Incumbent Brat seeks to continue original goals

For three years, Congressman Dave Brat has been busy on Capitol Hill representing Virginia’s Seventh U.S. House District.

During his time in Washington, D.C., Brat has helped hundreds of constituents obtain passports and deal with government agencies, solving problems with Veterans Affairs, the IRS, and the Social Security Administration as well as staying engaged with local communities through town hall forums and visiting all nine counties and the City of Richmond each month.

As Congressman, Brat also introduced The Universal Savings Account Act designed to help Americans save money while enjoying tax-free earnings and distributions without restrictions associated with other tax-advantaged savings accounts. He also introduced the Health Savings Account Expansion Act and The Statutes at Large Modernization Act, which digitalized the National Archives and Records Administration dating from 1789.

Brat will seek election to a third term in November’s general election as the Republican Party’s nominee. There, he’ll face the Democratic nominee (either Abigail Spanberger or Dan Ward) as well as independent Helen Alli.

Brat’s background and education in business, religion, and economics and experience working with the head of Senate Finance in the Virginia General Assembly spurred an interest in getting into politics while he was teaching economics at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland. He rode a stunning June 2014 primary upset over then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor to office later that year in the general election.

“Basically economics and ethics,” he said. “If you put those two together, it ends up in politics. You go from teaching it in the theoretical land, and I wanted to make things better.”

If re-elected, Brat plans to work on issues at the federal level – beginning with the debt problem.

“We have $21 trillion in debt that the kids are going to have to pay off because we’re spending right now and we’re putting the debt on the kids and their generation,” said Brat. “Some of them don’t know that yet, and many constituents don’t realize that we’re spending right now and going to be taxing our kids to pay for our bill.”

Brat also wants to continue to address the $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities with mandatory programs such as Medicare and Social Security.

“We’re promising to pay $100 trillion in those programs in the coming years and we don’t have it,” he said. “So those are the huge issues that I ran on.”

With federal money not making its way down to the local level at levels he deems acceptable, Brat wants to continue working to ensure that more is allocated to those in his district who need it.

“We passed a bill last year, a billion-dollar bill. Mental health, opioids, everything. So that was a start, but it’s got to make its way down to the recovery people.”

Brat also wants to address the human trafficking issues that exist in Chesterfield, Henrico and along the Interstate 95-Route 1 corridor.

With continual pushes for school safety, enforcing immigration laws and economic growth, Brat hopes to be able to continue representing Virginia’s Seventh District and address the issues on which he ran initially.