Raúl Grijalva began his career in public service as a community organizer in Tucson. Four decades later, he continues to be an advocate for those in need and a voice for the constituents of his home community. From 1974 to 1986, Raúl served on the Tucson Unified School District Governing Board, including six years as Chairman. In 1988, he was elected to the Pima County Board of Supervisors, where he served for the next 15 years, chairing the Board for two of those years. Raúl resigned his seat on the Board of Supervisors in 2002 to seek office in Arizona’s newly created Seventh Congressional District. Despite a nine-candidate primary and the challenge of being outspent three-to-one by his closest competitor, Raúl was elected with a 20-point victory, thanks to a diverse coalition of supporters that led the largest volunteer-driven election effort in Arizona.
I believe that our diversity as a country is our greatest strength. Our very identity as a nation is rooted in our immigrant heritage, and immigrants are critical to both the cultural and economic vibrancy of our country. That’s why I am fighting for a process that keeps families together, provides refuge to the world’s most vulnerable populations, and attracts the world’s best talents to live, study, and work in the U.S. Instead of building walls, we should be prioritizing border management and efforts that modernize and expand our nation’s land POEs, which are vital to both ensuring the safety of our country as well as facilitating the flow trade. We must also stop the wasteful spending on a border wall that has devastated precious environmental habitats, militarized border communities, and destroyed sacred Native American cultural sites.
Our healthcare system is broken. Massive gaps in coverage disproportionately impact Arizonans, and a profit-driven system that puts the interests of powerful insurance companies between people and healthcare has exacerbated health inequities. It is unacceptable that millions of Americans lack basic preventative care and millions more are one medical bill away from bankruptcy. I support the incremental improvements of the Affordable Care Act, but we must take action to provide true universal coverage and a health system that puts the interests of people first.
Our criminal justice system is fundamentally broken and heavily reliant on punitive measures instead of rehabilitation. From incarceration rates to the likelihood of falling victim to police brutality, communities of color have borne the disproportionate impacts of this dysfunctional system. Our criminal justice system should be humane, rehabilitative, and free from perverse profit incentives from for-profit entities that incentivize incarceration.
As a former School Board member in Tucson, it’s a lifelong mission of mine to ensure that every child receives the world-class education they deserve—regardless of their zip code, immigration status, or language barriers. For too long, we’ve cut budgets and forced teachers to make miracles with fewer resources while leaving our students—particularly students of color—ill-prepared to enter the workforce of pursue higher education opportunities. Stronger investments in our public schools, increasing apprenticeships and technical training, and making higher education opportunities more affordable and accessible are some of the best ways we can ensure our children receive the education they need to prepare them for participation in the 21st century workforce.
We all deserve to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and live on land free from contaminants and pollution. Throughout my time in public service, I’ve put environmental justice at the center of everything from infrastructure and economic development to our current efforts to address the climate crisis. Arizona is at the center of the environmental justice and climate justice movements and often disproportionately experiences the deadly heatwaves, droughts, and wildfires. To solve the climate crisis, we must continue transitioning our economy away from one reliant on fossil fuels to a new green economy based in renewable energy that creates millions of new green jobs. At the same time, we must continue protecting our public lands, safeguarding our biodiversity, and working with communities impacted by environmental and climate justice issues to remedy past wrongs.
I believe that America’s working families are the backbone of our economy and country. Our policies must reflect that and strengthen America’s middle class by creating good jobs that pay fair wages and offer workers the benefits they deserve. From rights in the workplace to consumer protections, affordable health care and support for small businesses, each policy impacts the economic well-being of our country. After years of financial sector deregulation and the subsequent housing crisis that led to the Great Recession, I have supported aggressive policies to create jobs and regulate a reckless financial sector in order to get our economy back on track. Now is the time for comprehensive solutions to rewrite the rules of our economy so it works for all Americans, not just the wealthy.
