Amy Klobuchar

Democrat

• Age at Inauguration: 60
• Experience: U.S. Senate - Minnesota (2006-present)
• Education: Yale University (BA), University of Chicago (JD)
• Interesting Fact: Klobuchar wrote a book called "The Senator Next Door: A Memoir From The Heartland"

Key Platform Points

• Strict criminal justice reform
• Rebuild America's infrastructure with a comprehensive and adequately funded plan
• Address the pressing issues of climate change, income inequality, and our changing economy

Economy and Taxes

• Raise the federal minimum wage to $15/hour
• $1 trillion infrastructure plan:
• Repair and replace our roads, highways, and bridges
• Provide protection against flooding and update and modernize our airports, seaports and inland waterways
• Expand reliable public transit options and update rail infrastructure
• Rebuild our schools and overhaul our country’s housing policy
• Connect every household to the internet by 2022
• Ensure clean water for everyone

• Infrastructure plan meant to create thousands of good-paying jobs
• Fund infrastructure through tax alterations on wealthy and corporations
• Renegotiate trade deals and end Chinese tariffs that hurt the agriculture industry
• Supports changing USMCA
• Supports using tariffs as a method to crack down on certain countries, but critical of Trump's approach
• Supports legislation to simplify the tax code, close wasteful loopholes, and provide incentives to keep jobs in America
• Raise capital gains taxes to same rate as ordinary income
• Apply a minimum tax rate of 30 percent on individuals making more than one million dollars a year
• Decrease red tape and burdensome regulations that hinder small business growth
• Expand the Child Tax Credit
• Connect every household to the internet by 2022
• Increase the maximum salary for a worker to qualify for the overtime pay
• Increase inspections of steel imports at ports of entry to combat Chinese steel dumping, the setting of the price of steel artificially low to prevent competition

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Corporations

• Raise the corporate tax rate from 21% to 25%
• Close loopholes that encourage U.S. companies to move jobs and operations overseas
• Establish a financial risk fee on largest banks
• Renew efforts to prevent another financial crisis by restoring the stature of the Office of Financial Research
• Prosecute payday lenders that engage in predatory practices
• Companies should be taxed for sharing user data, with the revenue being returned to citizens as a dividend
• Will not accept corporate PAC, lobbyist, or fossil fuel industry donations for her campaign
• Supports regulating Facebook's data practices
• Supports investigating big tech companies first to determine further actions
• Strengthen antitrust legislation relating to agricultural monopolies and mergers
• Require tech platforms to disclose more information about who's purchasing political ads online
• Require publicly traded companies to disclose all political spending over $10,000 to their shareholders

Criminal Justice and Drugs

• Supports legalization of marijuana federally
• Supporter of strict criminal justice reform
• Grant all formerly incarcerated people the right to vote
• Abolish the death penalty
• Reform cash bail
• Reduce mandatory minimum sentencing
• Phase out the use of private prisons
• Crack down on money laundering and tax evasion
• Strengthen prosecution of white-collar criminals

Education

• Provide tuition-free community college and technical certifications
• "Progress Partnership" plan which would provide federal funds for states that pledge to increase teacher pay, update their high school curricula to improve workforce readiness, and demonstrate an equitable system to repair schools across their state
• Expand early childhood education opportunities
• Supports expanding access to technical and vocational training
• Double the number of apprenticeships to over a million by the end of her first term
• Increase funding for special education and high-needs schools
• Supports a plan that would give U.S. public school teachers an average $13,500 pay raise
• Allow borrowers to refinance their federal student loans at lower interest rates
• Increase the maximum Pell Grant from $6,195 to $12,000
• Reinstitute a rule which held for-profit institutions accountable for providing meaningful career skills to enrollees

Environment

• Does not support the Green New Deal
• Rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement
• Invest in green jobs and infrastructure, climate research and innovation, environmental justice programs, rural energy development, and greener transportation
• Protect/preserve farmlands, hunting lands, wetlands, coasts and oceans
• Meet the goals of the U.N. panel on climate change - cut greenhouse gases by 45% by 2030, and increase renewable energy by up to 47% by 2050
• Achieve 100% net-zero emissions no later than 2050
• Work to increase gas mileage standards
• Supports new nuclear power development
• Restore the Clean Power Plan, which set emissions standards for states with respect to reductions in carbon dioxide emission
• Supports setting a price on carbon to push companies to reduce their emissions
• Expand a USDA program that pays farmers, under five-year contracts, to adopt environmentally friendly practices
• Restore environmental regulations repealed by the Trump Administration
• Supports regulating fracking
• Eliminate fossil fuel subsidies
• Restore staffing levels at the EPA
• Strict fuel efficiency standards
• Limits on carbon pollution from power plants
• Raise 50 to 150 billion dollars in clean energy bonds for clean energy projects
• Supports incentives for adoption of clean energy technology
• "Buy Clean" product labeling system to build a climate-friendly product market
• Supports innovative local transportation
• Strenghten EPA methane rules

