportunities for our returning veterans.
• Re-join the Paris Accord and restore U.S. leadership to the process of fighting the existential threat of climate change.
• Establish closer economic ties with countries around the world, because countries that trade and do business with each other are much less likely to fight wars.

A Deep Record of Service to Country
Military service, quite simply, is in my blood. My father was a decorated Navy veteran who served in both the Atlantic and the Pacific theaters in World War II. During his distinguished 23-year career he rose to the rank of Captain and after his death in 2009 he was buried with honors at Arlington National Cemetery.

Like my father, I proudly attended the Naval Academy at the start of my career and began a wonderful time of service upon graduation. During my more than three decades in the Navy I served six sea tours with units of the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets and made seven deployments to the Western and Southern Pacific, Europe, and the Persian Gulf. I led a series of operational commands at sea, including Commander of an aircraft carrier battle group of 30 U.S. and allied ships, 100 aircraft, 15,000 sailors, Marines, aviators and SEALs during combat operations in Afghanistan and precursor operations to the war in Iraq. Between tours at sea the Navy helped me earn a Master’s degree in Public Administration and a PhD in Political Economy and Government, both from Harvard University.

Because the Navy invested in me and prepared me for increasing responsibilities and command at sea and ashore, my growing expertise and experience allowed me to become deeply engaged in all aspects of defense policy, strategy, and operations oversight. I served in the Pentagon on the staff of the Chief of Naval Operations as head of the Strategy and Concepts Branch and director of the Strategy and Policy Division. I was sent to Washington again to be a political-military analyst for two chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral William Crowe in the late 1980s, and General Colin Powell during the early 1990s. I was honored when President Bill Clinton assigned me as Director of Defense Policy with the National Security Council at the White House. I later directed the Navy Quadrennial Defense Review, after which I became the first director of the Navy’s strategic anti-terrorism unit, the Navy Operations Group, known as “Deep Blue.” I later served as the director of the Chief of Naval Operations’ Analysis Group, again reporting directly to the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Vern Clark. My tasking was to analyze anything that was sent to him from the senior officers under his command, and to provide an alternative perspective based on my and my team’s analyses — a demanding and at times controversial job, as my mandate was to rein in spending by maximizing efficiency. I also served as Deputy Chief of Naval Operations responsible for the Navy’s five-year, $350 billion warfare requirements budget, during which I proposed a controversial reduction in ship-levels from 375 to 260, challenging the long-held assumption that numbers were the best measure of military capability. I foresaw a future dominated by whoever best harnesses the power of cyberspace, so I believed then — and still believe now — that we can vastly improve combat effectiveness by investing in cyber capabilities.

After achieving the rank of 3-star Admiral, I retired as my daughter bravely fought her first bout with brain cancer. But my days of public service proved not to be over, and with Alex’s cancer in remission I decided to run for a seat in the U.S. Congress to represent the Pennsylvania district where I grew up. It was important to me to pay back my country for the military healthcare coverage that saved Alex’s life. After defeating a 10-term incumbent in the 2006 election — running on the refrain that “national security begins at home with health security” — I found myself back in Washington, DC. I was appointed to the Armed Services Committee, the Education & Labor Committee, and requested and received a waiver for a third assignment, the Small Business Committee (on which I served as Vice Chair). Within a few months I was a new Democratic voice on issues of war and peace, debating defense policy on Meet The Press at the 4th anniversary of the war in Iraq. I called it a “tragic misadventure,” which had been my term for it since I was first told that my carrier battle group was being redeployed from the Afghanistan war to a new war in Iraq. I shared my feeling of disappointment from that time, which I will always remember, steaming off toward the Persian Gulf and leaving most of our coalition of the willing behind. Iraq was a tragic misadventure — which most of allies knew at the time — and one for which our country and the world is still paying a heavy price.

If elected President, I will always remember this important admonition: though militaries can stop a problem, they cannot fix a problem.

Engaged Diplomacy
While I am proud of my experience, experience means little without translating its lessons into thoughtful policy. I’ve made the decision to run for President of the United States to a large degree because of the harm we are doing to our American Dream by abandoning U.S. global leadership. The cornerstone of any good national security policy is maintaining strong bonds with our allies. In every successful military engagement we’ve embarked upon — from World War II to winning the Cold War without a shot — our allies have been prerequisites to our success. When we ignore or bully our closest allies, it shows an ungrateful lack of appreciation for the global concord of friendly nations which we have led for generations and which ensures our peace at home. With all of the great challenges facing our people, we cannot afford to abandon the strategy of diplomatic engagement supported by mutually beneficial alliances that has kept our people safe and secure on the home front for most of our history.

Today, as in the past, so many of our greatest national challenges are global in nature. In addition to the overarching issue of climate change — which exacerbates issues from mass migration to food security to infectious diseases — we face geopolitical and economic competition from China (including the prospect of China-owned 5G wireless networks), threats of conflict in Asian waters, nuclear proliferation issues from Iran to North Korea, Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and election interference around the world, bitter tensions and periodic conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, tragic civil wars in Syria, Libya, Yemen, Nigeria, Congo, and South Sudan, instability in Venezuela, Burma, Sudan, Somalia, Turkey, and elsewhere, and of course our own country’s ongoing military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Every one of these challenges has the potential to impact American lives and livelihoods, directly or indirectly, and often in profound ways.

Such transnational challenges require a strategy of engagement with innovative thinking about how to cooperate best with other governments that share our values, as well as emerging nations that are open to our values. That includes sharing intelligence as appropriate; applying sanctions — economic and other — in conjunction with our allies, whenever necessary; and sometimes securing support from Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that can assist in improving situations on the ground. Trade deals and international collaboration are also critical tools in our arsenal. Our intelligence community needs to be the greatest in the world. And our diplomatic corps, on the front lines of shaping the world for our collective betterment, is vital to our interests. Our military — always a deterrent — should only be utilized as a last resort when absolutely necessary. In general, we must build a comprehensive tool kit, capable of responding to every conceivable challenge with the right set of tools. We can stay ahead of any potential adversary and also remain a beacon to people around the world who value a moral, rules-based order under American leadership.

