Minnesota Congressional Election 2018 Political Courage Test

Abortion

1. Do you generally support pro-choice or pro-life legislation?
- Pro-choice

2. Other or expanded principles
- Birth control needs to be universally available and affordable or the number of abortions will rise regardless of their legal status or availability. I prefer safe abortions over dangerous illegal ones, especially when in conjunction with family planning options and proper sex education. The number of women who have abortions is and has been decreasing since Roe V. Wade, and unless we want to see a resurgence of those old numbers, we should keep abortions safe, legal, available, and as unnecessary as possible.

Budget

1. In order to balance the budget, do you support an income tax increase on any tax bracket?
- Yes

2. In order to balance the budget, do you support reducing defense spending?
- Yes

3. Other or expanded principles
- I'm a veteran. One thing I saw time and time again is the ploy the military uses when faced with budget cuts. They take away benefits to the enlisted troops. Tuition Assistance vanishes, and they start reducing Basic Allowance for Housing. We need to audit the companies the military contracts out instead. These companies have been receiving multi-million dollar contracts from the military for years and use that money to lobby Congress for more contracts. They are the fraud, waste, and abuse of military funding, and we can find more legitimate contractors and save enormous sums of money.

Campaign Finance

1. Do you support the regulation of indirect campaign contributions from corporations and unions?
- Yes

2. Other or expanded principles
- I think indirect campaign contributions should be illegal for any entity. Favors and bribes only serve to corrupt otherwise functional democracies.

Economy

1. Do you support federal spending as a means of promoting economic growth?
- Yes

2. Do you support lowering corporate taxes as a means of promoting economic growth?
- No

3. Other or expanded principles
- For the decades corporate tax reducing policies have been enacted, we have never seen economic growth result from them. We do, however, see economic growth from social security and jobs programs. We see economic growth when we address poverty in a meaningful way. Supply side economics does not function, it only increases income inequality. Demand side economics, however, can work.

Education

1. Do you support requiring states to adopt federal education standards?
- Yes

2. Other or expanded principles
- We need national standards for education. However, we don't need the federal government making invasive decisions about curriculum. That should be handled locally.

Energy & Environment

1. Do you support government funding for the development of renewable energy (e.g. solar, wind, thermal)?
- Yes

2. Do you support the federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions?
- Yes

3. Other or expanded principles
- Development of renewable energy and the manufacturing of energy products is absolutely vital not just to the health of our planet, but the continued success of our nations economy. We focus entirely too much tax payer money into the fossil fuel industry. These companies are now supplying a dangerous product that can't keep up with the efficiency and falling price of renewable alternatives but refuse to reinvest to keep competitive in the future. If we don't put more money into renewable energy, other countries will pick up the slack and become the world's supplier of energy and top economy.

Guns

1. Do you generally support gun-control legislation?
- Yes

2. Other or expanded principles
- We're the only country that has this level of gun violence. I'm fully under the impression we can curb the violence through common sense reform and by allowing the CDC to study gun violence on a consistent basis.

Health Care

1. Do you support repealing the 2010 Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare")?
- Yes

2. Other or expanded principles
- The ACA does not come close to what Americans need and deserve from their country concerning health care. We need a universal single payer system like Medicare for All. I'm in full support of making the ACA obsolete by instating a more comprehensive plan that supplies care to every citizen without economic discrimination.

Immigration

1. Do you support the construction of a wall along the Mexican border?
- No

2. Do you support requiring immigrants who are unlawfully present to return to their country of origin before they are eligible for citizenship?
- No

3. Other or expanded principles
- There are entirely too few options for an immigrant seeking citizenship in the United States. We need more comprehensive and available paths to citizenship as we clearly require more people in this country to do the work available. Immigrants on the whole provide economic benefit to the country they move to, so why not make sure they pay taxes and keep the money they earn in their new home instead of trying to send them back to the home they fled from. Also, a wall is a child's idea of an immigration policy.

Marijuana

1. Do you support the legalization of marijuana for recreational purposes?
- Yes

2. Other or expanded principles
- Legalization will lead to greater tax revenue, fewer markets for criminal enterprise, a lighter case load for public defenders, a decrease in prison population, less excuse for police profiling, and will, quite frankly, be the biggest and perhaps the only successful operation during the war on drugs. The legalization that has already occurred in a few states has been the most devastating blow to drug cartels who once made the bulk of their money from selling marijuana in the U.S. Let's finish the job the right way.

National Security

1. Should the United States use military force in order to prevent governments hostile to the U.S. from possessing a nuclear weapon?
- Yes

2. Do you support increased American intervention in Middle Eastern conflicts beyond air support?
- No

3. Other or expanded principles
- The United States should continue to work with the U.N. when dealing with potentially dangerous nations with and without nuclear capabilities. Diplomacy is always the first option, but if that fails, and the U.N. agrees, military force may become necessary. However, I have seen too often the use of military force being the initial option, and that's something I will not abide. There are no wars that have occurred in my lifetime I would have voted in favor. We are making expensive mistakes that put us in greater danger when we wage war.

Administrative Priorities

Please explain in a total of 100 words or less, your top two or three priorities if elected. If they require additional funding for implementation, please explain how you would obtain this funding.
- Enact a Constitutional Amendment that overturns the Citizens United decision and changes our private campaign finance system into a public one funded by one additional higher tax bracket. Pass a single payer health care system funded by a Medicare flat tax on all tax payers. Audit the military and its contractors the find fraud, waste, and abuse at the highest echelons to secure a pay increase for our troops, better prices for our gear, and a leaner, less expensive military.