Platform
Learn where Aaron stands on several issues. Don’t see what you’re looking for, reach out today to begin a conversation!
Government Accountability & Ethics
Those in government owe a duty to the people they serve to operate with ethics and hold themselves and other to account. I would demand accountability from all elected officials, regardless of party. First and foremost, I would work to impeach and hold accountable any member of the executive branch or the judiciary who violated the law. I would also be a strong advocate for clear and enforceable codes of ethics for members of Congress and judges, with penalties to match the offense, including loss of salary or office. I would support the thorough investigation of all credible complaints of official misconduct.
Immigration and Citizenship
Federal immigration enforcement is out of control. People who should never be caught up in ICE activity, including lawful asylum seekers, people with protected status who assisted the U.S. armed forces in Afghanistan, lawful permanent residents, and even U.S. citizen children are being detained and deported without meaningful process.
There is no excuse for this. Due process is not an inconvenience in protecting the American homeland: there is no American homeland without due process.
As your congressperson, I will go to immigration detention facilities and I will demand full, eyes-on, accountability for what is being done in the name of the American people. So far, the incumbent has both failed and refused to do this.
I will also continue to stand with our migrant community and activists, attend rallies in support of those affected by ICE action, and accompany those who fear persecution to court. These are things I am doing now, and will continue to do if elected.
I will also work to protect our right to citizenship under the 14th Amendment. While the administration seeks to undermine the plain meaning of the Constitution and buy time to stack the federal judiciary with judges who will permit this backdoor amendment process, Congress continues to do nothing. As your member of Congress, I would ardently withhold support from any bill that sought to implement this absurd interpretation of the Constitution, and I would advance legislation to enshrine the clear constitutional meaning of birthright citizenship into statute. Furthermore, if the federal judiciary abandoned its commitment to interpreting the Constitution consistent with its plain meaning and precedent, I would withhold support from any budget that continued to fund the enforcement of such rulings.
Foreign Policy
The United States can and should be a leader on the world stage. We must, however, be judicious in what we are leading the world toward. We should be working to strengthen our ties to traditional democratic allies and expand the appeal of democracy worldwide. I am disturbed by the current toleration of democratic backsliding and the amoral approach to alliances with dictators and despots. I would work to limit foreign military interventions and would not support funding for any such intervention undertaken without the explicit authorization of Congress, and even then, only in instances of threats to our territorial integrity or in support of our treaty obligations.
The Economy and Labor
The United States remains an economic powerhouse, and American workers are the most productive workers on Earth. But too many people work hard without enough to show for it. Tax and subsidy policies that favor passive income along with laws that have weakened collective bargaining and labor power have cause Americans to work hard to support shareholders and executives who buy islands, spaceships, and more influence while struggling to put food on their own tables.
American workers now also face increased pressure from automation and artificial intelligence. While these technologies have the potential to produce more goods with less labor, there is nothing in place currently to ensure that American workers will benefit from this. Congress has failed to address the foreseeable future of American work, and the current administration has focused its A.I. policies on promoting right-wing speech in chatbots rather than protecting the American people.
As a candidate who will likely live to see the consequences of my actions or inaction on these crucial emerging issues, I have a strong incentive to engage in this area with the urgency it deserves. Policy in these areas must be aimed at protecting and promoting human dignity and agency while also rejecting fear-based positions.
First and foremost, we must complete the work of ensuring that every worker in America has healthcare that is not job dependent and is completely portable within the United States. I support universal, single payer, healthcare for all Americans. A universal healthcare system will ensure that employers cannot exert undue influence over workers through control of their access to healthcare, and will allow those with entrepreneurial ambitions to explore them more freely, thus expanding the dynamic potential of the economy.
Second, welfare and public assistance should be streamlined and made more robust through a Universal Basic Income (UBI) program. This would help eliminate duplicative programs and overhead, provide direct and flexible assistance to all Americans without onerous paperwork, and would eliminate most avenues for fraud and abuse. Such a system would be paid for by an appropriate tax on profits derived from displacing workers through automation, and would serve as a technology dividend to ensure that all people are benefiting from the emerging technology economy.
Third, I would forcefully advocate for an end to the broad authority of the executive branch to impose tariffs without specific congressional approval. These tariffs amount to a hidden sales tax on the American people. Our nation was born out of the slogan “no taxation without representation” and our Constitution entrusts the House of Representatives, the house closest to the people, with initiating tax policy. Giving that power to the executive branch was a mistake and it is one Congress must fix.
Fourth, I would end corporate tax loopholes that allow companies to shelter unspent earnings or benefit shareholders at the expense of the broader economy. Corporate spending on wages, research and development, and investment in products and infrastructure are positive influences on the economy. Hoarding money, shuffling it around in the form of paper debts that all pay out to the same small group of billionaires, and manipulating markets to fund these charades is not. A tax policy that incentivizes real growth in wages and beneficial investment is necessary to putting an end to the wealthy treating the economy as a private casino where workers ended up covering all the bets.
Fifth, we must re-establish an inheritance tax that interrupts the accumulation of unearned wealth from generation to generation. While fewer and fewer American workers can even afford to leave a home to their children, an increasing amount of our total economic output is passing from generation to generation a small handful of wealthy families. The United States will always reward hard work and success, but being born into a wealthy family is neither of those things and allowing generational wealth to accumulate risks creating an aristocracy, something the United States should never have.
