Health Insurance/Health Care/Privatization
    With spiraling costs, 45 million people uninsured, and inconsistent quality, it’s clear that the next Congress must pass bold and broad health care reforms. This is a moral question about our values. I would work to guarantee that everyone has access to basic care, like the plan currently offered to members of Congress. I support policies that provide subsidies to make care affordable to all, make plans fully portable for those switching jobs, and ensure that everyone is accepted and treated fairly by their plan.

    I agree with Senators Clinton and Obama that we should pay for the increased cost of universal access by allowing President Bush's tax cuts on those making more than about $250,000 a year to expire in 2010 instead of acting to make them permanent. I also think that we can help pay for expanding access by finding new ways to cut costs, such as:

    *focusing on preventive care for chronic diseases like diabetes;
    *investing in a national electronic health records system; and
    *preventing prescription drug companies from encouraging people to over-medicate by advertising on television.

Campaign Contributions
    I definitely support public funding for Congressional campaigns. While I’ve tried to spend as much time meeting people and developing specific policy plans, the deck is stacked against a kid from Sanford who hasn’t spent his career running for office. I don’t believe there is a single reform that would have a bigger impact on our country than finding a way to make campaigns about ideas instead of spending a majority of time raising money. Until we remove the influence of campaign donations, it will continue to be incredibly difficult to make progress on issues like health care reform.

Global Warming/Alternative Energy
    I believe that I’m uniquely qualified to help pass the Safe Climate Act as the only candidate in the race who has a real expertise in clean energy. I have spent much of my career working on energy solutions for both businesses and governments. In addition to helping Maine businesses save money by using more clean energy, I have advised many eastern European governments on how to restructure their energy sectors and meet clean energy standards set by the European Union.

    This is an area in Congress where I can make an immediate impact. I closely studied the 2005 energy bill that contained little on clean energy yet provided senseless handouts to oil companies, so I understand the challenges we will face restructuring our own energy sector in the next Congress.

    I have proposed an aggressive, detailed plan for clean energy that would go even further than the Safe Climate Act. I believe that in order to actually reduce our air pollution 80% below 1990 levels by 2050, we must make sacrifices together as a nation. Oil companies must invest more in clean energy or pay into a research and development fund; manufacturers must make more energy efficient products; individuals must conserve more energy; and our leaders in Congress must give us more than just sound bites. Here’s how we I think we should share the responsibility:

    * Increase auto fuel efficiency standards to catch up with Japan and Europe, instead of the most recently passed standards, which have us in line with China.
    * End the billions of dollars in tax breaks that oil companies receive and use the money instead to provide more incentives to produce clean energy in the U.S.
    * Set a renewable electricity standard for the entire nation, following the example set by Maine, that requires states to generate a minimum percent of electricity from sources such as solar, wind, and hydro. At a minimum, 15% of our electricity should be renewable. This would save families up to $18 billion on their electricity and gas bills in 2020.
    * Provide incentives to power companies that provide cheaper prices for off-peak electricity and promoting energy efficiency.
    * Allow self-reliant families and businesses who install solar, wind, or other clean energy generators to sell the power they produce back to the grid.
    * Jumpstart the clean technology market by making the federal government a major buyer of flex-fuel and plug-in hybrid cars and energy efficient light bulbs.
    * Reward businesses that allow employees to telecommute so that less emissions are produced.
    * Extend the tax credits given for purchasing hybrid vehicles that have been phased out.
    * Require all federal buildings to meet minimum energy efficiency standards.
    * Create a nationwide “cap and trade” system. This market-based system would put a limit on the amount of air pollution our economy can produce and decrease that limit every year until we reach our ultimate goal. At the beginning, the government would auction off credits that give businesses the right to create a fixed amount of pollution, and these credits could then be traded between businesses. Passing a flexible, market-based solution like this would be one of my top priorities in Congress.

    Clean energy leadership is also a major economic opportunity for Maine. With the right, experienced leadership and our abundant natural resources, we can become a model for the new green economy.

National Security/Military Spending
    I believe that if we are responsible in bringing our troops home as safely and quickly as possible from Iraq, we will have the opportunity to invest more in our schools and hospitals here at home. But at the same time, we must remember that since the current administration has dangerously overstretched our troops in Iraq, we will still need to spend a significant amount on rebuilding our damaged armed forces so that they are prepared to fight terrorism and provide assistance during humanitarian disasters. As someone who served in the National Guard, I’m very concerned about the damage that has been done to our military, especially our veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. People on all sides of the political spectrum, including Senators Obama and Clinton, agree that we will need to fully fund the Veterans Administration to fulfill the obligation we made to our soldiers.

