- Campaign
Literature « 1992
Democratic Presidential Primary «
Clinton for President Committee
1992 Democratic Presidential Primary
Clinton for President Committee
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| Booklet -
8 1/2" x 11", 15 pages. |
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A
PLAN FOR AMERICA'S FUTURE
To:
Paid for by the Clinton for President Committee
Dear Fellow American,
Our country is in trouble. We're falling behind economically, and drifting apart with no sense of common purpose or common good. Our people are really hurting. For ten years, the middle class has declined, poverty has exploded, and only the rich are doing better.
When he isn't denying that an economic crisis exists, the President blames Congress for our problems. Then the Congress blames him back. It's time someone took responsibility to change things.
I am running for President with a specific plan for economic change — a plan to jumpstart our economy in the short term and a new long-term strategy to turn our country's economy around and restore the American Dream for all.
The plan includes a tax cut for the middle class, and asks the rich to pay their fair share. It calls for health insurance for every American; dramatic education reform to help our children and our schools to do better; and a public and private investment strategy to create new jobs. And it calls for a revolution in government to provide more choices and more services with less bureaucracy.
I hope you will take the time to read this plan. It's time you had a President who cares, takes responsibility, and knows what he wants to do for America for a change. You deserve more than slogans and 30-second TV commercials. You deserve more than political rhetoric and outdated proposals. In these pages, I spell out in plain language what I intend to do as President.
But I want you to do more than simply read this plan. I want your ideas for making it better; and I want your help in making it a reality.
This is more than a campaign. It's a crusade for change. A crusade to restore the American Dream for the forgotten middle class and build a better life for our children.
Sincerely,
Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
A PLAN FOR AMERICA'S FUTURE
The American Dream is in trouble. Around the country, families are hurting.
And while ordinary people everywhere are working harder and making less, our leaders in Washington are looking out for themselves and for their friends, but not for the country and the people who make it great.
The forgotten middle class is discovering that the reward for a decade of sacrifice and hard work is more sacrifice and hard times: They've paid higher taxes on lower incomes and gotten less in return, while the rich got tax cuts, poverty increased, and the President and Congress got pay raises and health insurance.
We have to move away from George Bush's and Ronald Reagan's failed experiment in trickle-down economics and political neglect. It didn't produce growth or upward mobility. It didn't prepare average Americans to better compete in the new world economy. But we must also move beyond the old Democratic theory that says we can just tax and spend our way out of every problem we face.
For 11 years, we've had no national economic vision, leadership, or strategy.
We need a new approach that will move this country in a radically new direction.
We need a new economic program that empowers people, rewards work, and organizes America to compete and win again. We need a national economic strategy to lift the country out of recession and restore hope and opportunity for the long term.
We can take direct steps right now to end this recession:
The Bush recession is eating into the incomes of middle-class Americans across the country. We can't restore consumer confidence until we restore consumer cash. One quick and right way to do that is to reduce the tax bite on average families — and so reverse the policies of George Bush and Ronald Reagan, who raised taxes for most middle-class Americans and cut them sharply for the wealthy.
We should cut middle class taxes immediately by 10 percent, and pay for it with higher income taxes on those earning more than $200,000. The deficit won't go up, and the richest Americans will pay their fair share (though still a smaller percentage of their incomes than they paid in '70s).
2. Expand the Children's Tax Credit
Families with children deserve additional tax relief. The value of the tax exemption for children has dropped dramatically since World War II, while the tax burden and the cost of raising a family went up. In 1948, a typical family of four paid just 0.3% of their income in federal income taxes. Today, a similar family pays 30 times as much.
We need to stop taxing away the money parents need to raise a family, and restore the value of the children's tax exemption. We should replace the current $2,150 dependent's exemption with up to an $800 per-child tax credit, which would be equivalent to exempting from tax as much as $5,330 for a family in the 15 percent tax bracket. This change would mean additional tax savings this year of up to $480 per child for an average-Income family.
We can pay for it without raising the deficit, by enacting a combination of spending reforms, such as cutting the $200 billion annual budget for the federal bureaucracy, and tax changes designed mainly to close tax loopholes for high-income people.
This change, along with middle-class tax reform, would deliver real tax relief
tor those who work hard and play by the rules. Combining the impact of these two reforms, our plan would cut federal taxes for an average-income family with two children by as much as $1,300.
