Congresswoman Susan Wild is a mother, attorney, public servant, and a dedicated member of the Greater Lehigh Valley community for more than 30 years.
The daughter of a journalist and a career Air Force officer, she was born at Wiesbaden Air Force Base in West Germany, and spent her childhood on Air Force bases across our country and around the world—an experience that shaped her lifelong commitment to the families that serve and sacrifice alongside our servicemembers. After years of moving around, she finally found a place to call home when she settled in the Lehigh Valley to start her family. Susan built a successful legal practice in the Valley while raising her two children, Clay and Addie, and later became the first woman to be appointed Allentown's City Solicitor. In November 2018, she made history again when she was elected as the first woman to represent Pennsylvania's 7th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Representing the people of PA-07 is an extraordinary privilege, and I am committed to delivering results for our community. As an independent-minded Member of Congress, my focus is on serving all my constituents—regardless of whether they identify as Republicans, Democrats, Independents, or none-of-the-above.
Mindless partisanship has no place in a function government—and I’m doing my part to put an end to this harmful “us vs. them” attitude by working with both my Democratic and Republican colleagues to find common ground and get things done. I’m happy to report that 77% of the bills I have introduced and cosponsored are bipartisan bills. And over 60% of the votes I’ve cast during my time in Congress have been bipartisan. I’m also proud to be independently rated as one of the most bipartisan members of Congress by the Lugar Center. According to their analysis, I rank among the top 12% most bipartisan members in either party in the House.
I’m also not afraid to vote against what my party leadership wants - when I disagree with Nancy Pelosi, I say it with my vote. Since taking office in 2018, I’ve voted against the party line dozens of times. In fact, I was one of only 14 Democrats to vote against the HEROES Act in May 2020 because the $3 trillion spending bill failed to provide the kind of direct and immediate assistance needed to help struggling families back home. As a Member of Congress, my job is to be a voice for my constituents, and I don’t take this responsibility lightly.
I’m proud that the first piece of legislation I introduced—a bill that would have funded our Coast Guard through the partial government shutdown—earned bipartisan support. Our men and women in uniform who put their lives on the line to defend our nation need to know that our country will never again let politics interfere with our commitments to them, and I am determined to work across the aisle to rebuild that trust.
I believe that Democrats and Republicans must also work together to address the concerns that families of all political beliefs discuss around their kitchen tables, including shared concerns regarding health care. I’ve worked tirelessly to address the skyrocketing cost of prescription drugs and monthly premiums, issues that I know many of my Republican colleagues find unacceptable as well. I'm proud that an amendment on stopping the rising cost of premiums, which I offered to the Protecting Americans with Pre-Existing Conditions Act, earned the support of 78 Republicans.
In another instance, I was glad to work with Republican Representative Glenn Thompson, a fellow Pennsylvanian, on an amendment to the Stronger Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act—which passed the House with bipartisan support—to increase proper reporting of child abuse. I’m also an active member of the Bipartisan Addiction and Mental Health Task Force, because tackling these urgent health crises must never be a partisan issue.
Throughout my time in Congress, I will continue working with my friends across the aisle on many of the key challenges we face, including lowering health care costs, rebuilding our country’s crumbling infrastructure, and fixing our broken trade policies.
Labor and Fair Wages
As a Member of the House Education and Labor Committee and Vice Chair of the Labor and Working Families Caucus, I’m working to ensure every American gets a fair shot at a good job and a safe workplace.
I’m proud to support the Paycheck Fairness Act to address gender-based pay discrimination, the Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act to protect older workers and ensure our jobs market is fair to everyone, and the FAMILY Act, which would establish a national paid leave program, so that all workers are able to take care of young children or relatives who need their assistance without sacrificing their careers.
I am an original cosponsor of the Raise the Wage Act, which would gradually raise the minimum wage and finally provide a much-needed raise to American workers and families’ bottom lines.
I am also an original cosponsor of the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which would strengthen our nation’s labor laws for the 21st century economy to ensure that workers can form a union and collectively bargain for good wages, a secure retirement, and a safe workplace.
Innovation and Regional Empowerment
I believe that a key part of being an effective advocate for workers means equipping our workforce with the skills and knowledge they need to obtain decent-paying jobs in an increasingly competitive global economy. That’s why I introduced the bipartisan Regional Innovation Act that would leverage federal knowledge and leadership to support technology and innovation hubs across the country – so that communities like the Greater Lehigh Valley have a fair shot to contribute to the nation’s economic success.
