Quotes from Raja Krishnamoorthi

My parents climbed their way to the middle class.

I decided to run for Congress to get and keep people in the middle class.

I will not stand for any tax increase for middle class or working Americans. There is no way I will support that.

As a party, Democrats must focus on the pocketbook issues that our constituents care about every day when they wake up to go to work, drop off their kids at school, and tuck them into bed at night.

As the son of legal immigrants to America who came from India, I support stronger border security for our nation as well as deporting undocumented immigrants who have committed serious crimes.

For too long, people in Washington and Congress point fingers at each other, even as millions of middle-class Americans remain unemployed and our economy continues to sputter. They must realize that we are all in this together, and I respectfully submit that the best way to remind Congress of this is to tie their pay to their collective results.

One of the best programs that the federal government sponsors is the Small Business Innovation Research program, in which more than 2.5 percent of federal research and development funding at the largest agencies goes directly to small businesses.

A porous border is a danger to America's national security, the people who live near it, and to those who cross it.

When we came to this country, unfortunately, my father lost his job, and we were this close to destitution. We were put on food stamps. We were put in public housing.

I'm a product of public schools. They are resource-challenged, and when you take those dollars away from public schools and send them to private schools, you're further starving the system.

Each Dreamer in our country is more than a mere statistic; he or she is a proud American in everything but official documentation.

We have numerous mandirs, gurudwaras, and mosques in my Congressional district and all across the U.S.

I hope that President-elect Trump will drop his unrealistic campaign pledge to deport millions of immigrants who've made their lives in this country and contribute to our country.

A functioning democracy cannot stand when its people do not trust their leaders to uphold the law.

When you encounter some form of discrimination or maybe even worse, I urge you to alert others. Regardless of how small the incident is, it has to be brought to the attention of people like me and also the law enforcement agencies.

Before I was elected to Congress, I helped to create the public corruption unit in the office of Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan. Unfortunately, business was good. Among the usual suspects were government contracts steered to insiders - leaving Illinois taxpayers holding the bag.

As a small-business man myself, I believe strongly that improving the health of small businesses is the key to improving the economy, growing the middle class, and creating innovative products and services.

Our political system has been bankrupted by the failures of Congress to act in ways that give meaning to the struggles our constituents endure.

If I am elected to Congress, I will put the interests of our community first, and I will actively seek input and respond to it.

I've led programs that have helped thousands of individuals, small businesses, veterans, the disabled, farmers get low-interest loans to prosper.

When the norm is decency, other virtues can thrive: integrity, honesty, compassion, kindness, and trust.

Even people who have successfully obtained a visa are sometimes being turned back at the airport. Such incidents have never happened in the past but are increasing now because even low level officers of the border patrol department are being entrusted with too much discretion power on how they execute the laws.

Step one of the initial process of getting a non-immigrant visa is tough, renewing it is tough, and then transferring from the status of non-immigrant to immigrant or green card is tough. The only process which is easy is the last part of transferring from green card to citizenship, but getting there is quite a journey.

Mail in our country serves as an economic engine.