A PLATFORM FOR PROGRESS
In a state with so many wealthy people and corporations, there is no good reason why so many of our neighbors are going without healthcare, housing, or real economic opportunities. Greed and graft are making our state a nastier place to live every day, but it doesn't have to be this way. Below are the reforms that will be my highest priorities if you elect me. But it will take more than just one elected official to make these proposals into law. It's going take a mass movement of working people to bring about the political pressure needed to pass these progressive reforms. With your support, I will help build that movement.
PRIORITIES
Progressive Income Tax
Oregon's personal income tax is not as progressive as it once was, not as progressive as other states and countries, and not as progressive as it ought to be. There are different ways to measure how progressive a state's income tax is, but the most obvious is to compare how much income tax a wealthy individual pays to that of someone with a more average income. Leaving aside deductions, credits, etc., for sake of simplicity, when comparing the state income tax rates that someone making $1,000,000 annually has to pay, to someone making $25,000 annually, Oregon's income tax ranks 21st in progressiveness out of 22 states (and D.C.) with a progressive income tax. Of the 4 tax brackets that Oregon has, an individual is already in the 2nd highest bracket while earning an income less than the federal poverty level (which is about $14,600 annually).
My highest priority as a state representative would be advocating for a more progressive state income tax that lowers taxes for poor, working and middle class families, and raises taxes for those who can most afford it, like individuals with taxable incomes greater than $180,000. As some of the wealthiest people to have ever lived (like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates) have repeatedly and publicly pointed out, the wealthiest in the US are now effectively paying a much lower tax rate than everyone else, and a much lower rate than they used to pay. This is the opposite of how it should be. If trickle-down economics worked, and cutting taxes for the wealthiest made everyone more wealthy in general, poverty in our nation would've been eliminated by now.
Oregon's near flat income tax is not only dragging down our state's economy by taking money from those who can least afford it and who would otherwise most likely spend it locally, it's also a big part of why most state provided public services and programs are severely underfunded and understaffed right now. Making our personal income tax rates more progressive will help reduce poverty, boost our local economy, and reduce inequality in our state. A good example of the kind of progressive income tax that I'll fight for can be found here.
Healthcare for Everyone
There is no good reason why we don't have a health insurance system that covers the more than 300,000 Oregonians who currently don't have any health insurance, not to mention those of us struggling with being underinsured. A single-payer healthcare system would not only save working class families a lot of money in healthcare costs, it would prevent most of the more than 2,500 deaths in our state each year that come from lack of affordable healthcare. I am ashamed to live in a society that lets so many of our neighbors suffer and die unnecessarily just so that private companies can make more profits. It doesn't have to be this way.
I will fight for a state healthcare system that puts people's health before profit. That means ensuring dental, vision, mental, reproductive and gender affirming healthcare are always covered for everyone.
Affordable Housing
The largest expense for most working families is housing, especially rent. About 1 in 5 households statewide spend 30% or more of their total income on rent, and Oregon ranks 7th highest in the nation for the percent of our neighbors who are burdened by the cost of rent. While many in the Legislature are focused on building more housing as a way to resolve this issue, I don't believe that approach will actually help the situation.
Our state's rental vacancy rate has more than doubled in the last 18 months and is above the national average, according to the US Census Bureau. Meanwhile, our state's population has just decreased for consecutive years for the first time since the 1980s. If lack of housing supply was causing the unaffordability problem, that problem would have likely already corrected itself by now. Instead, the average price of rent continues to climb across the state, year after year, even into 2024. The state's current strategy of bringing down the cost of housing by throwing more money at real estate developers to build more housing is a bit like putting the fox in charge of guarding the hen-house.
What would bring down the cost of housing is to give our cities and counties the tools they need to contain the out-of-control cost of rent. Right now our state has a law in place prohibiting any kind of rent control from being implemented in the most unaffordable communities in Oregon (ORS 91.225). I believe the most impactful policy we could and should adopt to address our housing affordability crisis is to repeal the state's ban on local rent control measures.
Expanding Union Rights
People who work in Oregon's agricultural, domestic, and construction sectors are currently excluded from state laws protecting the right to collectively bargain (ORS 663.005). Immigrant, BIPOC and other minority communities have historically been, and are still today, over-represented as workers in those sectors. Collective bargaining (aka a union) helps workers to gain better pay, benefits, working conditions and job security. These benefits are then shared by workers' families and communities. By denying workers in these three sectors the same protections that most other workers have, our state law continues to perpetuate racial and ethnic disparities by granting economic opportunities to some that are withheld from others.
Since union protections were first enshrined into federal law in the 1930s, two types of workers have always been excluded from these labor rights: agricultural and domestic. When legislators in our state adopted laws similar to federal labor law in the 1970s, they decided to exclude workers in the agricultural, domestic and construction sectors from those protections. Changing this law costs the state nothing, and it will help to repair decades of legalized racial and ethnic discrimination that carries on in Oregon to this day. Expanding labor protections to include these three categories would improve the lives of more than 200,000 workers.