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Michael Bloomberg

Former Mayor, New York City

 

Opportunity
Justice
Democracy

Opportunity

Racial Wealth Gap

Michael Bloomberg addresses the racial wealth gap in his “Greenwood Initiative”. His initiative will:

  • “Set up user-friendly onestop shops for entrepreneurs across the country.”

  • “Expand mentorships and incubators.” 

  • “Increase access to capital.”

  • “Support Black-owned banks by increasing federal deposits, and by providing a streamlined process to qualify as CDFIs”

  • “Expand procurement from Black-owned businesses.”

  • “Provide incentives for private investors to focus on underrepresented groups and underserved communities.” 

  • “Launch a $70 billion national initiative to identify and turn around 100 of the country’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods. It will invest in 100 communities over five years to tackle the neighborhood conditions that perpetuate poverty and exclude the historically disadvantaged from growth and opportunity.”

    • “Create a new Neighborhood Equity and Opportunity Office (NEOO) to manage the initiative.” 

  • “Defend the rights of protected groups by reinvigorating and reorienting the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Dept.”

  • “Shed light on discriminatory practices by requiring companies to report on hiring, pay, and procurement and collecting more complete lending data.”  

  • Offer financial services through the Post Office and by piloting a program to provide free checking accounts to recipients of the Earned Income Tax Credit.

His “Housing and Earned Income Tax Credit Proposals” will: 

  • Reform the Earned Income Tax Credit to increase the amount families receive and

    • Simplify the rules so that the credit is easier to administer

  • Increase Child Tax Credit, and raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

Affordable Housing

Michael Bloomberg addresses affordable housing in his “Greenwood Initiative”. His initiative will:

  • “Provide down-payment assistance.”

  • ”Get millions recognized by credit scoring companies.”

  • “Enforce fair lending laws.”

  • “Reduce foreclosures and evictions, and increase the supply of affordable housing.”

  • Order federally controlled and mandated mortgage guarantors to update their credit-scoring requirements, to insist that scoring models be tested for racial bias, and to encourage the use of alternative models that employ information such as bank account. history, rental payments, or mobile-phone payments to assess creditworthiness.

  • “Create a Housing Fairness Commission, funded with an initial $10 billion, to work with municipalities and nonprofits on testing policies aimed at reversing the effects of discrimination and expanding programs that work.”

“Ties federal housing funding to progress in reducing segregation.”

His “Housing and Earned Income Tax Credit Proposals” will:

  • “Expand the Low Income Tax Credit, with conditions to ensure that more new construction is in low-income areas with substantial community investments to improve schools and reduce crime.”

  • “Increase funding to federal affordable housing programs, such as the Public Housing Capital Fund, the HOME program, Community Development Block Grants, the Capital Magnet Fund and the Housing Trust Fund.”

  • Incentivize cities to open up the most desirable neighborhoods to affordable housing with $10 billion in federal funds.

  • “Enforce Department of Housing and Urban Development rules, such as Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing, that require cities to demonstrate progress in addressing segregation — for example, by removing exclusionary zoning regulations.”

  • “Increase funding for housing vouchers” and administer them regionally.

  • “Create a Housing Fairness Commission, funded with an initial $10 billion, to work with municipalities and nonprofits on testing policies aimed at reversing the effects of discrimination and expanding programs that work.”

  • “Expand the Fair Housing Act protections to include all relevant forms of discrimination.”

  • “Enforce fair lending laws and keep gathering the data needed to do so.” 

  • “Revive HUD’s efforts to enforce progress on housing desegregation (under its Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule) and ensure people’s right to challenge discriminatory policies in the courts (under its disparate impact rule).”

Access to High Quality Education

Michael Bloomberg addresses access to high quality education in his “Greenwood Initiative”. His initiative will “require implicit bias training for police, teachers and federal contractors.”

Bloomberg also highlights his education work as Mayor of New York. While Mayor he “created 126,000 additional classroom seats and opened 654 new schools.”

