Zach Wormer, Democrat, 15th Congressional PA District

I believe the biggest economic issue facing the United States is corporate consolidation. We are seeing the fastest rise and largest amount of corporate consolidation since the Gilded Age. Consolidation touches nearly every industry, including agriculture, energy, news, banking, healthcare, etc. The problem with consolidation is that it undermines the free market. In a truly free market, companies cannot get away with raising prices significantly above the price to produce a good because there would be other companies in the market to undercut them. In a consolidated market, large companies avoid being undercut by market forces by buying smaller competitors and thus can charge prices in excess of what it costs to produce a given product. The consolidation effect is precisely why some goods have increased immensely in cost, while others like electronics which are highly competitive have actually deflated in cost. To rectify this immense problem the United States needs to increase funding for anti-trust enforcement agencies so that they may adequately regulate the marketplace to ensure our markets are free. Some of this is already being done through the executive action of Lina Khan, however, large corporations are pushing both Presidential candidates to remove Khan because she threatens their consolidation scheme. Furthermore, the current tax code from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 cannot be reauthorized in 2025. The TCJA will cost middle-class families more than they paid in taxes before it was passed starting in 2025, while the ultra-rich and corporations will pay far less than previous tax regimes. Both Warren Buffett and Bill Gates have said that the paltry amount they are required to pay under the current tax regime is unbelievable and they'd be happy to pay more. It is my view that given current economic circumstances, there ought to be a tax cut for the working class and a tax hike on the rich and corporations.

The only answer to housing costs is building more housing. In the wake of the great recession and the laying off of construction workers like my father has been a consequence of far fewer homes being built and we are now in a position where demand is so much higher than supply that costs are getting out of hand. In order to meet this challenge, the federal government could incentivize homebuilders to take the risk of building new housing by backing them in the form of a program that guarantees the costs of building new homes provided they do not sell. As someone from personal experience with this, it is clear that homebuilders do not build new housing on the scale needed because of the risk inherent to large-scale building and the fear of a 2008 housing market. By backing the projects, homebuilders would be free to build up new housing stock without the risk of bankruptcy.

Healthcare access is a serious issue in central Pennsylvania. The 15th district has seen 12% of hospital closures in Pennsylvania since 2000 but has only 5% of the state's population, in fact, the district has seen the largest amount of closures out of any district in the state. At the Federal level, we can meet this challenge by making the Medicare Dependent Hospital Subsidy and the Low Volume Adjustment appropriations permanent. These programs are what keep rural hospitals alive and they expired on Oct. 1, 2024. Furthermore, I believe Congress should create a program wherein if a community has demonstrated that they do not have access to healthcare, the Federal government will fund a state-run hospital to ensure that all citizens of our country have healthcare access.

I believe illegal immigration is a problem facing our country. I do not find it reasonable to bury our heads in the sand as millions of people enter our country illegally. Most importantly, illegal immigrants who are not availed of United States labor law, undercut the wages and livelihoods of U.S. Citizens, especially in the trades. I believe we need more border agents to police the border, and we need more asylum justices to clear the backlog of asylum claims. I am not in any way an opponent of legal immigration.

I believe we should codify Roe v. Wade so that the United States does not have a patchwork of policy wherein the legal regime is unclear for citizens. The legal ambiguities currently have in some cases lead to harm or even death to folks who would not have otherwise been harmed had we had a national standard.

I have been and continue to be a strong supporter of the Second Amendment. As a resident of a town of 2700 with no police department, I know quite well how important it is to be able to utilize your Second Amendment right.

I am all for climate action but not to the detriment of working men and women. We have seen time and time again that not the wealthy, but the working class are the people who bear the burden of environmental regulations. Provided that climate action can be free of the subjugation of the working people of this country I would support such action.

I generally believe that the United States ought to be less involved in foreign wars. Israel is our ally and we support their right to defend themselves. However, at all times to the extent we are involved in a foreign conflict, it ought to be with the intent to bring it to a resolution, not to fund our defense contractors. It is my belief that foreign countries have a better understanding of conflict than we do, and our role should be as a mediator of conflict.

I believe people should be free to live as they choose so long as they are doing no harm to anyone else. To this end, I obviously believe members of the LGBTQ community should enjoy the same rights as any other citizen. I have no desire or intention to tell people how to live their lives.

Above all else, the business as usual, the status quo of our government being unresponsive to its citizens is due to legal corruption. So long as corporations are able to spend an unlimited amount on campaigns, and Federal legislators and their families are able to use their seats as positions of profits in the form of individual stock trading, the status quo will not change. It doesn't matter where you are ideologically, until we remove the corruptive influences in our government we will not be able to have a real national debate about issues. It is my first priority as your future Congressman to take action on corruption in every capacity available to me. It is not a partisan issue, both parties benefit from these forces, the only folks who lose are common-sense Americans who want good policy.