Small Business
Small businesses are part of what make the Greater Lehigh Valley home, and I am proud to stand with small business owners across our community.
I saw firsthand the devasting impact that the COVID-19 pandemic had on small businesses in Pennsylvania . That’s why I voted for President Biden’s American Rescue Plan, which provided access to critical economic relief for millions of small businesses across the country. I led efforts to increase funding for the Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loan program and to make sure the programs were working effectively for small businesses and their workers. I have also been a leader on the RESTAURANTS Act and the Restaurant Revitalization Fund, which has provided billions of dollars in support to restaurant owners and workers that have struggled to stay in business during the pandemic. And I fought to help small businesses and arts and entertainment venues in our community receive over $20 million in relief funding as part of the Shuttered Venue Operator Grant, which was established under the American Rescue Plan. I will continue to do everything in my power to support the businesses that power our local economy and make our community strong.
Ensuring our public safety is a responsibility we all share as Americans. I am committed to supporting our local first responders, law enforcement officers, and health care workers who work every day to keep our community safe.
The COVID-19 pandemic has emphasized the essential role that emergency medical services play in communities across the country. That is why I am proud to sponsor the bipartisan EMS Counts Act, which would better support first responders and make sure our community has the resources we need to respond to health emergencies and natural disasters. This legislation would require the federal government to collect accurate, comprehensive data on the quantity, location, and training of first responders working throughout the United States. By doing so, we will address the chronic miscounting of first responders, particularly firefighters and emergency medical services (EMS) personnel. This is essential to ensuring that communities like ours are able to quickly respond to emergencies, including outbreaks of disease and natural disasters.
In addition, I am committed to providing law enforcement officers with the resources they need to do their jobs and keep our communities safe. This is why I sponsored the bipartisan Safe Interactions Act to improve interactions between law enforcement officers and people with disabilities and mental health needs. The legislation aims to create safer communities and reduce violence towards people with disabilities by funding grants for stronger training programs for law enforcement officers. These grants will be used to create partnerships between non-profit disability organizations and law enforcement agencies to administer enhanced training for law enforcement officers regarding best practices when interacting with people with disabilities and mental health issues.
During my time in Congress, I have also supported increases in funding for the Byrne Justice Assistance (Byrne JAG) Program and the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) programs. These important community safety programs provide local and state law enforcement with the resources, personnel, and programs needed to serve our communities. These programs help keep us safe through targeted violence prevention and mitigation initiatives.
As a Member of Congress, I am deeply committed to protecting the programs that our seniors rely on most. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are all critical to ensuring our seniors can retire with dignity. I will fight to strengthen these programs and prevent changes that would limit accessibility or negatively reconfigure eligibility.
Social Security
Since the original Social Security Act was signed into law by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935, Social Security has grown to become an essential lifeline for retired and disabled Americans. Today, Social Security is the nation’s cornerstone economic security program. Social Security is more than a government program—it is a promise between each generation of workers. I am and will always be an unwavering champion of protecting and strengthening the Social Security benefits that our workers have earned through a lifetime of hard work. Every year that I have served in Congress, I have successfully led a push to increase funding for the Social Security Administration (SSA) to ensure that SSA offices have the resources to serve the greatest number of beneficiaries. I won’t stop fighting until we have an adequately funded, adequately staffed SSA able to serve every American in need.
As long as I have the honor of serving my constituents in Congress, I will remain a steadfast voice for protecting and strengthening Social Security.
Medicare and Medicaid
Medicare and Medicaid are imperative programs for seniors, and I will do everything I can to fight privatization efforts and cuts. We must instead strengthen Medicare and Medicaid and empower them with the tools to effectively deliver affordable health care as they are on the frontline in the fight against skyrocketing health care costs and outrageous prescription drug prices. I have been leading the charge in Congress to finally give Medicare the power to negotiate drug prices to ensure that Americans are no longer price-gouged for life-saving medications. We can then use these savings to expand Medicare to finally cover hearing, dental and vision care for our seniors.