Transportation
    While I would need more time to study all of the proposals, I am very much committed to making our public transportation greener. My first choice would be to make it a priority to get funding to both expand our current fleet of buses, ferries, and paratransit vehicles and convert them to run on clean fuel. As for my second choice, I think it’s only fair to say that I would have to study the options more before deciding.
International Relations
    I believe that Iraq and global warming are the two international challenges that affect Mainers most. If we hope to regain our position as a moral leader in the world, we’ll need to learn from our mistakes on both.

    22 Mainers have died fighting in the war in Iraq so far, and several of them were friends of mine. One of the main reasons I'm running for Congress is to make sure that we never again go to war first and ask questions later, as we’ve done in Iraq. We need to change the mindset that got us into Iraq in the first place. We can never again go to war without real evidence, without making a sufficient case to our allies, without enough troops and proper equipment, without regard for rules against torture that protect our soldiers, or without an exit strategy and an honest debate at home.

    Another way we can regain our standing abroad is by taking a lead role in negotiations for the international energy agreement that will succeed the current Kyoto treaty. If we choose not to participate, we may save some money in the short term, but industrially developing countries such as China and India will take this as a cue to continue producing huge amounts of pollution. Ultimately, we can only reverse our effects on global warming by working together with the rest of the international community.

    While I have detailed plans for both of these issues on my website, I believe they are part of a larger issue: the need to recognize our interdependence. In the age of globalization, Mainers will face a number of serious threats together with the rest of the world: terrorism, nuclear weapons, climate change, disease, poverty, and genocide. All of these threats are intertwined, and no nation can face these threats on its own. I think that Madeleine Albright put it best: "We should cooperate with others whenever we can and act alone only when we have to. Not the other way around." I would work to make sure we follow this simple rule if elected to Congress.

Mortgage crisis in ME/Banking and lending
    The government should help restructure loans for people who are having their homes foreclosed even though they acted responsibly or were misled by deceptive lending practices. We should also help renters who are evicted from foreclosed buildings because of the irresponsible behavior of their landlords. The data I’ve seen shows that these people are disproportionately young and poor. I believe that the government should punish those companies who misled people and use the penalties to help those who were harmed.

Gay Marriage
    Yes. I believe people should be judged at work by how well they do their job and nothing else. The Employment Non-Discrimination Act is a good step forward, and I would keep supporting it until it is finally signed into law.
Living Wages/Jobs in ME/poverty/homelessness
    The most important step we can take to protect the poor is to continue to reward work by expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit to cover low income people not currently eligible, such as childless workers younger than 25, and increasing the amount given to families with three or more children.

    In order to help lower income parents make sure that their kids are not already behind before they start school, I would work to establish a federal fund of $24 billion to expand access to quality preschool. We also need to make it a priority to invest in other crucial programs that give children living in poverty a fair start such as:

    * the State Children's Health Insurance Program;
    * Head Start; and
    * the Child Care Tax Credit.

    Obviously, providing universal access to health care will also do much to protect the poor. I believe that we can pay for these protections by allowing President Bush's tax cuts on those making more than about $250,000 a year to expire in 2010 instead of acting to make them permanent. And since repealing the estate tax helps only the wealthiest one-third of one percent, I would support the House Democrats proposal to keep the tax for those inheriting more than $7 million.

College Affordability
    Growing up in a family of teachers, my parents taught me that education is the key to opportunity. Because education is so important to me, I have worked to offer the most serious and detailed plan in this race to make college more affordable.

    The cornerstone of my economic plan is a generous college tuition tax cut, because parents shouldn't have to go deep into debt to do what is right for their kids, and young adults shouldn't start their working lives saddled with tens of thousands of dollars of debt.

    Here’s are specific ideas on how I would invest in educational opportunity:

    * Give tax credits for half of college costs up to $10,000 per year for parents struggling to put their kids through college;
    * Increase the Pell Grant, make it available to more middle class kids who are getting priced out of college, and increase it with the rate of inflation in educational costs;
    * Provide a $500 College Savings Account to every child at birth, as Harold Alfond has generously done in Maine, with the government matching savings every year up to $500 for lower-income children;
    * Award $10,000 towards educational costs or loans for each year of national service completed in the military, Peace Corps, Teach for America and new programs such as a Health Corps and Green Corps;
    * Sharply increase funding for our community colleges in order to provide alternative paths to success—since middle-skill jobs, which require more than a high school diploma but less than a four year degree, are the largest segment of jobs in America; and
    * Provide grants for books, child care, and transportation to low-income students who want to get trained for high skill jobs, since it’s not just tuition that they struggle to afford.

