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Quick Facts
Personal Details

Caucuses/Former Committees

Former Member, Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations Subcommittee, United States House of Representatives

Former Member, Asia and the Pacific Subcommittee, United States House of Representatives

Former Member, Environment Subcommittee, United States House of Representatives

Former Member, Research & Technology Subcommittee, United States House of Representatives

Former Ranking Member, Space Subcommittee, United States House of Representatives

Former Chair, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations (Foreign Affairs), United States House of Representatives

Education

  • MD, University of California at Irvine, 1991
  • BS, Biological Sciences, University of California at Irvine, 1987

Professional Experience

  • MD, University of California at Irvine, 1991
  • BS, Biological Sciences, University of California at Irvine, 1987
  • Clinical Professor, School of Medicine, University of California at Davis, 2005-present
  • Former Chief Resident, Internal Medicine, California Pacific Medical Center
  • Physician, MedClinic Medical Group
  • Associate Dean, Admissions, School of Medicine, University of California at Davis, 2004-2007
  • Chief Medical Officer, County of Sacramento, 1999-2004
  • Medical Director, Care Management, Mercy Healthcare for Sacramento, 1997-1999

Political Experience

  • MD, University of California at Irvine, 1991
  • BS, Biological Sciences, University of California at Irvine, 1987
  • Clinical Professor, School of Medicine, University of California at Davis, 2005-present
  • Former Chief Resident, Internal Medicine, California Pacific Medical Center
  • Physician, MedClinic Medical Group
  • Associate Dean, Admissions, School of Medicine, University of California at Davis, 2004-2007
  • Chief Medical Officer, County of Sacramento, 1999-2004
  • Medical Director, Care Management, Mercy Healthcare for Sacramento, 1997-1999
  • Representative, United States House of Representatives, District 7, 2013-present
  • Candidate, United States House of Representatives, California, District 7, 2018, 2020
  • Candidate, United States House of Representatives, District 3, 2010

Former Committees/Caucuses

Former Member, Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations Subcommittee, United States House of Representatives

Former Member, Asia and the Pacific Subcommittee, United States House of Representatives

Former Member, Environment Subcommittee, United States House of Representatives

Former Member, Research & Technology Subcommittee, United States House of Representatives

Former Ranking Member, Space Subcommittee, United States House of Representatives

Current Legislative Committees

Member, Committee on Foreign Affairs

Member, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology

Member, Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Global Human Rights

Chair, Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, and Nonproliferation

Member, Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight (Science, Space, and Technology)

Member, Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics

Religious, Civic, and other Memberships

  • MD, University of California at Irvine, 1991
  • BS, Biological Sciences, University of California at Irvine, 1987
  • Clinical Professor, School of Medicine, University of California at Davis, 2005-present
  • Former Chief Resident, Internal Medicine, California Pacific Medical Center
  • Physician, MedClinic Medical Group
  • Associate Dean, Admissions, School of Medicine, University of California at Davis, 2004-2007
  • Chief Medical Officer, County of Sacramento, 1999-2004
  • Medical Director, Care Management, Mercy Healthcare for Sacramento, 1997-1999
  • Representative, United States House of Representatives, District 7, 2013-present
  • Candidate, United States House of Representatives, California, District 7, 2018, 2020
  • Candidate, United States House of Representatives, District 3, 2010
  • Member, New Democratic Coalition, present

Other Info

Favorite Movie:

Gandhi, Love Actually, Pretty Woman, Slumdog Millionaire, Almost Famous

Favorite Musician:

Sting, U2, Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Tom Petty, Earth Wind and Fire, James Taylor, Cat Stevens.

Favorite Quote:

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is." -Albert Einstein

"Let him who hath no sin cast the first stone." -Jesus Christ

"An ounce of practice is worth tons of preaching." -Gandhi

"Civil rights are positive legal prerogatives -- the right to equal treatment before the law. These are rights shared by all -- there is no one in the United States who does not -- or should not -- share in these rights." -- Julian Bond

"There are all too many people who, in some great period of social change, fail to achieve the new mental outlooks that the new situation demands. There is nothing more tragic than to sleep through a revolution." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." - Henry David Thoreau

"You can have anything you want -- if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, do anything you set out to accomplish if you hold to that desire with singleness of purpose." - Abraham Lincoln

Hobbies or Special Talents:

I enjoy traveling, fishing, swimming, camping, golfing, & reading. I am a collector of experiences and an observer of the world that I encounter. In everything I do I strive to believe more in the world that is possible than the world as it is.

Policy Positions

2021

Abortion

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

Budget

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

2. Do you support expanding federal funding to support entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare?
- Yes

Campaign Finance

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

Crime

Do you support the protection of government officials, including law enforcement officers, from personal liability in civil lawsuits concerning alleged misconduct?
- No

Defense

Do you support increasing defense spending?
- Unknown Position

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. Do you support providing financial relief to businesses AND/OR corporations negatively impacted by the state of national emergency for COVID-19?
- Yes

Education

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

Energy and Environment

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

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

Guns

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

Health Care

1. Do you support repealing the 2010 Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare")?
- No

2. Do you support requiring businesses to provide paid medical leave during public health crises, such as COVID-19?
- Yes

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

National Security

1. Should the United States use military force to prevent governments hostile to the U.S. from possessing a weapon of mass destruction (for example: nuclear, biological, chemical)?
- Unknown Position

