Justin brings together an understanding of the local communities with extensive experience in public service working on the pressing issues affecting our country.

Justin and Mary, his wife, live in Loma Linda.

Priorities

Justin Kim is a Democratic candidate for the 31st Congressional District focused on pursuing progressive solutions to the problems facing our district and our nation.

Jobs and Economy
This district needs both long-term and short-term solutions that address the building blocks of our local economy from the bottom up. Our focus should be on sustained growth through the creation of temporary jobs that translate into permanent employment in a progressive job market. To meet these ends, we need to continue our investments in publicly supported projects that create the infrastructure and environment for lasting private investments while protecting the employment rights of the workers who make these changes possible.

High unemployment hurts the entire community and reduces everyone's standard of living. When one family's income plunges due to joblessness, so does their spending in the local economy. We need aggressive measures to create jobs quickly and prevent more job losses. Drastic cuts in critical investments will irresponsibly hurt the creation of more jobs. When unemployment remains high, government revenues will fall, budget deficits will rise, and the downward spiral of our economy will continue.

To break this cycle, Congress needs to pass a robust jobs bill that aids working Americans by creating temporary jobs in projects that strengthen the local community and attract new business—thereby fostering new long-term employment opportunities. Projects that could provide temporary relief, invest for the future, and revive the economy include:

• Investment in public infrastructure—projects to improve local roads, bridges, and transportation systems that create jobs in construction and manufacturing;

• Investment toward increasing energy independence from foreign oil and simultaneously creating new jobs in the Inland Empire by putting researchers, manufacturers, and engineers to work developing clean energy technology to power the future;

• Investment to prevent state and local cuts that threaten accessible, quality childhood education—saving and creating jobs in primary and secondary education.

These are important investments because the long history of our government's role in facilitating technological innovation—from railroads and interstate highways to medical research and development—demonstrates why public investment must be a foundation for our economic growth.

Protecting American jobs and industry will also require strong multilateral trade agreements that are fair to American workers and American industry. American manufacturing has already suffered from unfair trade regimes that allow other countries to manipulate their currency to disadvantage American exports to foreign markets. This requires the negotiation of strong trade agreements that uphold labor standards and aggressive enforcement actions to ensure that American-made products are not unlawfully excluded from global markets.

Tax Reform

I support reform towards a simpler and more progressive federal income tax code. Our current system is overly complicated and results in wildly varying tax bills for similar households. Among other things, the unnecessary complexity of the tax code allows some of the wealthiest Americans to exploit loopholes that undermine the fair distribution of taxes. This is unfair and needs to be stopped.

At the Department of Justice, I confronted and fought against some of the most abusive tax shelters that defrauded the U.S. government. In Congress, I intend to continue to this work by closing loopholes for the rich and returning to a tax policy that requires each citizen to pay their fair share. This starts with the expiration of 2001 and 2003 Bush-era tax cuts for taxpayers in the top income brackets and continues with progressive distribution of the national tax burden.

Protecting the Social Safety Net

We are all vulnerable to events beyond our control that threaten our health and well-being. For most Americans, our families are one personal or medical crisis away from financial ruin. Social Security and Medicare are broad social insurance programs that provide the minimum level of safety for all Americans in order to ensure economic security and dignity for many generations. I want to strengthen these public insurance programs by giving more Americans the opportunity to choose between private insurance and a public option while making some common sense fixes to the system.

Social Security is a critical layer of the social safety net. We should ensure that it continues to provide retirement security to all Americans. Despite the political rhetoric, strengthening Social Security for future generations is a relatively simple fix. The Congressional Budget Office has already published a straightforward analysis of the projected long-term shortfall and options that would eliminate it. For example, raising the cap on payroll taxes to $250,000 while maintaining current benefit levels would, by itself, make up for most of the projected shortfall for the next 75 years.