We must return to a values-based liberal world order by revitalizing diplomatic engagement that convenes the world for two primary objectives: putting the brakes on climate change — which I address in the Climate Change & Environmental Protection issue page — and putting an end to the injustices of an illiberal world order led by China and Russia, but accompanied by emerging autocrats from Turkey to the Philippines, Hungary to Venezuela. It will take the collective effort of our allies to deter those injustices, whether they take the form of illegal territorial claims, military aggression, unfair trade practices, or human rights violations. We now know that China is using facial recognition technology to digitally track its subjugated Uigher population, many of whom languish in “re-education camps.” Meanwhile, Chinese companies also prepare to deploy 5G wireless network technology around the world, with the potential of abusing it. And as China also builds roads, bridges, dams, and other infrastructure across Africa and Latin America, it is more important than ever before for the United States to improve ties with the rest of the world. We must focus in particular on developing nations in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, to help bind them to our core values and rules of fair trade, instead of to China’s totalitarianism. Only by regaining respect and authority on the world stage can we return to a rules-based global order rooted in sustainable economic development and respect for human rights.

One critical action we must undertake immediately is rejoining the Iran nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA). This hard-won agreement, signed by all of the world’s major powers, had disarmed the nuclear threat of Iran — until we abandoned it. Breaking America’s word on the deal while Iran kept theirs is unforgivable. The recent ratcheting up of tensions with Iran is a potentially grave mistake. If we decide to launch missile strikes on Iran in an attempt to destroy deeply buried nuclear infrastructure, they might instantaneous rain hundreds of missiles on Israel and our regional bases, and close the Straits of Hormuz, cutting off 20% of the world’s oil supply. Even if we manage to destroy their nuclear infrastructure, they can rebuild it all again within four years. We must heed that old lesson of our misguided invasion of Iraq: militaries might stop a problem, but militaries don’t solve a problem. And the problem of Iran’s nuclear capability can only be solved through diplomacy.

Innovative Military
While a wise military strategy must always be undergirded by diplomacy, we must also be prepared for every eventuality. That means we must not only have the best military in the world, but also the most forward-looking. I believe we need to modernize our military forces by focusing on force posture, not force structure. Instead of merely measuring military readiness in terms of overall size and numbers, we must focus on better metrics, in particular knowledge and technology. For example, rather than buying more submarines at $2 billion each, we can develop a netted sensor information system to track enemy submarines, and then direct an aircraft to drop a torpedo for the “kill.” Rather than double-down on obsolete but expensive pieces of equipment, we must invest in new technology that gives us better capability, not just capacity.

During my last term in Congress, Defense Secretary Robert Gates came under heavy criticism for asking a Navy audience, “Do we really need 11 carrier strike groups for another 30 years when no other country has more than one?” I upset a lot of my old friends in the Navy when I came to Secretary Gates’ defense, arguing that we could reasonably reduce the total number of carrier groups to about nine because the new generation of CVN-78 aircraft carriers (like the USS Gerald R. Ford) has eight times the fighting capability of the last generation — and because some of that money could be much better spent on cyberspace, the area of warfare most in need of investment.

We must also recognize that some of the greatest national security threats we face cannot be defeated by traditional military hardware, but only by smarter cyberspace warfare, including both cyber-security and offensive cyber-warfare. The twin threats of cyber-terrorism and cyber-attacks from state actors could do devastating harm to our economy and our people. We need our Defense Department, in conjunction with our intelligence agencies and the entire interagency processes, to take a much more active role in cyber-security to defend our electric grid, water supply, communications infrastructure, computer networks, personal privacy rights, and of course critical national security installations. We must also improve our own cyber-warfare capabilities so that in the event of a cyber-war we are able to respond in kind.

Finally, and most importantly, we must always do right by the people who wear the cloth of our nation. Our military servicemembers volunteered to put their lives on the line for all of us. They are heroes, and we must recognize their heroism by always having their backs. Above all else, we must always make sure that every military servicemember has the resources they need to do their jobs and thrive as individuals and families, whether on military bases, at sea, on the battlefield, or in civilian life. Fundamental to this promise is enabling all who wish to serve — regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity — to do so openly. Transgender Americans deal with enough struggles in life. If they are called to join and serve in the military, we should welcome them with open arms — and a customary salute — not a cold shoulder. The simple reason, beyond principles of fairness and equality, is that we need the best of the best in our military — and being transgender does not disqualify anyone from meeting that definition.

As President, I promise to be a responsible and wise leader for our military and foreign policy institutions, to always do right by the people who serve, and to restore American authority and respect on the world stage.

Women's Rights
For far too long, women in America were treated as second-class citizens, refused the right to vote, beholden to the wishes of their fathers or husbands, discriminated against in employment and education, subjected in the shadows to horrifying sexual and domestic violence, and generally unable to pursue their dreams as individual human beings. Thanks to countless courageous women — and at least a few male allies — the situation for women has improved dramatically over the past century. But we still have a long way to go. As President, I will work every day to make the future brighter for the women of America and women around the world.

Priorities:

• Secure reproductive rights and reproductive health services for all women.
• Finally achieve “equal pay for equal work” by closing the gender wage gap.
• Improve access to daycare for young children.
• Pass family and medical leave legislation.
• Fight domestic abuse, sexual violence, and human trafficking.
• Expand support for women who own a small business or wish to start one.
• Advance women’s opportunities in the military and better support women veterans.

A Strong Record of Fighting for Women
As a Congressman, I fought every day for America’s women, for better healthcare, reproductive rights, higher wages, professional development, and personal safety and security. I was a strong supporter of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) which provides free preventive screenings for women, increased services such as prenatal care for pregnant women, and ensures women with pre-existing conditions are not denied coverage. I voted to make contraception a free preventive service for women. I co-sponsored legislation to fund family-planning programs and help teenagers and rape survivors access emergency contraception. I also co-sponsored legislation attempting to reduce adolescent pregnancy, HIV rates, and other sexually transmitted diseases through better sex education programs. I co-sponsored and we passed a law requiring health plans to cover a minimum hospital stay of two days for mastectomies and other breast cancer treatments, and additional legislation to improve the flexibility of grants to conduct research on environmental factors related to breast cancer.

