http://www.deanforamerica.com/site/PageServer?pagename=policy_speech_economy_reclaimingtheamericandreamReclaiming the American Dream
The American people have two basic expectations of our Presidents – one is to manage the affairs of our nation in the world and the other is to manage our economy.I’ve spoken a lot in this campaign about our failures abroad, and I’ve laid out my vision for a foreign policy that aims to restore America’s leadership as an idealistic force in the world.
Today I plan to talk about the failure of this President’s economic leadership and about my plans for reclaiming the American Dream for our nation’s working families. Our founders built America on the principle that power should rest in the hands of the people. Political power and economic power. Our system of free enterprise has always upheld the notion that the interests of the people should never be subservient to those of the privileged few. That the democratic power of the people should never be subservient to the power of capital.
Our nation’s economic strength has rested on a healthy partnership between the public and private sectors and on everyone having the fair chance to compete. But when the balance of power in Washington shifts and private interests trump the common good –American capitalism has been betrayed. Over the last 30 years, we have allowed multinational corporations and other special interests to use our nation’s government to undermine our nation’s promise. They have bought access to power with their campaign contributions and their lobbyists. And they’ve used that access to ensure that the laws – and most importantly the tax code - benefit them.
That’s why we don’t have health care for every American today.That’s why the tax burden on individuals and working families goes up while corporations get tax breaks for moving jobs overseas. The Bush presidency is the realization of our founding fathers’ fear – that one day economic power would seize political power. Enron epitomizes this fear, corporate power run amok. The executives at Enron misled the public and their employees to line their pockets with millions of dollars while employees lost their jobs, lost their health insurance and lost their pensions.
President Bush has brought the Enron model from Texas to Washington. He’s implemented an economic plan for the country with reckless tax cuts based on false economic assumptions that benefit the wealthiest in our society at the expense of ordinary working Americans. The President’s economics are Enron economics.He’s piled on massive amounts of debt. The effect of this president's policies is to saddle a family of four with $52,000 in national debt over the next six years alone.
And let’s be clear what American middle class families actually received. In 2003, 60 percent of Americans will get an average of $307; the top one percent of all households received an average of over $26,000. What George Bush is basically doing is borrowing $1000 in your name and handing you $250 of it.
That is why I say, unlike some of my rivals, that we need to repeal all of the president’s tax cuts. These tax cuts weren’t written for the majority of America. These tax cuts weren’t written to return economic power back to the people. These tax cuts, like Enron’s finances, are a scheme to make the rich richer, to starve Social Security and Medicare and to put our nation’s financial strength at risk by creating the largest debt in history. And they are an effort to shift the tax base in this country from wealth to labor.Under the President’s program, working people’s wages make up a higher and higher portion of total tax revenue while all the income you don’t have to earn – estates, dividends and capital gains – is exempted further from taxation.
The effect of Enron Economics on our economy has been disastrous. In three short years, the budget is unrecognizable. George Bush has turned the largest surplus in history into the largest deficit. When Bill Clinton left office the Congressional Budget Office was projecting $3.1 trillion in surpluses in the decade from 2002 to 2011. Today, we have a deficit of over $400 billion and face deficits totaling at least $3.8 trillion in the next decade. What does this mean to the individual American household? Over ten years, rather than a surplus of $28,000 per household, they now each hold an astounding additional debt of $35,000. A debt our children and grandchildren will now have to pay off.
Now, I am not against tax cuts. I believe in cutting taxes when the cuts make sense for the good of all the people. In Vermont, I cut taxes so that businesses would come back to the state and bring job opportunities with them. It worked. But I am opposed to the kinds of tax cuts President Bush has pushed which hinder our ability to grow the economy, invest in our future, and ensure that our children do not pay the cost of our fiscal recklessness.
Look at the results of Enron Economics for the American people. 3.3 million private sector jobs lost. 1.3 million more Americans are living below the poverty line. 1.5 million filed for bankruptcy last year. Home foreclosures are at a record level. And all of this has been particularly hard on communities that were already struggling to get on their feet – communities of color and of disadvantage. African American unemployment has reached 11.2 percent. One out of three young African-Americans is unemployed. Unemployment among Latinos is up 30 percent since the start of the administration. America’s working families deserve the truth. This is no ordinary downturn. This isn’t simply a normal business cycle downturn. We are the victims of Enron Economics. We’ve been sold a bill of goods and like the Enron shareholders, we’re the ones left holding the bag.
We were promised fiscal responsibility. We’ve gotten an $8 trillion increase in the nation’s debt over ten years.
We were told that tax cuts would reduce the deficit, but the government’s chief auditor – a Republican – calls that assertion “flat false.”
We were told there wasn’t enough money to fix up our nation’s electric grid, but there has seems to be plenty to contract with Halliburton to fix up Iraq’s.
Like Enron, the administration hasn’t simply misled, it’s hidden the truth. When the Treasury Secretary commissioned a report on the long-term liabilities created by Social Security, Medicare, and the tax cuts, the report was suppressed. When its statisticians discovered that 1.3 million more Americans were living in poverty, it tried to find a way to make the problem go away by redefining poverty.When its military leadership warned of the real costs of the war in Iraq, they were muzzled and ignored.
It doesn’t have to be this way. As President, my fundamental and abiding economic pledge is that our federal budget will once again serve the needs of our country, not the ideology and narrow financial interests of a powerful few. My campaign is about empowering people. My economic plan is no different – it is about empowering all Americans to participate in their economy again. It’s about giving ordinary Americans the opportunity to reclaim the american Dream – by putting America back to work, restoring fiscal discipline, addressing the economic stress facing working families, and restoring fairness to economic policy at home and abroad.
<much more>
http://www.deanforamerica.com/site/PageServer?pagename=policy_speech_economy_reclaimingtheamericandreamThe full policy paper is here:
http://www.deanforamerica.com/site/PageServer?pagename=policy_policy_economy_reclaimingtheamericandreamAnd the blog has just announced that the speech will be shown on CSPAN tonight during prime time. The time will be posted to the blog as soon as they have it. www.blog.deanforamerica.com
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