Technology
I believe that data privacy is an important and often overlooked aspect of our daily lives. Congress should be doing more to protect the privacy of Americans’ data, not only against amoral market actors and foreign adversaries, but also against our own governments. I would support closing loopholes such as the data-broker exception that make otherwise private data available without a warrant by using third-party businesses to acquire it. I would also work to incentivize tech companies to implement data protection for consumers rather than monetizing the intimate aspects of people’s lives without their understanding. Finally, I believe that AI has tremendous potential, but it must be developed responsibly and safely, particularly as models become increasingly capable of autonomous behavior. I do not support the unregulated expansion of AI. Additionally, I believe that AI companies should be working to develop renewable energy sources to power data centers and non-extractive means of cooling, rather than creating new strains on polluting power systems and using huge amounts of fresh water.
Environment and Energy
New energy investments are necessary to secure a future for our next generation and all who come after that. I support phasing out fossil fuels as rapidly as possible while making public investments in renewable energy production and modernizing our distribution systems. Doing so will provide better prospects for economic stability, environmental health, and social justice and equity.
I believe that threats from climate change caused by carbon emissions are among the most severe threats to our future as humans on this planet. If elected, I support enshrining the not only the authority but the duty of the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases as sources of environmental harm and harm to human health, thus ending the tug of war between successive administrations regarding the 2006 endangerment finding and its impact on federal regulations. I also believe that Congress should be proactive in guiding the development of national policy on global warming and end its decades long deference to the executive branch, which has proved incapable of effectively creating lasting policy on this issue.
Public Health
I have worked in public health and I know that America has a public health messaging crisis that is becoming a catalyst for real-world disasters: measles outbreaks, rising teen nicotine use, multiple addiction problems, and worsening access to preventive care. I have also seen firsthand the destructive approach of this administration to public health, including demoting and demonizing highly qualified public health professionals who have helped tackle major public health issues, while promoting unqualified “experts” to proclaim pseudo-scientific theories and politically motivated propaganda.
We must create viable pathways for positive health outcomes and we must do so quickly. It is fine to tell Americans to eat healthy food, exercise, and avoid chemical additives, but doing so without providing a framework to make those changes possible, such as addressing food deserts, child poverty, and burnout due to overwork, is irresponsible. Furthermore, we need a public health policy that follows the scientific and medical consensus and a public health authority that bases its messaging on sound, peer-reviewed research rather than political considerations.
We must work quickly to restore access to life saving vaccinations and restore trust in the tried and true system that has all but eliminated many deadly diseases. While patient choice and autonomy must be respected, a patient only has true autonomy when they can make their choice based on the best available information and know that they will have access to care. Doctors should be free to give full throated support, backed by high quality public health research and policy, to recommend vaccines that are beneficial to their patients. Politically motivated decisions to reduce or eliminate mandatory vaccine coverage for certain diseases and to weaken the science-based recommendations of our nation’s public health authority do not promote greater patient autonomy. They force patients to wade through disinformation and restrict life-saving and cost-saving preventative care to those who cannot afford to pay out of pocket. The next Congress must ensure that all people have access to high-quality information about vaccination and can be vaccinated without cost.
I am a proponent of safe, clean, and naturally derived food as a gold standard for the American diet. I support efforts to remove unnecessary chemicals and additives from the commercial food supply and the ensure that people know what they are putting into their body. However, this process is not accomplished through headline grabbing announcements and flipping the food pyramid upside down. We must exercise care in how we approach food safety as a component of public health and, most importantly, we must ensure that people have access to the safest, highest quality foods at prices every person can afford. I believe that like almost all health decisions, how best to nourish one’s body is a decision best left to the individual in consultation with their providers and by reducing barriers to access to high quality, safe foods, we can make those discussions more meaningful.
All of this points to concepts that the current administration has sought to banish from our public health landscape: health equity and environmental social justice. Health outcomes are not evenly distributed in society and ignoring the fact that specific classes of people have worse health outcomes, are routinely excluded from studies about how to solve public health problems, and are frequently denied access to public health resources will only deepen the problem. Similarly, ignoring the environmental determinants of public health and why historically marginalized groups have greater exposure to environmental contaminants due to historical exclusion from more desirable living areas and working conditions will only compound the problems that a history of racism and discrimination have created. Good health for all is a winning agenda, but it requires that we wrestle with a past littered with uncomfortable truths and policies intended to create disparate outcomes. We cannot build better health policy by being blind to the mistake of the past and refusing to be proactive in correcting them.
America is a beautiful and rich country where a healthy society is very much achievable. Through a return to science-based health advice, improved access to care, and a focus on restoring justice and equity to health policy, we can work together to make that happen, not just for those traditionally privileged under public health policies, but for all of us!
Healthcare Costs & Access
I believe that healthcare is a human right. I also believe that a healthy population and workforce are vital to a prosperous society. As such, it makes sense both morally and economically to ensure that all people have access to healthcare. I support a Medicare for All approach, which will secure basic services and will still allow a supplemental market to exist for those services that go beyond the scope of basic quality care.
I support eliminating the income limits on Medicare and Social Security contributions in order to secure the future of these programs. Additionally, I would oppose spending that borrows from these programs unless there was a demonstrable and enforceable mechanism to ensure they are paid back with interest over a specified and short period of time.