[Note: My website includes details applicable to many of the responses below. Please see www.howeforpa10.org.) 

- A few years ago, I read a review of international health care systems. At the time, France’s was rated as the “best.” France’s system is a public-private system that resembles our public-private education system. I think it is a good model for the US, in part because it would be familiar and because it builds on the public-private system we have now. The goal must be public health care available for all with a private system for those who prefer alternatives. I should note that the private system can provide initiatives that might be lacking in public health care, just as is now the case. 

That said, a sudden shift to a public system can be very economically disruptive, harming the very people we should be trying to help. Consequently, I have proposed four steps to build on the success of the PPACA and to move us toward a system that covers everyone. First, PPACA exchanges everywhere should be provided a public option devised by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Second, the age threshold for Medicare should be reduced by one year each year over a three-year period. That would lower eligibility to 62. Third, raise the poverty threshold for Medicaid by four percentage points each year for three years (from 138% of poverty to 150%). Fourth, fully resource the Veterans Affairs health care system and study the feasibility of including first responders as patients. Local communities struggle with health care costs for police and fire department personnel. After these steps have been enacted, we should pause to assess their effectiveness and then move forward with the most successful efforts and continue until everyone has access through some public, affordable means. This way, we can reach the goal of coverage for all without causing severe harm to our economy. 

2. What is your position on immigration reform and securing our borders? Do you support a path to citizenship for Dreamers? What about the other 10 million immigrants?   

- It is less the case that we are a great nation and, therefore, people come here from around the world, than it is that people have been coming here from around the world, therefore, we have become a great nation. I challenge immigration opponents to explain why it is “illegal” to come to the United States. The roots of these laws are based in racism. Trump is restoring racism as the central basis for our immigration law. He must be stopped. We need a process that codifies the status of everyone who enters the United States and allows them to remain and contribute unless they have a clear connection to criminal activity. Our Dreamers must stay and become American citizens. Undocumented immigrants must be given a path to citizenship. And, we must welcome immigrants who come in through the regular channels. Last, we must welcome to the maximum of our ability asylum-seekers and refugees as required by international law. All of these groups have long histories of contributing more than they take and of become great Americans. We harm no one more than we harm ourselves by excluding them. 

3. How will you address economic inequality? Include in your answer your position on raising the federal minimum wage and the impact of the recent tax legislation passed by Congress.  

- Income inequality is the topic of my second series of town hall meetings. I strongly support unions and strongly support raising the minimum wage. If you work, you should not be poor. I favor reversing the recent Republican tax cuts to provide larger cuts for middle-class and working-class Americans and increasing taxes on the wealthiest earners. Unique to my campaign, I am demanding the elimination of the payroll tax cap. Under this cap, American workers earning $127,200 per year or less give up 6.2% of their income to support Social Security. Members of Congress—they all make at least $174,000 per year—give up just 4.53% of their income in payroll taxes. A person making $1,272,000 per year gives up only 0.62%. This is an unfair and regressive tax. As I note in my town hall meetings, eliminating the cap will fully fund Social Security and likely will allow for a percentage decrease. If the rate is cut to 5%, a family making $50,000 per year will keep $600 more per year in their pockets. For some, that exceeds the tiny, temporary income-tax cut they just got from Republicans. 

- For two decades, my Air Force career included assignments in Japan, South Korea, Italy, Germany, and extended stays in Qatar and Jordan. I have been an outsider and a non-citizen for over half of my adult life. I understand, in some ways, what it means to have less rights than my neighbors. More than that, I have been a student of the US Civil Rights Movement for a couple decades. I had the pleasure of a semester at American University attending a course taught by Julian Bond. I have a library of histories from the movement, including a personalized inscription in Congressman John Lewis’s memoir. My wife and I organized and led two bus tours from Panama City, Florida, to Civil Right Movement historical sites in Montgomery, Alabama. More still, the Air Force spent decades indoctrinating me on treating everyone with respect and dignity and in ensuring that equality prevails for everyone. I look forward to few things more than serving with Congressman Lewis and fighting beside him for racial justice, economic justice, and environmental justice.

- Everyone is endowed with the same inherent rights, dignity, and justice, regardless of their identity. My support for abortion rights is firmly rooted in the truth that women deserve the same rights as men to make their own health-care choices. For the past year, I have been supporting a transgender woman in her contemplation of a candidacy for the PA General Assembly. Humans are humans. Period. Each one of us deserves the opportunity to thrive. 

- I think it is important to point out that candidates for Congress cannot accept donation from any entity but individual US citizens. That said, my strong support for climate change will ensure that fossil fuel groups will not be spending any money to elect me, only on trying to defeat me. I have taken the “No fossil fuels money” pledge presented to candidates by Sunrise Pennsylvania. I point out to voters that the same streams of pollution that are creating CO2 concerns about climate change are also poisoning our water, our air, and our children. I am calling for an accelerated deployment of green energy sources (wind, solar, tidal, and wave) to replace fossil fuels as rapidly as possible. This is an infrastructure program. This is a jobs program. This is a national-security program. It is vital to our future as a world leader. We must not miss this opportunity. 

