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Platform & Issues

"When I say that I am for the square deal, I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the game, but that I stand for having those rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for equally good service."
Theodore Roosevelt

A Square Deal For Virginia Families

  • Getting a Good Paying Job. Virginians lose over $1 billion by not having the skills employers need. Ben supports expanding workforce training programs like the G3 Program and Virginia Fast Forward to provide more skills training in high-demand fields such as healthcare, information technology, skilled trades, and teaching. Ben also recognizes that sometimes the hardest part of getting a better job is becoming qualified for it. That is why he supports allowing apprenticeships to meet occupational licensing requirements so that people can earn the skills and credentials they need while still earning a paycheck.
  • Strengthening Collective Bargaining. Ben also supports the right of workers to join a labor union and bargain collectively. He favors repealing Virginia’s so-called “Right to Work” law, which limits employees’ rights to negotiate fair wages, benefits, and workplace safety and increases unions’ costs to provide those vital services to workers. Ben opposes efforts to repeal or water down Virginia laws requiring state-funded construction projects to use project labor agreements, a collective bargaining agreement between building trades and contractors or create opportunities for outside entities to challenge a public body’s decision to use a project labor agreement. Moreover, Ben supports efforts to make it easier for public sector employees to join a union and bargain collectively for fair wages and better working conditions. In 2021, Virginia passed a historic law allowing public employees to unionize if the local governing body agrees. Ben favors removing that extra step and allowing government employees to unionize without any barriers.
  • Raising the Minimum Wage. We have great economic need in our region. About 29 percent of the residents of Stafford County make less than it costs to live in the county. Most of these individuals are first responders, educators, seniors, and new families. That number increases to over 54 percent for residents of Fredericksburg City. In Spotsylvania County, 37 percent of the residents make less than a living.According to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, an individual worker would need to earn about $22.42 per hour to make a living wage. A single parent with two children would need to make $44.20 per hour, and a dual-income family would need to earn $28.56 per hour. Meanwhile, the minimum wage is currently $12.00 per hour in Virginia. Ben supports raising the minimum wage so that working families can afford to live in our region.
  • Stopping Wage Theft. Ben supports greater action to combat wage theft which can take many forms, including employers not paying the minimum wage, not paying overtime premiums, stealing workers’ tips, and not paying for all hours worked. Every year, wage theft costs the United States economy almost $15 billion. Here in Virginia, several hundred thousand workers are likely unknowing victims of wage theft each year. Moreover, wage theft hurts honest and ethical employers who play by the rules.
  • Standing with Domestic Workers. In 2021, Virginia amended its overtime laws to provide live-in domestic workers, who have historically been Black or brown, with added protections for the first time. Some lawmakers now want to roll those protections back. Ben stands with domestic workers.
  • Ensuring Justice for Farmworkers. Farmworkers are essential to our survival and should be treated with dignity and respect, including the full protection of the law, regardless of immigration status. Farmworkers suffer abuse, discrimination, and human rights violations. Ben believes that farmworkers must be covered by Virginia’s minimum wage laws, protected from heat stress, and provided a just pay for long hours worked in the fields, and that children, who are allowed to work on farms, should enjoy added protections from harsh working conditions.
  • Paid Sick Leave. In 2021, Virginia Democrats passed a law to require employers to provide paid sick leave to home healthcare workers who provide services to patients enrolled in Medicaid and work an average of at least 20 hours per week. Ben wants to finish the job and requires employers to provide paid sick leave for all Virginia workers.Over 1.2 million Virginians currently have no sick days (or paid time off). That amounts to roughly 41% of private-sector workers, who predominantly work for lower wages, having no time off to take a sick day or care for a loved one. These families must make the hard choice between being healthy or keeping food on the table. Ben believes that workers need to be able to stay home when they, or a loved one, is sick.
