Bill Weld
Historical Details
Position on Issues
Against| Read My Position
Candidate's Facebook Page, 2016
"I would not support any bill to outlaw classes of weapons unless it was a gun that could fire a tactical nuclear weapon."
Other| Read My Position
"As to health care, instead of arguing endlessly and fruitlessly about whether the Affordable Care Act should be repealed - because let's face it, we do not have a consensus in Congress - there are various commonsense health care issues that could be addressed immediately, across party lines. Consumers should be permitted to establish personal health care savings accounts, and to choose their health care provider. They should be free to purchase pharmaceutical drugs across state lines and also in other countries. Their choice, not the government's."
Other| Read My Position
Weld has not specifically addressed a federal law guaranteeing the right to an abortion. However, he identifies as pro-choice.
"President Donald Trump's only major Republican primary challenger said Saturday that the recent spate of abortion laws being passed in states like Alabama has him feeling 'terrible,' and declared that abortion is a decision the government should not come anywhere near.
"At a campaign stop in Exeter, New Hampshire, former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld told a crowd of voters he's 'the most pro-choice person you're ever going to meet.'
"'The way I look at it, it's kind of a power issue,' Weld said. 'And who wants a lot of big, fat, white guys who live in Washington 700 miles away making the decision about what's going to happen about a family pregnancy where the family has basis for some views and maybe wants to terminate the pregnancy.'"
Other| Read My Position
"Domestically, our most immediate priority must be jobs and wages. What are we going to do about the fact that 25% of all the jobs in the United States today won't exist in 15 years? This is not caused by the unseen hands of globalization or the internet, but rather by the soon to be all-too-visible hands of robotics, drones, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and autonomous vehicles. The old jobs will be replaced by new and different jobs, but the problem is that today's workers don't yet possess the skill sets that the replacement jobs will require. ... The skills required by the new jobs correspond roughly to the skills now taught in the first two years of post-secondary education, or the community college level. But a displaced worker can't take two years off and pay two years' tuition to acquire those skills. Accordingly, we should adjust our budget priorities to cover the cost of in-state tuition for those displaced workers, as we did for our returning veterans under the G.I. Bill following World War II. In addition, to cut down on room and board expense, we should encourage and embrace on-line education. ... Oh, and the current federal provision which prevents the renegotiation of student debt? We need to repeal it immediately."
Other| Read My Position
"Federal taxes need serious adjustment downward. I favor repealing the federal death tax, for example, and cutting the capital gains tax rate to 10%. ... But we also need to restructure our entire tax system. We don't need to choose between Robin Hood-style confiscatory taxation and deficit-creating tax cuts for the super-rich. We should instead take a good long look at some other models, such as a 19% flat tax on income, and the famous 'post card' tax return. I have read extensively on the subject, and I believe the savings from the dramatic simplification of the Internal Revenue Code and the whole process of taxation would be enormous."
Against| Read My Position
Candidate's Facebook Page, 2018
"Imposing tariffs, especially substantial ones, unavoidably puts government in the business of choosing marketplace winners and losers, not just abroad, but here at home. Slamming doors to U.S. farm products, raising costs for U.S. manufacturers and making countless consumer goods more expensive isn't just bad policy...It's not the role of government in the first place."
Against| Read My Position
"I am a lifelong hunter and gun owner. In 1993, however, as Governor of Massachusetts, I went along with some modest restrictions on certain types of firearms. I was deeply concerned about gun violence, and frankly, the people I represented were demanding action. Sometimes, governing involves tough choices, and I had to make more than a few.
"Today, almost 25 years later, I would make some different choices. Restricting Americans' gun rights doesn't make us safer, and threatens our constitutional freedoms. I was pleased by and support the Supreme Court's decision in the District of Columbia vs. Heller -- a decision that embraced the notion that our Second Amendment rights are individual rights, not to be abridged by the government."
For| Read My Position
"The effect of marijuana being a schedule class 1 narcotic in Washington is a seriously flawed idea. Descheduling is the most constructive step that could be taken."
Against| Read My Position
"Medicare for All would take all the private money out of the system and what it is would be one gigantic single payer system with nothing else. It would, it would require the world's most humongous tax increase in history to to fund that and also taking the private sector out of the health care area is is the last thing we need. In general, I'm in favor of getting more functions into the private sector rather than less."
Against| Read My Position
"'The wall is a joke,' Mr. Weld said of Mr. Trump's vow to build a wall along the border with Mexico. But, he added, 'I would say it was a joke if it didn't remind me so much of the Berlin Wall.'"
For| Read My Position
"In fairness to millennials, who may never receive the benefits of social security, the government should permit the establishment of individual retirement accounts."
Other| Read My Position
"Domestically, our most immediate priority must be jobs and wages. What are we going to do about the fact that 25% of all the jobs in the United States today won't exist in 15 years? This is not caused by the unseen hands of globalization or the internet, but rather by the soon to be all-too-visible hands of robotics, drones, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and autonomous vehicles. The old jobs will be replaced by new and different jobs, but the problem is that today's workers don't yet possess the skill sets that the replacement jobs will require. ... The skills required by the new jobs correspond roughly to the skills now taught in the first two years of post-secondary education, or the community college level. But a displaced worker can't take two years off and pay two years' tuition to acquire those skills. Accordingly, we should adjust our budget priorities to cover the cost of in-state tuition for those displaced workers, as we did for our returning veterans under the G.I. Bill following World War II. In addition, to cut down on room and board expense, we should encourage and embrace on-line education. ... Oh, and the current federal provision which prevents the renegotiation of student debt? We need to repeal it immediately."
Against| Read My Position
Candidate's Twitter Feed, 2019
"Thanks to President Trump's withdrawal from the 2015 agreement among our European allies, Iran, and the United States, Iran today announced that it is now on its way to being able to produce nuclear weapons. It is now clear that Mr. Trump's petulant cancellation of the non-proliferation agreement was a colossal blunder. He has put the United States in a position of increasing danger, and gotten absolutely nothing in return."
Against| Read My Position
"The United States must rejoin the Paris climate accords, and adopt targets consonant with those of other industrialized nations."
