Reply #25: Listen to Robert Reich and Paul Krugman

[Lydia Leftcoast]

Adopt the Progressive Caucus's budget. Take that as your starting position. Make the Republicans compromise. Don't sign anything that the Progressive Caucus objects to.

Get out of the "free" trade deals.

End the H1B and J1 visa programs and replace them with TRUE exchange programs, like the Working Holiday program that most other Western (and a few East Asian) nations participate in. In other words, yes, a French or Korean young person can come here to work for six months to a year, but it's reciprocal, and a young American can do the same in France or Korea.

Otherwise, no permission to hire foreign workers unless you can prove that you can't get anyone at ANY price.

Announce that percentage of manufacturing done in the U.S. (not with Chinese slave laborers in the Mariana Islands, but with free laborers in the 50 states) will be a criterion for winning government contracts.

Lower the age of Medicare eligibility by five years every year. Explain that this will bring younger, healthier people into the program and ensure its stability.

Stop the wars and close most of the overseas bases. Find ways for the demobilized personnel to use their skills in civilian life.

Use the bully pulpit to identify economic heroes (companies that keep their manufacturing in the U.S., companies that provide good wages and benefits, companies that practice extensive community philanthropy, companies that institute innovative and effective environmental programs) and economic traitors (companies that send jobs overseas, companies that cut wages and benefits while increasing bonuses to executives, companies that stop giving to charity, companies that defile the environment)

Raise taxes on the wealthy to Reagan-era levels, adjusted for inflation.