As the son of a mother who was a teacher for decades, the brother of six sisters who are all working professionals, the husband of an impressively accomplished woman, and the father of a teenage girl with limitless potential, I have been particularly focused on supporting women in the workplace and women entrepreneurs. I co-sponsored and voted for both the Paycheck Fairness Act and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. As Vice Chair of the Small Business Committee, I introduced and passed in the House the Small Business Entrepreneurial Development Programs Act, which strengthened the SBA grant program for small business development centers to help the 30% of small businesses which are owned by women. I also co-sponsored legislation ending barriers to healthcare encountered by women veterans by developing a comprehensive plan to better address their needs and also require better training for medical professionals to understand female veterans’ unique needs.

Supporting Victims of Domestic and Sexual Violence
I was proud, every year I served in Congress, to vote to fund programs that combat violence against women, provide transitional housing assistance for victims of domestic violence, operate rape crisis centers for emergency treatment of women, provide specific grants for rural law enforcement to better address domestic violence, and reduce violence against women on college campuses. I also voted for enhancements in primary health care for veterans and programs that help veterans who are victims of sexual trauma.

I co-sponsored the International Violence Against Women Act of 2010 to permit the United States to form regional cooperative arrangements with 5 to 20 other countries to prevent sex trafficking and sexual violence. I also supported legislation to direct the Secretary of State to establish within the State Department an Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking. I voted every year to fully fund the Justice Departments Office on Violence Against Women which oversees a range of programs to help victims of domestic violence, rape, stalking, and human trafficking. And I supported legislation that directs the Secretary of State to establish an Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking.

After meeting with many survivors of domestic and sexual violence in my home district in Pennsylvania, I worked hard to establish a shelter for women and children victims of abuse in Upper Darby to ensure their safety as they transition from a tragic situation to a new life. We need to do so much more as a country to ensure that survivors of sexual and domestic violence are supported through their trauma and recovery. As President, I will work to increase resources devoted to this cause throughout the country, particularly in underserved communities.

Moving Forward, Not Backward
The last few years have been incredibly discouraging for so many women. While the movement of women survivors of abuse coming forward to tell their stories has been inspiring, it has also revealed how much progress still must be made to stop the scourge of sexual and domestic violence and harassment. Moreover, the political situation in the country has been especially troubling for women, with violence against women, objectification of women, control over women’s bodies, and general misogyny normalized in frightening ways, in the media and even in our most hallowed centers of power.

As President, I will restore respect and accountability to the White House. I will urge Congress to finally pass a law enshrining a woman’s right to choose an abortion, for that is a decision that should be between a woman and her doctor, and regardless of whether or not the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, all women across the country must have access to safe and affordable reproductive health care. I will finally achieve universal healthcare for all Americans. I will advance progressive legislation to fight domestic and sexual violence and human trafficking, both here and around the world. I will make free childcare a reality for poor parents, and make child care more affordable for lower and middle-income families through subsidies. I will pass robust family and medical leave legislation, and do more to support people who work full-time at home caring for elderly or disabled loved ones. I will support women in the military and women veterans. And I will expand access to small business loans and mentorship programs for women entrepreneurs.

Above all, I will set a good example by treating all people with the dignity and respect they deserve. We desperately need a President who understands the true value of equality and lives it every day.

Veterans
I served proudly in the U.S. Navy for over 30 years, rising to the rank of three-star Admiral. As the highest ranking military veteran ever elected to Congress, and the son of a WWII veteran, I have no higher priority than the welfare of those who wore the cloth of our nation — along with their families (for I know well that the toughest job in the military is military spouse). Identifying the needs of veterans and addressing their challenges in a comprehensive and responsible way was among my highest priorities in Congress. As President, I will be the leading champion for veterans and their families.

Priorities:

• Help veterans find quality jobs upon re-entering civilian life.
• Provide needed job training and educational opportunities for returning veterans.
• Empower veterans to start new businesses.
• Expand benefits and protections for surviving spouses and military families.
• End homelessness among our veterans.
• Address the epidemics of addiction and suicide among our veterans.
• Ensure access to the highest quality medical care for veterans’ physical and mental health.
• Hold Veterans Administration (VA) leadership accountable for meeting their responsibilities to all veterans and their families.

Opportunities in Civilian Life
It is nothing short of a moral outrage that for far too long far too many of our policymakers were willing to spend trillions on open-ended wars but unwilling to fulfill their obligations to our returning veterans, from medical care to job security to housing assistance. When we make a decision to send American troops abroad, we must also calculate the cost of eventually transitioning them to life back home. Failure to do so is a dereliction of duty.

Even today, far too many of our veterans struggle to find meaningful work. While the unemployment rate for veterans is finally low, underemployment remains a serious problem. Many veterans have families to support and so are willing to take the first job offered to them, even if it fails to utilize their full set of talents and abilities or pay them what they deserve. We must therefore renew and expand legislation like the Vow to Hire Heroes Act which provides businesses with tax credits for hiring veterans who have been looking for work for over six months or who are disabled, and increase funding for Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment (VR&E) programs, which include job training, resume development, and job-seeking skills coaching.

We must also make it easier for veterans to start their own businesses. While veterans are nearly twice as likely to own a small business as the general population, and nearly 1 in 10 small businesses are owned by veterans, today’s veterans are far less likely to own their own businesses when compared to older generations of veterans: nearly 50% of World War II veterans became business owners, and 40% of Korean War veterans, but only 4.5% of post-9/11 veterans had started their own businesses as of 2016. We must pass new legislation to provide assistance to veterans with entrepreneurial development, counseling, government procurement, and low-interest loans.

Veterans’ Health and Well-Being
Veterans are 1.5 times more likely to die by suicide than the rest of the population, and at a rate that has only increased since vets started returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan. More than 20 veterans die by suicide every day. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injuries, physical disabilities, addiction, depression, sexual violence, and housing insecurity all contribute to this crisis. We owe it to all our wounded warriors to care for them whether their injuries are visible or invisible, physical or mental. We can do better by our veterans.

