Building care infrastructure and economic equity
What do you see as the biggest barriers and challenges facing the care work industry and care workers?
“At the federal level, I've supported a whole variety of bills that have supported the child care industry, whether it's the for the providers themselves and helping people to start and create these businesses and keep them sustainable, or to help parents pay the cost of child care. It's gotten, in some cases, as expensive as college tuition, or it's made it so difficult to pay that many parents find they can't even afford to go back to work. And frankly, we need parents in the workforce if they choose to go there… We should really think about [childcare] as a societal responsibility.”
"We should really think about [childcare] as a societal responsibility.”
Ensuring reproductive and gender-specific healthcare
What do you see as key policy interventions to protect access to reproductive health care in the state?
“We've definitely fought hard at a federal level to both protect the funding to Planned Parenthood through Medicaid and through Title X. And the misguided, ideologically driven cuts that have happened at the federal level and have just been eating away over time have done an enormous amount of damage to all of the institutions that help do that level of care—Planned Parenthood, family planning. It's just a really horrible time.
So we spend a lot of time making the case to people and helping them understand that those are essential facilities in our state, that they're a good use of federal dollars, that they deserve to have Medicaid, and that these are the places that people go to for essential cancer screenings and other primary health care. They often have nowhere else to go, or nowhere else that they feel safe.”
I just hope eventually we can turn the corner, and this is no longer a topic of conversation, because it's a huge fight every year and it's always a political fight. It shouldn't be. It should be just about health care and making sure people get access to the care they need, particularly gender-specific care.”
“[Funding family planning services] is always a political fight. It shouldn't be. It should be just about health care and making sure people get access to the care they need, particularly gender-specific care.”
Ending gender-based and carceral violence
What do you see as the key policy interventions to support sexual assault and domestic violence survivors, and to protect access to these services?
“It's everything from the gun show loophole to a ban on assault weapons to getting rid of ghost guns. I believe we we have to have the broad spectrum and that it it just shouldn't be an argument in this country. I think for a while we used to always think, like, ‘Oh, you know, Sandy Hook, that's just a horrific crime. This this will push people to go in the right direction.’ And unfortunately, it hasn't worked that way. And we've had a tough time moving forward with any legislation. I do hope if and when the Democrats are back in power, we make it part of our priority agenda to move forward on some of those things”
“It's everything from the gun show loophole to a ban on assault weapons to getting rid of ghost guns. I believe we we have to have the broad spectrum and that it it just shouldn't be an argument in this country.”
Developing equitable & accessible government systems
How do you think the tax structure or state budget can be used to create more gender equity and reduce disparities?
“So, so many women work at the lower end in lower paid jobs, service industry, healthcare industry, all the places we've been talking about, but are often taxed proportionally more than those people who are much higher on the system, who either get the benefits of the tax cuts, which were mostly skewed to the rich, or they have tax lawyers that can help them figure out ways to get out of paying it. So you've got corporations that don't pay any money, and you've got a lot of rich people pay much smaller share. There's that classic line of Warren Buffett, who says his tax secretary paid a higher tax rate than he did. That's really indicative of how our system often works. So reform there is really important.
I am just deeply, deeply worried about our tax structure. When you look at the big ugly bill which codified many of the the tax cuts that President Trump had made during his first administration - the overall imbalance in our tax system, and the gap between the rich and the poor - which has grown so much more in the last two decades - is just getting dramatically worse all the time.”
“The overall imbalance in our tax system, and the gap between the rich and the poor - which has grown so much more in the last two decades - is just getting dramatically worse all the time.”
Other notable quotes
“Sometimes people go to work for the healthcare or they stay in a job they don't even like because they need the health care benefits. Health care benefits should not be tied to work. We should have a single payer system that everyone can access. It's embarrassing we're the wealthiest nation in the world and really the only western country that doesn't have some sensible system of affordable healthcare.”