Dave’s Keystone Agenda to Reclaim America

Four thousand deadly overdoses in Pennsylvania each year is a tragedy and an outrage. We must not tolerate the flow of billions of dollars of fentanyl ingredients and laundered money from China. It’s time to use sanctions, intelligence resources, military interdictions at sea, and all other tools at our disposal to make it as difficult as possible for drug cartels to produce fentanyl with ingredients originating in China.

Inviting China into the World Trade Organization gave China preferential access to the U.S. market, and instead of following the rules and meeting its free trade obligations, what did China do? They cheated, stole, and took advantage of weak American leaders. It’s time to get tough. Congress must revoke China’s permanent normal trade relations status, and the United States must advocate for China’s removal from the WTO.

The Biden-Harris Administration’s green climate crusade is pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into things like electric vehicles and solar panels that make the U.S. even more dependent on China. It might as well be a direct transfer from Pennsylvanians’ bank accounts to the CCP. Being dependent on China for advanced energy technologies like lithium batteries and solar panels repeats the same mistake we made with semiconductors and pharmaceuticals.

American innovation, money, and hard work must no longer underwrite the CCP’s efforts to become the world’s leading superpower. It’s unconscionable to consider the possibility that U.S. dollars would fund a military buildup that could one day be deployed against Pennsylvania’s sons and daughters. We must now presume that Chinese companies seeking U.S. financing or technology will become partners to China’s military and security services—whether willingly or not. That’s why Congress must establish a clear outbound investment regime that cuts off U.S. investment in all technologies in China critical to national security and in those companies that work with the People’s Liberation Army. All publicly traded companies and investment funds should also disclose their investments and exposure in China in public filings.

The recklessness of the Chinese Communist Party and its Wuhan Institute of Virology unleashed COVID-19 on the world. They then deprived the United States and our public health institutions of crucial warning to prepare for the pandemic, refused to provide transparency on its potential origin, and co-opted international organizations like the WHO to spread their COVID propaganda.

The pandemic and the ongoing war in Ukraine have made clear the importance of food security to our economy. Our nation’s farmers and ranchers give us the ability to feed ourselves and many countries around the world. That is a strategic asset and source of independence. We cannot ever allow that to change. All significant purchases of American land by Chinese nationals or companies, as well as purchases near military bases, and critical infrastructure should undergo a national security review. Dave will defend our agriculture industry and our homeland from the CCP.

Dave’s Keystone Agenda builds off his battle plan for renewal outlined in his book Superpower in Peril, which gives us a path to victory in three vital contests of our time: the races for talent, technology, and data supremacy.

We should remove Biden and Harris’ constraints on new oil and gas projects on federal lands, reverse the liquified natural gas export pause, and enact permitting reform. Prioritizing the construction of new energy infrastructure — particularly for projects that will help get natural gas from Pennsylvania to the world — is good for our commonwealth’s economy, consumers, and the environment.

If Pennsylvania cannot provide affordable and reliable energy, key industries like manufacturing and the jobs they support will go elsewhere or overseas to places like China. From natural gas to clean energy solutions like nuclear and emerging technologies like carbon capture and storage, we should be utilizing all forms of energy to help lower prices and drive innovation.

We must end our reliance on China for energy products like solar panels and electric vehicle components. The supply chains for these technologies should be based right here in America whenever possible or, if not, in countries that are reliable trade partners. Leveraging our resources at home will boost our energy independence and national security.

1. Make it easier to fire bureaucrats in administrative agencies who are not performing.
2. Relocate the Department of Energy to Pittsburgh and move federal agencies with missions mostly outside of D.C. to other parts of the country.
3. Sell any federal building in D.C. that does not have a full-time workforce.
4. Stop focusing resources and attention on misguided ideological agendas like diversity, equity, and inclusion.
5. Actually enforce laws put in place to protect Americans, like removing foreign nationals who incite violence or endorse terrorist activity.
6. Exclude noncitizens from the Census count and pass a constitutional amendment so only Americans can vote in American elections.