Foreign Policy

• Rebuild relationships with allies
• Opposed withdrawing troops from Syria earlier this year
• Supports restricting North Korea's nuclear weapons program
• Supports the Iran nuclear deal
• Restore freedom to travel to and trade with Cuba
• End U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen
• Focus on humanitarianism in Yemen, combatting Iran, and destabilizing Syria
• Pull troops out of Afghanistan by the end of her first term
• Keep the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem

Government Reform

• Supports DC statehood and self-determination for Puerto Rico
• Supports automatic voter registration
• Full disclosure of independent campaign expenditures
• Prohibit voter caging
• Overturn Citizens United v. FEC
• Open to eliminating the Senate filibuster
• Open to replacing the Electoral College with the popular vote
• Make Election Day a national holiday
• Open to adding justices to the Supreme Court and against implementing term limits
• Return authority to declare war to Congress
• Mandate paper ballots
• Require that tax-exempt organizations disclose to the IRS the names of individual donors who contribute more than $5,000 per year
• Introduced election security legislation

Gun Control

• Supports universal background checks
• Ban military-style assault weapons
• Supports a voluntary federal buyback program for military-style assault weapons
• Ban high capacity ammunition magazines
• Reform gun laws while respecting the 2nd Amendment
• Supports red flag laws
• Close the "gun show" and "boyfriend loophole"
• Prevent people with severe mental illness from acquiring guns
• Against arming teachers with guns

Health Care

• Doesn't support Medicare for All
• Instead offer a public option that people can buy into
• Supports building on the Affordable Care Act's foundation
• Supports keeping private insurance
• Expand Medicare to include Americans age 55 and older
• Address the shortage of maternity care health professionals
• Increase health care access in rural communities
• Create a universal, gender-neutral, national paid family and medical leave program allowing for up to 12 weeks of paid leave
• Supports giving the federal government the ability to negotiate drug prices for Medicare
• Immediately allow for the importation of drugs from other countries
• End "pay for delay" agreements, where drug companies pay the makers of generic drugs to delay the entrance of cheaper versions of drugs into the market
• Incentivize drug companies to charge prices that are comparable to those paid in other developed countries
• Allow the government to break the patents of brand drug companies so that generic companies can produce cheaper knockoffs
• Invest in Alzheimer's research
• Released a plan to spend $100 billion over a decade to improve mental health care and fight substance abuse
• Supports imposing a one-cent tax for each milligram of opioids in a pain pill and the tax revenue would be used for substance abuse treatment

Immigration

• Supports a pathway to citizenship for the roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants now living in the U.S., including Dreamers
• Increase the availability of skills-based visas
• Use technology instead of a physical barrier to secure the Southern border
• Would support additional wall funding as part of a broader immigration bill that includes other things such as a pathway to citizenship
• Supports increased funding for border security and enforcement
• Against the Trump administration policy of family separation at the border
• Meet target of 110,000 annual refugee admissions set during the Obama administration
• Supports increasing foreign aid to Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala in an effort to reduce the flow of asylum seekers to the U.S.
• Restructure ICE
• Rescind the travel ban

LGBTQ+ Rights

• Supports same-sex marriage, and has pushed for measures to combat LGBTQ+ discrimination
• Lift the ban preventing transgender people from serving in the military
• Prioritize LGBTQ+ antidiscrimination policies across the federal government to address homelessness and suicide
• LGBTQ+ discrimination doesn't just hold moral implications, but can damage the economy as well

National Security & Veterans Affairs

Social Security & Welfare

• Cut childhood poverty in half in ten years and end it within a generation
• Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Child Care Tax Credit, SNAP (food stamps), and overhaul our country's housing policy
• Supports Social Security expansion
• Expand loans for and investments in local communities in need
• Doesn't support direct payments to slave descendants, instead prefers investment in their respective communities
• Combat segregation in housing
• End attempts to reduce federal housing subsidies
• Remove barriers to education for homeless and foster youth

Women's Rights

• Pro-choice stance
• Believes limits in the third trimester protecting the health of the woman are important
• Ensure funding for Planned Parenthood
• Prohibit states from setting restrictions on abortion
• Supports the Paycheck Fairness Act, the FAMILY Act, and the Equal Rights Amendment
• Believes in equal opportunity to enter male dominated fields
• Put rules in place to prevent pay discrimination

Children

Economic:
• Cut childhood poverty in half in ten years and end it within a generation
• Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit (offered to lower-income families, particularly those with children), the Child Care Tax Credit, and overhaul our country’s housing policy

Health:
• Doesn't support Medicare for All and would instead offer a public option that people can buy into
• Create a universal, gender-neutral, national paid family and medical leave program allowing for up to 12 weeks of paid leave

Education:
• Create a universal child care program and make it free for families at 75% of their state's median income
• Supports universal pre-K that is free for low-income families
• Create tuition-free community college and technical certifications and expand access to technical and vocational training
• Double the number of apprenticeships to over a million by the end of her first term
• Provide federal funds for states that pledge to update their high school curricula to improve workforce readiness and repair schools across their state
• Increase funding for special education and high-needs schools

Child Welfare:
• Recognize Dreamers as US citizens and end child separation
• Increase investment in SNAP (food stamps)

Other:
• See Klobuchar's Environment and Gun Control stances for more related to children's policy