  • Affordable Childcare. Most children in the United States under six years old – 68 percent of those in single-mother households and 57 percent in married-couple households – live in homes where all parents are employed. Most of these families need early childcare and education. However, the average cost of obtaining that care has increased nearly 220 percent over the past three decades while real wages for working families have remained stagnant.Ben wants to implement universal childcare and early childhood education for every family in Virginia with a child aged four years and under. This investment in our working families will provide a transformational opportunity to lift countless families out of poverty and provide a meaningful opportunity for those families to achieve economic stability, especially single working mothers. Affordable childcare is vital to the American Dream.
  • Increasing Grant and Loan Programs. Small businesses are the economic engine that drives our regional economy employing anywhere between 50 to 75 percent of our workers. Ben supports doing more for our small businesses, including setting up small retail business grant programs to promote existing small businesses and foster more business development. Moreover, Ben supports targeted efforts to promote micro-businesses with five or fewer employees. Micro-businesses are an important source of new jobs and a frequent source of entrepreneurship, particularly for women, veterans, and people of color. These businesses face the most difficulty accessing the capital needed to start and expand. Ben wants to create a targeted loan fund to help micro-businesses thrive.
  • Ensuring the Ability to Attract and Keep Talent. Recognizing that small businesses compete for the same talent as large multinational corporations, Ben supports creating programs to enable small businesses to attract and keep the workers they need to thrive. One such program is the creation of healthcare cooperatives that allow small businesses to work together to provide affordable health insurance to employees.Recognizing the growing “brain drain” in far too many communities, Ben wants to create a loan forgiveness program that would offer student loan forgiveness to graduates who choose to locate in areas experiencing significant population loss or fill job openings in high-need fields. By bringing more of our college graduates home, Ben believes we can support keeping talent local.
  • Fostering Employee Ownership. Almost 85 percent of small businesses, that is over 2.3 million, do not have succession plans. That is why Ben supports the creation of a Virginia Center for Employee Ownership, like efforts in states like North Carolina and Missouri, to support employee ownership as a succession planning practice.
  • Enhancing Our “Soft” Infrastructure. Ben supports investment in “soft” infrastructure, such as affordable childcare, to allow more Virginians to enter the labor market. Over $50 billion per year is lost in revenue, wages, and productivity due to persistent childcare needs in the United States.
  • Increasing Competition in the Marketplace. Whether it is multinational entertainment companies raising the prices of concert tickets or local trash companies increasing prices and decreasing the quality of service, the lack of competition in the marketplace hurts working families through higher prices, lower quality service, and less innovation. Ben believes in robust antitrust enforcement (meaning breaking up the monopolies and blocking anticompetitive mergers) and providing a regulatory environment where small businesses can thrive, and competition among firms still is robust. That is why Ben supports greater funding for state antitrust enforcement and regulatory reform to cut down on the unnecessary red tape to foster growth in consolidated industries.
  • Fighting Inflation and Price Gouging. Working families are paying at the gas pump and grocery store due to record inflation. A growing consensus is that record corporate profits – not irresponsible consumer spending – drive record inflation. According to the Economic Policy Institute, over 53 percent of price increases are attributable to profit growth, meaning that large corporations are raising prices to pad their bottom line. Ben supports taking decisive action against corporations that engage in price gouging and efforts to increase competition, including supporting new business development to bring prices down to combat record inflation.
  • Allowing All Families to Build Wealth. According to recent studies, economic mobility, the cornerstone of the American Dream, has not increased enough to offset rising income inequality. In America today, it would take a lower-income family of 4 with two children, 9 to 10 generations (200 years!), to achieve a middle-class income on average. Ben supports efforts to allow all families to build wealth and achieve the American Dream, including establishing state tax credits for working families, especially families with children, adopting a progressive income tax system, and lowering costs associated with higher education.
  • Municipal Broadband. Despite being one of the wealthiest regions in the United States, some of Senate District 27 still do not have access to high-speed, reliable broadband. Broadband internet is vital to supporting economic activity in our region, from applying for a job to starting a small business. Ben supports allowing local governments to invest in expanding internet access through municipal broadband deployment. When local governments own the infrastructure supporting broadband, they can set the rules for companies that want to deliver internet services to their residents, allowing better protection of customer data. This ensures that underserved communities are not left behind and that internet service is reliable.