    In a rapidly changing economy, we also need to offer better educational opportunities for adults to improve their skills or learn new ones. Whether workers have been forced to change careers or just want to get ahead, investments in worker retraining program have been proven to pay huge dividends to our economy. In order to strengthen these opportunities, we should:

    * Give adult students access to federal student loans and grants currently unavailable to them;
    * Create opportunities for lower paid workers to gain skills needed in growth industries while they are still in their current jobs;
    * Reward businesses that help their employees go back to school;
    * Greatly increase worker re-training programs such as Trade Adjustment Assistance;
    * Offer programs such as job counseling to all laid-off workers, no matter how they lose their jobs;
    * Begin to retrain workers as soon as it is clear that their workplace is about to close, so that they have more time to prepare for a new career;
    * Reform worker retraining programs based on what works best; and
    * Require community colleges receiving federal grants to coordinate with local employers in order to ensure that they can connect workers with real jobs in the area.

AIDS Awareness
    I believe that we can limit the spread of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases by allowing federal funding to be used for age-appropriate sex education and not requiring a certain amount of funding from our global AIDS plan to go towards abstinence-only education.

Fair Trade/Unions Rights
    I think that Congress should take seriously its responsibility to oversee trade policy. In my mind, trade should be both free and fair, not one or the other as many have sought to portray it. In Congress, I would support serious environmental and labor standards included in trade deals. At the same time, I believe that we should work to help trading partners actually meet these standards rather than using them to hurt the economic development of poorer countries.

    We also need to do much more to help workers at home who lose their jobs because of trade. Rather than just offering them the same limited Trade Adjustment Assistance that is commonly referred to as “burial insurance,” we should make it a priority to overhaul TAA and offer broader opportunities for advancement so that workers are prepared before jobs are even lost, as I have detailed above in my plan to make skills training more affordable. And while we can’t stop globalization, I believe that we should end tax breaks that encourage companies to move their jobs abroad.

Iraq War/Torture
    The war in Iraq is deeply personal for me. I had friends killed there. I treated people who died there. And I missed the birth of my first daughter while serving there. After spending a year of my life in Iraq leading troops in combat, I am absolutely committed to finding the most responsible way to bring our troops home as safely and quickly as possible.

    The situation is too complex, though, to offer simplistic sound bites as an answer. Instead, we need a thoughtful and realistic approach to Iraq. We must be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in. This means finding a way to bring our troops home that prevents them from needing to return in the future to stop genocide, regional civil war, or a terrorist stronghold from forming.

    In Bosnia, where I also served, we were faced with a similar challenge: a seemingly impossible solution to a brutal civil war. Fortunately, we had the wisdom then to see that military action alone is not enough to bring peace. After our military served its role, we needed a bold diplomatic solution—the Dayton Peace Accords—to bring our troops home and transition to an international peacekeeping force. In order to find a responsible way to bring our troops home now, we need a similarly bold diplomatic solution in Iraq. Here's how I would use my experience serving in both Iraq and Bosnia to lead others in Congress towards such a solution:

    While the “surge” has reduced some of the violence in Iraq, it has not addressed the fundamental problem. Instead of relying on an unsustainable military presence, we must reach a diplomatic solution. I believe that we can find a way forward by looking at a similarly complicated situation from our past. In the 1990s, we were faced with a country where:

    • Three main factions of people were caught in a never ending civil war;

    • Roving paramilitary units killed civilians indiscriminately;

    • Neighboring countries were contributing to the instability; and

    • Outsiders looked at the situation and said “These people have been killing themselves for a thousand years, what can be done?”

    This country was Bosnia, where I served soon after the Dayton Peace Accords were signed. While I served there, I saw firsthand how diplomacy can result in a peaceful resolution to an otherwise uncontrollable war.

    I believe we must learn from Bosnia by sending one of our best statesmen, such as former Senator George Mitchell, to broker a diplomatic solution in Iraq that allows all three sects to share power in peace. At the same time, we should direct our military commanders to develop a plan to safely withdraw troops as soon as it is possible. This diplomatic solution should have three priorities:

    1. Separating the Warring Factions

    Much like Bosnia during the early 1990s, Iraq is embroiled in a civil war among three factions. To end the fighting, the Shia, Sunni and Kurdish factions must be separated. In Bosnia, a quarter mile wide “zone of separation” was established, which prevented paramilitary units from entering into adjoining areas. The same must be done for Iraq. This allows people to stop worrying about leaving their homes for fear of being attacked and allows them to start working to repair their local communities.