- The federal government must make sure that all states are providing fair and effective education to everyone. We used to get a good return on K-12 education, creating a pathway to the middle class. That is no longer true. There is a gap between that education and economic success. We must close that gap with more education, and we must have viable education pathways for people who have had their jobs terminated by advances in automation. Education must be understood as a life-time experience and a national investment. Cuts in state and federal spending are shifting the burden to property owners and to college students overwhelmed with debt. This is harming our nation. We must increase funding. Diverting public school money to “school choice” programs wastes tax dollars and harms education in our public schools. 

When I retired from the US Air Force, I pledged to increase the number of educated, informed voters as a means to help justify the sacrifices I knew my fellow Airmen were making. I told my campaign team when we started running against Lou Barletta over a year ago that if we tried only to replace his name with mine and failed, we would have accomplished nothing. Instead, we are continuing to work at increasing the number of educated, informed voters. The health of our democracy depends on them. 

8. While keeping the 2nd Amendment intact, how can we reduce gun violence in this country? Please prioritize how you will work to this end.  

- Let me start by saying I am 100-percent with the kids of Parkland and our local students who are speaking out on this and am looking forward to getting a grade of “F” from the NRA. 

Republicans repeatedly look at comprehensive gun-safety bills and say something like, “While I support many of the changes in this bill, there are some things I cannot accept. Therefore, I must vote ‘no.’” That’s a damnable lie. They are merely masking their goal to keep a favorable NRA rating and NRA funding. I will bring four items to the floor, one at a time, and force Republicans to vote on each of them, taking away their excuses and exposing them to the voters. The four measures will be: universal background checks on ALL transfers of gun ownership; repeal of the Dickey Amendment, allowing the CDC to research gun violence; a ban on bump stocks; and a ban on sales of new, high-capacity, semi-automatic weapons—rifles and pistols. I am a deer hunter and a gun owner, and I have nothing to fear from changes like these. Nor, do any other lawful gun owners. 

- Simply put, we need legislation that reverses the catastrophic effects of the US Supreme Court’s erroneous ruling in Citizens United. Corporations are NOT people. They do NOT have the same inherent rights of human beings. It is abundantly clear that Citizens United is causing grave harm to our Democracy. This must end. 

My campaign is running on a thrifty budget that focuses on face-to-face interactions with voters instead of the remote and expensive practice of impersonal mailings and other contacts. We favor town hall meetings as our primary way to reach voters and to convince them that I am the best available candidate. We advertise our campaign as an example to others. 

- We have long had a justice system that is marked by institutional bias, resulting in real harm for the working class and poor in this nation, including especially members of minority groups, starting with African-Americans but increasingly involving injustices for Hispanic-Americans. We need rigorous and very active oversight from the federal Justice Department. However, with Jeff Sessions in charge, the DoJ is moving in the opposite direction. Sessions needs constant oversight by a Democratic-led Congress, or he will do immeasurable harm to minority communities in the US. 

Police forces and friendly prosecutors cannot provide credible investigations of police shootings. They should be barred from doing so. An independent national body should handle the investigations of all police shootings. 

I have called for ending all federal prohibitions on all intoxicants, so that the states can find better approaches. The war on drugs is an abject failure. Nonetheless, Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions want to double-down on that failed approach. This threatens even important programs like Pennsylvania’s medical marijuana reform. Ending federal prohibitions will limit the federal role to policing drug gang activity and leave the states free to do what is right for their citizens. 

- Ordinarily, I would say climate change and its impacts like mass human migration and effects on our national defense infrastructure would be the first and the rise of regional hegemons not closely tied to or respectful of international norms and United Nations rules would be the second. However, the biggest current threat is in our White House. Donald Trump is a continuing threat to our national security. 

Not only is he putting Russia first ahead of the United States and committing a constant stream of actions that are favorable to Russia and damaging to the United States (see for example his fights with our allies in Europe), but he and Rex Tillerson have emptied and severely weakened the State Department. Vital roles are unfilled. We are in the midst of some poorly planned interaction with North Korea while we lack even an ambassador to South Korea. This ad hoc, haphazard approach to foreign policy will harm us and our allies. It makes us weak in the face of Russian aggressions. 

I have been telling people for months that we do not need to know why Trump is putting Russia first ahead of the United States. It is enough to see that he is putting Russia first ahead of the United States. A police officer does not pause to ask herself, ‘I wonder why that man is shooting all those children.’ A police officer intervenes. Congress must intervene. Congress is failing in its duty to protect the United States. So, as I tell my audiences: If Donald Trump has not been impeached by the time you send me to Washington, when I get to Washington, impeaching Donald Trump will be my first task.