Key Issues
We can do better for our district. For America!
Introduce Circuit-breaker Bill to prevent "Property Tax Overload"
Key Issue In San Mateo County, we often talk about the “price of paradise.” We see it in our bustling downtowns, rising cost of everyday items, and, most acutely, in our monthly housing costs. But for many of our long-term neighbors – the retired teachers and nurses, the fixed-income seniors, and the service workers who anchor our community – this price feels more like a ransom. The culprit isn’t just rising insurance or maintenance; it is the fundamental “mismatch” of the property tax. Property taxes are calculated based on your home’s assessed value, not on what you have in your bank account. In a region where rapid appreciation even for the modest homes due to rising demand is a norm, a home’s value can skyrocket while the owner’s income remains stagnant. When your tax bill grows faster than your paycheck, you face a “tax overload.” Without intervention, this mismatch creates serious affordability issues that contribute to displacement and erode the neighborhood stability we all value.
Proposed Solution It is about time we discuss a proven solution used across a number of states: the Property Tax Circuit Breaker. The concept is as simple as the safety device in your electrical panel. When the “load” on a household’s budget becomes too heavy, the circuit breaker trips and provides relief by refunding or crediting back the portion of property tax that exceeds a set percentage of income. Unlike across-the-board rate cuts that mostly benefit higher-value owners, a circuit breaker is a targeted credit that links tax liability directly to the ability to pay.
To see the impact, we can look at models already functioning in states like Massachusetts and Maryland. Imagine a senior homeowner in San Mateo, is living on a fixed income of $60,000 in a modest two bedroom and a bath home of $1M assessed value. If their property tax bill at the current effective rate of 1.4% is $14,000, their tax burden is a staggering 23.3% of their total income. Under a 10% circuit breaker threshold, any amount over $6,000 would be credited back. This neighbor would receive an $8,000 credit, bringing his effective tax burden back to a manageable level.
This protection extends to renters as well. Let’s say a family of four with an income of $100,000 per year is paying $60,000 in annual rent for a 3-bedroom 1 bath home of assessed value $1.1M. Total tax paid by landlord on this home at current effective property tax rate of 1.4% would be $15,400. Renters are also paying “imputed” property tax through their landlord. If 25.6% of that rent ($15,400) is treated as tax, it exceeds a 10% income threshold by $5,400. A circuit breaker refund of $5,400 allows that renter to stay in their neighborhood rather than being priced out by costs they cannot control.
Critics often worry that tax relief drains local coffers, hurting our schools and parks. However, many circuit breaker programs are structured as state income tax credits, therefore not touching local tax revenues. If Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Vermont, and the District of Columbia can do this, why California, the richest donor state in the nation, can’t?
Ultimately, this is an issue of equity and community health. Older homeowners are more likely to live on fixed incomes, have owned their homes for long, and be deeply attached to their neighborhoods. Evaluations of these programs show they reduce foreclosure risk and lower tax delinquency. By tying property tax to income rather than to volatile real estate cycles, we give households across all income levels a predictable path to remain in their homes. We want a San Mateo where the people who built our community aren’t forced to leave it simply because their home became “too valuable” to live in.
Support repeal of Prop-19, a "Death Tax" on Families and Seniors
Kevin Mullin, our current Congressman representing California’s 15th district, authored and championed the controversial Proposition 19, which passed with a narrow majority of 51.1% in 2020 thanks to massive funding from special interest groups like the California Association of Realtors who poured millions into the campaign. This measure harms middle-class families by severely limiting the parent-child property tax exclusion, allowing transfers without reassessment only for primary residences and capping additional value at $1 million—leading to steep tax increases on inherited family homes, farms, and rentals. As a result, grieving families face reassessments that can double or triple their property taxes, forcing many to sell cherished properties and eroding generational wealth built over decades, particularly in high-cost areas like San Mateo County where middle-class residents are already stretched thin.
