Christopher Deluzio

Chris believes that we should be making the products Americans depend on here in America, and that we should be making them with union workers right here in Western Pennsylvania.

Folks in Western Pennsylvania made the steel that built this country, and then corporate globalization stripped this region for parts: outsourcing jobs and devastating communities. Chris disagrees with the lousy trade deals and policy choices that hurt us, and, more importantly, that the American people never agreed to: to ship our jobs overseas, to sell the American Dream of millions of middle class families off to the highest bidder, and to make us dependent on foreign supply chains. These mistakes did plenty for corporate profits and Wall Street at the public’s expense.  

And now our country, our communities, and our families are bearing the cost of those policy choices. Too many families struggle to make ends meet, find good jobs, and dream about a better life for their kids.

Chris will fight hard in Washington to reverse these disastrous decisions, to bring back strong union jobs to make things here once again.

Chris believes these industries are critical, not just in the future, but right now:

Industries that pay their workers every dime that they earn and train them to earn even more.

Industries that respect the fundamental right to form and join a union.

Industries that care about the places they are located and the people who live there.

Industries that pay their fair share of taxes.

Industries that invest in new technology instead of just buying back their own stocks.

It is time to make things in America again. It is time for our government to work with domestic industries to get the job done. And it is time for Wall Street to invest in America again rather than putting profit and greed above all else. Let’s get to work.

Our democracy is in peril. From limitless corporate money running through our political system, the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol, Republican voter suppression efforts in Harrisburg and across the country, and gerrymandered maps that serve politicians instead of the people – we need bold action to protect and strengthen our democracy.

Chris is deeply committed to defending our democracy and freedom to vote, going back to the oath of office he first took as a 17-year old at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, through his work at Pitt Cyber and the Brennan Center to defend our voting rights and elections. He supports legislation like the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act, and he knows we need to overturn the Supreme Court’s disastrous ruling in Citizens United that opened the door to limitless corporate money in politics. Chris believes we’re all served better by impartial and fair maps, not gerrymandered ones. He won’t shy from a fight with those on the radical right who would attack our freedoms and throw out our elections in exchange for power.

Chris believes that we need bold and swift action to make Western Pennsylvania communities resilient to the effects of climate change and to secure our children’s future on earth. We should have clean air and water and strong union jobs.

To do this, we need to invest in the clean energy sources of the future, while protecting and creating union jobs in places like Allegheny and Beaver County that have kept the lights on in this country for over a century. Chris supports policies like the Inflation Reduction Act that are investing in renewable energy production and creating good jobs right here in Western Pennsylvania.

To get to the future where the world is free of greenhouse gas emissions–which we must do for the sake of humanity–we have to be honest about the role of natural gas’s role to help us get there. It is a significant source of union jobs in Western Pennsylvania and a key domestic source of energy, helping us reduce dependence on imports. Chris is not willing to send our kids overseas to fight another energy war.

We should, of course, fight for tougher environmental standards around natural gas (like methane emissions controls) and protect our public lands, but we need natural gas in our electrical grid to provide reliable base load power while we build out capacity for non-fossil fuel sources like solar, hydropower, and wind. Our region is also lucky to have a major source of non-fossil fuel energy: Beaver Valley Power Station in Beaver County. It employs hundreds of union workers and provides critically reliable power to the grid. We ought to be doing everything we can to ensure that nuclear remains a key and viable part of our energy mix, especially if we strive for a future with carbon-free energy powered by solid union jobs.

Chris will never vote to kill good Western PA jobs–union jobs–and go tell people to learn to code or whatever rubbish they’ve cooked up. Chris will fight for our jobs, for our air and water, and for our clean energy future with Western Pennsylvania leading the way.

During his military service, Chris led Americans in harm’s way and carried weapons of war in places like Iraq. He had some of the best weapons training in the world from our military and knows firsthand the power of these weapons. It’s exactly because of this background that Chris supports common sense gun reforms like background checks for every gun sale, getting high-capacity magazines and weapons of war off our streets and out of our schools, and red flag laws to keep guns out of the hands of people who are a danger to themselves or others.

He supported the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act signed into law in 2022 that expands background checks, strengthens school safety, and provides better mental health services and is fighting to bring the funding from this law back into Western Pennsylvania. Chris has supported and secured federal funding for local law enforcement, so that cops have what they need to keep us safe. He is also a member of the Bipartisan Fentanyl Prevention Caucus and is fighting back against the havoc that this drug is wrecking on Western Pennsylvania communities.

In the richest country in the history of the planet, it is obscene that some Americans cannot afford healthcare一or are stuck paying way too much for lousy care. The way Chris sees it, we cannot keep settling for an expensive, profit-driven healthcare system that leaves too many uninsured, under-insured, ripped-off, and left without real choices. Medical bills simply should not be a leading cause of bankruptcy, as they are today.

Chris is fighting to guarantee healthcare for every American and believes that healthcare is a human right. He supports efforts to lower the Medicare eligibility age; to expand Medicare to include dental, vision, and hearing services; to allow Medicare to negotiate better prescription drug prices; to expand Medicaid coverage to home care services for seniors and people with disabilities; and to close the Medicaid coverage gap. Chris will work hard to expand Medicare to achieve coverage for all Americans.

Chris believes that every American should be able to retire with dignity and security. For years, Social Security has provided a lifeline alongside hard-earned pensions and private savings. Yet as the radical right and big corporations waged war against unions, the prevalence of pension plans has fallen drastically, greatly increasing Social Security’s importance in retirement, which provides a reliable source of earned income, lifting an estimated 22 million seniors out of poverty during any given year and providing general retirement security for millions more.

But despite this success, Social Security is under attack from the right, who see one of the most successful social welfare systems in history as another obstacle in their path toward enriching big corporations and the wealthy. Republican administrations have cut taxes on corporations and the rich, including through the 1983 payroll tax income cap (which exempts the richest Americans from payroll taxes that fund Social Security). The radical right would gladly throw more seniors out on the street by raising the legal retirement age and have even tried to privatize Social Security altogether.

In Congress, Chris is fighting hard to protect and expand Social Security, which is so critical to the economic security every retired American has earned. He supports legislation to shore up this program for future generations, and thinks that the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which adjusts the value of Social Security payments based on inflation, needs to be measured better to make sure that we fully capture cost-of-living for retirees. Moreover, Chris believes that a common-sense solution to increase Social Security’s available funds is to have the ultra-rich finally pay their fair share in payroll taxes, which are currently capped at $160,200 in annual income. Ending this handout would give the program a nearly $100 billion annual increase in funding, a massive increase that would help secure millions of Americans’ retirements and keep Social Security on a steady footing for generations to come.

During Chris’s deployment to Iraq, he saw firsthand一like too many of his fellow veterans一the consequences of a war that we never should have fought. The forever wars have cost trillions of dollars and even more in American lives. In Congress, he will never vote to send Americans to war unless absolutely critical to our national security, and as a member of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs and House Armed Services Committee, he has shown he’s not afraid to ask the tough questions and to demand answers from those beating the drumbeat of war.

In his first term in Congress, Chris stood up to defend veterans healthcare and services from Congressional Republican-proposed cuts and successfully protected the earned benefits of America’s veterans. No matter what, Chris will never break faith with his fellow veterans, to whom we have a sacred obligation to care for with a fully funded and staffed Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).