I know how important both Medicare and Medicaid are to seniors. For the most part, Medicare does not cover nursing home care but someone turning 65 years old today has almost a 70 percent chance of needing some type of long-term care in their remaining years. These seniors very often rely on Medicaid. In fact, Medicaid covers six in ten nursing home residents. I will continue fighting to prevent cuts to Medicaid so that our seniors and people with disabilities can get the care they need.
I am also very proud that my amendment to the Dignity in Aging Act to provide mental health screenings for seniors was included in the final legislation signed into law by the President. The Dignity in Aging Act reauthorized and builds on the Older Americans Act, which funds vital programs like Meals on Wheels. This bipartisan legislation that I helped pass gave these vital seniors programs an immediate seven percent increase in fiscal year 2020 and a six percent increase every year thereafter.
We face major challenges related to protecting the integrity of our elections and government institutions. We must defend our elections from foreign interference, protect the right of every citizen to cast a ballot, rein in dark money and special interest influence in campaigns, and ensure our elected officials are accountable to their constituents and serve with integrity.
Our democracy is only as strong as it is representative and inclusive. That is why I am a proud cosponsor of the For the People Act. This landmark legislation would establish essential reforms, including protecting access to the ballot, reining in partisan gerrymandering, and countering the influence of large donors and dark money in our elections. In an effort to protect voting rights, I sponsored a bill to expand early voting periods for federal elections to make sure every voter is able to have their voice heard at the ballot box. This bill has passed the House of Representatives as an important component of the For the People Act.
I also sponsored the Lobbyist Loophole Closure Act, which would prevent well-connected individuals from exploiting loopholes in federal ethics laws. These individuals have been able to be hired on as “consultants” in order to avoid registering as a lobbyist and abiding by ethical guidelines. As an important component of the For the People Act, this piece of legislation will end corrupt practices like these.
Furthermore, in response to state legislatures across the country passing restrictive voting laws, I sponsored the Stay in Line to Vote Act. This legislation would explicitly allow food and drink to be provided to voters while they wait in line to vote at polling places. Legislation like this would provide a basic level of support to voters as they wait to cast their ballot, especially in areas where long lines and wait times can deter voting.
House Committee on Ethics
When it comes to holding our elected officials accountable, I believe we must do more to ensure that no one is above the law, no matter how powerful or well-connected. When I first came to Congress, I requested to join the bipartisan House Committee on Ethics, and I have been a member ever since. Through my work on this Committee, I am determined to push for new reforms to restore a spirit of high ethical standards to our government.
As a member of the Ethics Committee, I have forged close working relationships with my colleagues across the aisle. Together, we have created new oversight regulations that promote public confidence in Congress. It is clear, however, that our work is far from finished. We must enact reforms that reaffirm the fundamental truth that elected officials are public servants and their ultimate responsibility is to promote and protect the public interest.
I am committed to ensuring that every child can access a world-class education, that our teachers and school leaders have the support they need to educate their students, and that every student who works hard and wants to attend higher education is able to afford it.
As a proud member of the Education and Labor Committee since my first term in Congress, I am working hard to improve our education and workforce systems so they work for every child, student, and family in the Greater Lehigh Valley.
Children and Early Learning
Across Pennsylvania, too many families struggle to find high-quality and affordable child care. The cost of child care has increased by 25 percent in the last decade and 50 percent of families live in child care deserts. This is why I am a leader of the Child Care for Working Families Act. This legislation would establish a child care and early learning infrastructure that ensures working families can find and afford the child care they need to succeed in the workforce, and that children will receive the early education they need to thrive.
I am also proud to be a leader on child abuse prevention and treatment, to make sure every child has the resources for a healthy start and to succeed in their early years. I have introduced three bills, the Jenna Quinn Law, the WE CAN Act, and the SPEAK Up Act, which will improve child abuse and prevention programs and reporting.
In addition, I know that for children to be able to learn in the classroom successfully, they need to have their basic needs met. Child hunger and malnutrition is one such basic need that is an issue of the highes moral imperative. That is why I am proud to sponsor the Schools Preventing Hunger in At-Risk Kids Act, which would expand free school meals for more children in need of extra nutrition support.
Higher Education
The Greater Lehigh Valley is lucky to be home to more than 10 institutions of higher education, which provide a range of educational opportunities for students and support our local economy by producing a highly skilled workforce.