Repealing Prop 19 would restore the full parent-child and grandparent-grandchild exclusions under prior laws like Props 58 and 193, enabling families to pass down homes, farms, and investment properties without triggering massive tax hikes. This would benefit middle-class families in our district and throughout California by preserving affordable housing options, maintaining family stability during times of loss, and protecting against the unintended exodus of residents seeking lower taxes elsewhere—ultimately strengthening communities and ensuring that hard-earned assets stay within families for generations to come.
Champion incentives & policies to make housing affordable and available
Most Pressing Issue – Sky-high housing costs and a lack of available homes are forcing our neighbors to make impossible choices. Younger families, renters, and essential workers are being pushed out of the area or forced into crowded, multi-generational living just to stay afloat.
- The Reality: In San Mateo County, a typical home now sells for $1.6 to $2 million, while one-bedroom rents often exceed $3000 to $4000 per month.
- Public Outcry: Recent 2025 surveys show that 80% of Bay Area residents view this as a “big problem,” with over half of all Californians deeply worried about making their next rent or mortgage payment.
- Secure Stable Funding: Create a permanent, dedicated source of money for building and preserving homes that local families can actually afford. This can be achieved through local or state bonds and working with private partners.
- Speed Up Building & Streamline Approvals: Cut through red tape to build homes faster. We can do this by using new state laws to allow more types of housing in existing neighborhoods (like duplexes and lot splits) and using common-sense exemptions for building within cities, not on open land.
- Bridge the Rent Gap: Expand financial assistance and create a refundable tax credit for renters. This helps working families make ends meet and ensures more of their paycheck goes toward food and necessities, not just rent.
- Accelerate Permitting & Reform Zoning: Update our local rules to encourage more affordable, multi-family housing, especially in areas close to jobs and public transit. This reduces costs and helps build community where we need it most.
- Embrace Modern Building: Support innovative construction methods—like using modular, prefabricated, or 3D-printed housing. These technologies help us build quality homes faster and cheaper.
- Guarantee Affordable Homes: Require that a set percentage (20%) of new private developments are made affordable for lower-income families. We can also expand the use of community land trusts to keep housing affordable for generations.
- Leverage Federal Support: Advocate for increased federal tax credits for affordable housing and support building denser housing near public transit stops. Studies show this is a proven way to reduce overall housing costs by up to 30%.
Impose hard guard rails to protect workers from AI related job losses
The Risk Statement
We are witnessing the quiet onset of an economic displacement crisis that threatens to stratify American society into two permanent classes: those who harness AI, and those displaced by it. What was once the realm of science fiction — machines replacing human labor at scale — is now a measurable, accelerating reality. Between 13% and 16% of entry-level workers aged 22 to 25 have already lost jobs to automated systems. These are not statistics. These are our children, our neighbors, our future.
Beyond jobs, AI’s insatiable infrastructure demands are waging a war on our natural resources. Massive data centers — the physical backbone of AI models — consume billions of gallons of water and enormous quantities of energy annually, directly competing with communities for the very resources that sustain human life. This is not progress. This is extraction without accountability.
66% of business leaders say they will not hire candidates without demonstrated AI literacy — yet our schools, workforce programs, and policy frameworks remain frozen in a pre-AI paradigm. We are producing graduates trained for a job market that no longer exists, while the new market demands fluency in tools that are barely taught, rarely understood, and wholly unregulated. CA-15’s high-income, educated population is not immune — in fact, the pressure here may be more acute, where highly-skilled knowledge workers face the greatest exposure to AI substitution.
However, most critically, the people charged with governing this transformation lack the foundational expertise to do so effectively. Congress is making trillion-dollar decisions about technology most members cannot define, legislating an industry they have never worked in, for a future they cannot envision. This vacuum of informed leadership is itself a national risk.
Political Intervention: Hard Guardrails
Where AI Cannot Replace Humans – Legislation must establish protected employment zones: roles where AI may assist but never supplant. These include direct patient care, early childhood education, social work, mental health services, emergency response, and roles requiring fiduciary and discretionary human judgment. Any employer operating in these protected sectors who deploys AI to eliminate headcount faces mandatory review, financial penalties, and worker reinstatement requirements.
