What's the Big Idea?

There are many reasons why health care has become so expensive, and providing better insurance doesn't really address any of them, it just shifts the burden of cost. Why blame your auto insurer for the high cost of repairs?

I support Medicare for all. I don't think of health care as a "human right" so much as a societal obligation. We're long past the point where we put our sick and elderly on ice floes and send them off to live or die on their own. And even though I don't blame the insurers, they still get their take merely for being the middlemen. That would end with a one-payer system.

One prime driver in health care costs is the hospital sector. Competition -- the least intrusive way to keep prices down -- has shrunk drastically over the last decade, as hundreds of mergers have been approved, with nothing but the market left to regulate the prices. Congress should take action to ensure consumers and patients are protected. There are several good studies, and several lawmakers have proposed solutions, but health care reform is just another victim of a partisan Congress.

I'm trying to keep this short, so I'll cut to the chase on another proposal: Making zero-interest or low-interest federal loans to students in fields that have been designated as critical to the medical field. As part of the "Big Beautiful Bill," the federal government is cutting such loans back drastically. We must do all we can to support our future caregivers, not make it more costly than buying a house and saddling them with lifetime debt.

Another Big Idea: Give the surgeon general an army. The U.S. could open clinics around the country offering free care of the low-hanging, everyday fruit of medical care, such as small injuries and preventive care.

Many years ago, I heard an immigrant comedian talk about why he loved America. He said, "You can move to Germany, but you'll never be German. You can spend the rest of your life in Russia, but you'll never be Russian. Only here, in America, can you move to the country and become an American."

America needs immigrants. Plain and simple. But we are a nation of laws, and everyone who lives and/or works here must abide by them. That includes how they arrive here. We must have secure borders and strong immigration laws. And those who violate those principles must be held accountable.

We very nearly had a bipartisan approach to the crisis, reached in Congress after years of work, named the Lankford Bill after the Oklahoma Republican senator who was a chief architect. It was near passage in 2024 when partisan politics got in the way and tanked it, keeping immigration as a contentious political issue. I would strongly support reviving the Lankford Bill, along with other reforms aimed at taking the criminality away from people who only want to work here.

I'm certain there are humane ways to resolve this. We don't need to chase immigrant workers through farm fields or arrest them outside courtrooms just to claim we're being "tough" on illegal immigration. And we don't need masked federal officers wielding weapons on our neighbors.

Our Founding Fathers gave federal judges lifetime appointments to ensure their independence from the other two branches of government, and so that they need not fear retribution for their decisions. That's still a great idea, but appointment to the highest court in the land -- the court of final appeal -- has become highly politicized over the last few years, as lawmakers cede their powers to the referees. No other member of our government has anything granting such lifetime immunity to make nation-changing decisions as our Supreme Court.

There have always been "conservative" and "liberal" views of a law, but when the court overturned Roe v. Wade, they lost their claim to impartiality, in my opinion. Every justice who voted to end a decades-old personal right had testified during their confirmation hearings that they would "respect precedent" when asked their views on it. So they either lied or intentionally misled the Senate, which in my opinion should be cause for their impeachment, but that's much too extreme a measure.

So I propose term limits on appointments to the Supreme Court. The justices would still have lifetime appointments to the federal courts as the Founders intended, just not to the last court in the land. After, say, 12 years they would revert to presiding judges in whatever circuit they currently represent. The highest court would be consistently refreshed with newer viewpoints.

Another important reform would be to restore the filibuster. As frustrating as it can be, it ensures minority party input and debate on such an important aspect of our government. I know this is something that can only be done in and by the Senate, but I think it should be mentioned.

Whether the causes are part of a natural cycle or man-made, we can all agree the Earth's climate is getting warmer. Especially here in our own beloved Evergreen State, where our snow seasons are drastically shortened and our summers are turning into severe droughts. Every year different parts of the United States are flooded by melting snow or baked by unrelenting sun.

I would propose a national retention and distribution effort along the lines of Eisenhower's interstate highway program to move that water around to where it's needed. It would cost billions, but we could build and replenish reservoirs (starting with the rapidly depleting Ogallala Aquifer, which supports our heartland farmers, and the Hoover Dam, which supports millions of Americans in the Southwest) and pipeline systems to reclaim areas of land that have been decimated by drought.

Only three presidents have ever been impeached -- two of them in modern times. Richard Nixon resigned before the House could vote to impeach him, after members of his own Republican Party came to him and told him he didn't have enough support among them to prevent the impeachment. That was the last time the process was so bipartisan.