  • Supporting Small and Mid-Sized Family Farms. Agriculture is one of Virginia’s largest industries, with an economic impact of $82.3 billion annually, providing more than 381,800 jobs in the Commonwealth. Ben supports providing tax credits for farmers to donate produce to food pantries and making it easier for state agencies to purchase from in-state farmers will support farmers while leveraging in-state producers to fight hunger and increase access to healthy foods for everyone.
  • Developing a Regional Transportation Authority. Too many transportation decisions affecting the Fredericksburg area are decided in Washington, D.C., or Richmond. Ben supports the creation of a regional transportation authority to ensure local control of transportation funding decisions making our transportation dollars work for us.
  • Investing in High-Frequency Transit. Ben supports greater investment in high-frequency transit options, including the expansion of the FXBGO! bus fleet to include electric buses that offer expanded route options throughout the region comparable to the high-frequency Metrobus service provided in the Washington, D.C. area.
  • Expanding Virginia Railway Express Service. Ben supports expanding VRE service during the weekdays to encourage greater ridership and providing weekend service to allow residents to travel to Washington, D.C., with their families, keeping more cars off the road.
  • Fair Funding for Fredericksburg City Public Schools. Virginia decides each locality’s ability to pay for their public schools using a Local Composite Index (“LCI”) in a manner, unlike any other state. The LCI is based on property values, adjusted gross income (“AGI”), and local sales tax, with property values being assigned the heaviest weight. The lack of affordable housing in our region has caused housing prices to skyrocket, giving the appearance, according to the LCI, that Fredericksburg City has a greater ability to fund its schools. However, Fredericksburg also has a higher percentage of students qualifying for free and reduced school meals. There are also thirty different languages spoken within the school district. The current LCI does not reflect those factors. Ben supports moving to a population-adjusted model to more accurately capture Fredericksburg City’s actual education funding needs.
  • Increasing Compensation for our Educators. Ben supports appropriating greater funding in the Virginia budget towards increased compensation for our educators so that our educators receive compensation equal to the hard work they do to prepare our students for success. Our educators are often asked to serve as temporary parents, social workers, and mentors and offer quality instruction. It is time they receive compensation that reflects the importance of their work and the sacrifices they make for our children.
  • Promoting and Supporting Teachers Unions. Virginia took an important step towards protecting our educators by allowing public employees to engage in collective bargaining if the local governing body passes an ordinance allowing them to unionize and setting up procedures for them to do so. Ben supports ending the requirement that local governing bodies must pass an ordinance allowing for collective bargaining. Our educators, as a matter of right, should be able to join together to bargain collectively without unnecessary hurdles or barriers placed before them.
  • Ending the Politicization of Educators and Students. We are experiencing an unprecedented attack on our educators, students, and public schools. Whether it is book banning, legislation requiring educators to “out” transgender students, or removing the teaching of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., from K-5 education, far-right Republicans are out of step with Virginia families. Ben believes we should not be using our public schools as a battleground for the culture wars, that we should support our educators and students, and that we should teach true and accurate history in our public schools.
  • Clean Water for Future Generations. Ben wants to preserve and protect water quality across the Commonwealth, including supporting funding to restore water quality, reduce pollution runoff, and protect clean water. He supports legislation requiring utilities to responsibly dispose of toxic waste, including coal ash, in permitted landfills and fully eliminate toxic waste in these sites. Furthermore, he supports efforts to reform the state’s regulations governing toxic waste spills and hold polluters accountable with a system of penalties that sends a clear message to bad actors.
  • Healthy Communities. Ben supports strong land protections to preserve our natural resources, ensure healthy communities, and protect our quality of life. He supports more funding for the Virginia Land Conservation Fund, Virginia Battlefield Preservation Fund, and Virginia Farmland Preservation Fund, which preserve our open space. He favors funding to keep our state parks functional and accessible. Moreover, he wants to bring forward environmentally friendly transportation options, smart growth, and land use reform to provide localities with tools to protect communities from irresponsible development.