The AI Displacement Tax – Companies that eliminate positions due to AI automation must contribute to a federally mandated Worker Transition Fund, proportional to the number of displaced workers. This is not punitive — it is accountability. The profits generated by automation must partially fund the social cost of that automation. Revenue from this fund directly finances retraining programs, community AI labs, and transition grants for displaced workers.
Transparency & Accountability Mandates – All employers with 50+ employees must annually disclose: the number of roles modified or eliminated due to AI, the tools deployed, and their environmental footprint. AI systems used in hiring, performance review, or termination must be independently audited for bias and subject to worker appeal. No American should be fired by an algorithm with no human review and no recourse.
Environmental Hard Caps on AI Infrastructure – Data centers must meet strict water usage and renewable energy standards before receiving operating permits. Facilities that exceed consumption thresholds face operational restrictions. Federal AI infrastructure investment must be conditioned on carbon-neutral roadmaps and community water impact assessments. AI’s environmental footprint must be treated with the same urgency as industrial pollution. No AI related energy infrastructure and usage cost should be passed on to residential customers.
The AI-Proof Safety Net – Expand unemployment insurance to explicitly cover AI displacement. Create portable benefits — health coverage, retirement contributions — that travel with workers between jobs and are not severed by automation-driven layoffs. Transition grants for displaced workers to fund retraining, relocation, and living expenses. No American who loses their job to a machine should face that loss
without a bridge.
Rebooting K–12 for the AI Age – AI literacy must become a core graduation requirement, not an elective. Starting in middle school, students
learn how AI systems work, where they are useful, where they are dangerous, and how to evaluate them critically. This is not about training coders — it is about producing citizens who can navigate, question, and shape AI-driven environments rather than be shaped by them.
AI as Personalized Tutor, Not Replacement Teacher – Invest in deploying AI tutoring agents that adapt to each student’s learning pace, aptitude, and desired outcomes — with the explicit mandate that these tools support teachers, never supplant them. For at-risk learners,
personalized AI tutoring can close achievement gaps that traditional classroom ratios make structurally impossible to close. Every child deserves a tutor. AI can make that possible.
Reducing Administrative Burden on Teachers – Teachers spend an estimated 30–40% of their time on administrative tasks: grading, documentation, compliance reporting, scheduling. AI automation of these tasks returns that time to instruction. Teachers receive federally
funded training not in spite of AI but in partnership with it — building confidence and fluency so that they lead the curriculum rather than fear the technology.
Workforce Retraining at Scale – Partner with technology companies to create nationally standardized apprenticeship pipelines for displaced workers. Create community AI labs in underserved areas — physical spaces where workers can access training, mentorship, equipment, and job placement support. Prioritize workers over 40, who face the steepest re-entry barriers and the least institutional support in existing programs.
Fight to tie entry-level pay to no less than 1% of a CEO's total Compensation
One Percent Bill – Friends of California’s 15th District and fellow Americans everywhere, I present a revolutionary yet simple proposal called the ‘One Percent Bill.’ This initiative aims to create broader prosperity across all companies—both private and public—while eliminating ridiculously high, board-manipulated CEO compensation. This bill states that in no company in America shall an entry-level worker’s total compensation be less than 1% of the total compensation of that company’s CEO.
As we have seen time and again, corporate bosses, their legal teams, subservient boards, politicians on their payrolls, and lobbyists will always find ways to keep executive compensation artificially high on the backs of their workers. Therefore, we must devise an airtight bill with provisions that prohibit companies from outsourcing a majority of their work to low-wage onshore and offshore contractors as a percentage of their total workforce. Please let me know in the comments: what are your thoughts on this proposal to create broad-based prosperity and wealth in America?
