Positions

Robert Tager offers fresh alternatives to the past decades of ineffective leadership in the 12^th Congressional District, State, and Nation. Issues and Positions.

My positions are very simple and crafted through common sense:

     Country must always come before party in policy considerations.

   What is good for the middle class and working class is also good for America.

New ideas are what moves our Country forward.

These are my positions. To read more in depth, please go to my issues page

• Opposed to privatization of Veterans Affairs (VA)
• Favors enhanced mental health services
• Favors expedited disability claims
• Favors increased access to health services
• Favors proper VA funding
• Fight to protect GI Bill benefits
• Favors making marijuana available through VA
• Include Dental and Vision, even if not service connected
• Favors fixing the systemic problems that cause Veterans to have to beg their congressman for help
• Find solutions to veteran homelessness and suicide

SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE

• Opposes privatization of Social Security
• Opposes privatization of Medicare
• Favors increase of income level cap
• Favors taxing dividends, capital gains, and interest on persons without W-2 income that are under 65.
• Favors Prescription Drug price reductions through negotiating or regulation
• Favors allowing Veterans to use Medicare
• Favors syncing the age of eligibility for Medicare and Social Secuity
• Favors Medicare for All
• Favors Medicare Public Choice to allow younger and healthier people to buy in, employers, and private people

HEALTHCARE

• We MUST recognize that healthcare is a human right and not a privilege of wealth
• Favors Medicare For All, or some other form of universal or single payer
• Favors immediately opening Medicare for people to buy, until Medicare For All is implemented.
• Opposes insurance companies making medical decisions
• Opposes coverage limitations
• Reduction of prescription medication costs through negotiation or regulation
• Favors interstate sales for insurance companies
• Favor capping consumer costs of Not For Profit Hospital care to Medicare rates.
• Favor free women’s contraceptives
• Favors keeping the government out of the Doctors office and patient medical decisions. This includes reproductive rights.
• Oppose abortions being made illegal.
• Medicaid must be better funded
• CHIP and SNAP must be funded properly
• Increase the poverty level to be eligible for ACA subsidies
• Favors requiring insurance companies to disclose negotiated rates so consumers can better estimate what their co-pays and out of pockets will cost
• Public funding of mental health facilities like we used to have
• Favors pharmaceutical company funding for addiction centers

JOBS/WAGES

• Favors enhancing and improving public education;
• Favors publicly funded technical programs working in conjunction with unions for training and apprentice programs
• Favors Federal Funding Increases for public education, can not be used for charter schools or vouchers
• Favors utilizing and training in renewable energies including for fossil fuel workers to begin to move them to a renewable energy economic future.
• Favors improvement of infrastructure which creates immediate good paying jobs. This includes High speed rail and light rail.
• Favors increase in mandatory minimum wage. This includes high speed and light rail. (NOTE- 1 Jan 2018 Florida increased to 8.25 hr. Federal poverty line for 2018 for family of 2 is 16460

Therefore if a single parent worked 40 hrs per week at current minimum wage, they would earn only $700 more than federal poverty level at the end of the year!! OR : $13.46 weekly!! Most of us are only one unexpected major expense away from financial catastrophe.

• Supports unions and the benefits they provide such as collective bargaining, higher wages, better work conditions, safer work environment
• End corporate welfare and demand livable wages
• I will work with the governor and district leaders to help trying to attract industry
• Favors equal pay for equal work
• Favors prohibiting employment discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation
• Favors using Earned Income Tax Credit to assist with child care costs. A person can not work if they have to care for their child during the same time.

REDUCING GUN VIOLENCE

• Favors Banning future sales of military assault weapons such as the AR-15 that are not hunting rifles
• Favors Defining military assault rifles beyond the cosmetics
• Favors Prohibiting all person to person sales and require all sales go through licensed gun dealers to ensure background checks and to end straw man purchases
• Favors giving the Government the right of first refusal and allow the government to purchase military style assault rifles in the private market place. (Continuing gun buy back program)
• Favors no fly no buy, with a process to dispute the designation or to show they are not a public safety threat
• Favors nationwide banning of bump stocks
• Favors permitting and funding the CDC to research gun violence, the causes, and solutions
• Favors implementing smart gun trigger safeties

RIGHT TO VOTE

• Favors automatic restoration of voting rights
• Favors increased opportunities to vote
• Opposed to closed primaries
• Favors extended early voting
• Favors ending partisan gerrymandering.

