SAN FRANCISCO (Diya TV) — With Election Day come and gone, some Americans are preparing to make their inaugural venture into DC politics, while for others, their tenure has come to an end.
It took Ro Khanna two tries, but the Representative-elect emerged victorious in last month’s election against eight-term incumbent Congressman Mike Honda. Khanna, speaking in an interview with Breitbart News, gave his soon-to-be constituents a sneak-preview of what they can expect from him as a congressman, and how he plans to do his part in how politics function in the nation’s capital.
“I want to get special interest money out of politics,” Khanna said. “I want to work on building a caucus where other members don’t take money from PACs. And we have to brand that caucus.”
Khanna’s focus, as was one of his campaign’s main pillars, is putting American workers first. During his first term in Congress, Khanna said his main focus will be returning to America the manufacturing jobs that established the country’s industry sector. He also wants to remove the special interest element from DC politics, and get the cash in offshore bank accounts back on American soil.
“We have trillions of dollars offshore and we’ve got to figure out how to bring that money back and reinvest it in jobs here,” he said. “Let’s reduce the tax to allow them to bring it back. But once they bring it back, they need to use that money to invest into businesses.”
According to the Breitbart report, Khanna said he will seek to eradicate the influence of money from corporate and union PACs, the ladder of which usually support Democratic initiatives. Khanna also wants to explore the option of enforcing stricter term limits for the men and women who work in the House chamber.
“We need term limits and I’ll work across the aisle to impose these term limits,” he said during the interview.
He said he will have a closer look at California’s model, which currently allows for two terms in the state Senate and six in the House.
The newly-elected congressman also said he plans on working towards dropping bad trade deals and currency manipulation, and to spread the innovation created in California’s 17th Congressional District, which houses the majority of the nation’s most elite tech companies, around the country.
He said he will work towards finding a way to incentivize companies to invest in manufacturing jobs, saying this is an agenda that “transcends partisan politics.”
Like President-elect Donald Trump, Khanna is opposed to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.
“I totally opposed TPP. I think that was a bad deal for American workers. It was a bad deal for our manufacturing industry,” he said.
Regarding the future of the H-1B visa program, which the President-elect has said he plans to take a closer look into, Khanna, too, called for more reform to the program in order to ensure it’s not being abused by companies who shove American workers aside to make room for cheaper, foreign workers.
“Of course we want to create jobs,” Khanna said. “But it shouldn’t be at the expense of the American workers.”