Lead the coalition to pass Universal Healthcare with a Single Payer System
Defining Issue of our time
The United States remains the only high-income nation without universal healthcare, leaving over 26 million Americans uninsured in 2025 and tens of millions more underinsured amid skyrocketing premiums and deductibles. Medical debt is now the leading cause of bankruptcy, life expectancy has fallen behind peer nations, maternal mortality rates shame us globally, and preventable deaths climb while administrative waste consumes nearly one-third of every healthcare dollar. The patchwork system we cling to is not just cruel—it is collapsing under its own inefficiency and inequity. With healthcare costs continuing to outpace wages, inflation, and economic growth, delaying reform any longer means more families forced to choose between medicine and food, more small businesses crushed by premiums, and more lives lost to treatable conditions. We cannot afford another decade of half-measures; the moral, economic, and public health imperative is clear: America must implement universal healthcare now, before the human and financial toll becomes irreversible.
Potential / Recommended Solutions:
- Pass the Medicare for All Act of 2025 (H.R. 3069 / S. 1506), introduced by Rep. Jayapal and Sen. Sanders, to establish a true single-payer national health insurance program administered by HHS, eliminating private insurance for core benefits and ensuring zero uninsured from day one of full implementation.
- Enact a phased transition period (modeled on the bill’s 4-year rollout): Year 1 covers children under 18, adults 55+, and current Medicare enrollees; others access buy-in options; full universal coverage activates in Year 4, drawing from successful rapid transitions in Taiwan (1995) and South Korea (1977–1989).
- Provide comprehensive, no-cost-sharing benefits including hospital care, primary/specialty care, prescription drugs (with negotiated prices), dental, vision, hearing, mental health, and long-term care—proven in systems like Taiwan and the UK to deliver better population health outcomes and higher life expectancy without financial barriers.
- Eliminate private insurers as middlemen for covered services, banning duplicative private plans (as in Canada’s single-payer model), ending denials, prior authorizations, and profiteering while slashing administrative waste from 30% of U.S. spending to under 3%.
- Negotiate drug and device prices globally through a new HHS office, adopting best practices from Australia and Europe to reduce costs by 40–70%, ensuring affordability and innovation without corporate gouging.
- Fund providers via global budgets and fair fee schedules (hospital global budgets as in Sanders’ Senate version; negotiated fees for clinicians), maintaining or increasing total compensation while removing billing burdens—evidenced by high provider satisfaction in single-payer nations like Norway and Denmark.
- Support workforce expansion and training with generous funding for medical education, residency programs, and rural/underserved incentives, addressing shortages and ensuring shorter primary care wait times than the current U.S. system (as seen in Taiwan’s rapid-access model).
- Finance progressively and sustainably through a mix of redirected existing public funds (~60% of current spending), a progressive income surtax (4–8% on high earners), capital gains/investment tax alignment, corporate tax reforms, and a modest wealth tax on net worth above $100 million (2–3%, raising trillions over a decade without burdening middle/low-income families).
- Offset costs with massive savings ($500–650 billion annually) from reduced administration, lower drug prices, and preventive focus—net system cost falls 5–10% despite universal coverage, as validated by CBO-style analyses and real-world single-payer efficiencies in Canada and Taiwan.
- Establish independent oversight and regional planning boards to allocate resources equitably, prioritize preventive care, and monitor outcomes—ensuring shorter waits for non-emergency procedures through capacity investment (learning from Australia’s mixed but efficient public system).
- Protect workers during transition with robust just-transition funds for displaced insurance/administrative employees (retraining into health sector jobs) and 5–15-year compensation for converting for-profit providers, minimizing disruption as in past U.S. reforms.
- Implement immediately upon passage to halt the growing crisis—27+ million uninsured in 2025, rising medical debt, and inferior outcomes—delivering longer lives, financial security, and economic growth by freeing families and businesses from premium burdens, proving universal single-payer is the only viable path forward now.
Alleviate the "Super Commute" crisis
The Core Challenge: Reclaiming Our Time & Quality of Life
The “Super Commute” Crisis: For too many families in our district, the housing shortage isn’t just about rent—it’s about the hours lost in gridlock and the environmental toll of regional sprawl. We cannot fix our traffic woes without addressing where we live.