We must build on the successes of the Veterans Health Administration — the part of the Veterans Administration that directly provides health services to millions of American veterans — and do our utmost to protect it from privatization at the hands of Republicans and wealthy interests like the Koch brothers. While a few shameful scandals have received much attention, overall the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) provides high-quality medical services to veterans across the country at more than 1,250 facilities. Compared to private contractors which offer comparable services to the general public through Medicaid, VHA services are uniformly rated as good or better by independent monitors. Unlike medical care for the rest of the population, care for veterans through the VA is comprehensive and integrated. Most veterans I meet are generally pleased with the care they receive through the VA. Some tell me it’s saved their lives.

Privatization is the biggest threat to veterans health care. As a case in point, consider the failed Veterans Choice program, created by Congress in 2014. Its purpose was to allow veterans who live a great distance from a VA medical facility or who face a wait time of at least 30 days to receive medical care from an authorized non-VA facility. While the program was created with good intentions, it resulted in over $2 billion in cost overruns — including at least $90 million in overbilling by third-party administrators — with over $19 billion dollars ending up in the hands of private interests, and all without improving patient outcomes. Congress voted in 2018 to scrap the program and replace it with something called the Veterans Community Care Program (VCCP), which just went into effect on June 6th, 2019. Yet watchdog groups and veterans rights organizations have sounded the alarm that this new program is not ready to launch and veterans’ healthcare will suffer with its implementation. Even the Republican chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs Johnny Isakson admitted at a hearing in April that when it comes to the VCCP “we’re going to stumble before we walk.”

The solution to the VA’s problems is not to privatize our country’s most effective national healthcare system — which indeed could be a useful model for a nationwide universal healthcare system — but the VA nevertheless does need better funding and oversight. The Veterans Administration, and especially the Veterans Benefits Administration (which administers financial and other assistance to veterans, and serves as a “gatekeeper” to veterans’ healthcare services through the VHA), could stand to be modernized and improved. First and foremost, the Military Health System and the VA need to better integrate their services, so a veteran’s physical examination upon leaving the military will suffice to determine eligibility for VHA healthcare, rather than forcing them to jump through another hoop. The VHA must reduce wait times for health services where necessary by increasing staffing and upgrading facilities. And the VA must better utilize technology to make it more nimble and efficient, such as through home treatment for mental health challenges via digital interface with doctors and psychologists — which will also require funding improved internet access for veterans in underserved communities, especially in rural areas.

As a Congressman, I co-sponsored the Women Veterans Health Care Improvement Act, which would have improved access to healthcare for women veterans by developing a comprehensive plan to better address their needs. The House passed it, but the Senate failed to do so. As President I will strongly urge Congress to pass this legislation, recognizing the unique medical needs of female veterans.

Helping Struggling Veterans
Veterans are 7.6% of the total US population, but 11% of the homeless population. Among homeless veterans, 50% suffer from a serious mental illness, and roughly 70% have substance abuse problems. We cannot forget these heroes any longer.

When I served in Congress, I voted to expand housing assistance for homeless veterans by providing at least 20,000 rental vouchers per year and creating a new supportive housing program which has caused the number of homeless veterans to fall, but we still have a long way to go. We must learn from innovative approaches taken to reduce chronic veteran homelessness like Phoenix’s “housing first” strategy in which homeless veterans are given housing before being required to prove sobriety or pass a drug test. Once housed, veterans are assigned a caseworker and provided health services and job training. After just a three-year effort, Phoenix became the first big city to end chronic veteran homelessness. We owe it to our homeless vets to replicate such programs across the country. The HUD-VASH (Housing and Urban Development-Veterans Administration Supportive Housing) program, created during the Obama administration, is a great start along these lines, but it needs a champion to fight for it. Disgracefully, President Trump’s latest budget zeroed out funding to address veterans’ homelessness.

Better funding, more integrated care, modernizing the VA, and expanding eligibility for services will help get more veterans the support they need. As President, I will demand legislators provide what is necessary to improve the lives of all who have served our country in uniform, especially those who live in struggle. But it is not enough for the federal government to simply spend money: we must spend it on programs that work, with measurable benchmarks for accountability. We owe that to our brave veterans and to all taxpayers.

Immigration
As the son of an immigrant who is now buried at Arlington, I know that the immigrant story is the story of America. Our immigrant heritage is a rich seam in our country’s history and adds much promise to our collective future. So many immigrants arrived in this country with nothing, and yet, through hard work and perseverance, saw their children become doctors, machinists, scientists, journalists, artists, welders, teachers, engineers — and even three-star admirals. No one doubts that our current immigration system is broken. But it will not be fixed by breaking it even further, which seems to be the current administration’s approach. It can only be fixed through comprehensive reform.

Priorities:

• Pass comprehensive immigration reform legislation.
• Secure our borders with smart technology such as drones and sensors, and sections of fencing where needed and appropriate.
• Increase guest worker visas and oversight of guest worker programs.
• Increase numbers of skilled immigrants, especially in STEM fields.
• Create a path to naturalization for undocumented immigrants willing to pay back taxes, pass criminal background checks, prove gainful employment, and pass a basic English language test.
• End the shameful practice of separating children from their parents or guardians.
• Restore dignity to immigrants and asylum-seekers in detention.
• Grant all immigrants and asylum-seekers the right to an attorney
• Assure timely due process for all immigrants and asylum-seekers.
• Work with the international community and explore innovative solutions to address the root causes of migration, including climate change, violence, corruption, and poverty.

Pragmatic Immigration Reform
Our immigration system is in dire need of reform. Congress’ failure over recent decades to pass a comprehensive set of reforms is harming our nation — turning away skilled workers and innovators from our shores; limiting law enforcement’s ability to strengthen border security; keeping millions of hard-working immigrants living in the shadows; subjecting uncounted thousands of asylum-seekers and migrants to inhumane and degrading treatment; preventing family unifications; and, in far too many cases, tearing infants and children from the arms of their parents. It is beyond time for the government to take positive action.

