Erik grew up believing that if you work hard and play by the rules, you should be able to afford a roof over your head, food on your table, and a life with some dignity in it. That's not a radical idea. That used to be the American promise. But today, families in Eastern Oklahoma are working two jobs and still can't make rent. One in five children in Oklahoma is living in poverty. The federal minimum wage hasn't budged since 2009 --- meaning the floor on working people's pay has been frozen for nearly two decades while prices for groceries, utilities, childcare, and housing have all gone through the roof. And investment firms are making it worse, buying up entire neighborhoods and turning homes into profit centers, pricing out working families who just want a place to call their own.

Josh Brecheen has had the nerve to stand in the way at every turn. When the House voted on a bipartisan housing affordability bill, a bill so broadly supported it passed 390 to 9. Brecheen was one of the nine. Nine people in the entire US House voted against making housing more affordable, and he was one of them. He doesn't want corporations held accountable, he doesn't want your wages raised, and he doesn't want Washington doing a single thing to help you get ahead. He wants to keep the game rigged for the people who are already winning.

When elected to Congress, Erik will fight for a federal minimum wage that actually covers the cost of living, because a job should lift you up, not keep you treading water. He will fight to stop Wall Street firms from gobbling up homes and neighborhoods and pricing out the families who actually want to live there. He will fight for a federal jobs guarantee so that every able-bodied American who wants to work can get to work repairing roads, building bridges, modernizing schools, and reopening the rural hospitals that Washington has let wither and die. The economy of this country is the envy of the world. There is no excuse for the people who built it to be sleeping in their cars.