Raul Grijalva

Raul Grijalva

Grijalva, Raul (Democrat)

Phone: (520) 629-0050

Address: 408 W Ohio St. Tucson, AZ 85714

Age: 62 (02/19/48, Tucson, AZ)

Arizona since: Birth

Occupation: Assistant dean for Hispanic Student Affairs, UofA, 1987; director of El Pueblo Neighborhood Center, 1975-1988.

Marital: Married (Ramona, retired librarian)

Children: 3

Religious preference: Catholic

Education: B.A., sociology, U of A, 1987.

Political experience: Member of Congress since 2003; chairman and member, Pima County Bd of Supervisors, 1989-2003; member, Tucson Unified School Board 1974-86.

Memberships have included: Nat’l Assn of Latino Elected Officials; Nat’l School Board Assn, 1975-1986.

Interests: Music and reading.

Issues:

Political influence: On a national level: Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar Chavez and Bella Abzug. On a personal level: my family.

Top priority: Education: I will continue to work to reform K-12 education by getting rid of the destructive and counterproductive elements of No Child Left Behind and replacing them with effective school supports. Aside from K-12, I will continue my efforts to enhance federal commitment to early childhood education and access, and to continue to seek strategies for making college more accessible and affordable for students. Natural Resources: As chairman of the National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands Subcommittee, my greatest priority is reforming and updating the way we extract resources from public lands and waters. I will also continue to promote public lands bills that will benefit Arizonans and, I believe, the nation as a whole. Employment: I will continue to fight for job growth in local communities through investments in infrastructure development, career training and adult education. I will also fight to ensure that jobs that form the cornerstone of our local communities’ economies and security, such as teachers and first responders, are not devastated by the revenue shortfalls currently being experienced in local governments. Immigration Reform: Our state’s new immigration law, SB 1070, is a flawed solution to a very serious problem. We need real and effective solutions, and I will continue to fight for laws that get workers on-the-books, paid above-the-table, on the tax rolls, and hold them and their employers accountable for following all the rules, just like every other citizen has to follow all the rules.

Respected opponent: Barry Goldwater because he was principled and fair.

Wall Street bailout: I voted against the original bailout proposal because of concerns about how the money would be spent and the fundamental unfairness of passing the costs to taxpayers who had done nothing wrong. To this day, our nation is in an economic crisis brought on by greed, mismanagement, and a lack of regulation by the Bush administration, not by the failures of everyday Americans. The banking industry lobbied and sued to reduce oversight of their activities. Even now, they expect deference and favorable treatment as Congress debates a financial reform bill. I believed when the bailout came to a vote that Congress cannot give a blank check to Wall Street, and I believe that today. In early 2009, I voted in favor of changes to the program that increased transparency and spending oversight.

Stimulus Act: We lost 2.6 million jobs in the last year of the Bush administration. ARRA has been a vital step in supporting the economy and transforming it for long-term growth. Without quick action on a comprehensive recovery plan, our economy would have worsened dramatically. It is naive — but tempting — to think that a badly damaged economy could somehow fix itself without major government intervention. As the Joint Economic Committee recently concluded, we are on pace to create more jobs this year than we did under eight years of the Bush administration. ARRA accounts for much of that growth, and I continue to support it as a necessary step in putting us back on the path to a working economy.

Health care overhaul: This bill was a step towards improving a broken health care system. We reached a milestone with this bill, but the journey is far from over. Congress must work with HHS to ensure the law is carried out as intended. Unfortunately, our system is still dominated by inefficient private insurance companies. I will continue to fight for a single payer system and legislation that would eliminate all the inefficiencies in our system.