Healthcare Emergency
- Reinstate ACA premium tax credits that already expired. People are paying more right now because Congress let them lapse. This isn’t a new program — it’s restoring one that was working.
- Close the Medicaid coverage gap at the federal level. Florida refused to expand Medicaid. That left hundreds of thousands of people making too much for Medicaid, too little for ACA subsidies. Washington created the gap. Washington needs to close it.
- Fix Social Security cost-of-living adjustments. Make them reflect what seniors actually spend money on — medicine, healthcare, groceries — not a formula that pretends those costs don’t exist. A 3% COLA means nothing when our prescriptions went up 15%.
Cost of Living
- Block SNAP cuts (food stamp cuts) scheduled to hit after the election. The cuts are already written into the budget — they just timed them so people wouldn’t feel it until after the election.
- Fix the benefits trap. Right now, earn one dollar too much and you lose everything. A single mom gets a $1/hour raise and loses $5,000 in housing, food, and childcare assistance overnight. Benefits should phase out gradually, not vanish at an arbitrary line. Nobody should be punished for getting a raise.
- Enforce antitrust. Break up monopolies. When one company controls the price, we’re not customers — we’re captives. Groceries, meat packing, health insurance — same pattern. Start enforcing again.
Privacy
- Data protection against both corporate and government overreach. Browsing history isn’t a product. Location data isn’t a commodity. Companies that collect it without clear consent should face real consequences, not a fine they budget for quarterly.
- Personal data belongs to the person it describes. Not the carrier, not the app store, not an agency with a three-letter acronym. Ownership means we decide who sees it, period.
What a Catalyst Congressman Does from Day One
Legislation takes time. Coalitions take time. But a congressman who actually works for the district doesn’t wait for a vote to start helping.
- Help communities write federal grant applications — federal health grants for clinics, federal economic development funds, USDA money for rural infrastructure. The money is there. Most small counties don’t have the staff to apply for it.
- Connect the county that needs the project with the grant that funds it. A rural health clinic in Gilchrist County. A broadband co-op in Hamilton County. A processing facility in Suwannee County. The federal programs exist — someone has to make the introduction.
- Cut red tape and broker partnerships between the VA and community health centers, between UF/IFAS and local farms, between FEMA and county emergency management. The bureaucracy isn’t going away — but someone can navigate it for us.
- Open doors and remove roadblocks. Most of these federal agencies are within walking distance of Capitol Hill. I’ll meet with the people at the health agency, the ag department, economic development, and emergency management — in person, face to face. It’s harder to say no to someone standing in front of them than in a form email. That’s what having a representative means.
- Submit earmark requests on day one — and run them in parallel with grant applications. Earmarks and grants aren’t either/or. They’re redundant funding streams aimed at the same projects. If the grant doesn’t come through, the earmark might. If the earmark doesn’t land, the grant might. If both come through, the earmark enhances what the grant already covers. Our current representative has submitted zero earmark requests. I’ve already identified the first seven.
The grant writing is the easy part — there are templates, examples, and technology that gets better every day. The hard part is getting two counties who need the same clinic to realize they should be applying together. Earmarks give us a second shot at the same target — and they show the district that someone in Washington is actually asking for the money on our behalf. That’s where I come in.
Emergency Lanes and Foundations
Some of these require Washington. Others, we can start building right now. The emergency lanes keep people from falling while we build something worth standing on.
The Day One items are triage. They stop the bleeding. The bigger plans — mobile clinics, co-op housing, cooperative processing, economic restructuring — those are the foundation. We need both. Emergency lanes and long-term construction, running at the same time.