Sean Casten: 2026 candidate for the 6th Congressional District

Bio

Office sought: 6th Congressional District

Party: Democrat

City: Downers Grove

Age: 54

Previous offices held: US Representative for Illinois 6th Congressional District (2019 - Present)

Q&A

What is your view on the role of tariffs in the American economy? Do you support the president’s policies on setting tariffs on goods from other countries?

Tariffs are an appropriate and necessary tool in certain targeted, specific instances, but that is decidedly not the case as it relates to President Trump’s tariffs.

Specifically, if US industries are unable to compete against imported goods from a country that has lower costs only because of weak labor or environmental standards, or because of an industrial policy that rewards “dumping” excess goods into the US market, tariffs can be a critical tool both to protect US businesses and to force the rest of the world to come up to our higher standards. However, even in that case it is tautologically true that tariffs on goods and services are always inflationary - and we should always be sensitive to the political tradeoffs between the near-term economic interests of domestic manufacturers and domestic producers.

But in all cases, the Constitution makes it clear that only Congress has the authority to “levy taxes, duties, imposts and excises”. And while Congress has in the past delegated authority to the Executive branch to impose tariffs without prior Congressional authorization for very specific reasons, the Trump tariffs did not rely on any of those prior authorizations.

What should Congress do to protect Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid? Will Congress act in time to prevent significant cuts in Social Security benefits?

Ensuring that Social Security and Medicare continue to provide economic security for American families requires working on both the cost and revenue sides of the ledger, but absolutely cannot include any cuts in services provided.

On the revenue side, both programs suffer from the fact that they are progressive policies funded by regressive taxes. FICA contributions are currently capped at $184,500 of W-2 income, which means that the wealthier you are, the less you contribute as a percent of income. Taking off that cap would substantially solve near-term challenges, and I was proud to co-sponsor legislation that would start that process.

On the cost side, we have huge opportunities to lower the price of healthcare in this country, which would in turn drastically cut the cost of Medicare. We spend more per person per year on healthcare than countries like Switzerland and Germany, but have vastly worse health outcomes. Getting to those levels would free up ~$1 trillion/year in healthcare expenses, a significant portion of which would accrue to Medicare.

How do you rate the state of health care in America? In particular, what are your views on the Affordable Care Act and the concept of Medicare for All?

Anything that expands the number of Americans who have access to all of the healthcare they need, at a price they can afford, makes us all richer and healthier.

To that end, I was proud to have helped expand the ACA tax credits, which helped ensure nearly 20 million more Americans had access to healthcare - just as I am ashamed that Speaker Johnson allowed those credits to lapse at the end of 2025. We still have a coverage gap to fix among people who don’t have private insurance, aren’t eligible for Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans healthcare, or the Indian Health Service.

As relates to Medicare for All, the devil is in the details. As currently designed, Medicare does not cover vision, dental, or hearing, and — thanks to my predecessor in IL-6, Henry Hyde — does not provide full coverage to women who may need abortion care. If (a big if) we can address those coverage gaps and devise an equitable way to pay for a much larger pool of Americans without compromising care, I’m open to considering such options but to date have not seen any Medicare for All proposals that address those political and economic challenges.

How would you describe the working relationships in the U.S. House today? What can be done to promote more effective government in Congress, and what will you do personally to work toward this goal?

In the course of my 4 terms in Congress, I have seen us at our best and our worst.

I have seen us come together in the teeth of the COVID crisis to craft and pass massive legislation that accelerated public health measures to trace, track, and treat COVID, develop vaccines at record speed, ensure businesses could keep employees on payroll, and expand the social safety net. Those bills are the reason why the US economy recovered sooner and faster than any other global economy from the COVID recession. I have seen us come together to pass the biggest infrastructure bill in our history, the biggest climate bill, and a massive investment in scientific research that created a massive increase in US investment and manufacturing from 2020 - 2024.

I have also watched in horror as the Capitol was attacked on January 6th.

I am proud to have played a role in us at our best, and to have kept myself at arm's length from our actions at our worst. I have always held out that we should be judged by our work, not by the team we play on or who we play with, and never lose sight of the fact that we are accountable to our voters, not to our team.

Do you believe the nation's election system and those of the individual states are secure and fair? If not, what must be done to improve them?

Recent elections have been the freest, fairest elections we have ever known. COVID protocols led many states to introduce long-overdue incentives to make it easier for every American to vote. Expanded mail-in voting, more drop boxes, longer early voting hours. All these contributed to record turnout.

I’m proud to have worked on, cosponsored, and passed bills in the House to expand voter access, like the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and my IDs For An Inclusive Democracy Act, to ensure that every American citizen has access to a free federal ID to ensure they can access all of their federal rights and benefits - including but not limited to the right to vote.

That said, a country that was founded on the premise that only white, property-holding men could vote has never fully committed to the idea of a fully inclusive democracy. The SAVE Act that Donald Trump has promoted would have the pernicious, and quite intentional, effect of making it harder for married women who changed their name to vote.

The legislative changes I’d like to see - including but not limited to the bills noted above - are ones that flip the way we think about the franchise & expand our democracy.

If elected, what will you do to help make Congress more effective?

Our goal shouldn’t be simply to make Congress more effective, but to make our entire government more effective. And to measure “effectiveness” as the degree to which the will of the public is reflected in the actions of our government. On a host of issues, from gun control to women’s rights to choose to campaign finance reform, our government has consistently failed to enact and enforce laws that are popular with overwhelming majorities of the American people.

To fix that, I have worked with various Constitutional scholars to craft my package of government reforms which would - among other things (a) expand the size of the House and index future House membership to population growth, ensuring the House is more representative of the people (b) create 12 at-large national Senators to create a block in the Senate that elevates the will of the American people over the will of individual states and (c) shift the Supreme Court’s appellate jurisdiction to a body of randomly selected senior circuit court judges to remove the ability of outside groups to politicize the judiciary. Those changes will make our government, as a whole, more effective at carrying out the will of the people.