  • Sensible Climate and Energy Policy. Ben supports efforts to reduce our carbon footprint in Virginia, including remaining in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (“RGGI”) and fostering the further deployment of renewable energy sources like wind and solar through strong incentives and policies that promote renewable energy. He also supports ending coal subsidies that have awarded millions of dollars of handouts to coal companies and utilities that do nothing but support coal barons at the expense of coal miners. Coal tax credits are the least-effective subsidies awarded in Virginia.
  • Protecting Abortion Access. Ben supports a Virginia constitutional amendment to protect abortion access. He firmly believes that patients, in consultation with their doctors, should decide reproductive healthcare decisions, not politicians or hospital lawyers worried about lawsuits or police investigations.
  • Equal Access to Assisted Reproduction. Infertility affects millions of people in the United States. Disparities in access to infertility care for people of color, low-income people, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ communities receive treatment at disproportionately low rates. Ben supports laws and policies to protect and promote fair access to infertility care to help ensure the full spectrum of reproductive rights.
  • Contraceptive Access. The freedom to decide whether and when to have children is vital for achieving gender equality and ensuring that women can participate as full members of society. However, many women struggle to obtain contraceptives. Service members, veterans, and their families face even greater barriers. Ben supports laws and policies that make contraceptives more readily available.
  • Maternal Healthcare. Marginalized communities consistently face the greatest risk during pregnancy and childbirth due to discrimination, inadequate access to healthcare, and lack of investment in access to care. Ben supports laws and policies to ensure that women have access to quality and respectful maternal healthcare, reducing maternal health disparities and improving outcomes for women regardless of race, ethnicity, nationality, immigration, or financial status.
  • Lowering Prescription Drug Costs. Ben supports efforts to reduce our prescription drug costs, including setting up a program to import prescription drugs into the United States from countries such as Canada, where they can be bought much cheaper. He also supports the creation of a Prescription Drug Affordability Board to conduct an affordability review of live-saving prescription drugs to decide whether they are overpriced and set limits on how much companies may charge for those live-saving medicines.
  • Requiring Hospitals and Insurance Companies to Negotiate. Consolidation in the healthcare industry has trapped working families between large health systems and insurance companies. Here in Fredericksburg, contract disputes between Mary Washington Healthcare and providers such as CIGNA, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Aetna have left working families effectively without insurance coverage for unreasonable periods of time. Ben supports legislation to require insurance companies and hospitals to bargain in good faith over coverage terms. A neutral arbitrator should decide the disputed terms if the two cannot agree. Protecting working families from losing coverage through no fault of their own is a key priority for Ben.
  • Fostering Greater Competition. Ben supports efforts to foster competition in the healthcare industry, including blocking anticompetitive practices, creating opportunities for smaller healthcare providers to compete with large health systems, and making it easier for doctors to sell their practices to their employees or other doctors rather than large healthcare systems. The purchase of small healthcare practices by large healthcare systems is one of the leading drivers of consolidation and price increases in the healthcare market.
  • Workforce Housing. Ben supports increased funding for the Virginia Housing Trust Fund to support the development of more affordable housing, expanded grant programs to support first-time homebuyers, and laws to allow localities to impose affordability requirements on new construction. He also supports laws to make it easier for working families to build accessory dwelling units (“ADUs”) on their properties consistent with reasonable requirements imposed by local governments to protect health and safety.
  • Funding Homelessness Diversion Programs. Another aspect of supplying safe, affordable housing is ensuring dignity for the unhoused. Ben supports greater funding for homelessness diversion programs. Additionally, he supports efforts to create solutions for the chronically unhoused, including supporting efforts by local leaders like Micah Ecumenical Ministries to create communities where the chronically unhoused can receive safe, affordable housing along with a full complement of support to ensure they are on a pathway towards remaining
  • Protecting Mobile Home Owners. Mobile homes are one of the last sources of affordable housing in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Yet, mobile homeowners have less protection than renters. Ben supports adopting a Mobile Home Owner Bill of Rights to protect mobile home owners from unreasonable increases in lot rent, require companies that maintain mobile home communities to protect the health and safety of the residents of these communities, and, when a company decides to sell, give the residents of the mobile home community the right of first refusal to purchase their community. He also supports allocating funding to support mobile homeowners’ abilities to purchase their communities.