But instead of finding policy fixes that most people could support, loud factions in our two major political parties have too often taken extreme positions — one side wants to round up and deport every undocumented immigrant in the country and build a wall along the whole southern border, while the other advocates freely granting amnesty and citizenship to 11 million undocumented people and a few even call for more-or-less open borders. Neither approach is practical or consistent with our values. Finding and deporting 11 million people hasn’t worked, nor will it, and even trying involves ripping people them away from their U.S. citizen children (approximately 4 million of them). Building a wall as “the solution” will simply not work — for reasons I outline further below. And any path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants must include stringent requirements.

Concerning the border, we need to appreciate that there are legitimate national security concerns involved. When I headed the Navy’s anti-terrorism unit and later as a Congressman on the Armed Services Committee, I learned the details of how al-Qaeda terrorists in West Africa were increasingly funded by working with drug traffickers based in South America, whose networks often reach well into the United States and Europe. Border security must not only about preventing illegal immigration, but about fighting the illegal drug trade, illicit arms smuggling, human trafficking, and other transnational dangers to our domestic security and values. But this does not mean building an impractical wall across the entire border. Rather, it means smart measures, such as improved unmanned vehicles and motion detectors, as well as more staffing and better technology at border crossing stations — since most illicit trafficking of drugs, humans, and weapons, actually happens right under the noses of our border security agents, passing through our regular border crossings and other official ports of entry.

On creating a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants already here, I do believe we must approach the situation with compassion — for almost all these immigrants are good neighbors, productive members of society, and often have children or other family members who are valued American citizens — but we must also recognize that there are millions of people around the world who want a chance to become Americans but have applied through the legal paths available to them and are still waiting for their turn. I favor creating stringent requirements for undocumented immigrants to earn a path to citizenship, including a willingness to pay back taxes and fees, an ability to pass criminal background checks with flying colors, proof of gainful employment, and basic English language capabilities.

At the end of the day, we need immigrants because since 1970 our birthrate alone has not been sufficient to replace all those who pass away each year in America. If it were not for immigrants, America would have a declining population. And now with the baby boomer generation growing older and retiring at a rapid rate, our workforce needs immigrants if we are to grow our economy and not stagnate. Without immigration, we would be in a population death spiral like Japan, who’s non-immigration policy has meant anemic economic growth for the past two decades — and it will only get worse. We need immigration to keep our country strong.

More STEM Workers, More Innovation
Jobs in fields related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) drive our economy forward and have long helped America to be the most powerful country in the world. Yet our companies and non-profits that hire STEM workers face a persistent shortage of qualified workers. According to one recent study, in 2016 there were 13 job postings for every one unemployed worker with relevant STEM training. Clearly this situation is stifling to innovation and advancement for American industry. An obvious long-term solution is to better prepare American students for these jobs of the future, but the only solution in the meantime is to make sure we can attract and retain skilled workers from around the world.

In order to fill the dangerous shortage of STEM workers, we must update our visa system. Currently, two-thirds of immigration visas go to family members of US citizens and legal permanent residents, while many skilled immigrants are left looking for other opportunities. While I believe our system must always endeavor to preserve individual family units, we should also take reasonable steps to bring in more skilled workers to fill the jobs our economy desperately needs filled. As a first step, we should no longer have a cap on the number of visas we give to foreign-born students who have earned advanced STEM degrees at American universities, and we should create an expedited path to full citizenship for these workers. Such immigrants have already formed bonds within our communities, they have proven themselves adept enough in the English language to graduate from an American school, and they possess skills our companies and our countries need. It makes no sense to force them to return to the country of their birth or find another country.

In fact, data shows that retaining skilled immigrant workers creates jobs across the board: for every 100 foreign-born graduates of a U.S. master’s or Ph.D. program who stays in America working in a STEM field, over 250 jobs are created. In addition, these workers make more than a fair share of contributions to our tax base. Data from 2009 shows that the average foreign-born adult with an advanced degree paid almost $23,000 in federal, state, and Social Security and Medicare taxes, while their families received public benefits worth just 10% of that sum. The best and brightest from around the world want to come here and become Americans. We should welcome them.

A Humane Response to Migration
The ongoing crisis at our southern border has been exacerbated by an inept and too often harsh response to a very real surge in immigrants and asylum-seekers attempting to illegally cross the border or legally presenting themselves at border crossings and requesting asylum. In a woefully misguided — and obviously failing — attempt to discourage more migrants from making the often dangerous journey to our border, this administration has made matters worse with family separation and, in some places, less than humane conditions at immigrant detention facilities. Yet still more people keep coming. These attempts to scare immigrants away from America will continue to fail because despite the disgraceful conditions reported from the border every day — people forced to live in filth, denied due process in court hearings, and the anguished crying of infants and toddlers forced from their parents — the situations so many are fleeing are unimaginably worse.

Migrants coming from Central America make up the majority of the recent surge in numbers, in particular those from the “Northern Triangle” countries (Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras) and increasingly from politically unstable Nicaragua as well. They are fleeing communities where endemic violence has taken hold, fueled by the drug trade, weapons smuggling, and organized crime. For many reasons (including, at times, misguided US policies and the high demand for illegal drugs in the United States) government officials in these countries are all too often corrupt or inept. They are often incapable of fighting back against organized crime, or else they are complicit. Our country, which sends hundreds of millions in foreign aid to these countries, must do a better job of holding Central American officials accountable for seeing that our funds are spent effectively — and that they do not become fuel for the fires of corruption and instability. We must also ensure that military and policy training programs we offer to the governments of other countries center respect for due process and human rights. And we must also recognize that climate change (driven largely by industrial countries like ours) is also a driving force for immigration, including from Central America. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) recently reported that 2.2 million Central American farmers have suffered significant crop losses in recent years due to drought and sometimes excessive rainfall. Lakes and aquifers are drying up, and excessive heat in the summer can sometimes make life unbearable. These weather extremes are caused by climate change, so unless we deal with climate change (as I’ve detailed on the Climate Change & Environmental Protection issue page) the migration problem will only get worse.

Migrants don’t choose to leave their homes and communities on a whim. They would much rather stay at home, in a familiar community that is safe and prosperous, but when that no longer becomes an option they get desperate and become willing to take immense risks. That is why we must enhance the focus and effectiveness of programs meant to mitigate the conditions people are fleeing — there really is no other way to stem these high migration flows. And with climate change it will only get worse if we do not act now. We must always show these people compassion and respect — because that is who we are as a nation, the home of the compassionate Statue of Liberty, inscribed with those wise words of Emma Lazarus — both by working hard to help their countries become better places to live, and by treating migrants humanely when they arrive on our doorstep.

