Breaking Down The Plans: Pete Buttigieg

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 going in order of polling. Enjoy!

Climate change:

• Use 0 emissions in our society by 2050 at the latest
• Enacting a price on carbon and sending that money to Americans
• Investing a total of $500 billion in different clean energy research funds
• Investing $200 billion over 10 years in a transition for workers
• Creating Regional Resilience Hubs and giving them $5 billion per year to prevent climate disaster
• Creating a National Catastrophic Disaster Insurance program
• Rejoining the Paris Agreement and lead world leaders in a Pittsburgh summit to address global climate
• Regaining military presence in the Arctic to reduce emissions and oppose drilling
• Creating a senior climate security role in the Department of Defense

Gun violence:

• Increasing the FBI’s domestic terrorism field staff and strengthen ties to local authorities
• Passing multiple bills to track hate groups/crimes
• Getting the National Counterterrorism Center to investigate white nationalism violence
• Instituting universal background checks
• Closing the boyfriend, Charleston, and hate loopholes
• Banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines
• Supporting red flag laws and a federal gun licensing system
• Letting the CDC research gun violence as a public health crisis
• Ending the filibuster

Public education/student loan debt:

His Schools of the Future plan says he wants to increase Title I funding for schools, make schools be transparent with their hiring process to ensure racial diversity, making public college tuition free through the Pell Grant program, and dedicate $25 billion to HBCUs and MSIs. Other than that, he does not have an official public education plan on his website.

Immigration:

He does not have an official immigration reform plan on his website yet.

Gender equality:

While he has stated that he wants equal pay for equal work, he does not have an official gender equality plan on his website yet.

Racial equality/criminal justice:

• Create/funding Health Equity Zones to support local heath equity
• Revitalizing the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Health and Human Services
• Creating targeted grant funding for the NEA to support black history art projects
• Doubling funding for states that commit to criminal justice reform
• Legalizing marajuana and ending incarceration for drug possession/mandantory minimums
• Creating a clemency commission outside of the DOJ
• Abolishing private federal prisons
• Appointing people to federal positions/benches who believe in criminal justice reform
• Abolishing the death penalty
• Restoring Pell Grant access and Medicaid use to incarcerated people
• Increasing tax credit for employers who hire formerly incarcerated people
• Restoring voting rights to all formerly incarcerated people
• Increase funding in tracking police departments and getting safety measures like body-cams
• Investing $10 billion in an eunterprenuership fund for underrepresented communities
• Forgiving student loans for Pell Grant recipients who have a business employing at least 3 people within five years of graduating
• Raising the mimumumn wage to $15 an hour
• Creating a program where local communities can bid with HUD to revitalize housing and business in that area
• Expand the environmental health network to show signs at a neighborhood level of climate related health issues

LGBTQIA+ equality:

While he does state that he wants to pass the Equality Act, there is no official LGBTQIA+ rights plan on his website.

Voting rights: (as part of his Douglass Plan for racial justice)

• Automatic voter registration by eligibility
• Allowing online and same day registration as well as early voting and voting by mail
• Making Election Day a federal holiday
• Expand the Voting Rights Act to have it block racist laws before elections
• Allowing people to vote with a written statement of identity
• Redefining DC as a government building area and create a “New Columbia” state to give people in DC the right to full political representation
• Replacing the Electoral College with a National Popular Vote

Read more about his plans: https://peteforamerica.com/issues/