We must think beyond the traditional definitions of infrastructure as roads, bridges, and airports and include infrastructure for families like childcare, broadband, and school buildings in our policies. Infrastructure can also play an important role in addressing the climate crisis by upgrading old infrastructure with new environmental standards and helping create millions of jobs in the new green economy of the future. Building the 21st Century infrastructure our communities deserve should involve bold government investments that create good-paying union jobs, tackle the climate crisis, and update our infrastructure systems with cutting-edge technology.
Seniors have worked hard their entire lives and should be able to retire with dignity. While Republicans frequently discuss making deep cuts to Medicare and Social Security to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy and large corporations, I have long championed policies to expand them. I support improving the Social Security Administration, increasing benefits by using a more accurate measure of seniors’ cost of living, and shoring up the long-term solvency of the program by scrapping the payroll tax cap to require the wealthy pay taxes like everyone else.
Social Security has stood the test of time, and for millions of seniors is the only thing left standing during their retirement years. With barely half of American workers receiving a retirement plan through their jobs, stagnating wages, and a slow economic recovery, many working families have been unable to save for retirement. We have a duty to uphold our promise to workers who have paid into the program their entire adult lives by ensuring that they receive every penny of their Social Security benefits. Maintaining a strong social security program is especially critical to millions of American women, who continue to face unjustified pay gaps.
Protecting the civil rights and liberties of all individuals is one of the most important responsibilities for Members of Congress, and one that I take seriously. While some are working to turn back the clock and undo much of the progress our country has seen in the past sixty years, I will continue to work diligently against all forms of discrimination whether in the voting booth, workplace, school, or in public accommodations. We must continue to protect the right to vote, ensure that women are able to make their own reproductive healthcare decisions, work towards closing the gender-pay gap, and limit the use of surveillance into the private lives of the American people.
After selflessly serving our country, many veterans are not enjoying the healthy and secure civilian life they deserve. Efforts to improve health care coverage and benefits for our current and past service members must be strengthened. Now more than ever, we must provide for the men and women willing to sacrifice for their country. We can help ensure their health and prosperity by providing workforce training and reintegration programs, getting them timely access to their entitled benefits, protecting them from unscrupulous financial predators, and making sure their families have access to dedicated support resources.
For too long, U.S. Foreign Policy has been defined by erratic decisions that have upended our traditional alliances and created extreme upheaval. Rash actions, such as rushing into military action without understanding the long-term implications for a particular region, must be prevented. Entanglement in forever wars causes hardship to our service-members and their families, diverts resources for domestic priorities and has too often caused further destabilization of areas around the world. Effective foreign policy requires the United States to take a more proactive and diplomatic role within our global community in promoting peace, creating stabilization through effective foreign aid, protecting human rights, and ensuring open channels of communication with international partners and organizations.
As the first Americans, the Indigenous people of this region have culture and traditions embedded to the land. I am working to ensure that their rights as sovereign nations are not only respected, but emboldened, through policy-making at the federal level. We have an atrocious history of injustice towards the Indigenous people of this land that goes against the very values of our country and that we must constantly work to rectify. I will continue to be a strong voice for tribal rights in Congress whether it be fighting to protect sacred land from being sold to the highest bidder, working toward better health and economic opportunities for Native communities, or urging Congress to codify the tribal consultation process.
The pandemic has provided unprecedented challenges to our country, leaving virtually no facet of our lives untouched. I support bold government action to protect American lives and provide our country with the relief it deserves to rebound stronger than before. This includes direct payments to workers and their families, support for small businesses, and major structural investments in our public health departments and health system to prevent such crises in the future.
I believe that the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United V. FEC went far beyond precedent, far beyond the original intent of the Constitution, and far beyond anything the Founders meant when they protected freedom of speech for individuals. James Madison never intended for the First Amendment to apply to corporations; he meant free speech to be for the people.
