Dean Outlines Strategy For Economic Growth & Job Creation

Khephra

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Wed Jul-30-03 03:27 PM
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Dean Outlines Strategy For Economic Growth & Job Creation

Edited on Wed Jul-30-03 03:34 PM by khephra

DEAN OUTLINES STRATEGY FOR ECONOMIC GROWTH AND JOB CREATION
Wednesday July 30, 2003
By: Press Office

Former governor blasts Bush administration's 'unfair, misguided' economic policy (July 30, 2003)

DES MOINES--In a speech here before the Plumbers and Steamfitters Union, Governor Howard Dean, M.D., attacked the dismal economic record of the Bush administration and outlined his strategy for job creation and for addressing the concerns of America's working families.

" has created a crisis for American workers and brought financial disaster to more and more American families. They are the victims of an unfair, misguided economic policy," Dean said. "Never has a president talked so much about jobs while doing so much to destroy them."

"We need a fresh start, a new beginning with a new administration and a new economic plan--a program that opens up opportunity, creates more good jobs, and saves the ones we have," the former Vermont governor explained.

In promising to reverse the downward trend in the country's economic situation--which has seen nearly three million jobs lost under President Bush and the highest unemployment in a decade--Dean outlined a six-point plan for stimulating growth and creating jobs:

--Raising the minimum wage to put more money in the hands of working Americans

--Expand unemployment insurance to cover more full and part-time workers

--Expand aid to state and local government for homeland security and through doubling the Community Development Block Grant

--Invest in job-creating infrastructure programs like school construction and increasing rural broadband access

--A health care plan that reduce costs to employers and frees up additional private money for investment and job creation

--A trade policy that ensures that strong and enforceable labor provisions are included in all trade agreements--to ensure that trade helps both us and our trading partners shore up middle class jobs.

Commenting on the administration's "Jobs and Growth" tour, where cabinet secretaries are traveling through the Midwest to tout the Bush administration's record and promote their tax cutting agenda, Dean said, "With the record this administration has on jobs and growth, this must be one mighty short tour."

Dean also highlighted the concerted attack that the administration has launched basic American safeguards like social security and workers' rights, as well as on organized labor--stripping federal workers of union protections, seeking to privatize parts of the federal workforce, ignoring worker concerns in airline bailouts, locking out longshoremen and reversing ergonomic standards.

The governor credited labor unions with always leading the fights against industry-backed politicians who threatened America's democratic principles. "All Americans, not just union members, owe a debt of gratitude to the men and women of America's labor movement," Dean said. As president, Dean promised that he would "defend, support and expand the rights of American unions to organize as an essential prerequisite to the prosperity of our nation."

Today's remarks is one element of a comprehensive economic plan that Governor Dean will lay out later this Fall.

More information on the governor's speech, including the full text and his economic record, are available at www.deanforamerica.com.

http://www.deanforamerica.com/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=7365&news_iv_ctrl=1301