You want policy proposals from the 2020 Democrats? Sen. Amy Klobuchar has policy. Klobuchar released a list of 136 policies she would address in her first 100 days as president, which means she’s planning to be busy.
By The Washington Post’s count, “Roughly half of these promises involve reversing or counteracting actions taken by President Trump and his administration.” Those include restoring the Clean Power Plan and fuel-economy standards gutted under Trump; removing the citizenship question from the census; lifting the ban on transgender military service members; ending the domestic gag rule on Title X women’s health providers; ending the Muslim ban; admitting more refugees; protecting DACA and TPS recipients from deportation; strengthening federal workers’ rights; and many more.
She would press prison reforms; move the Justice Department away from the use of private prisons; create a clemency advisory board; and reduce racial disparities in school discipline, a key part of the school-to-prison pipeline. On health care, Klobuchar promises to address disparities in maternal and infant mortality; take on short-term junk insurance policies; “Expand Medicaid reimbursement for people receiving mental health or substance use treatment”; press universal health care (but not Medicare for All); and more. She would also “revive the aggressive protection of voting rights.”
Klobuchar’s gun policy proposals include closing the “boyfriend loophole” so that people who have abused dating partners are banned from gun ownership; having the CDC study gun violence as a public health issue; and introducing legislation on background checks; and more. That’s not the only area in which Klobuchar would take multiple forms of action. On election security and antitrust enforcement, she is pledging to both introduce legislation and take executive action.
Klobuchar would use executive action to strengthen rights for federal workers, including contract workers, with a $15 minimum wage for federal contract workers and incentives for contractors to provide paid family leave and childcare benefits. She would also use incentives for federal contractors to promote net neutrality.
There is a lot here. We’ll have to wait to hear details on some of the proposals to assess them against those of her Democratic competitors, but Klobuchar has certainly established herself as a policy candidate with this list.