Brad Schneider

Expanding quality, well-paying, career-focused opportunities by growing manufacturing jobs, rebuilding our infrastructure, and educating our children to succeed in our 21st century global economy.

While our economy continues to rebound, too many people are still looking for work, concerned about paying their mortgage, and uncertain about their ability to retire. Middle-class families in the Tenth District and across the country worry not just about finding any job, but finding a well-paying job that will ensure a rising standard of living for their family.

Growing Manufacturing

Key to strengthening our economy and expanding job growth is helping our small businesses succeed. Small businesses historically create 60 percent of all new jobs and are the driving force behind economic expansion and middle-class prosperity. In particular, manufacturing firms are job multipliers; through surrounding services and the supply chain studies show each manufacturing job supports as many as two to five others. We must work to provide both the regulatory environment and tools necessary for small businesses and manufacturers to thrive.

Educating for Success

We must also work with employers to ensure we are graduating students and training workers with the skills they need to find employment. This is particularly true in our manufacturing sector, where many jobs go unfilled because workers do not have the necessary skills.

Investing in Infrastructure

Finally, we must continue to rebuild our infrastructure - highways, bridges, ports and tunnels — which are a foundation for economic growth. These transportation arteries are an investment in our future, allowing American companies to move and sell their product on the global market.

Ensuring all of our young people have the opportunity for a world-class education, learning the skills and lessons to succeed as adults and lead our future.

All of our young people, regardless of their zip code, deserve the opportunity for a high-quality, affordable education.

We have a responsibility to ensure that our children graduate high school ready for college and a career. They deserve the opportunity to further their education without the burden of enormous student loan debt. In an increasingly globalized world, our graduates must be prepared to compete for jobs, and ready to lead in innovation and ideas, not just with their neighbors, but with people from around the world.

Only by enhancing our nation's education opportunities will we maintain the best educated, most innovative and most productive workforce in the world. With renewed emphasis on education -- including Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) and also Arts programs -- we can ensure that the next generation of invention, and the great breakthroughs in health care, energy and manufacturing are developed in this country.

We must lay the foundation for this success by investing in early childhood education. Research shows that students who are provided with early education are more likely to read and do math at grade level, graduate from high school and demonstrate improved academic achievement.

Nothing is more fundamental than the air we breathe and the water we drink. And there is nothing more important for us to do than to protect our planet for the next generation.

Climate change is a grave threat to the ecological and environmental health of our nation and planet. While some chose to deny the overwhelming scientific consensus, I recognize that the failure to address this challenge will, with certainty, result in further environmental degradation and incalculable damage to the world we pass on to our children.

Environmental sustainability requires a comprehensive, forward-looking approach that utilizes all of our nation's assets and ingenuity. We must expand investments in clean energy technologies including solar, wind, geothermal, and nuclear. While we seek alternatives to replace our demand for oil and gas, we must continue exploring domestic energy sources in a way that minimizes their environmental impact. By responsibly pursuing energy independence, we can promote economic growth, create jobs and preserve our global leadership in industries such as agriculture, energy, manufacturing and transportation.

I am committed to urgently addressing the impending threat of climate change. By being responsible, strategic stewards of our environment and natural resources, I know we can ensure a healthy, clean and dynamic natural world—not just for today, but for generations to come

Every day, we read stories of more tragic and senseless violence across our nations. We can come together to reduce gun violence with commonsense action, while at the same time respecting and protecting the Second Amendment rights of gun owners.

Tragic gun violence is all too common in our country. It is time for Congress to enact reasonable laws to keep the deadliest weapons off our streets and to reduce instances of violence, while still protecting law-abiding citizens' constitutional right to bear arms.

We must take a comprehensive, commonsense approach toward violence, investigating its root causes and investing in programs to help prevent crime before it happens. This means making mental-health treatment readily available to those who need it and providing safe places for kids who otherwise might turn to gangs or violence.

I support:

Extending Universal Background Checks

Right now, 40 percent of all gun sales are completed without background checks. We need to close the loopholes on background checks, a measure that will not add any new hurdles to gun ownership but would simply extend the same background checks already in place for retailers. This proposal would help protect against sales of guns to criminals, terrorists, and the mentally ill.

I am proud to introduce the "Ghost Guns Are Guns" bill with my colleague Rep. Espaillat to extend background checks to gun assembly kits purchased online. An egregious loophole in current law allows purchasers of these essentially untraceable mail-order weapon kits to avoid federal background checks. This commonsense proposal would close a loophole and take a small step toward making our communities safer.