Poverty
I believe deeply that there is no place for poverty in the richest country in the world. All Americans should have access to food, shelter, clean water, safe neighborhoods, quality medical care, and education. As President, I will do everything in my power to help people to move from poverty to prosperity.

Priorities:

• Increase nutrition assistance for needy families.
• Improve federal housing policy to fight homelessness.
• Hold municipalities accountable for providing clean drinking water to all residents.
• Fight racism and discrimination in all its forms, as these all too often conspire to keep people poor.
• Fix our healthcare system by restoring the Affordable Care Act and advancing it with a public option. Let its success lay the groundwork for a transition to a national healthcare system.
• Create more high-quality jobs through a national infrastructure plan and increased support for small businesses.
• Fund early education for all 4-year-olds, subsidize daycare for low to middle-income families, and institute paid family and medical leave, because taking care of loved ones should not force anyone to lose their job.
• Make a national commitment to “education for a lifetime”, investing in training infrastructure so workers can continuously learn new skills as needed, while improving access to higher education and lowering its cost.
• Combat global climate change, which inevitably impacts the poor first and worst.

Declare a New “War on Poverty”
It has been more than 55 years since President Lyndon Johnson declared a “War on Poverty” in his 1964 State of the Union address. The official poverty rate in the United States then was 19%. Today, it stands at 12.3%. By some measures, it is closer to 14%. While that does represent a real improvement, it is still a far cry from where we need to be as a nation. Far too many people still lack the resources to provide for their basic needs, including food, water, shelter, electricity, and heating. Far too many children still go hungry, the only square meal they receive coming just five times a week at their public school lunch. This should be unacceptable to all of us — and as President I will work every day to finally bring an end to poverty in America.

Tackle Poverty from Every Angle
Poverty is a complicated problem, both nationally and at the individual level, and as such, solving it will require a multi-faceted approach. The most fundamental answers lie in shoring up and expanding our vital social safety net, as studies repeatedly prove that the social safety net works.

Take the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (or SNAP, more commonly known as “food stamps”), which helps some 42 million Americans meet their daily nutritional needs. Roughly half of all children in the United States are fed by SNAP at some point in their young lives. The cost of SNAP to the federal government in 2017 was roughly $68 billion. That certainly sounds like a lot of money — and it is — but it is less than 2% of the federal budget. More importantly, according to a study by the Economic Research Service (a branch of the US Department of Agriculture), every additional dollar spent on SNAP results in $1.79 in economic benefits, including in reduced healthcare costs, and boosts to retailers, food processors, farmers, and in turn everyone else in every local economy around the country. So for the $68 billion we spend as a country, our economy banks over $121 billion in return. That sounds like a great investment to me! And it makes cuts to the program even more harmful.

Subsidized housing also needs expanding, with long wait-lists for government-backed housing across the country. Better funding for the Department of Housing and Urban Development and its anti-homelessness programs will boost the entire economy and create more jobs. Likewise, government-backed healthcare, child care, employment, infrastructure, and educational programs (described in more detail elsewhere in my platform) will do the very same.

Fight Injustice, Fight Poverty
If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s injustice. When I was a Captain in the Navy a superior officer asked me how I felt about the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which barred LGBT Americans from serving in the armed forces unless they kept their sexuality or gender identity a secret. I responded that I thought it was wrong and that the Supreme Court would probably overturn it very soon, likely within a couple months. My prediction proved incorrect and it took closer to a couple decades before it was finally overturned. Now the current Administration is again discriminating against brave and patriotic Americans who only want to serve their country with the decision to ban transgender servicemembers from our armed forces.

Beyond the military, it remains legal for employers to fire LGBT people simply because of their sexuality, gender identity, or gender expression. LGBT people can still be legally denied housing and public accommodations (such as spending a night in a hotel) as well. Such discrimination hurts all of us, not only for moral reasons, but because it makes it harder for LGBT people to get ahead and thus acts as a drag on the whole economy. Likewise, everyday discrimination against people of color, religious minorities, immigrants, and others, such as those looking for a job or a house or apartment, remains too commonplace (although it is at least illegal) — and makes life more difficult for so many people. Tackling poverty requires a holistic approach recognizing the legacy of generations of systemic discrimination. Creating a fairer and more just society will improve life for all of us.

Climate Change and Poverty
The greatest uncertainty we face as a society is the grave peril of climate change, which is already bringing increasingly extreme weather and natural disasters to the United States, and threatens food shortages, mass migrations, and other major societal disruptions. Exactly how the climate crisis will play out is unclear, but we know the first and worst effects of climate change are already being felt by poor and marginalized people, from Central America to Syria to the Pacific Islands, and in American communities as well — for proof, one need only look to the destruction caused by Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, or the spread of diseases like West Nile Virus, or increases in heat-related illnesses and death. If we do not make solving the climate crisis our biggest national — and international — priority, it is people already living on the edge who will suffer most. But in the end, if we continue to do nothing, climate change will eventually make all of us much poorer.

Violence Prevention
I believe the government must do more to prevent senseless acts of violence, whether they be mass shootings in public places or interpersonal abuse in private homes. As the father of a daughter and brother of six sisters, I believe we must fight violence against women in all its forms. I have a strong record as a Congressman of standing against domestic violence, sex trafficking, elder abuse, and abuse of the disabled. I have also demonstrated consistent support for common sense gun laws to end the scourge of gun violence. Everyone deserves to live in safety and security.

Priorities:

• Maintain and expand programs that protect and support survivors of domestic violence.
• Fight organized human trafficking, including sex trafficking.
• Expand laws aimed at preventing elder abuse and abuse of the disabled.
• Pass common sense gun laws, including closing the gun show loophole and restoring the assault weapons ban.
• Fix the National Instant Criminal Background Check System to ensure guns stay out of the wrong hands.

