Sean Casten: Candidate profile, U.S. House, District 6

In the race for Congress from District 6, one-term incumbent Sean Casten, a Democrat from Downers Grove, is facing challenges from Republican Jeanne Ives of Wheaton and Libertarian Bill Redpath of West Dundee.

The 6th District includes parts of Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake and McHenry counties.

The Daily Herald asked the candidates to respond to a series of questions. Ives declined to participate. Redpath did not return the questionnaire.

To explore the candidates' campaign websites, visit castenforcongress.com, www.jeanneforcongress.com, and billredpath.com.

Here are responses from Sean Casten.

Q. What has Donald Trump's unconventional leadership taught us about politics in the United States? What is the best thing his presidency has done? What is the most significant criticism you have of it?

A. I believe Donald Trump is the most dangerous President we have ever known. My biggest criticism of Donald Trump is that he has put his own self-interests above the office he holds and the American people we serve. But in so doing, he has highlighted that the majority of the country does not share his values, and has led to mass mobilization.

From the global Women's Marches that followed his election, followed later by Marches for Science and Marches for our Lives, to the massive protests in support of Black Lives Matter, Donald Trump has mobilized Americans across the country.

Q. Does today's climate of polarization reflect a natural and necessary ebb and flow in the tone of civic debate? Or does it reflect a dangerous divide? What, if anything, should be done about it?

A. As a newcomer to the political world, I'm consistently struck by the contrast between the public narrative around partisanship and the shared set of values held by the majority of our friends and neighbors.

In schools, in churches, in businesses, we do not ask people first to divide up into two teams. In those environments, the conversations are around issues, and on that front there is significant commonality. Most Americans would like to see reasonable gun control laws enforced. Most Americans believe man-made climate change is real. Most Americans agree on a myriad of issues.

If, however, you frame those questions not on issues but as a partisan question tied to a specific political figure, you see much more polarized results. That reflects on the way we talk about government and politics much more than it reflects on the character of the American people.

Q. What role does Congress play with regards to the growth of conspiracy theory groups like QAnon?

A. We are long past due to address the regulatory gap where social media platforms are not held liable for false information. Traditional media outlets have obligations and liabilities if they willfully amplify false information. Digital platforms, like social media companies, under current law are held harmless, under the pretext that they are nothing more than a local bulletin board with no responsibility for content.

But this theory is directly contradicted by their revenue model, which is predicated upon their ability to selectively amplify, boost, and precisely target content to specific users. This has created a loophole Congress must address, in which social media companies profit where they should be exposed to legal risk.

QAnon and other fringe groups have leveraged that loophole to generate a far larger and more dangerously weaponized audience than they otherwise would have had.

Q. Many critics of governmental process complain that both Barack Obama and Donald Trump governed too much through executive orders rather than in collaboration with Congress. Is our system in danger of veering toward authoritarianism? From a structural standpoint, does Congress need to place stronger limits on the power of the presidency? If so, be specific on what some of those limits might be. If not, please explain your view.

A. We are long overdue for a rebalancing of the relative power of the Executive and Legislative branches. Congress has a constitutional responsibility to move away from a unitary executive and back toward the system of checks and balances established by our founders.

Executive Orders are part of this problem, but more because of the lack of consistency they create; what one President can create by E.O. can be eliminated by the next. This has confused our allies, such as when President Obama signed the Paris Climate Accord, which they thought represented a commitment on behalf of the United States, only to see it revoked by President Trump.

Q. Is there a "cancel culture" in America?

A. The culture I grew up in in the 1970s and 1980s is vastly different than it is today. At the time, little thought was given to the power and pain that can be inflicted by the words we use. The tasteless comedy of my youth no longer meets the appropriate standards of our humor today.

I do not believe we have a "cancel culture," but I do believe we are finally acknowledging the ways in which our speech, public and private, can make people feel empowered or unwelcome. We have matured, and that is a mark of progress to be proud of. We aren't perfect. But we're a little closer to that dream of a world where we will only be judged by the content of our character.

If you refuse to recognize this progress and continue to act in a way that society deems inappropriate, then you are responsible for the consequences of those actions.

Q. What do you see as the most important issues to address regarding immigration reform? If you oppose funding for a wall, what steps do you support to try to control illegal immigration?

A. In his final speech as president, Ronald Reagan said that the day we stop welcoming immigrants is the day we stop being Americans. Our current immigration should be improved. Specifically:

• We have to create a path to citizenship for the millions of undocumented immigrants already in this country who have lived law-abiding lives.

• We should significantly increase our capacity to screen and process asylum-seekers so as not to turn away people who are fleeing human rights atrocities, who are ready to contribute and present no risk to public safety.

• We should eliminate the country-specific quota system and replace it with one that allocates quotas based on skills gaps in the U.S. economy We should reevaluate how we allocate visas by balancing the needs in our economy as well as one that recognizes American values like refugee status, family ties, and diversity.

