Jay Inslee in Meet the Press interviews during 2019
On Energy & Oil:
Keep options open, including research on nuclear energy
We're moving forward. We built a $6 billion wind turbine industry. We are electrifying our transportation system.
We've got one of the highest uses of electric cars in the country and electric buses. We hope to build an electric ferry boat. We just passed a 100% clean electrical grid where we will not have fossil fuels on the grid.
I'm open to doing research and development to find out whether nuclear energy could become cost effective, could be safe and could deal with the waste stream.
Those things would have to be resolved before it would become part of the mix. But I don't think we should shut off research into those options, given the urgency.
Source: Meet the Press 2019 interview of 2020 presidential hopefuls
Apr 14, 2019
On Health Care:
Public option; more access to Medicare by lowering age
We will be the first state in the country to offer a public option. We are integrating physical and mental health, so it can be more effective and cost effective. On the federal level, we've got to have more access to Medicare on the road to universal
access. And I believe that we need to reduce the age. I think we need to allow people to opt into Medicare when they want it. This is the way to what we need and have to have, which is universal health care in the country.
Source: Meet the Press 2019 interview of 2020 presidential hopefuls
Apr 14, 2019
On Immigration:
More hearing officers to process asylum cases
We've got to make the asylum process work. We have to have more channels, more hearing officers to simply be able to process these cases. You don't change the law just because you've got more cases in the federal court system or get rid of judges.
We need more processing facilities to help these folks. And yes, while they're waiting for their asylum hearings, we're welcoming them to the state of Washington because we have found these folks frequently become pillars of our community.
We should give the 11 million plus that are our neighbors, that are working, some of the hardest working people in the country, we need to give them a path to citizenship. We need to protect our "Dreamers." These people are in our universities.
They're going to be engineers. They're going to be businesspeople. We've got to have an American style of acceptance of refugees because we're a humane nation. We've got to have a humane policy.
Source: Meet the Press 2019 interview of 2020 presidential hopefuls
Apr 14, 2019
On Immigration:
Against Muslim ban; not afraid of diversity
We are not afraid of diversity in the state of Washington. We relish it. It is the basis of our economic and cultural success. We're built as a state of immigrants. We've welcomed refugees, as we did the Vietnamese refugees, with a Republican governor
back in the day. I was the first governor to say that our state was willing to take Syrian refugees. That's why I was the first governor to come out against the Muslim ban. That's why we've sued Donald Trump and won 18 times in a row.
Source: Meet the Press 2019 interview of 2020 presidential hopefuls
Apr 14, 2019
Page last updated: Jan 12, 2020