Priorities

Gabe Evans and Donald Trump have relentlessly attacked our healthcare and our freedoms. Evans even said that he supports a federal abortion ban that would override our rights here in Colorado. And he voted for steep cuts to Medicaid, stood by and did nothing as health insurance costs skyrocketed, and voted to defund Planned Parenthood.

Thanks to Evans, nearly 30,000 people in our area will lose healthcare coverage. That’s just wrong. 

Unlike Gabe Evans, I’ve voted to protect and expand access to health care. In the Colorado legislature, I took on the big insurance companies and passed a law that required them to authorize care for patients right away, instead of delaying care and access to critical prescription medications for weeks by burying you and your doctor under mountains of paperwork.

I’ve also voted to protect and expand care by capping insulin costs, ensuring community health centers have the funding they need, and supporting our rural hospitals and doctors. And I have a 100% pro-choice voting record and will always defend your freedom to choose when and whether you want to start or grow your family.

Here’s how I’ll protect and expand health care in Congress:

• Work to reverse the steep Medicare and Medicaid cuts in Gabe Evans’ budget law, which may force nursing homes to close and make it harder for Medicare providers, especially in rural areas, to provide care.
• Add vision, dental, and hearing coverage to Medicare.
• Expand the government’s ability to negotiate prescription drug prices for Medicare beneficiaries.
• Lower health care premiums on the Connect for Colorado Health Exchange.
• Restore federal funding for Planned Parenthood.
• Restore federal protections for abortion rights and fight back against Republican attempts to restrict abortion and birth control access.
• Increase reimbursement rates for Medicare providers, allowing providers to stay open.
• Reverse Trump’s cuts – which Gabe Evans has stayed silent on – to federally-funded research for serious diseases like cancer, Alzheimer’s, and more.
• Require insurers to fully cover childbirth.

Growing up in a low-income family, I know the value of a strong economy and a good paying job, and I’m proud to be one of the most labor-endorsed congressional candidates in the nation. That’s why I’ve worked to boost job training here in Colorado, so that everyone has the opportunity to get ahead. In the legislature, I’ve brought together labor and business to increase funding for apprenticeship programs and support emerging industries in our state, and I also authored a law to make it easier for military spouses to find jobs. 

In Congress, I’ll continue this work by:

• Increasing apprenticeship programs and trade education at community colleges.
• Restoring the clean energy tax credits that Gabe Evans repealed so that clean energy facilities and factories open in our district.
• Supporting our small businesses by modernizing the Small Business Administration so that the SBA actually works for our communities. 
• Ending tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas.
• Boost funding for our federal antitrust agencies so that large corporate players play by the rules and don’t squeeze Main Street.
• Passing the PRO Act.
• Protecting our farmers and ag industry by repealing Trump’s tariffs that have devastated export markets.

Social Security and Medicare are a sacred promise for every American. Gabe Evans’s budget law cut $500 million from Medicare, and put nursing homes in jeopardy of closing with steep Medicaid cuts. That is completely unacceptable. In Congress, I will work to:

• Reverse the steep Medicare and Medicaid cuts in Gabe Evans’ budget law, which may force nursing homes to close and make it harder for Medicare providers, especially in rural areas, to provide care.
• Add vision, dental, and hearing coverage to Medicare.
• Expand the government’s ability to negotiate prescription drug prices for Medicare beneficiaries.
• Increase reimbursement rates for Medicare providers, allowing providers to stay open.
• Safeguard Social Security for generations to come by shoring up the trust fund. Under no circumstances should we be cutting Social Security.

Growing up in a working class family, I know that a strong education is transformative for our kids and families. The promise my teachers saw in me led me to become the first person in my immediate family to graduate from college. I got my start in public service by volunteering in my kids’ classrooms in the Adams 12 Five Star School District, and in the legislature, I passed the law that fully funded Colorado’s public schools for the first time in over a decade. I also passed the law that made community college and the first two years of Colorado public universities free for families who earn less than $90k a year, and expanded access to apprenticeships and trade education.

In Congress, I’ll continue to strengthen our schools, from Pre-K to higher education. That’s why I’ll work to:

• Ensure Colorado gets our fair share of federal education dollars. When the Trump administration temporarily froze $70 million in education funding to Colorado, Gabe Evans stayed silent. I’ll always fight for Colorado taxpayers and bring your hard-earned dollars home.
• Expand funding for early childhood education programs like Head Start.
• Increase Pell Grant funding, and allow student loan borrowers to refinance their loans.
• Reverse the Trump Administration's new limitations on student loans for critical professions so that students from all income levels can have the opportunity to earn the necessary credentials and compete for these jobs.
• Reverse the Trump Administration’s wind down of the Department of Education. 

Our immigration system is broken and in need of serious reform. We are both a nation of laws and of immigrants. Many immigrant communities call our district home, and many are living in fear right now. It’s heartbreaking and horrifying to hear frequent stories from constituents who send their kids to school with passports or birth certificates, and from small businesses that are hurting because their customers are afraid of being racially profiled. Gabe Evans told us he supported deporting criminals – but he’s doing nothing as ICE enforcement sweeps up U.S. citizens and grandmas and as ICE shoots and kills law-abiding citizens.

Everyone deserves to feel safe in their community, and we need to ensure that we have an orderly system that allows people who want to work and contribute to our communities to come here legally while preventing those who wish harm on Americans from entering. To do that, we need to shore up our southern border to prevent human trafficking, the flow of drugs and weapons. 

The following principles should be key to our immigration reform efforts:

• Passing the DREAM Act to provide a pathway to citizenship for people who were brought to the U.S. as children.
• Ending abusive immigration enforcement practices that are sweeping up American citizens and creating fear across our district, instead of targeting violent offenders and making communities safer. Read my plan to keep our communities safe and bring accountability to ICE here.
• Reforming the U.S. asylum system to, among other things, expedite processing of asylum claims, prevent fraud and deter false claims.
• Fully securing our southern border, including funding border agents and using technological enhancements to detect fentanyl, weapons, human smuggling, and other illicit activities. 
• Increasing funding for immigration judges so we can rapidly process asylum claims.
• Making it easier for doctors, nurses, and other healthcare providers to immigrate to the U.S. to ease our rural healthcare provider shortage.

Too many elected officials view public service as a way to enrich themselves, not to serve their communities. We need to reform the system to rebuild trust in our government. I don’t take contributions from corporate PACs, because I want to be accountable to the people I serve, not large corporations. I’ve taken the Unrig Washington pledge to tackle corruption. To make the system work better for all of us, I support:

• Banning members of Congress and their spouses from owning or trading individual stocks.
• Enacting meaningful campaign finance reform to get big money out of politics.
• Passing a federal law to ban gerrymandering.
• Requiring federal judges to abide by a binding code of ethics.
• Increasing fines for violations of campaign finance and ethics laws.