2. Do you support reducing military intervention in Middle East conflicts?
- Unknown Position

Trade

Do you generally support removing barriers to international trade (for example: tariffs, quotas, etc.)?
- Yes

2019

Abortion

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

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?
- Unknown Position

Campaign Finance

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

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

Education

1. Do you support requiring states to adopt federal education standards?
- No

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

Guns

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

Health Care

1. Do you support repealing the 2010 Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare")?
- No

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

Marijuana

Do you support the legalization of marijuana for recreational purposes?
- Unknown Position

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

Congress Bills
Speeches
Articles

The News Statesman - "We were sounding the alarms": the doctor in Congress who tried to warn Trump about a coming pandemic

May 20, 2020

By Emily Tamkin In late February, public health officials made an announcement: they had confirmed the first known case of a person getting Covid-19 without having travelled abroad or coming into contact with someone who had had the virus. This first reported case of community transmission was detected at the University of California, Davis Medical Centre in Sacramento. For some, the news was confusing and concerning. For others, it was too remote to be considered a direct threat. But for one member of Congress, it was something more personal. Ami Bera, who has represented a California congressional district since 2013, was previously chief medical officer for Sacramento County. The reported patient was at, as Bera calls it, "my old hospital". The coronavirus pandemic caught many in the public, and in politics, by surprise; the same day that first case of community transmission was confirmed, President Donald Trump told a White House press conference that the caseload in the US would, "within a couple of days", be "close to zero". But this was not the case for Bera who had, three weeks earlier (5 February), chaired the first congressional hearing on the coronavirus. He was, in fact, pushing for pandemic preparedness even before SARS-Cov-2 existed. In 2018, he led opposition to White House plans to cancel pandemic funding, and wrote to the then national security advisor, John Bolton, to object to Donald Trump's decision to disband the National Security Council's pandemic preparedness office. "We fear these recent decisions will leave the United States vulnerable to pandemics and commit us to a strategy of triage should one occur," he warned. "Being a doctor in Congress during a pandemic obviously gives me a unique perspective," Bera tells me in a phone interview. Having not only practised medicine but worked as a chief medical officer, he says, means that he's thought through epidemics, albeit on a smaller scale. How do you identify diseases? How do you try to contain and trace them? What does treatment look like? "That's always been an area I've been interested in," Bera says. But interest and a determination to act are two different things. Why, I ask Bera, did he think it was important two years ago to push for pandemic preparedness? It wasn't, back then, the big story of the day. "Because one of the lessons we learned in 2014 with Ebola ... you needed one person whose sole responsibility was to work across the interagency process," he says. Had the pandemic preparedness infrastructure not been dismantled, "We would have had someone paying attention … You would have had someone early on in 2020 when Wuhan was starting to shut down … You would have had someone who understood this virus is coming to the United States". And maybe you -- maybe we -- would have been more prepared with diagnostic test prep. But "none of that existed". "That's why we were sounding the alarms. We knew we would see additional viral outbreaks." Bera, age 55, was born in California, and is a product of its state college system: he got his undergraduate and medical degrees at the University of California, Irvine. He graduated from medical school in 1991 and practised in the Sacramento area, eventually becoming the county's chief medical officer. He did a stint as an educator, too, as a clinical professor of medicine at University of California, Davis. Bera ran for Congress in 2010 and lost; he ran again in 2012 and won. He's been there since, and is the longest-serving Indian-American in Congress. Bera, of course, isn't the only doctor serving in Congress during a pandemic. There are others, including Rand Paul, the senator from Kentucky who used the Senate gym while awaiting his Covid-19 test result (he tested positive). Bera is especially notable because, in addition being a doctor, also holds the title of chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee's Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, and Nonproliferation -- overseeing an area of US policy that will surely come under greater scrutiny as the Trump administration tries to blame China for the coronavirus pandemic. "China is not without responsibility," says Bera, pointing to the country's "lack of transparency" around the virus. "I think we should hold China accountable. But at the end of the day, this is a virus. We're in the middle of a global pandemic. "I think the reason why Trump is shifting to blame China is his incredible ineptness. You can quote me on that. It is almost malpractice how badly he and his administration have handled this pandemic". He notes that Trump is not the only one who seems to have had a difficult time wrapping his head around reacting to the pandemic. "You're seeing … autocrats truly struggle with managing this pandemic," he says. "Because it's a virus. You can't control a virus. You can only control how you respond to it." I asked if he worries that Trump -- and other leaders, but specifically Trump -- will, via their go-it-alone rhetoric, create further issues with the supply chains and co-operation needed to combat the virus. "Yes, very much," he replies. "If President Trump somehow gets re-elected and maintains this go-it-alone approach, it will make [the pandemic and recovery from it] harder, longer, cost us more lives." The world won't be rid of this virus until the majority of the world's population is vaccinated. And even if a vaccine is discovered in the next six to 12 months ("a monumental task"), it has to be manufactured. Six billion doses will need to be made; there will need to be enough glass in which to store and transport it; there will need to be sufficient syringes with which to inject it into the people desperately waiting for it. And what if one country discovers a vaccine that works for the elderly and another discovers a vaccination for children? "It's a monumental logistical and scientific challenge," Bera says. Having diagnosed the problem, he offers a prescription. "The world has to work together on this."

Events

2021

Feb. 4
Tax Webinar for Small Businesses

Thur 2:00 PM – 3:15 PM PST

Oct. 6
5th Annual Brain Health Forum

Tue 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM PDT