    Of course, there are several areas of mixed ethnicity in Iraq that will need careful planning and consideration, most notably, Baghdad and Kirkuk. But again, the problem of separating warring factions from cities of mixed ethnicities also existed in Bosnia and solutions were found. For example, when I was in Bosnia, I was stationed near the city of Brcko, an area with significant mixed populations of Serbs, Croats and Muslims. During negotiations for the Dayton Peace Accords, all sides argued that Brcko should be within their respective local control. An agreement was finally reached, however, which allowed the factions to share control over Brcko, subject to popular elections. A similar agreement could be reached for cities of mixed ethnicity in Iraq.

    2. Limiting the Role of the Central Government

    There is currently too much distrust among the Shia, Sunni and Kurds to expect them to maintain a strong central government. Instead, decision making power should be given to the local government as much as possible. The central government of Iraq should be in charge of foreign policy, the regulation of water and electricity, and the sharing of oil revenues—but little else.

    3. Withdrawing U.S. Troops

    American soldiers must be redeployed from Iraq and replaced with an international force whose sole mission is to patrol the zone of separation and the Iraqi borders in order to prevent foreign jihadists from entering and establishing terrorist camps.
Iraq War/Torture
    Definitely. As a combat veteran, I can’t think of anything more damaging to our troops’ safety or our standing in the world that the fact that the current administration has allowed the impression that we wink, nod, or condone torture in any form. It is not a sign of strength or toughness but rather a sign of ignorance that endangers our troops’ lives.
Presidential Power
    Obviously there are volumes of constitutional law dedicated to this topic. The short answer is that the Constitution lays out a pretty good balance of power that has served the nation well. Unfortunately, over the past seven years, we’ve had an administration that has not held the constitution in high regard and a Congress that has not come close to fulfilling its oversight obligations as a co-equal branch of government. My view of executive power is that we need to restore a balance of power with a President who respects the Constitution and a Congress that lives up to its oversight responsibilities and protects our civil liberties.
Experience that relates to youth
    As the youngest candidate in the race and the founder and president of the Maine Young Democrats, I think that I understand young peoples’ concerns and aspirations and would be natural voice for them in Congress. It’s our generation that is fighting and dying in Iraq. Our generation is the one that will have to deal with climate change and a crippling deficit.

    Two particular things interest me as a way to better represent young people:

    After serving in the National Guard, I want to give everyone the opportunity to serve their country. I think we should encourage this by giving young people $10,000 towards educational costs or loans for each year of national service completed, whether that’s in the military, Peace Corps, Teach for America or new programs such as a Health Corps and Green Corps.

    In addition to this, I would like to set up a youth advisory council in order to give me ideas for other policies that would help young Mainers and to bring more transparency to decisions made about issues like the PACTS committee.

Top 3 priorities
    1. Finding a responsible way to bring our troops home from Iraq as safely and quickly as possible in order to save American and Iraqi lives and regain our moral standing abroad.

    2. Creating more jobs and opportunity for working people in Maine to help those who are struggling to keep up with their bills, save for their kids’ education, and take care of their aging parents.

    3. Making Maine a leader in clean energy, since our nation’s current approach to energy threatens our economy, our national security, and our environment.
Maine’s commercial fishing industry
    I would continue the work of Congressman Allen to seek federal funding for organizations like the Gulf of Maine Research Institute that help to bring fishermen and scientists together as partners to bolster an industry that is critical to our state’s economy and heritage. In the future, I believe we should strive to maintain a balance between helping fishermen make a living wage and protecting our environment.
Reproductive Rights
    Since the federal government has the legal authority to place conditions on funding, we can only change these policies by electing representatives who would vote to eliminate the “global gag rule” and restore funding for age appropriate programs that prevent unintended pregnancies, dangerous back-alley abortions, and the spread of disease through unsafe sex. While abortion is such a morally complex and personal issue for so many, I believe we can all come together to fund polices such as these that reduce the need for abortions.

Tax and Budget
    It would be incredibly irresponsible to leave young people with the staggering debt this administration has created, so I believe that we have to maintain our commitment to “pay as you go” spending rules. Instead of running up trillions of dollars in debt paying for tax cuts for the very wealthiest who don’t need them, I believe we should us that money to protect working people from an unfair Alternative Minimum Tax. We should pay for this by allowing President Bush's tax cuts on those making more than about $250,000 a year to expire in 2010 instead of acting to make them permanent. And since repealing the estate tax helps only the wealthiest one-third of one percent, I would support the House Democrats proposal to keep the tax for those inheriting more than $7 million.

Comments
    One question that wasn’t on your survey that has a huge impact on all Mainers, young and old, is how we can bring jobs and opportunity to Maine so that young people are able to make a living here. I’ve worked hard to come up with a serious, detailed plan, so I hope you’ll take a few minutes to read about it on