I believe that every student who works hard and wants to access higher education should be able to afford it. I am proud to support comprehensive efforts to make our nation’s higher education and workforce development systems more affordable and accessible for all families. During the 116th Congress, I joined in introducing the College Affordability Act, which would comprehensively update our higher education system, lower the cost of college for students, improve the quality of higher education, and expand opportunity by providing students with the support and flexibility they need to succeed while in college and beyond.
Additionally, I am proud to sponsor the Simplifying Student Loans Act, which would reduce the cost of college by making it cheaper and easier for student loan borrowers to repay their federal student loans. I am also proud to sponsor the Expanding Disability Access to Higher Education Act, which would support students will disabilities in applying to college and succeeding while in college, and the Enhancing Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Through Campus Planning Act, which would help colleges and universities better support the mental health needs of their students.
I am dedicated to ensuring that our nation’s foreign policy advances our interests, reflects our ideals, builds trust among key allies and partners, and earns the respect of our friends and adversaries alike. From cyber-security and the global climate crisis to health pandemics and nuclear proliferation, today’s threats are unparalleled in their potential to destabilize entire societies.
Since the start of my time in Congress, I have been a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC) as well as the Subcommittee on Europe, Energy, the Environment, and Cyber. My top priority at the Foreign Affairs Committee is expanding opportunities for our workers and businesses—working to develop trade policies designed to build a Made-in-the-USA economy and protect good-paying jobs in the Greater Lehigh Valley. I am determined to be a strong advocate for carrying forward the United States’ engagement as a leader in NATO, a force for principled diplomacy at the United Nations and other international institutions, and a voice for respecting human rights whenever and wherever they come under attack.
As a champion of labor and the right of workers to freely organize and collectively bargain in our community and beyond, I understand that standing with labor at home also requires standing with labor abroad. That’s why I have worked with the US labor movement to build awareness and action on the need to defend labor organizers and their allies where they are vulnerable, including in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and beyond.
As the Representative of a community with thriving biomedical industries, I considered global health and security to be key priorities since long before the devastating COVID-19 pandemic. Alongside my Republican colleague Rep. Tim Burchett (TN-02), I am proud to have co-founded the Bipartisan Global Health Research and Development Congressional Working Group. This group serves as a forum for connecting members of Congress, scientific experts, industry representatives, non-profit organization members, and more in pursuit of a shared goal: a healthier, more secure future for all.
Finally, no discussion of war and peace should ever leave out the extraordinary sacrifices of our service members and veterans and the families that serve and sacrifice alongside them. When we make decisions affecting our troops without adequately considering the possible consequences, they ultimately pay the price. As the daughter of a man who spent his entire career in the Air Force, this issue is personal for me, and I will do everything within my power as a Member of Congress to ensure that our leaders never lose sight of the men and women who put their lives on the line in our defense.
Making Health Care Accessible
Since the start of my career in Congress, I have made it one of my top priorities to fight for high-quality, affordable health care for all. As a nation, we pay the most by far of any country in the world for both medical care and prescription drugs, and yet millions of our people remain uninsured, under-insured, burdened by high insurance premiums, and unable to afford the medicine they need. This situation is unacceptable, and I’m fighting to change it.
Thanks to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), we have made critical progress in the effort to achieve universal coverage. Insurance companies can no longer discriminate against people with preexisting conditions, young people can stay on a parent’s plan until age 26, and tens of millions of previously uninsured Americans were able to obtain coverage because of the ACA. And while I will continue working to protect the ACA from politicians who are trying to destroy it, I also believe that we must build on the ACA’s success to shape a future in which high-quality, affordable health care is the available to every child, adult, and senior in America.
My commitment to protecting, strengthening, and building on the ACA led me to introduce my own bill as part of a larger effort to expand and improve coverage for people across our country. The Family Health Care Affordability Act would fix the so-called “family glitch” issue: this issue has prevented too many workers from being able to expand their employer-provided insurance to their families. And I authored an amendment to the Protecting Americans with Pre-Existing Conditions Act designed to cap health care premiums—an amendment which, I am proud to say, was supported by 78 of my Republican colleagues.
Prescription Drugs
Americans pay several times more for the same prescription drugs in other countries. And we pay the most by far of any country in the world for prescription drugs. I am appalled by the skyrocketing cost of prescription drugs in our country, and I am committed to stopping the price-gouging of patients. Right now, Americans across our community and our country are rationing the lifesaving medication on which they depend, endangering their lives by going without their medication altogether, or facing financial ruin to get their prescriptions filled. This situation is absolutely unacceptable, and we must change it.