Protecting the Most Vulnerable
As a Congressman, I consistently stood on the side of victims of abuse and neglect. I introduced and worked hard to ultimately pass the first Elder Abuse Victims Act in 17 years. The law aimed to protect America’s seniors, including those suffering from Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, from physical, mental, and financial abuse by addressing and correcting failures in state elder abuse policies, establishing a Center for the Prosectution of Elder Abuse, Neglect, and Exploitation, and funding Elder Abuse Victims’ Advocacy Grants, among other provisions. Unfortunately, the Senate failed to take action, and no similar legislation has passed in either house of Congress in the ensuing decade. With an estimated 4 million victims of elder abuse every year, it is time for the U.S. government to act.

I also worked hard in Congress to fight abuse of people with disabilities. I co-sponsored and voted for legislation to extend federal hate crimes laws to cover crimes motivated by a victim’s actual or perceived disability, and to provide assistance to state and local law enforcement to streamline the investigation and prosecution of those crimes. People who prey upon the most vulnerable among us are the lowest of the low and deserve to punished to the fullest extent of the law.

Supporting Victims of Domestic and Sexual Violence
I was proud, every year I served in Congress, to vote to fund programs that combat violence against women, provide transitional housing assistance for victims of domestic violence, operate rape crisis centers for emergency treatment of women, provide specific grants for rural law enforcement to better address domestic violence, and reduce violence against women on college campuses.

I co-sponsored the International Violence Against Women Act of 2010 to permit the United States to form regional cooperative arrangements with 5 to 20 other countries to prevent sex trafficking and sexual violence. I also supported legislation to direct the Secretary of State to establish within the State Department an Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking. I voted every year to fully fund the Justice Departments Office on Violence Against Women which oversees a range of programs to help victims of domestic violence, rape, stalking, and human trafficking.

After meeting with many victims of domestic and sexual violence in my home district in Pennsylvania, I worked hard to establish a shelter for women and children victims of abuse in Upper Darby to ensure their safety as they transition from a tragic situation to a new life.

Fighting Gun Violence
I believe in the right to bear arms, but I am also a strong proponent of common sense gun laws, such as closing the “gun show loophole” (which allows people to avoid background checks by buying guns at gun shows and conventions or from other “private sellers”), closing the “gun kit” or “ghost gun” loophole (which allows people to buy portions of guns that are easy to assemble into functioning firearms), and creating a more effective national background check system, including by enabling states to add felons, domestic abusers, and other violent criminals to the background check database.

I also believe we must once again ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines. Having served in the armed forces for over thirty years, I know what weapons of war are, and I know that they do not belong in American communities. The horrifying mass shootings of recent years should be all the proof our lawmakers need to finally take action.

Guns kill tens of thousands of Americans every year, not only by in homicides, but in suicides and accidents as well — in fact, more US gun deaths each year are by suicide than homicide. Compared to other industrialized countries, the US is in a league of its own when it comes to deaths by guns. No other country comes close. Given these facts, it is incumbent on the government to seek creative solutions to our epidemic of gun deaths.

One idea worth considering is to require all gun owners to be licensed and to register their guns, as we require automobile drivers to be licensed and to register their cars (this would likely require repealing a law that bans the creation of a national database on gun owners). Similarly, the federal government could require all gun owners to carry liability insurance for each gun they own. Insurance companies (many of which will be looking for a new business model after we finally institute a single payer-healthcare system!) will no doubt require gun owners to prove that they keep their guns in a locked gun safe and they are trained in gun safety best practices in order to receive the best rates, or even to get insurance at all.

Lawmakers owe it to the American people to explore every possible remedy to the crisis of gun violence in our country. We must find a way to reduce the staggering number of gun deaths each year while still maintaining our 2nd Amendment rights. It’s long past time we got serious.

Curb Corporate Power
During my four years in Congress, I got a first-hand view of the impact of lobbying in Washington, DC. The end result is that all too often our laws and policies are directed by corporate power and finances, ensuring corporate interests have priority over the interests of the American people, as well as people around the world. Our government is supposed to be “of, by, and for” the people, so as President I will do everything I can to stop corporate abuses of power and have our government once again be accountable only to the people. With technological advancements allowing corporations to become ever more powerful, it has never been more important to increase oversight of corporations and make sure they never act against the public interest.

Priorities:

• Lobbying reform to put an end to the undue influence of corporate lobbying.
• Tax fairness, so corporations pay their fair share.
• Strengthen antitrust laws.
• Stop “corporate welfare,” subsidizing industries such as fossil fuels and industrial agri-business, among so many others.
• Overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, because corporations are not people and money is not speech.
• Reinstate Net Neutrality to keep the Internet a level playing field.
• Address intellectual property theft and cyberspace security which result in both companies and foreign countries (in particular China) threatening American enterprise and security.
• Establish that personal data belongs to a person, not to a corporation or government.
• Develop appropriate regulations of nanotechnology, biotechnology, and artificial intelligence, because while these may have great potential, they are also ripe for abuse.

Follow the Money
Lobbying is not inherently a harmful practice. Lobbyists often point out that it is an activity protected by the 1st Amendment, upheld by the Supreme Court. Indeed, at its root, lobbying is simply a group of people coming together to argue for their interests in Congress and at government agencies. But something is very wrong when corporations spend $2.6 billion on reported lobbying expenditures, while public-interest groups and labor unions spend 34 times less. Over the last 50 years corporate lobbying has itself become a business, and as money has become ever more central to politics — especially since the Citizens United decision enabled corporations to make unlimited campaign expenditures through Political Action Committees (PACs) — the power of lobbyists has only increased.

I am strongly in favor of legislation which would make it illegal for politicians to take contributions from lobbyists, ban lobbyist “bundling” (coordinating campaign donations), and close the revolving door that allows members of Congress to convert their access and professional networks into lucrative jobs. We must also increase transparency requirements for PACs, close loopholes, increase enforcement, end “gerrymandering” with independent redistricting commissions, and improve our voting systems and practices as well.