Since then, all the votes have been mostly along party lines, regardless of the charges or evidence. I'm sure Democrats are champing at the bit to impeach our current president and/or some of his Cabinet officers, but without significant Republican support -- extremely unlikely -- any such efforts will just be wasted time and energy. We need bipartisanship in our government, and putting the former president on what is basically a political trial will only make things worse, and force people into corners needlessly.

So unless there is significant support from Republicans in both branches of Congress, I will not be supporting any effort to punish the president or members of his Cabinet. There are more important things to be doing.

I'm a Democrat because I believe we're all in this together, and that a well-represented government is the best way for us to improve our lives and secure our future. Republicans, I believe, have come to view the government as the enemy. It began crystallizing with Ronald Reagan smiling as he said, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.'"

I don't believe that. I think the government gets things wrong all the time -- it is, after all, comprised of people -- but the solution is to right those wrongs, not to view everything it does and all the people in it as our enemy. We've all heard of "Big Pharma" and "Big Auto" and the like. Where is "Big People"? Where is the entity that takes on those industry giants? It's our government.

I also believe that Congress is the most important of the three equal branches of government. It raises the money and makes the laws. Everything else -- the chief executive described in Article Two and the courts described in Article Three -- springs from the leadership that Congress determines. But that separation and delegation of power has been seriously undermined by what I believe is a complacent Congress in the same party as the president.

Congress must reassert its role as Big People and ensure that the chief executive properly exercises the will of the people, not his own personal whims. One way would be to use more forceful, explicit language in the laws.

I'll put something here later. I'm working with another veteran as you read this.

We must wean ourselves off fossil fuels. Whatever you think about their role in pollution, we are destroying our planet in pursuit of them. We're scraping down mountains for coal, fracturing the earth beneath our feet for natural gas, and heading out farther into the ocean and into nature preserves for oil.

And we can't ignore the oil companies' profits from this. Every year, whether during worldwide pandemics, wars, or any natural disasters, they post record profits -- major oil companies make hundreds of billions annually. The Strait of Hormuz crisis didn't hurt their bottom lines, but everyone who buys gas sure did. And yet they continue to receive subsidies and tax breaks, with the amount estimated at between $10 billion and $50 billion.

And in the end, every dead dinosaur we burn is just stored solar energy anyway. When we burn wood or charcoal, we're just releasing the solar energy that was stored there

Fossil fuels are the whale oil of the 20th century. Yes, workers in that industry will lose jobs as we transition, but it won't be overnight, so we can provide a soft landing. Just redirecting the billions of oil company subsidy dollars should do it..

Shifting to solar energy will also remove the motive for interfering with other countries' governments that has been the cause for so much strife around the world for decades. The conflict in the Strait of Hormuz has caused billions of dollars in damage around the world, in countless ways, from the loss of fertilizers at the beginning of planting season to the extra dollars we all pay every day at the gas pumps. (The oil companies are still reporting record profits, by the way. Always have, always will.)

In 2024, the federal government spent $6.8 trillion on all its programs (except for $0.9 trillion on interest payments), and took in $4.9 trillion in income taxes - a deficit of nearly two trillion dollars, or $6,000 for every man, woman and child in America. The interest payments alone came to about $2,500 for each of us. $200 a month for literally nothing but a bank's bottom line.

We hear a lot about the wealthy "not paying their fair share," but in actuality, with some exceptions, they do, according to the rules we have set up. The top 1% of taxpayers in the U.S. pay the highest share of federal income taxes, accounting for roughly 40% of the total revenue. The top 50% pay over 97% of all federal income tax revenue. Even so, tax evasion is literally a multibillion-dollar industry.

I think our tax policy should be as income-neutral as possible. The best way to achieve that would be with a flat tax. But the tax must apply to every source of income, not just "earned" (i.e., salaries and wages) but also capital gains (i.e., from the sale of real estate, stocks and bonds, etc.). If we make a certain minimum income -- say, $50,000 -- exempt from the tax, it would ease the burden on our lower-income earners, we could set a flat rate (10%? I haven't delved that deeply into the math. In 2025, our Gross National Income was $31.4 trillion.).

This would end all the inherent unfairness of progressive taxation, in which different incomes pay different rates (we currently have seven brackets), so people wouldn't be forced to reject pay raises because it would put them into a higher tax bracket. It would also end tax "fakeouts" such as the "no tax on tips" in the "Big Beautiful Bill" so loudly touted by Republicans that will expire shortly after the 2028 elections.