Updated Jan 10, 2020
Pete Buttigieg on the issues, in under 500 words
Pete Buttigieg. Photo: Joshua Lott for The Washington Post via Getty Images
If elected, Pete Buttigieg — the 37-year-old South Bend, Indiana mayor — would be the youngest U.S. president ever. He also would be the first openly gay president in the nation's history.
Key facts
- Age: 37
- Born: South Bend
- Undergraduate: Harvard University, Oxford University
- Date candidacy announced: April 14
- Previous roles: Mayor. Began service in U.S. Navy Reserve in 2009, deployed to Afghanistan in 2014. Worked for McKinsey & Company.
Stance on key issues
- College costs: Says college is too expensive for "too many people." He supports expanding the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program that clears loans in exchange for public service.
- Infrastructure: Wants to create 6 million jobs with a $1 trillion plan that focuses on climate issues.
- Climate change: Supports the Paris climate agreement and Green New Deal. Wants net-zero emissions by 2050, double clean electricity by 2025, zero emissions in electricity generation by 2035, and net-zero emissions from industrial vehicles by 2040.
- Believes climate change is a national security threat and supports government-subsidized solar panels.
- Guns: Member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, and supports universal background checks and banning guns in schools.
- Health care: Released a plan to expand Medicare coverage and keep private health insurance plans. Also wants to tackle how to manage surprise billing and introduce an out-of-pocket spending cap for Medicare.
- Introduced a $300 billion plan to bolster mental health and addiction support.
- Released a leftward-middle proposal to reduce drug prices.
- Immigration: Supports providing a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers.
- Discrimination: Proposed the Douglass Plan to reform and invest in health care, education and other areas to dismantle "racist structures and systems," focused on supporting African Americans.
- Supports updating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to apply non-discrimination protections to the LGBTQ community.
- Abortion: Considered codifying Roe v. Wade, per AP. If elected, he would repeal the Hyde Amendment.
- Supreme Court: Proposed a 15-justice court with 5 Democratic appointees, 5 Republicans and 5 selected by agreement of the other justices.
- Electoral college: Supports abolishing it.
- Vaccines: Said he believes in personal exemptions to vaccines when there is no public health crisis. Following criticism, his campaign walked the position back.
- Foreign policy: Wouldn't move the U.S. embassy in Israel back from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv.
- National service programs: Wants new national service programs with a network of 1 million members by 2026.
- Gig economy: Plans to protect gig-economy workers.
Key criticisms
- Accepted donations from lobbyists: After criticism, Buttigieg announced he would return donations.
- Police recordings: Buttigieg demoted the South Bend police chief and fired the police communications director for illegally recording officers' calls that allegedly revealed racist comments.
- Police diversity: Suspended campaign to address a fatal shooting in South Bend of a black man by a white police officer. Received criticism for the lack of diversity in his city's police force.
1 fun thing
- Buttigieg speaks 8 languages: English, Dari, Norwegian, Italian, French, Maltese, Arabic and Spanish.
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