PBS Wisconsin Public Affairs

Hi, my name is Mike Van Someren and I'm the Democratic nominee for Wisconsin's 5th Congressional District. I'm running to bring common sense back to governing and to rebuild and strengthen the middle class, not only here at home, but throughout the U.S. Now, I'm a dad, a husband, and a business attorney, and I come from blue collar roots. My dad is a truck driver and my mom is an office manager. For the first five years of my life, we actually lived in a trailer court while my mom and dad saved up enough money to build the house that they still live in to this day. I got a great public school education, where I had the chance to play a variety of sports and participate in a number of extracurricular activities. This education led to the opportunity for me to walk on to play offensive line for the Wisconsin Badgers and Barry Alvarez. I graduated in 2008 in the middle of the Great Recession, and enrolled in Marquette University Law School, where I graduated with honors. And for the last decade, I've been practicing real estate and business law in the greater Milwaukee area. Now, I've always said that I'm interested in policy but not politics. And the reason I got interested in politics and decided I had to throw my hat in the ring is because during the pandemic, we had a group of people in office that refused to put aside partisan affiliations and do the job of governing for the greatest amount of people. And when people aren't willing to put aside their differences, we can't get anything done and our government becomes dysfunctional. Now, me personally, I don't care where an idea comes from, whether it's the left, the right, or the center. If it's a good idea, we need to implement it, and if it's a bad idea, we need to get rid of it and move on. Now, how do we rebuild the middle class? First, I think we need to make sure that we have one set of rules for everybody, regardless of status, class, or wealth. That means first of all, we need to collect the taxes that are owed rather than looking to raise taxes right away. We right now leave approximately $600 billion to a trillion dollars on the table each year on taxes that are evaded because people don't think they'll get caught. And that can't be the way that we operate. We also need to make sure our economy is competitive. And we can do this by attacking the illusion of choice. Right now, we have many brands that are owned by a few companies. We have four companies that control a portion of our food supply. We have four companies that control 90% of our media, whether that be print, digital, radio, or television. We can't have this. With this kind of consolidation, we have exasperating wealth inequality, fewer jobs, fewer family-supporting jobs, poorer products, and higher pricing. We can attack this by making sure people actually have to compete, and at the same time, having a proper safety net so that when people do take that chance and start that business, they don't have to risk their entire family and the quality of life that they have taking that chance and coming up with that next product. We also need to make sure that our health care is accessible to as many people as possible and provides outcomes that are good outcomes. Right now, we have health care that is very good, provides very good outcomes for a select few and is almost completely inaccessible for the vast majority of our population. We need to make sure more people can access it and that insurance companies are doing the job that they're supposed to do, which is providing coverage for health needs for our population. We also need to attack cost drivers, particularly in the prescription drug market. We can do this because we subsidize that with our tax dollars as it is. With a young family, I wanna make sure that our families are all safe, and we can do this by making sure our police are supported and that they don't have to respond to everything that society throws at us. Homelessness and drug abuse should be handled by social workers so that the police can focus on policing crimes and we can actually solve the problem of homelessness and drug abuse. Finally, I have a young family. I wanna make sure that our planet is healthy for the long term, and I think we can do that while still growing a strong economy. And in order to do this, we need to innovate our way out of the worst effects of climate change. And once we come up with these new innovations, export them to the rest of the world and make sure that we are the face of the world's problem solvers. That's gonna help our standing in the world, that's gonna make sure our planet is good, and it's gonna create a strong economy. I have an optimistic vision for this country, and I hope to earn your vote this November. Thank you.