Q. Please define your position on health care reform, especially as it relates to the Affordable Care Act.

A. The Affordable Care Act took a big step toward universal health care in the U.S., providing more than 20 million additional Americans with access to affordable insurance for themselves and their families. But, it is imperfect. We must build and expand the ACA in two ways:

1. Ensure all Americans have affordable health insurance.

2. Fix the flaws in the ACA exchanges to ensure they provide choice, remain available, and solvent. Everyone, regardless of employment or wealth, should have access to full preventive health care services - checkups, screenings, and all the other early-detection measures that reduce the need for higher-cost, later-stage interventions.

In Congress, I was proud to co-sponsor the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Enhancement Act, which would make insurance more affordable to low- and middle-income families, enshrine protections for people with preexisting conditions, and stop Republican attacks on the ACA that have driven up costs, lowered quality, and increased the number of uninsured.

This piece of legislation alone won't be enough to get us to universal health care, but it will mark a major step toward that end.

Q. Should everyone wear a mask? Should our schools be open? What has the country done right about the pandemic? What has it done wrong? How optimistic are you that we'll ever get back to "normal?"

A. The single most important thing that we as elected, or aspiring-to-be-elected, public officials can do in a pandemic is to elevate (and defer to) scientists and public health officials, and then use our public positions to model the behavior that they tell us will make us safe.

To that end, I do believe everyone should wear a mask. Not because of my own scientific training, but because public health experts who have studied this particular virus and its modes of transmission have shown conclusively that if we all wear masks we can slow the spread of this disease. Choosing not to wear a mask is literally choosing to increase the number of fatalities next month. Wearing a mask is - quite literally - the least we can do.

With respect to schools, there is no single answer other than to defer to public health experts and allow our local decisions to be informed by local data.

Q. What next steps should Congress take regarding the COVID-19 pandemic?

A. We need to get the public health crisis under control, and we need to provide economic security for Americans before it is safe to return to our pre-COVID way of life. We should put every available resource into the development of vaccines and therapeutics and formulate national strategic plans to deploy capabilities across the nation.

We also need to take measures we have within our control to isolate the virus. Until we have the public health crisis under control, we must provide Americans with the economic support they need to stay housed, fed, and healthy until it is safe to fully restart the economy.

The funding that Congress has - and must continue to - appropriate is massive. U.S. GDP was $21 trillion in 2019, and is down by nearly 33% on an annualized basis. Given the scale of that collapse, injecting $3 trillion into the economy as we have only "bought" us 6 months of cushion.

We need to continue to provide funding at that scale if we are to avoid permanent loss of businesses, structural unemployment and the collapse of state and local government services, from schools to police departments.

Q. What do you consider America's role in world affairs? What are we doing correctly to fill that role? What else should we be doing?

A. We need to rejoin the international treaties that Trump left, and do so with legislative support to ensure our commitments are more durable than the tenure of any given President. We must also be a forceful voice for democracy and American values on the global stage; using our full diplomatic arsenal to pressure the Chinese for their treatment of the Uigurs and the Russians for their invasion of Ukraine.

But, at the same time, sending a signal to countries around the world that if they commit to the rule of law - from patent protection to human rights - that we are indeed greater than the sum of our parts, and we will continue to play a leadership role to ensure that is always true.

Q. Do you believe climate change is caused by human activity? What steps should government be taking to address the issue?

A. Of course I do. But here's the thing: science doesn't care what you believe. Asking whether politicians believe whether climate change is caused by human activity is like asking politicians whether they believe in gravity. The fact that you have to ask the question is more significant than my answer.

So what should we do? Three things: (a) Cut our primary energy use per dollar of GDP in half (taking us roughly to the level already achieved by Switzerland and Japan), (b) Invest in a massive R & D effort to figure out how to make critical materials - like steel, fertilizer, and cement - from non-fossil inputs, and (c) get back to 350 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere.

Q. Protesters have massed in the streets throughout America calling for greater social justice. How significant a role does systemic racism play in limiting equal opportunity in America? To the degree that it exists, what should be done about it? Do you favor reparations? Should police be "defunded?"

A. I had the privilege of meeting Bryan Stevenson, the author of "Just Mercy," when I went to Selma, Alabama, with John Lewis last March. I was particularly struck by Bryan's argument that the original sin of our country wasn't slavery, but the narrative of inequality.

As long as that narrative exists, we are suppressing our potential as a country. To believe that all Americans, regardless of skin color, have an equal opportunity to pursue happiness is to be willfully blind of our present reality. The burden for justice and civil rights must be borne by all of us equally.

As it relates to policy, I have found much value in Raj Chetty's work on income and wealth mobility. His work has shown in stark relief how much the color of your skin predicts whether you will be wealthier than your parents. But it has also shown how much the neighborhood you live in determines your future wealth.

Therein lies a great policy opportunity, insofar as decisions we make about where to build low-income housing, how to allocate school funding and the degree to which we direct banks to reinvest in their local communities can make big, permanent and real differences.