As it stood, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act that was destroyed by the Supreme Court did not take away access to political speech by corporations. A corporation could have spent unlimited sums of money to televise and broadcast its message at any time except immediately before primaries and general elections. This limited law was directed at keeping wealthy corporate interests from drowning out the voice of individuals just before a vote. The idea that corporations must be treated identically to human beings when it comes to political speech is a bad reading of history and an insult to the people of this country.
This ruling was a power grab by conservative judicial activists unnecessarily overturning more than a century of judicial precedent. I believe that Congress must address this inflation of corporate power to return the electoral process back to the American people.
In addition, I support a two-tiered strategy for dealing with the effects of this decision. Because the Supreme Court based its decision on sweeping constitutional protections, the decision can only be directly addressed by a constitutional amendment outlining the principle that corporations are not people as far as First Amendment freedom of speech is concerned.
The short-term strategy must address the ways in which corporate money overpowers outside ideas and opinions. We must ensure that any corporation wishing to make political contributions or advocate any candidate, party or cause gets the express permission of the shareholders whose money they are spending. We must also ensure that foreign corporate influence is not permitted to sway our elections with expensive messaging. Corporations that produce ads meant to sway voters should be made to identify themselves and any shadow corporations behind the expenditures.
These efforts will help to minimize the negative effects of the outrageous decision of the Supreme Court, a decision that granted an unwarranted expansion of corporate expenditure to influence the political process in ways that cannot be matched by individuals.
I believe that America's working families are the backbone of our economy and country. As such, I am fighting in Congress for policies that will strenghten America's middle class by creating good jobs that pay fair wages and offer workers the benefits they deserve. From rights in the workplace to consumer protections, affordable health care and support for small businesses, each policy impacts the economic well-being of our country. After years of financial sector deregulation and the subsequent housing crisis that led to the Great Recession, I have supported aggressive policies to create jobs and regulate a reckless financial sector in order to get our economy back on track. I am proud of the progress that has been made, and will fight to stop the current administration from taking us back down the same fateful path that caused the Great Recession.
Yet still many workers haven't seen a real rise in pay in the past 30 years and inequality is at an all-time high. Wealthiest Americans continue to reap the largest benefits from the economic recovery. Our workers can’t afford another recession - some paychecks have just began to grow and we still have a long way to go before wages catch up with the current cost of living, especially for women and communities of color.
Now is the time for comprehensive solutions to rewrite the rules of our economy so it works for all Americans, not just the wealthy. Some of the policies I have championed during my time in Congress include: Medicare For All, debt-free college, raising the federal minimum wage, expanding Social Security, moving to 100 percent renewable energy, comprehensive immigration reform and paid leave and child care. As co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, I release a budget proposal every year that charts a course of responsible economic growth and investments to help working Americans get ahead. In contrast to the Republican plan, this budget reinvests in American families, prioritizing funding for education, infrastructure, jobs, clean air, and water all while ensuring that the largest corporations and the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share. The Economic Policy Institute released an analysis of The People’s Budget, which can be found here.
Unfortunately, the new Trump tax cut for the largest corporations, wealthy oil companies and the richest 1% is a recipe for economic decline. The notion that the gains of the uber-wealthy and largest corporations will "trickle-down" to workers has proven to be false time after time. Despite promises to help the working class, this administration has dismantled overtime pay, overturned rules that prevented financial advisors from cheating clients, undermined workers’ rights to organize, and attacked the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The president's policies have attacked immigrants, social safety nets and those with disabilities, despite economic evidence that immigration reform is an overwhelming benefit to our nation and that social safety nets lift people out of poverty.
By the numbers:
Social Security does not contribute a penny to the deficit and is legally prohibited from doing so. I will not support any attempts to privatize Social Security, which risks the retirement security of millions of Americans by subjecting them to an unpredictable stock market. Further, diverting money from trust funds into private accounts would be extremely costly and could cause benefits to be scaled back. Maintaining a strong social security program is especially critical to millions of American women, who continue to face unjustified pay gaps. Consequently, women on average, are less likely to have retirement savings and disproportionately rely on their Social Security benefits as a main source of income.