I also believe we need corporations to pay their fair share of taxes, and that we should end the sorts of “corporate welfare” programs that lobbyists have been so adept at getting written into law. A good start would be rolling back at least half of the recent corporate tax cuts that the current administration passed into law (and which is presently ballooning the federal deficit). According to analysts, half of the cost of those tax cuts were used by corporations for stock buybacks, not capital investments, training, or creating good-paying jobs. Tax reform should also include restoring the estate tax for America’s 400 wealthiest families to what it was in 2009, and having billionaire hedge fund managers — taxed at only 15% — pay at the same rate as other income (37% for the highest-earning tax bracket). When corporations and the wealthy people who run them pay their fair share, the whole country stands to benefit.

End Corporate Welfare
By some estimates, the federal government directly pays out $100 billion in corporate welfare each year. Federal tax breaks for corporations cost an additional $200 billion. Indirect subsidies cost us billions more: a recent study from the University of Illinois and UC-Berkeley found that the fast food industry alone receives some $7 billion in indirect subsidies because the wages it pays are so low that all those billions in public must be spent by taxpayers on public assistance for fast food workers. Wal-mart costs a further $6.2 billion in further indirect subsidies due to its low wages. Subsidies for corporate jets cost us $3 billion per year. Big-pharma saves untold sums because we don’t allow Medicare to negotiate for better drug prices. And a tax-deduction for mortgage interest on second homes costs us $8 billion. This madness must end.

It’s time to take a good hard look at corporate welfare across the board. Corporate jets should no longer be subsidized. Second homes should no longer be subsidized. And big businesses that refuse to pay their workers a living wage should most certainly no longer be subsidized. I support a new law mandating that businesses with over 500 employees cover 100% of the costs of public assistance which the government spends on their workers. So if an employee at an Amazon distribution center receives $1,200 in SNAP benefits, Amazon would reimburse the government $1,200. This will force companies to either pay a living wage, or pay taxpayers back for what we spend on their workers.

Some of the most egregious examples of corporate welfare involve industries that do lasting harm to our environment and the global climate, namely the fossil fuel industries and giant agri-businesses. Shockingly, oil companies receive seven times the subsidies of renewable energy. Some of these are just ridiculous: a $2.3 billion subsidy allows oil and gas companies to deduct 100% of costs that aren’t directly linked to the final operation of a well; a $1.5 billion subsidy called “Last-in, First Out Accounting for Fossil Fuel Companies” allows oil companies to undervalue their inventory; and the Deep Water Royalty Relief Act inexplicably costs taxpayers $1.1 billion by reducing royalty rates charged for certain underwater oil drilling operations. And while BP came to a $20 billion settlement following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster, our business-friendly tax code allowed them to deduct over $15 billion of that, depriving taxpayers of hundreds of millions of dollars. Why should these companies receive special treatment when they are already making money in vast quantities, and costing so much to us and future generations in terms of environmental damage and climate change?

Farm subsidies cost an estimated $20 billion every year, and the big corporations that receive them need review. Despite a 2000 law that prohibits disclosure of information about recipients of farm subsidies, we know that the majority of farm subsidies go to the largest 15% of all farm businesses, including some of the wealthiest landowners in America, while most small farmers — who generally farm more sustainably — actually lose money on their farming operations. A study by the Environmental Working Group even found that almost $10 million in agricultural subsidies go to members of Congress or their families. That is not right. Big farming operations and factory farms cause huge environmental problems, from dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico to immense carbon, methane, and nitrous oxide emissions (24% of all global greenhouse gas emissions stem from agriculture and land use), and taxpayer-funded subsidies are helping to foot the bill. While I support crop insurance programs and other necessary subsidies that provide our food security, we must dramatically re-prioritize our funding of the agricultural industry to focus on supporting small family farms and larger farms willing to transition to sustainable practices, or already employing them. As I detail in my Climate Change & Environmental Protection issue page, widespread adoption of regenerative farming practices could actually shift agriculture from being a major driver of climate change to being a weapon against it. Any subsidies to the agricultural industry should be focused on this goal.

Staying on Top of New Technologies
Corporations already have so much power in American society, and technological advancements are poised to give them even more power. The coming installation of 5G wireless networks is of particular concern, since the technology is all coming out of China, and brings with it potential for spying and other “Trojan Horse” hidden technology that could one day cripple our communications in the event of a cyber war. In the fields of nanotechnology, biotechnology, and artificial intelligence, corporations will soon be able to accomplish feats previously believed to be beyond our grasp. But as we have seen time and again, technological innovations can have unintended consequences. For instance, Monsanto’s genetically engineered crops designed to be resistant to the herbicide glyphosate have made Roundup the most popular agricultural chemical in the world, but only now are we beginning to realize the unintended effects: increased rates of cancer among people exposed to glyphosate, the development of “superweeds” resistant to herbicide, degraded soil (because glyphosate is an antibiotic too, destroying vital microorganisms in soil), and the loss of food sources and habitat for endangered and threatened species like the monarch butterfly.

The potential dangers of nanotechnology, gene editing, and artificial intelligence are not difficult to imagine, so government needs to stop its hands-off approach now that these technologies have become realities. Nanotechnology is already used in over 600 consumer products, from toothpaste to electronics, with global sales into the trillions of dollars, yet the potential harms of these products have yet to be fully probed. For instance, germ-killing nanoparticles of silver are increasingly used in products from clothing to stuffed animals, though it’s understood that they can harm human health, poison wildlife, and lead to antibiotic resistance in dangerous bacteria. A recent animal study in the UK has found that carbon nanotubes, which are now being used extensively in consumer products, can cause the same kind of lung damage as asbestos. On the gene editing front, a Chinese scientist used the new CRISPR-Cas9 technology to “gene-edit” a human being immune to HIV from birth. Subsequent study has found that people who naturally have the same mutated gene are more likely to die early deaths. From biotech, to nanotech, to gene-editing, a future in which giant corporations have the ability to alter life itself is not somewhere off in the distance, it’s already here.

The federal government must play an active role in regulating these potentially harmful sciences. We must apply the precautionary principle to regulatory oversight. We must not have regulatory agencies being run by former employees of the industries they are supposed to regulate, as is too often rampant. Unfettered lobbying and corporate influence in the halls of power are bad enough, but when combined with revolutionary technological advancements, they could become downright disastrous.^[1]