TAXES

• We MUST recognize that taxes are a necessity and avoiding taxes should not be a privilege of wealth. Everyone, including corporations, must pay their fair share.
• Favors interest deductions for credit cards, automobiles, and revolving credit up to $20,000 and making mortgage interest deductions permanent
• Favors health insurance premium deduction, dollar for dollar
• Favors out-of-pocket medical expenses deduction, dollar for dollar
• Favors childcare deduction, dollar for dollar
• Opposes wealthy monopolizing deductions
• Favors eliminating many corporate deductions
• Favors eliminating the carried interest tax rate of 15%. This is just welfare for the wealthy
• Favors a tiny transactional tax on Wall Street and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

UNIONS AND RIGHT TO WORK

• Favors right to organize unions and collective bargaining
• Opposes Right to Work legislation, Everyone is free to work and if people want to work in a non union shop that is their choice but their choice should not interfere with peoples right to unionize

MARIJUANA

• Favors medical marijuana
• Opposes marijuana being identified as a Schedule One substance
• Favors right of veterans to obtain at VA
• Favors legalization for adult recreational use
• Favors reevaluating the war on drugs

EQUAL RIGHTS

• Favors equality for ALL
• Favors updating the Civil Rights Act to prohibit discrimination for ALL persons for housing, lodging, and employment
• Favors requiring all police departments that receive federal funding to use body cams for all officers, and provide funding for that purpose to all law enforcement agencies

CUBA

• Favors normalizing relations
• Favors opening trade as a means of diplomacy
• Favors opening a consulate here in Tampabay

ENVIRONMENT

• Favors preservation of EPA, proper funding, and legislating maximum carbon emissions and air pollutant amounts.
• Favors addressing climate change concerns
• Opposes dependence on fossil fuels
• Opposes fracking
• Favors permanent ban on offshore and inshore drilling
• Favors renewable energy and will use tax policies and financial incentives to accelerate growth rate of growth for industry, workers, consumers, and exporting
• Favors limiting carbon emissions
• Favors clean water and clean air
• Opposed to Ridge road Extension
• Favors requiring agriculture, big sugar and fossil fuel industries, to capture and clean their wastewater and waste before dumping it or permitting it to enter our waterways
• Favors requiring companies responsible for damaging our waterways to clean up their own mess at their expense.
• Favors requiring fracking companies to disclose what chemicals they are using

POVERTY/HOMELESSNESS/HUNGER

• Favors combatting these problems with better free public education, trade schools, and retraining programs
• Favors ending wasteful military spending and cutting from the 1.3 trillion dollar military budget 10% to begin to fund homeless transitional centers and homeless navigation centers throughout the nation and here in this District. We are way over charged for everything from bullets to boots to hammers and nails.
• Free NUTRITIONAL school breakfasts and lunches for any student. This will end some school bullying
• Favors a transactional tax for wall street and Chicago Mercantile Exchange to pay for anti poverty/homeless/hunger activities.
• Favors Earned Income Tax Credits

PRIVATIZATION

• Opposes privatization of prisons
• Opposes Privatization of public education
• Opposes Privatization of our Military
• Opposes Privatization of our infrastructure

IMMIGRATION

• Favors Dreamers having citizenship if no violent felony convictions and paid taxes
• Favors giving undocumented several years to get documented. If they do they get permanent resident status (No voting rights). If they do not get documented they will be deported when caught.
• Increase resources to process asylum claims, immigration applications and speed up the process
• Reconsider and reevaluate temporary work visa programs such as the H1B and H2B programs. These are jobs that we have workers available and they artificially decrease wages
• Increase border security through technology and agents

INCOME INEQUALITY

• Favors tax policies that are more equitable
• Favors a ban on stock buy back programs, They used to be illegal
• Favors a more equitable tax policy.
• Many of my positions above will begin to slow the growth of income and wealth inequality

Our current congressman, Gus, is not for us. He has never voted for our benefit. He has consistently voted against our interests and in favor of those special interest groups that support him through millions of dollars of campaign contributions. Our District, State, and Nation needs a representative that fights to better the majority of the people and not the few elites. We need representation that puts the good of the people and Country first. I am that person. I will fight for all of the people and not corporations or special interests.