Adam Schiff is the current U.S. Representative for California’s 30th Congressional District. He is also the Democratic candidate running to represent California in the U.S. Senate in the 2024 elections.
Schiff said he can use the larger Senate platform to build housing in California, bring down childcare costs throughout the state, enable fair access to insurance, and to defend our democracy, which Schiff said “is in a very vulnerable position at this moment where we have someone running for president who wants to be a dictator on day one.”
He also said being a Senator from California affords him the opportunity to speak for approximately 40,000,000 state residents, which is about one out of every eight U.S. American citizens.
“It will give me a much stronger voice in defending our rights, our freedoms, and pushing back against disenfranchisement efforts around the country,” Schiff added.
Schiff said he plans to lower healthcare costs by moving to a “Medicare For All” model. Medicare for All is an assemblage of legislative proposals intending to increase Medicare into a federal single-payer system that offers healthcare to all Americans.
“I also want to make sure that we address disparities to care,” said Schiff. “There’s a bill I’ve been carrying for several years, The Equal Access to Healthcare Act, which tries to address the racial disparities in access to care.”
With gas prices at about $5 per gallon, Schiff said oil companies are gouging U.S. consumers, making record profits, and doing it because they can get away with it.
Although Schiff believes the war against Russia in Ukraine and the constricting of oil supplies to the United States by OPEC countries are also factors, he asserts that legislation can be passed to stop U.S. oil companies from overcharging.
“We need to develop stronger anti-gouging laws. I’ve introduced legislation that would put a windfall profits tax on oil companies,” he said. A windfall tax is a one that imposes a higher tax rate on exceedingly high corporate profits.
Schiff said another solution is moving to renewable energy, which is cheaper than oil now. “The more we can make that available, the more competition oil has,” said Schiff.
Schiff is also concerned about housing. His Low-Income Housing Credit is designed to incentivize housing developers to build more affordable housing for low- and moderate-income tenants.
According to a May 2024 Pews Research Center report, 83 percent of Black Americans vote Democrat, with 77 percent saying they would vote for Biden over Trump. But 49 percent of African Americans who vote Democrat say they would replace Biden and Trump as presidential candidates if they could.
“I think Joe Biden has done an extraordinary job as president on issues that deeply impact the Black community,” asserted Schiff. “The work he has done to build infrastructure in the country is creating a lot of good-paying jobs in construction.”
He continued, “The work that he has done to address environmental injustices through the Inflation Reduction Act is also hugely important in the Black community. All these things are enormously important to people’s economic wellbeing.”
Schiff said that Joe Biden — unlike Donald Trump, who doesn’t care about anyone but himself — cares about issues important to the Black community.
“The administration and those of us that are surrogates of the administration need to make the case [for] why what the president is doing is directly impactful in their lives and how the other side is not really offering anything equivalent,” said Schiff.
He continued, “What they are offering, and what they did offer the last time they had a chance to govern, was a tax cut for very rich people and very large corporations, which did nothing for the country or the Black community. And we can expect more of the same if that guy [Trump] takes office again.”
Schiff said in the upcoming election, everyone’s vote matters, including African American men who may be feeling disenfranchised.
“A lot of these elections are going to be very close in battleground states,” he said. “The Black community may be the decisive vote in these states.”
Schiff believes staying at home from the polls is potentially a vote for Donald Trump.
“That would take the country in such a dangerous direction,” said Schiff. “What we’ve seen under Republican leadership is efforts to disenfranchise people of color, attack voting rights, diminish our education system [and] make healthcare more inaccessible.”
He also acknowledged that if African American men and women don’t get out and vote, it’s not on them – it is on Democrats who haven’t made the case for why Black Americans should vote Democrat.