Strengthening Social Security
Since I was first elected to Congress in 2002, I have supported efforts to strengthen the solvency of the program and expand the meager benefits. In particular, I support legislation to strengthen Social Security solvency while improving benefits by fixing the outdated cost of living adjustment (COLA) formula so that benefits keep pace with actual costs seniors are facing. I support legislation to close the payroll tax loophole and ensure that every American pays their fair share into Social Security. Ninety-four percent of Americans pay Social Security tax on all of their income, yet the wealthiest six percent, who have an annual income greater than $128,400, don’t pay taxes on income above that amount. It’s not fair that the highest-income earners among us pay a lower rate than the rest of us. Closing this loophole for the wealthy will ensure that Social Security remains solvent and able to pay full benefits for at least the next 50 years.
A major part of being a Representative to the people of Arizona’s Third District is working to ensure that all of my constituents, regardless of their backgrounds, are treated equally and with the dignity and respect they deserve. LGBTQ Americans continue to face large obstacles in this respect, whether it be executive orders that ban transgender persons from serving our country in the military, or horrific acts of targeted violence against members of the LGBTQ community, as we saw in Orlando with the Pulse Nightclub shooting.
Despite this, time and time again we have witnessed the resiliency of the LGBTQ community to overcome the social and institutional discrimination they face in order to enact meaningful change. Thanks to their advocacy and activism, our courts finally recognize what we have known all along: that love is love. As the fight for equality marches on, I will continue to work in Congress to create laws and policies that respect each other’s humanity, and fosters an environment of inclusion for all Americans, including our LGBTQ brothers and sisters.
The robust agricultural sector in Arizona’s Third Congressional District is an economic driver for our state. Nationally, District Three is a top competitor in fruit and vegetable production. Yuma County’s mild winters allow for a high production of leafy vegetables making this region the “winter lettuce capital of the world.” District Three's location tucked in the Sonoran Desert has made farmers and ranchers adapt to the arid climate and conserve as much water as possible, making our region one of the best in water management in the country.
Unfortunately, District Three along with many other agricultural communities across the United States have faced labor shortages, not to mention the fact that agricultural workers on average suffer from disparities in working conditions and accessibility to resources.
For far too long, agricultural workers in our country have been treated as second-class citizens. It is shocking that in this day and age, labor laws do not fully protect the rights of one of the most vulnerable populations. I am proud to co-sponsor the CARE Act with Rep. Roybal-Allard which would ensure that standards and protections for child farmworkers are in par with other industries.
In addition, I am a proud co-sponsor of the Agricultural Worker Program Act of 2017 that would create a program that would allow agricultural workers and their families to apply for legal status if they:
- show consistent employment in U.S. agriculture over the past two years
- pay a fine
- pass a thorough background check
A 3 to 5 year path to citizenship would be provided to those who continue to work in agriculture for the required amount of time.
I will continue supporting bills that benefit everyone working in District Three's prosperous agricultural community.
I am proud to represent such a diverse constituency in Southern Arizona, including the four tribal nations that call this region home. As the first Americans, the Indigenous people of this region have culture and traditions embedded to the land. As their representative in Congress, I am working to ensure that their rights as sovereign nations are not only respected, but emboldened through policy-making at the federal level.
We have an atrocious history of injustice towards the Indigenous people of this land that goes against the very values of our country and that we must constantly work to rectify. I will continue to be a strong voice for tribal rights in Congress whether it be fighting to Save Oak Flat from multinational mining companies, introducing legislation to address the suicide epidemic on Indian reservations, or urging Congress to codify the tribal consultation process. By acknowledging the unique tribal history, I will address the challenges facing our Native brothers and sisters with understanding and consultation.