Through the work of his foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, he “leads national efforts to increase the number of lower-income students enrolled in top colleges” by his support of CollegePoint, “a free vi
rtual advising program that has helped 66,000 high-achieving low-and moderate-income students apply to top colleges and universities nationwide.”

Environmental Equity

Michael Bloomberg addresses environmental equity in his “Plan for 100% Clean Power”. His plan will:

  • “Ensure corporations are held responsible for the damages they have created, and commitments made to impacted communities are honored.”

  • “Develop solutions to ensure that low-income families have equal access to clean energy.”

  • Expand investments to map the unequal exposure to pollution, the health impacts of climate change, and socioeconomic factors such as improving and expanding environmental justice mapping. 

  • “Use the National Environmental Policy Act so that climate risk, environmental impacts, and equity concerns are considered in all federal actions, and also incorporate these considerations into the Office of Management and Budget’s annual budget process.” 

  • “Centralize planning of environmental justice from the White House by codifying the existing National Environmental Justice Advisory Council and creating environmental justice offices in every federal agency.”

  • “Reverse Trump rollbacks of clean air, water, health and safety, and waste rules that expose all Americans to dangerous levels of pollution from these sources”

  • “Ensure that there are more thorough consultations with community leaders, environmental justice advocates and scientists to determine criteria for all future rulemaking.”

Health Equity

Michael Bloomberg addresses health equity in his “Maternal Health Policy”.His policy will:

  • “Address the racial bias among health care providers – both implicit and explicit – by requiring doctors to have training in understanding and countering implicit bias in medical care.”

  • Increase in funding for medical schools at historically black colleges and universities to increase the number of people of color in the health-care workforce. 

In his “Health Coverage Plan”, he will:

  • “Create a Medicare-like public option where priority would go to the uninsured, including low-income people who are in states that haven’t expanded Medicaid under the ACA.”

  • “Lower drug prices and cap the cost of medical bills.”

Transportation Access

Michael Bloomberg’s campaign platform does not address transportation access specifically. However, in his website’s “Climate Change Resilience” section, it says he will:

  • “Ramp up federal efforts with the private sector to coordinate and invest in making resilient critical infrastructure and innovation to develop and design climate-safe solutions — including in energy, telecommunications, public safety and transportation.”

In his “Clean Buildings” issue plan, he notes the work of Bloomberg Philanthropies, noting he “created the Bloomberg Philanthropies American Cities Climate Challenge through a $70 million investment to empower 25 of the largest U.S. cities to implement their near-term climate goals, with a focus on clean transportation and buildings.”

Justice

Bail/Prison Reform 

Michael Bloomberg addresses bail/prison reform in his “Criminal Justice Reform” plan. His plan will:

  • “Provide incentives for states to experiment with and evaluate the impact of shorter sentences through the DOJ.” 

  • “Expand alternative-to-incarceration programs that have a proven record of success.”

  • “Restore access to Pell Grant funding for incarcerated individuals, allowing them to pay for post-secondary education while in prison.”

  • “Launch a nationwide initiative to cut imprisonment of young people in half by the end of his first term and eliminate juvenile incarceration for all non-violent offenders.”

Re-Entry Services

Michael Bloomberg addresses re-entry services in his “Criminal Justice Reform” plan. His plan will: 

  • “Expand drug treatment, mental health services, and re-entry and career-training for people who are incarcerated.”

Ending Capital Punishment

Michael Bloomberg does not address his views on capital punishment in his campaign platform. However, he has publicly expressed opposition to the death penalty in the past: 

  • “[The death penalty] would be so tragic, I’d raither lock somebody up and throw away the key, and you can put them in hard labor, the ultimate penalty that the law will allow, but I’m opposed to the death penalty.” – Bloomberg reiterating his opposition to the capital punishment.

Expanding Gun Safety Measures

Michael Bloomberg addresses expanding gun safety measures in his “Gun Safety” plan. The plan will:

  • “Require point-of-sale background checks for all gun sales.” 