  • Enhanced Penalties for Slumlords. Ben supports allowing localities to impose greater civil penalties on slumlords. Furthermore, he supports enhancing current landlord-tenant laws to give tenants the ability to fight against slumlords who refuse to maintain safe housing for their tenants.
  • Protecting Domestic Violence Survivors. Ben supports legislation making it illegal for landlords to evict survivors of domestic violence and crime victims simply for calling 911.
  • Ensuring a Fairer Criminal Justice System. Ben supports reforming mandatory minimum sentences, post-conviction treatment including parole and clemency to provide incentives for prisoners to rehabilitate themselves, pretrial reform to ensure those who have not been convicted of a crime are not incarcerated while they await bail or their case is resolved unless those pose a risk to the community, increasing funding for public defenders, and ending the failed war on drugs.
  • Campaign Contribution Limits. Virginia has some of the most permissive campaign finance laws in the United States, allowing candidates to raise unlimited amounts of money from individual sources such as corporate and single-issue political action committees (“PACs”). The lack of meaningful contribution limits means that those groups have a larger impact on our elections than ordinary, working families who lack the means to donate large amounts of money to the candidates they support, effectively giving corporations and their PACs more free speech rights than working families. Ben wants to impose meaningful contribution limits to put power back in the hands of the people.
  • Greater Transparency in Corporate Donations. Ben supports greater efforts to promote transparency and increase accountability in our elections, including requiring shareholder approval, public disclosure, and a business rationale for corporate political expenditures. Many states are also experimenting with banning corporate donations, like the federal prohibition on direct contributions from corporations. Ben supports reform efforts that put the government back in the hands of the people.
  • Prohibiting Contributions from Regulated Monopolies. Ben supports prohibiting public utilities like Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power from using ratepayer money to buy the General Assembly.
  • Utility Regulation Reform. Over the next few years, ratepayers across the Commonwealth will see their electric bills increase because of expensive projects undertaken by Dominion Energy. There is an increasing sense in the General Assembly that more must be done to promote competition and reform the current practice of allowing Dominion Energy to pass costs directly to ratepayers in the form of rate adjustment clauses (“RACs”). A growing bipartisan group of lawmakers has shown a willingness to do something about high costs, and Ben plans to join them.
  • Prohibiting Unfair, Deceptive, or Abusive Acts of Practices. The Virginia Consumer Protection Act currently applies to a limited set of companies. Public utilities, banks, mortgage companies, insurance companies, and small-dollar lenders are exempt. Ben wants to close this loophole to ensure that all businesses in the Commonwealth engage in honest business practices. Moreover, he wants to amend the law to prohibit unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practices comparable to federal consumer protection standards set out in the Federal Trade Commission Act (“FTC Act”) and Consumer Financial Protection Act (“CFPA”).
  • Protecting Sharing of Personal Data. Companies collect a lot of information and often share that data, including fingerprints, faceprints, retinal or iris scans, voiceprint analysis, and DNA, with third parties without consent. In fact, this kind of information sharing is estimated to be a $45 billion-a-year industry. Ben wants to adopt policies to ensure corporations cannot share your most sensitive information without prior express written consent.
  • Preventing Extreme Weather Utility Shutoffs. Ben believes disputes over utility bills should not put customers in life-threatening situations. By preventing public utilities from denying service during extreme weather events, we can save lives.
  • Common-sense Gun Reform. Supporting common-sense gun laws, including a ban on assault weapons, limits on gun magazine size, red-flag laws, safe storage, gun registration, and licensing, is crucial for the safety and well-being of our communities. These measures can help to prevent gun violence, reduce the risk of mass shootings, and ensure that firearms are in the hands of responsible individuals. By limiting access to high-capacity weapons, implementing red-flag laws that allow law enforcement to temporarily remove firearms from individuals who pose a threat, and requiring registration and licensing, we can take important steps towards creating a safer society for all. Mandating safe storage will prevent children from accessing their parents’ weapons. It is important to acknowledge the rights of responsible gun owners while also recognizing the need for common-sense regulations to keep our communities safe.