1. Restore President Trump’s executive order that required cutting two regulations for every new one added.
2. Create an expedited process to challenge regulations based on their cost-benefit analysis.
3. Impose stronger checks from Congress on agencies to ensure significant regulations receive proper scrutiny from elected leaders.
4. End the deference courts give agency interpretations of laws passed by Congress.

1. Impose term limits on Congress.
2. Prevent members from using their position to enrich themselves by prohibiting them and their immediate family members from trading of individual stocks and derivatives, lobbying, or steering funding to nonprofits that employ family members.
3. Get our fiscal house back in order and pass a balanced budget amendment.

You can read the white pager on Dave’s plan to Shake Up Washington here.

Provide families with a $15,000 tax credit for fertility services like IVF.

As PA’s senator, Dave will oppose any effort to restrict IVF. Period. But he’ll go even further. Every family should get a $15,000 tax credit for fertility expenses like IVF. This credit would put up to $15,000 in the pocket of families using IVF to have children, be fully refundable, and available in up to two tax years per family.

Make the Paid Family and Medical Leave Employer Tax Credit permanent.

When Dave was a CEO, he strongly encouraged everyone on the team to take paid leave—regardless of whether they were the mom or the dad. He believes Congress should incentivize more employers to provide paid parental leave by making the Paid Family and Medical Leave Employer Tax Credit that was passed during the Trump Administration permanent and expanding it to cover more forms of paid leave, such as insurance, to give small businesses more flexibility.

And for new and newly-adoptive parents who do not have access to paid leave or do not receive 100% percent of their wages during leave, we should allow them to pull forward up to three months of their Social Security benefits to finance it. While three months is a relatively small amount of time in retirement, for new parents this could provide a lifeline at a crucial time for their new family.

Stop the federal government from standing in the way of families accessing affordable faith-based or community childcare.

Low- and middle-income families are eager to utilize childcare offered by faith-based and community organizations. But the childcare plan that Biden, Harris, and Casey support would have also forced many faith-based organizations to choose between their religious mission and providing childcare services eligible for federal assistance while raising the average cost of childcare by $13,000 per year. Federal assistance programs should incentivize states to make it easier for faith-based and community organizations to open a childcare facility by streamlining licensing, relaxing worker education requirements, or reforming zoning.

Dave also believes we should expand eligibility for the Child Care and Development Block Grant to 1.5 times the state median income for the equivalent size family and increase funding for the block grant. This would make a Pennsylvania family of four making $150,000 eligible for a voucher to use at the eligible child care provider of their choice. This ensures that parents, not bureaucrats in Washington, can decide where they use this assistance for childcare.

Empower parents and expand school choice through a federal tax credit for contributions to scholarship funds.

As the son of two Pennsylvania public school teachers, Dave believes parents should have the right to choose the school that is best for their child, rather than being forced to attend failing schools based solely on where they live. We should be funding student success, not systems that fail to deliver results.

Dave also supports the Educational Choice for Children Act, which would create a federal tax credit that allows individuals and businesses to make tax-deductible contributions to organizations that provide scholarships to low- and middle-income families. This could provide tens of thousands of Pennsylvania students with scholarships to attend the school of their choice, all funded by private donations.

Ban children under the age of 16 from using social media.

Social media is addictive and anxiety-inducing, and it’s a major driver of the mental health crisis among American teenagers. We need to come together in a bipartisan way to address this crisis and protect children by properly treating kids under 16 as minors needing protection from the harmful effects of social media.

Create a tax-free savings account families can use to pay for up to $10,000 per year in childcare costs.

Dave would give every working family access to a tax-free savings account to pay for up to $10,000 per year in childcare costs. Eligibility for the FSA would begin in the middle of pregnancy and be available to any family with earnings to fund it and not be tied to a particular employer.

Double the Child Tax Credit.

