Our Priorities

As the father of two young children, my personal experiences as a parent motivate me to lighten the burden for other working families. According to a recent report by the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center, Virginia ranks 32nd in cost of living. We need to take measures that will help to preserve the earning power of Virginians and Americans broadly by lowering everyday costs experienced. It’s not sufficient to simply call for a one-time tax cut, families need savings that will help their bottom line on a monthly basis.

As your next Congressman, I’ll fight for policies that help families reduce day-to-day expenses and impact everyday lives, including:

• Universal Paid Family and Medical Leave.
• Universal Pre-Kindergarten from ages 2 and up.
• Establishing a Working Families Bill of Rights, which includes a right to 40 hours of earned sick leave.
• Reducing the tax burden on working families by pushing for the removal of the cap on the SALT Deduction, expansion of the Federal Child Tax Credit, and implementation of a Homestead Deduction which would reduce real estate property taxes.
• Promoting support for funding higher salaries for our educators, medical professionals, and first responders (including firefighters, emergency medical service, and law enforcement).
• Establishing training programs that help Virginians find jobs or change careers, including “Next Generation” and “Emerging” fields, so that individuals are in a place to transition to new careers more easily.
• Supporting our military service members, veterans and their families by improving housing, education, and disability benefits; offering more job-readiness training and programs; and expanding opportunities to achieve gainful employment in civilian sectors; and standardizing benefits ordinarily offered by certain states (e.g., tax-exemption for military pensions).

MAGA Republicans are attempting to scale back our freedom and further harm our nation’s most vulnerable populations. I will work to stop any actions that would make it harder to vote, reduce access to reproductive rights, or otherwise violate the principles of equal protection for all Americans.

You can count on me to fight for your fundamental rights. I will work hard to: 

• Protect the voting rights of all citizens.
• Defend a woman’s right to make her own medical decisions.
• Help to create a fair and equitable justice system that works by putting forth legislation that promotes a judiciary with adequate trainings, including managing unconscious biases and ensuring fairness and tolerance around diversity.
• Support the Equality Act which would expand protections for LGBTQ+ people from discrimination in employment, housing, credit, jury service, and federally funded programs, and public places and spaces.
• Support civil rights legislation, including the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act which would reinstate portions of the Voting Rights Act which have been eroded, and the Economic Inclusion Civil Rights Act, which would restore and protect the intent of Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 by adopting a motivation test that assesses the intent behind discriminatory actions impacting a person’s access to economic
• Push back and defend our nation against hate speech, including racism, antisemitism, islamophobia, transphobia, and any other toxic rhetoric meant to target members of the community.

As the husband of a Virginia public school teacher, I know firsthand about the challenges our educators experience. Moreover, we have seen a record number of provisional licenses — short-term licenses granted for teachers who have not met all state requirements — being issued to stave off the ongoing teacher shortages plaguing schools. This is largely due to low wages, increased workloads with fewer resources, and a politicized school environment. The teacher shortage has implications for our schools, and by extension, our students.

Educators and students deserve more than they get today, and in Congress, I will work to:

• Increase funding for teachers, bus operators, and school staff.
• Give students equal access to a quality education, regardless of the zip code that they live in or the amount of money their parents make.
• Protect the integrity of our education system and curriculum, by pushing for the adoption of core principles in standard courses, such as African American History taught in American History, and updated guidelines as to recommended topics, such as coding, personal finance, and fact-checking of online sources. History should be taught accurately and our students should receive a complete education on topics important for becoming productive members of society.
• Give public schools incentives to improve teacher recruitment and retention.
• Ensure that students can learn in a safe environment, free from gun violence by promoting gun safety measures.
• Provide and expand universal broadband access, to ensure that all students have a fair shot at learning and thriving in their educational experience.

Everyone deserves access to quality health care irrespective of their race, ethnicity, income level, location, or insurance provider.

I will fight to make sure no one has their basic well-being needs ignored through affordable care initiatives including:

• A national push for the Cover All Kids initiative, which provides funding for low-income children who are currently denied health coverage through Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Programs.
• Reducing drug prices for all Americans through negotiation of drug prices, and the creation of an online database which will provide easy comparison of drug pricing by manufacturers, allowing individuals to compare prices across the industry.
• Improving pandemic prevention and response for potential future outbreaks, by pushing for funding towards research and studies around effective measures that can be taken in light of challenges faced during the COVID-19 outbreak.
• Modernizing our hospitals, with improved statistics around medical outcomes across all demographics. This includes tracking data around medical outcomes by all hospitals, based along certain categories including race, gender, and ethnicity.

As a Virginian who commutes regularly to D.C., I know firsthand the challenges around high density population and the headache of driving on I-66 during rush hour, and deciding between backed-up traffic or expensive tolls. I will work to invest in initiatives that expand support for local infrastructure development, including:

• Addressing the issues around traffic congestion through pilot programs that go beyond basic roadway expansion.
• Looking into potential price gouging practices by tolls and capping excessive fees.
• Evaluating how roadway projects are impacting residents and their properties, including eminent domain practices.
• Incentivizing and lowering the cost of green energy investments, including pushing for Virginia and other states to adopt initiatives such as refunds to those who purchase solar panels and other alternative energy sources for their homes.
• Protecting against poorly planned and invasive development, while encouraging diverse business investments.
• Creating opportunities for affordable housing through initiatives such as incentives provided to developers who invest in “blighted” structures and other sub-market-priced buildings so that their resale value remains at market price.