That’s why I am leading the charge in congress to finally allow Medicare to negotiate the soaring cost of prescription drugs and to make sure those lower negotiated rates are available to everyone, not just those on Medicare. I recently led a letter of several members of congress to Democratic leadership urging them to include Medicare negotiation power in the Build Back Better Act (also known as the reconciliation bill). If we empower Medicare by giving them the tools to effectively negotiate prescription drugs prices and make these prices available to the private sector, it will lower the cost of these medications not just for seniors, but also for Americans of all ages. This change is urgent given that drug companies hiked the prices of 783 drugs in January 2021. And 100% of these hikes were above the rate of inflation.
I also fought for and secured crucial changes to the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA) to address drug costs. I led 27 freshman House Democrats in a letter calling for negotiations to be re-opened so changes could be made to protect consumers from excessive increases in drug prices as well as to strengthen labor standards and environmental terms. After I helped secure these changes, the ALF-CIO and United Steelworkers endorsed the USMCA and it was ultimately passed into law by a huge bipartisan majority vote in the House of 385 to 41.
Mental Health and Suicide Prevention
I am also committed to ensuring that ensure that mental health care resources are within reach for all people across our country. And I believe that all of us have a critical role to play in making suicide prevention a national priority in the face of a deeply alarming epidemic of suicide across our country.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, health care workers have borne the brunt of the pandemic and are particularly at-risk. That's why I introduced the bipartisan Dr. Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Act. This bill would fund grants to health care institutions so that they can study and implement employee programs designed to reduce and prevent suicide, burnout, mental and behavioral health conditions, and substance use disorders. Health care professionals deserve access to a mental health care infrastructure that works for them as they continue their tireless work to keep our nation healthy.
We also know that young people are particularly at-risk, which is why I introduced the Enhancing Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Through Campus Planning Act. If enacted, this legislation would help fill the gap in unmet mental health needs of college students by requiring the Department of Education to coordinate with the HHS Secretary to encourage institutions of higher education to develop and implement comprehensive mental health and suicide prevention plans. And because older Americans are also disproportionately at-risk of suicide, I worked hard to include an amendment to the latest reauthorization of the Older Americans Act which adds screening for suicide to the disease prevention and health promotion services provided under this law. I'm proud to say that my amendment passed unanimously through the Education & Labor Committee—earning the support of Republicans and Democrats alike.
When families face the extraordinary heartbreak of suicide, I believe we as a country have an obligation to stand alongside them in support and solidarity. That's why I introduced the Greater Mental Health Access Act, which would help people impacted by suicide access the mental health care they need by making the suicide of a loved one a "qualifying life event" allowing people without coverage to enroll for coverage at any time.
Together, we can put an end to the stigma surrounding mental health care and suicide awareness. As a Member of Congress, I am committed to doing the hard work necessary to make this goal a reality.
If you or a loved one require immediate assistance, please call 911 (Emergency Medical Services) or 899 (the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline), both of which are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Since taking office in 2018, I have cosponsored more than 60 pieces of legislation on issues affecting veterans, military families, and servicemembers. I am committed to expanding health care benefits for veterans, particularly those with disabilities or preexisting conditions, through my cosponsorship of several bills, including the Veteran Families Health Services Act, the Veterans Infertility Treatment Act, and the Health Care Fairness for Military Families Act.
Ensuring health, safety, and equity for female servicemembers is another top priority for me, and I am honored to be a founding member of the Servicewomen and Women Veterans Caucus and to serve as a member of the Women Veterans Task Force. During my first term in office, I introduced the Improving Legal Services for Female Veterans Act—a bill aimed at providing legal assistance to women veterans to help them access services to assist with eviction and foreclosure, child support, and child care. This legislation was signed into law in January 2021.
I am also a National Ambassador for the PREVENTS task force at the Department of Veterans Affairs. PREVENTS aims to prevent suicide among veterans and all Americans. The task force seeks to change the culture surrounding mental health and suicide prevention through enhanced community integration, prioritized research activities, and implementation strategies that emphasize improved overall health and well-being.
We owe an immeasurable debt to the generations of individuals who have put their lives on the line in our defense. I will continue working to make sure that essential services and programs are accessible for veterans, servicemembers, and military families.