Breaking Down The Plans: Beto O’Rourke
Breaking Down The Plans is a short political writing series that I am doing trying to break down 8 of each Presidential candidate’s plans (the issues that young people most care about) into factual bullet points that anyone can easily digest. I will give my opinion at the end as well as a link to the official website to read more. I’m doing this because 1. I’m a policy geek and 2. not everyone can sit through a 36-page plan. Also, if anything is in bold, it means that I feel it is significant in some way. We are gonna start with the highest polling candidate. Enjoy!
Climate change:
- Rejoining the Paris Agreement
- Using $500 billion to decarbonize all sectors
- Setting a carbon budget to achieve 0 emissions on federal lands by 2030
- Stopping all new fossil fuel leases
- Giving more than $250 billion to climate research and development
- More than $1.2 trillion on grants for communities directly impacted by climate change
- Partnering with cities taking climate action
- Increasing spending on pre-disaster grants
Gun violence:
- Signing the No PAC Act into law
- Creating a federal gun licensing system and raising the age to 21
- Requiring universal background checks
- Banning assault weapons, trigger cranks, silencers, and high-capacity magazines
- Implementing a national buy-back of assault weapons
- Limiting individuals to one gun purchase a month
- Implementing red flag laws and close boyfriend, private sale, Charleston loophole
- Investing $320 million into the CDC’s research of gun violence as a public health crisis
- Making gun trafficking a federal crime
- Ban fugitives from purchasing guns
- Ban 3D printing of guns
- Giving the ATF full resources to investigate the gun industry
- Making manufacturers and dealers liable for crimes
- Restoring the Firearm Safety Act
- Funding education around firearm safety
Public education/student loan debt:
- Creating a $500 billion fund to raise wages for teachers and improve schools
- Creating a committee to hold states accountable for funding with consideration to marginalized students
- Fully funding the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
- Investing $100 billion into physical and digital school infrastructure
- Banning corporal punishment in schools
- Providing funds for restorative justice school programs and teacher racial bias training
- Enacting the Strength in Diversity Act
- Increasing funding for Title III
- Forgiving student loan debt tax free for teachers who have worked more than 5 years in public school
- Forgiving 20% of student loan debt a year for teachers until they hit 5 years
- Automatically enrolling all eligible recipients into the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program
- Forgiving 10% of student loan debt at the end of each year for someone who works in public service
- Giving colleges $500 million per year for residency programs for HS students
- Funding HBCUs and MSIs at $500 million per year
- Making grad school free for anyone who seeks to become a teacher
- Creating a Master Teacher Corps
Immigration:
- Reversing all family separation and travel bans
- Requiring detention only for immigrants with criminal records
- Eliminating all private, for profit prisons
- Reinstating the Central American Minors program
- Increasing staff in the asylum system
- Making courts independent rather than under the DOJ
- Expanding the Legal Orientation Program
- Deploying 2,000 lawyers to the border
- Halting work on a border wall
- Boosting staffing for drug inspections
- Creating a pathway to citizenship
- Creating a community-based VISA program
- Increasing the number of people we let have VISAs
- Creating a Border Oversight Committee
- Forming a regional alliance with Latin America
- Investing $5 billion into Latin America through non-governmental organizations
Gender equality:
There is no official plan for gender equality on his website yet.
Racial equality/criminal justice:
- Legalizing marijuana
- Ending the cash bail system and mandatory minimumns
- Increasing funding for public defenders
- Banning employers from asking about a criminal record
- Making Pell Grants available to incarcerated people
- Giving incarcerated people the right to vote
LGBTQIA+ equality:
- Overturning all of Trump’s LGBTQIA+ discriminatory policies
- Reinstating Department of Education efforts to protect LGBTQIA+ students
- Enforcing the Equal Access Rule
- Directing the DOJ to investigate crimes against trans people specifically trans women of color
- Allowing trans people to update their names and genders on identity documents
- Giving LGBTQIA+ people fleeing violence access to the asylum process
- Tasking the FTC to investigate false advertising that promotes conversion therapy
- Creating an Interagency task force to stop federal LGBTQIA+ discrimination
- Appointing openly LGBTQIA+ judges and executive branch members
- Passing the equality act
- Banning LGBTQIA+ discrimination in healthcare
- Reforming the Prison Rape Elimination Act
- Enacting the Every Child Deserves a Family Act
- Securing a non-persecution treaty through the International Law commission
- Establishing a section of the state department for human rights of LGBTQIA+ people
Voting rights:
- Allowing same day and automatic voter registration
- Allowing 16 and 17 year olds to pre-register to vote
- Providing vote coordinators for campus
- Capping US House and Senate terms to 12 years
- Capping Supreme Court terms to 18 years
- Allowing a written statement of identity to replace voter IDs
- Making Election Day a holiday
- Facilitating voting by mail
- Extending early voting to 2 weeks before Election Day
- Placing polling stations near public transportation
- Funding state cybersecurity efforts like paper ballots
- Requiring online platforms to disclose political ad sponsors
- Holding monthly town halls
- Banning federal lobbying for anyone who served as or for an elected official
To read more of his plans, go to: https://betoorourke.com/#plans
Opinion: Now that I have factually broken down his plans, I will give my opinion. Take it or leave it. Wow. This guy is so impressive. I don’t think I ever really got into his campaign until writing this break down. If I could rank primary candidates, he is definetly in my top 5. So many points that I just wrote out are brilliant and his plans are ridiculously comprehensive/incredible especially his plan for gun violence which is the best of anyone running. Also, I just think everything he has done integrating honesty into his campaign and speaking the truth consistently is so ridiculously admirable. I think he would be a really good Senator or President.