- Build Homes Where the Transit Is: By concentrating housing and jobs near Caltrain stations and El Camino Real, we allow residents to live car-light or car-free, directly attacking the root cause of congestion Following the example of the “Rail + Property” mandate of Hong Kong Model which creates integrated communities above stations, making MTR one of the world’s few profitable transit system, we can empower Caltrain to form Joint Ventures develop land at stations like Millbrae, San Mateo, and Redwood City for high-density station towers in CA-15
- Create “Complete Neighborhoods”: We need integrated plans that coordinate zoning and parking reform with better sidewalks and bike lanes, ensuring safe first/last-mile connections for every commute. We can learn from Japan’s inclusive zoning, Dutch design standards for bike lanes, and Vienna’s model for workforce housing to create complete neighborhoods in CA-15
- Invest in Reliable Transit: Fast, frequent, and affordable transit isn’t a luxury—it’s an economic necessity for our workforce and a core quality-of-life issue for Silicon Valley (Hong Kong Model uses the real estate profits to fund the railway without heavy taxpayer subsidies)
Demand an end to inflationary tariffs that drive up your cost of living
The Hidden Tax on Working Families & Fixed-Income Seniors
Donald Trump promised to lower prices on Day 1. Instead, he delivered the largest tariff tax increase since 1909 — and the families of CA-15 are paying for it every single time they walk into a grocery store. According to the Yale Budget Lab, Trump’s tariffs cost the average American household $1,700 annually — a crushing burden for working families already stretched thin in one of the nation’s most expensive regions. For our neighbors whose paychecks are already consumed by rent and childcare — this isn’t an abstraction. It’s skipped meals, deferred doctor visits, and impossible choices. For our seniors on fixed incomes, the pain is compounding. The price of household necessities rose in December even as overall inflation held steady — meaning lower-income people and fixed-income retirees were hit harder than everyone else. A retired teacher in San Mateo or a senior on Social Security in South San Francisco cannot absorb $1,700 in new annual costs. Their income doesn’t adjust. Their bills do.
A CA-15 Plan to Restore Affordability
Roll Back Tariffs That Drive Up the Cost of Living in CA-15: I would work to immediately repeal the broad consumer tariffs on groceries, household goods, clothing, and everyday essentials that are functioning as a regressive tax — falling hardest on working families who spend the highest share of their income on necessities. Reserve targeted trade tools for genuine national security and strategic economic purposes, not inflationary political theater.
Strengthen Grocery Affordability & Supply Chain Accountability: I would introduce legislation requiring price transparency from major retailers and food suppliers when tariff costs are passed to consumers, and expand SNAP benefits and food bank federal funding to meet the surge in demand triggered by tariff-driven food inflation across CA-15 communities.
Combat climate and environmental risks based on Science
Very Important Issue
Regional and state research highlight the Bay Area’s vulnerability to climate impacts such as sea‑level rise, extreme heat, and wildfire smoke, emphasizing the need for local adaptation and nature‑based solutions. Measures like concentrating housing and jobs near transit, limiting sprawl, and preserving open space are promoted in San Mateo–focused advocacy as ways to simultaneously address housing, transportation, and climate pressures in districts like CA‑15.
Potential / Recommended Solutions
Implement nature‑based solutions (wetlands restoration, urban tree canopy, green stormwater infrastructure) to address sea‑level rise, flooding, heat, and air quality. California’s state climate targets highlight these approaches as cost‑effective resilience tools for coastal and Bay Area communities.
Upgrade hard infrastructure (levees, drainage, energy and water systems, building standards) to withstand extreme events—including wildfire smoke episodes and heat waves—that research shows will intensify without adaptation.
Align housing growth with high‑capacity transit and protect open space to curb vehicle miles traveled and emissions; regional housing and ballot‑measure guidance in San Mateo underscores concentrating growth in existing urbanized areas for both climate and quality‑of‑life reasons.
Integrate climate risk metrics (e.g., Healthy Places Index or hazard maps) into investment decisions so the most vulnerable neighborhoods receive priority for cooling centers, air filtration in schools, and flood/heat protections, a practice outlined in county‑level recovery and equity planning.