One of the most important federal policies that supports families is the Child Tax Credit. The 2017 Trump tax cuts doubled the credit, allowing low- and middle-income families to receive up to $2,000 per child each year, of which up to $1,600 is fully refundable. President Trump and Republicans let parents keep more money—Bob Casey and Democrats voted against it.

Dave believes we should do even more: he supports increasing the child tax credit to $4,200 per child under the age of 5 and $3,000 for children ages 6 to 17 and giving families the option to receive the credit in monthly installments, from mid-pregnancy to a child’s seventeenth birthday.

Expanding Access to Mental Health Services

Mental health is another important priority because far too many Americans with serious mental illness are not able to get the care they need. We can expand access to care for those with serious mental illness by getting rid of Medicaid rules that significantly constrain access to inpatient psychiatric beds, increasing Medicaid reimbursement rates for care of the seriously mentally ill, and expanding access to mental health services at the VA.

• While the U.S. Army demands accountability, in Biden’s Washington, accountability is nowhere to be found.
• Afghanistan: To this day, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have not said aloud the names of the thirteen fallen heroes who were killed in Kabul, and not a single senior administration official was fired for the failures in Afghanistan. Bob Casey fully backed their decision.
• Ukraine: Vladimir Putin heard that message and invaded Ukraine just six months later.
  • Senator Casey directly contributed to that weakness by voting against imposing sanctions on Putin’s Nord Stream II pipeline just one month before Russia invaded Ukraine.
• Iran and Israel: Bob Casey and Joe Biden sent coffers full of cash to Iran in 2015, and Iran smiled as Harris’s radical progressive allies celebrated Hamas’s horrific massacre of innocent Israelis on October 7, an attack made possible by the money Biden and Casey made available to that dangerous regime.
• China: Beijing is conducting one of the largest military buildups in human history and flying spy balloons over our skies. Yet the response of Biden, Harris, and their rubber stamp Bob Casey has been to send senior officials to China to bow to the Chinese Communist Party while they undermine our economy and security every single day.
• State of the Military: On Vice President Harris and Senator Casey’s watch, America has forfeited its military might. As an independent, bipartisan commission created to evaluate the Administration’s National Defense Strategy recently concluded, “the U.S. military lacks both the capabilities and the capacity required to be confident it can deter and prevail in combat.”
• Culture: Our national sense of purpose is being undermined by radical ideological agendas that inculcate a culture of weakness. During the first year of the Biden-Harris Administration alone, our military spent nearly 6 million man-hours on DEI training and a stand down to discuss “extremism.”

• Rebuild our military power
  • As a member of President Trump’s Defense Policy Board, I saw firsthand what it looked like to prioritize military strength, and we can do it again with strong leadership.
  • I applaud and endorse the blueprint put forward by Senator Roger Wicker, the Senate’s top defense leader, to build a military that can actually deter the threats we face around the globe and, in the process, strengthen our defense industrial base.
  • America must once again become the Arsenal of Democracy and rebuild our defense industrial base.
  • I will be a champion for making generational investments in defense infrastructure that supports our national security—like reconstituting the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard—which will create union jobs right here in Pennsylvania.
• Change the way the Pentagon does business.
  • America’s military must learn to innovate again. That means we have to invest in cutting-edge technologies to ensure our servicemen and women are armed for the fight of the future and innovate on top of existing weapons platforms to get the most bang for the taxpayer’s buck.
  • We also need new political leadership that will build a culture of innovation in the military services and drive fundamental change. The next secretary of defense must focus every day on rebuilding our military power and promoting officers who have an unshakable focus on what it will take to fight and win the next war.
• Restore the sense that America is worth fighting for.
  • far too many Americans have been fed a narrative of victimhood that puts grievance, not leadership and strength, first.
  • We need new leaders to cultivate the American spirit and restore institutional integrity. In the Pentagon, put war fighting and deterrence first; in schools, teach civics and America’s exceptional story; in business, reaffirm the principles of merit and capitalism; and across society, create a new national commitment to citizenship.