Taxes & Cost of Living

I was born to a single mom who worked overtime at a hotel to support me. We lived in a little apartment in East Austin. There wasn’t room for a nursery, so I slept in a crib in her closet. She was so proud of that closet. She decorated it with pictures and toys — no one was gonna tell her it wasn’t a nursery!

As a former public school teacher, I know what it’s like to work early mornings and late nights in an underpaid, stressful job. I know what it’s like to be crushed by student debt and medical debt. And I know what it’s like to feel like the system isn’t working for you.

Meanwhile, the richest 1% of Americans now own more wealth than the entire middle class. Dozens of the largest corporations pay zero dollars in federal income taxes. They lobby for policies that cut their own taxes while raising taxes on all of us. And they lobby against regulations that would stop them from monopolizing markets and artificially jacking up prices. That’s a big reason that everything is so expensive right now. 

We need a government that serves working people instead of giant corporations. And we need a government that rolls back the barriers keeping us from living the American dream — whether they’re unnecessary tariffs or outdated zoning regulations.

As a legislator, I have fought for working Texans, I’ve stood up to billionaire mega-donors and special interests, and I’ve worked to cut bureaucratic red tape — passing major legislation to lower the cost of prescription drugs, housing, and childcare. Now I’m ready to take this fight to the U.S. Senate.

This is not a comprehensive list! If you have policy ideas you want to see from your next U.S. Senator, please reach out HERE. We want to hear from you!

• Create a fairer tax system: Make giant corporations and the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share of taxes. (That way, we can cut taxes for working families and small businesses.)
  • Make billionaires pay their fair share in taxes — including by imposing a higher tax on their income and capital gains and ending the dubious “buy, borrow, die” loopholes that billionaires use to grow untaxed wealth.
  • Make corporations pay their fair share in taxes — including by raising the corporate tax rate (it has fallen by HALF since the mid-1980s!), ending the “carried interest” tax loopholes that allow hedge funds to avoid paying billions that they owe, and rolling back other extreme tax breaks that allow the largest corporations to pay $0 in federal income taxes.
  • Raise the tax on corporate stock buybacks, which corporations use to artificially inflate their stock prices instead of making investments in research and development or to pay their employees the full value of their work.
• Increase wages for workers, not CEOs: Raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, and incentivize CEOs to pay fair wages by creating a special tax on corporations that pay their top executives more than 250 times their median worker’s salary.
• Ensure Americans can afford to retire: Fight tooth and nail against attacks on Medicare and Social Security, ensure the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share into Social Security by eliminating the tax cap on those earning over $400,000 a year, and incentivize employer-sponsored pensions.
• Expand tax credits that support working families: Expand the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit, which reward hard work, offset the cost of raising children, and can save the government money over the long-term.
• Lower health care and prescription drug costs: Create a federal public health insurance option that competes with private insurance, institute caps on out-of-pocket costs for lifesaving drugs, reinstate the Affordable Care Act (ACA)’s enhanced premium tax credits, increase price transparency and Medicare’s negotiating power to ensure fair pricing, incentivize the development and approvals of generics, and regulate pharmacy benefit managers to ensure they’re not up-charging patients.
• Lower housing costs: Stop corporate landlords from engaging in market manipulation to artificially hike rents, ban Wall Street from buying up housing stock to enrich wealthy investors while making it harder for families to afford homes, expand the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, repeal outdated red tape that hinders the construction of housing, support legislation to lower property insurance costs, and create a federal task force charged with helping communities use quality, cost-effective options like factory-built “modular” homes to speed up construction timelines.
• Lower grocery costs: Stand up to attacks against SNAP and WIC, increase oversight into mergers and acquisitions that artificially jack up prices, remove tariffs on produce that can’t be grown in the United States, and reduce barriers to entry for new grocery providers to increase market competition.
• Lower energy costs: Require AI data centers to pay for their own energy infrastructure updates so those costs aren’t passed on to consumers, diversify our energy sources to drive down costs, expand the Energy Star program that educates consumers about energy-efficient products, and modernize the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program’s disbursement formula to ensure that hot climate states — like Texas — receive equitable funds to help families with utility costs.
• Repeal the Trump tariffs: Repeal the Trump tariffs that are making everything — from groceries to cars to clothing — more expensive.

• Reduced prescription drug costs by capping insulin co-pays at $25 a month in Texas, allowing Texas to import cheaper prescription drugs from Canada at reduced costs, increasing transparency around Big Pharma’s price gouging tactics, and establishing a prescription drug savings program for uninsured Texans.
• Lowered housing costs by replacing outdated regulations to increase the supply of apartments and condos, establishing Texas’ first-ever Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program, and providing tax relief on low-income housing construction.
• Lowered child care costs by establishing property tax exemptions for child care providers and increasing the supply of high-quality centers.
• Lowered property taxes by voting to increase the school district residence homestead tax exemption, increase the business personal property tax exemption, and provide additional exemptions for elderly and disabled homeowners.
• Lowered higher education costs by establishing tuition and fee exemptions and a public junior college state finance program.