Call for a fair immigration system
In California’s 15th District, families should not have to wonder whether a loved one will disappear into an unmarked van on the way to work or while walking a child to school. Masked agents grabbing people off our streets and out of their homes without clear identification or visible warrants is not “law and order” — it is an assault on the rule of law and on the basic American promise that government power must be accountable, transparent, and restrained.
In a community where roughly a third of our neighbors are immigrants and where they contribute billions in taxes and spending power, raids that terrorize mixed‑status families don’t just violate our values, they weaken our shared prosperity.
CA‑15 deserves leaders who will say: no more secret‑police tactics, no more politics of fear — it is time to defend due process, protect our immigrant neighbors, and build a fair, orderly, and humane immigration system that keeps every family in our district safer, stronger, and free to dream.
Fight to stop funding genocide and illegal foreign wars
End Blank-Check Foreign Wars — Invest in America First
No more funding genocide abroad while cutting healthcare, housing, and Social Security at home.
The Core Problem
Washington is writing unlimited checks to fund the Israeli government’s military campaign in Gaza — a campaign the International Court of Justice has found presents a plausible risk of genocide — while simultaneously gutting Medicaid, housing assistance, and Social Security for American families. Our military is being deployed as a de facto enforcer of Israeli regional expansion in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and now escalating postures in Iran. This is not American foreign policy. It is a subcontract — and the people of CA-15 are paying for it.
Criticizing a government’s military conduct is not hatred of its people. I stand firmly against antisemitism — and equally firmly against the cynical use of that charge to silence accountability.
About Gaza, moral clarity is required: What is happening in Gaza is a genocide. I will say it.
- Over 50,000 Palestinians killed — the majority women, children, and elderly civilians — since October 2023.
- Hospitals, schools, and refugee camps deliberately targeted. Humanitarian aid systematically blocked as a weapon of war.
- The International Court of Justice has issued provisional measures citing plausible genocide risk under the 1948 Genocide Convention.
- The Holocaust was a crime against humanity — and no past suffering grants any government a license to inflict mass atrocities on another people. Victimhood is not a credential for perpetrating genocide.
- I distinguish sharply between the Jewish people — whose safety and dignity I defend — and the Israeli government’s military and political conduct, which I condemn.
The Fiscal Trade-Off: $17B+ for foreign military aid. Cuts to your healthcare. That math is wrong.
- The U.S. has provided over $17 billion in emergency military aid to Israel since October 2023 — more than the entire HUD annual budget.
- The same Congress approving that spending is cutting Medicaid, child tax credits, housing vouchers, and Social Security COLA for seniors.
- Every dollar funding a foreign war is a dollar not spent on housing affordability, Medicare for All, AI worker protections, or keeping San Mateo seniors in their homes.
- Our current representative Kevin Mullin takes AIPAC money. I do not. That independence is not incidental — it is why I can say what he won’t.
What I Will Do in Congress: Eight concrete demands, not aspirations.
- Condition all U.S. military aid to Israel on full compliance with international humanitarian law and unrestricted humanitarian access to Gaza.
- Support an immediate, permanent ceasefire and return of all hostages through diplomacy — not continued bombardment that has failed to free them.
- Recognize the State of Palestine and support full UN membership consistent with a two-state framework guaranteeing security and sovereignty for both peoples.
- Oppose any U.S. military strike on Iran not explicitly authorized by Congress. War powers belong to the legislature — not any president.
- Ban arms transfers to any government under active ICJ investigation for genocide violations, pending resolution.
- Redirect suspended military aid into domestic priorities: housing assistance, Medicare expansion, worker retraining, and climate resilience.
- Require full public disclosure of AIPAC and foreign-government-linked lobbying in U.S. congressional races.
- Support independent international investigation of all war crimes — including October 7 — because accountability must be universal to mean anything.
The Broader Principle
My foreign policy is my domestic policy applied globally: results over rhetoric, accountability over complicity, people over powerful interests. America’s real security comes from a world where international law is upheld — not from shielding governments committing atrocities from consequences while our own families go without healthcare and housing.
Palestinian children are not collateral damage. They are children. A representative from CA-15 should be able to say that without flinching. I can. I will.