POLICY ISSUES
This campaign launched March 11, 2025. Since the beginning, we’ve talked about taking a different path to achieve a different result. I intend to look at past, current, and future legislation through a lens of restore, reform, and repeal. What legislation has passed that negatively impacts our country and that needs to be repealed? What has been taken away that should be restored? And lastly, what in our political system needs to be reformed?
This isn’t your typical campaign, and this isn’t your typical issues section. Our intent wasn’t to tell people what to think, but rather to listen to their concerns. In response to what we heard, this is our plan to improve the lives of the people we seek to serve.
Seniors
“It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”
~Hubert H. Humphrey
I was raised to respect my elders, but societally, not only have too many lost respect for them, some are now treating them as a commodity for profit. The past decade has seen private equity groups increasingly investing in nursing homes and spreading into broader senior living and assisted living communities. This often results in higher patient costs, reduced staffing levels, and increased mortality rates.
Currently, 19% of SNAP recipients are elderly, receiving on average $188/month in benefits. Additionally, as many as 3 out of 5 seniors who qualify for SNAP do not participate, totaling nearly 5 million eligible older adults missing out on assistance, due primarily to misconceptions about eligibility or the complicated application process.
Focus on nursing home regulations and staffing levels were increasing under the Biden Administration which sought to implement reforms, while the current administration’s focus on deregulation poses challenges to oversight. This increases the burden on state governments and decreases the overall standard of care.
Our social security reserves are expected to run out sometime in the next 6-7 years. At this point, incoming payroll taxes will only cover roughly 77–79% of promised benefits, resulting in an automatic 21–23% reduction of benefits. This would most likely result in raising the retirement age or increasing the social security payroll tax for current workers.
When it comes to protecting our seniors, profit should not be the goal. This is one area where regulations and oversight are extremely important. Our seniors should be entitled to certain standards of care and allowed to retire with dignity and respect. We should do what we can to limit private equity firms from investing in nursing homes. When it comes to our seniors, care and comfort should be prioritized, not profit.
We should hold senior facilities to a national minimum standard of care, including better patient to staff ratios, easier access, and more education about programs like SNAP and Medicare. The federal government should be leading the way in elder care, not leaving it all up to the states where standards vary greatly. The comfort you retire in shouldn’t be based on your previous address.
The social security shortfall must be addressed, and the easiest way to do that is to “scrap the cap.” Currently, people stop paying into Social Security on any earnings exceeding $184,500. Eliminating that cap, or even continuing to tax earnings at a reduced rate after reaching the cap, would extend social security solvency for several more decades.