Making Gun Trafficking a Federal Crime

It is time past we finally enact commonsense legislation that makes gun trafficking a federal crime, which is why I cosponsored the Gun Trafficking Prevention Act that would crack down on straw purchases.

Limiting High-Capacity Magazines and Silencers

We should limit the sale of high-capacity magazines that allow for dozens of bullets to be fired without having to stop and reload. I also oppose relaxing regulations on the sale of silencers which would make the job of our law enforcement professionals more difficult and dangerous.

Restoring the Assault Weapons Ban

Since the original Assault Weapons Ban expired in 2004, we've seen a dramatic increase in the number of crimes committed with these weapons. Military-style weapons have no place on our streets, and I—like the overwhelming majority of federal, state and local law enforcement—believe it is time to renew the sensible ban on these weapons.

I believe that access to affordable, quality health care is our right, not a privilege reserved for only a few. We need to fix the Affordable Care Act, building on its successes, fixing its flaws, and looking for new and innovative ways to improve health outcomes while lowering individual and national costs.

America has the best doctors, hospitals and medical technology in the world, but our health care system is hamstrung by inefficiency and high costs.

The Affordable Care Act was a step in the right direction. No longer can insurance companies deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions or arbitrary annual or lifetime limits. Our young people can stay on a parent's plan through age 26; and the law improved parity between mental and physical health care.

Yet much work remains to expand access, improve outcomes, and reduce overall costs. I'm committed to finding solutions, and working across the aisle, to improve what is working, fix what is not working and rethink what is not fixable in our current system. But I do not support the irresponsible plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act wholesale, which would increase the number of uninsured and raise health care premiums – all while diminishing overall access to care.

Fixing our broken immigration system will grow our economy, reduce our debt, and strengthen our communities. We need to come together, in a bipartisan effort, to pass comprehensive immigration reform.

Since our nation's founding, immigrants have provided the diversity, energy and wealth of knowledge and innovation that help our country prosper. Unfortunately, our current immigration system is badly broken. Deficiencies in the legal immigration process coupled with imperfect border security have resulted in more than 11 million undocumented immigrants living within our borders, functioning in a shadow economy that disregards their personal integrity and disadvantages American workers.

It is essential that we enact comprehensive immigration reform that secures our border and includes a pathway to citizenship for those here illegally. In my first term in Congress, I was proud to help introduce comprehensive immigration reform legislation, and remain committed to finding a solution. In particular, we must ensure the "DREAMers" brought here as children can live without fear of deportation in the only country that many of them have ever known.

We must uphold our committment to older Americans for the secure retirement and quality health care that they have earned.

Our seniors, the people who supported our families and developed our communities, deserve the dignity of a secure retirement and affordable health care. The multi-generational commitment of Social Security and Medicare is a foundation of our social contract, and a defining feature of our national prosperity.

I am committed to safeguarding Medicare from privatization and efforts to transform the program into a voucher system, shifting costs to seniors and our most vulnerable citizens. While we must address rising health care costs that threaten Medicare's long-term sustainability, I will defend the Medicare guarantee so that no senior will ever have to choose between heating their homes and maintaining their health.

I also know we must protect and strengthen Social Security. I will oppose efforts to privatize Social Security while looking for constructive ways to bolster the system.

While I recognize that we need to address our fiscal challenges, it is paramount that we fulfill the promise made to our seniors, and I will always work to fend off efforts to dismantle the basic structure of Social Security and Medicare.

Growing deficits are irresponsible and threaten the prosperity of future generations. Budgets reflect our values and priorities. A more sustainable budget will require difficult decisions, but we must not balance our budget on the backs of our most vulnerable citizens.

Our country's growing national debt is a significant burden that threatens our long-term prosperity. The federal government can take a lesson from small businesses and working families across the country who understand that it is unsustainable to consistently spend more money than you have. However, we must also recognize that not all cuts are wise, just or well-advised. While it is critical that we balance the budget, we cannot do so on the backs of the most vulnerable.

I support a balanced approach that includes both spending cuts and revenue increases. By coupling targeted spending reductions with an appropriate amount of revenue increases, we can reduce the deficit without instituting crippling budget cuts that disproportionally impact the elderly, students or the poor.