  • “Reinstate the federal ban on a
    ssault weapons and high-capacity magazines.”

  • “Close the private sale loophole, which enables prohibited people to buy guns simply by finding unlicensed sellers at gun shows or on the Internet.”

  • “Require every gun buyer to get a permit before making a purchase.”

  • “Use sales records to identify crime guns and notify local police when individuals have been prohibited from having a gun.”

  • “Reverse Trump’s proposed firearm export regulations that loosen oversight of gun exports—and make it easier to publish 3D-printing gun blueprints online.”

  • “Ban all guns in K-12 schools, colleges, and universities – except for law enforcement.”

  • “Pass a federal red flag law that expands extreme risk orders to 50 states—and funds state efforts to maximize the policy.”

  • “Close the “boyfriend loophole”

Improving Police-Community Relations 

Michael Bloomberg addresses improving police-community relations in his “Greenwood Initiative”. His initiative will:

  • “Require implicit bias training for police, teachers and federal contractors.”

Bloomberg did recently apologize for authorizing the ‘stop-and-frisk’ policy, which splintered police-community relations in New York’s black and brown communities.

  • “Over time, I’ve come to understand something that I long struggled to admit to myself: I got something important wrong. I got something important really wrong. I didn’t understand back then the full impact that stops were having on the black and Latino communities. I was totally focused on saving lives, but as we know, good intentions aren’t good enough.”

Democracy

Voting Rights

Michael Bloomberg addresses voting rights in his “Voter Rights“ plan. His plan will:

  • “Reinvigorate enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.”

  • “Block states from purging voters on the basis of inactivity, incomplete cross-checks, or returned mail.”

  • “Restore voting rights to people with felony convictions, post incarceration.”

  • “Ensure uniform federal standards for voting state-by-state.”

  • “Ensure voter protection on Election Day.”

  • “Launch a federal campaign to educate the public about voting rights and laws.”

  • “Require states to have convenient polling place locations, near public transportation where possible, implementing federal standards for a sufficient number of polling places and sufficient polling hours to ensure voter access.”

  • “Fund accessible voting equipment for people with disabilities. 35 million voters are people with disabilities. Two-thirds of polling places inspected in 2016 had at least one impediment to people with disabilities.”

  • “Stipulate that provisional ballots posted at incorrect polling places must be counted, subject to reasonable verification.”

  • “Abolish racial, gender, and ability disparities. Set federal standards for voting in federal elections that will eliminate disparities currently disproportionately affecting communities of color, Native Americans, transgender people, and people with disabilities.”

Bloomberg also discusses voting rights in his “Greenwood Initiative”, which will “restore voting rights by addressing practices such as ID requirements, roll purging, and gerrymandering.”

Access to Voter Registration

Michael Bloomberg addresses voter registration in his “Voter Rights“ plan. His plan will:

  • “Enroll eligible voters when they first interact with state government agencies like the “Department of Motor Vehicles, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, or the Indian Health Service.”

  • “Require states to allow same-day registration to ensure that eligible voters are not turned away on Election Day or early voting days.”

  • “Pre-register 16- and 17-year-olds.” 

  • “Require states to allow online registration, which reduces costs and is more environmentally-friendly to administer.”

  • “Mandate early voting to allow eligible voters to cast their ballots in person at least 15 days before Election Day.”

  • “Require states to allow voting by mail, and mail ballots to voters at least 45 days before federal elections.”

Gerrymandering

Michael Bloomberg addresses gerrymandering in his “Voter Rights“ plan. His plan will “prevent partisan gerrymandering by requiring states to establish independent redistricting commissions to draw federal congressional districts in a way that does not give an advantage to one party or group, but reflects the preferences of voters statewide, through a transparent and inclusive process. This is especially important for communities of color that have long been disenfranchised by unfair, partisan redistricting.”

Census 2020

Michael Bloomberg’s campaign platform does not address the 2020 census.