3. Provide an Economic Lifeline for Health Care and Housing
Under George Bush, a smaller share of people who lost their jobs are receiving unemployment benefits - less than 35 percent - than in any previous downturn since the 1930s. The process of restoring economic confidence should have begun six to nine months ago by extending these benefits, but George Bush blocked efforts to do so until November, and even then agreed only reluctantly.
We must do more during our country's current economic emergency. Millions of Americans are terrified that if they lose their jobs, they could lose their homes and their health care coverage, too. We need to restore confidence by providing an economic lifeline for middle-class families facing unexpected unemployment. People who work hard and pay taxes deserve a fair break; during the economic emergency, we can provide temporary ways of enabling families to keep up with their health care premiums and mortgage or rent payments.
Under this program, each state will be able to design its own economic lifeline plan. For health care coverage, some may choose to help families buy into the medicaid system, others may provide additional direct payments: For mortgage and rent payments, some may choose to work with private banks, others could expand loan provisions under their existing housing programs. Washington will cover the initial cost of the program — and ensure that those who receive help pay it back, once they are working again, through automatic withholding.
4. Jumpstart Economic Demand
George Bush has refused to do anything to get the economy going again. Our people can't afford to wait any longer. We need to take four immediate steps to jumpstart the nation's economic growth right away:
a. By front-loading the new highway bill so that we spend the first two years of money in the first year, the President could create 200,000 jobs.
b. By raising the ceiling on mortgage loans eligible for Federal Housing Administration insurance to cover 95 percent of the median price of a home in every metropolitan area, the President could enable as many as a half-million young families to buy their first homes this winter and spring.
c. By urging federal regulators to send a clear signal to banks not to call in good loans that are performing, and not to hesitate to make sound loans, the President could help keep thousands of small businesses open and expanding.
d. By calling on banks to renegotiate loans downward and bring down the interest rates they charge on balances of good credit-card customers, in line with the falling interest they pay on a depositor's savings or checking account, the President could help relieve the consumer and business debt burden of millions of families.
These four measures, all within the President's discretion, would cut the recession short and reduce the pain and economic stress of millions of Americans.
5. Use U.S. Influence in the World to Boost the U.S. Economy
Throughout his term, George Bush has neglected to use America's influence with other advanced countries to insist that in the modern global economy, they too must do their part to keep world growth going. We need a President who will not only defend the country well, but who also recognizes that in the post-Cold War world, our national security is largely economic.
More of the costs of preserving the military security of Asia and Europe can be shifted immediately to Japan and Germany, releasing billions of dollars that can come home to America and spur U.S. production. Japan and Germany also should be told. in no uncertain terms, that it is time for them to help shoulder more responsibility for worldwide economic growth today by stimulating their economies in order to boost U.S. exports.
A LONG-TERM PLAN TO REGAIN OUR ECONOMIC LEADERSHIP
We face a fundamental economic challenge today — to create a high-wage, highgrowth, high-opportunity national economy that will carry America into the 21st century, instead of a hard-work, low-wage economy that's going nowhere. We need a long-term national strategy to meet this challenge and win.
Our new economic strategy will restore the American Dream of upward mobility by enabling every person and every business to become more productive. This strategy rewards work, expands opportunity, and empowers people — so America can compete and win again.
In the new world economy, American economic growth will come not from more federal spending and more federal bureaucrats, but from America's workers learning more and working smarter, from America's entrepreneurs taking risks and going after new markets, and from America's companies designing better products and taking a longer view.
We need to pursue a five-part long-term strategy:
1. Empower every American to be more productive by changing the ways we educate our children and train every worker.
2. Lead a revolution in government so it becomes an engine of opportunity again, not an obstacle to it.
3. Encourage American workers and American companies to reorganize
the workplace and the way we do business, to increase genuinely productive investment and innovation throughout the economy.
4. Stand up for American workers and businesses by expanding trade on just and fair terms.
5. Define a new national security policy that enables us to lead the world we've done so much to make and look out for the interests of our own people at home.
1. Empowering Every American to Get Ahead
America can be a high-wage, high-growth, upwardly-mobile country only if America's workers have advanced skills. And in the new world economy, in which capital and technologies cross national borders easily and quickly, the only way for workers to prosper in well-paid jobs with growing incomes ls to become lifelong learners and innovators.
If we're going to turn this country around, we've got to empower every American with the education and training to get ahead. We need radical reform throughout our education and training systems, stretching from the age of pre-schoolers to the time most people retire.
RADICALLY RAISING THE LEVEL OF PUBLIC EDUCATION
In the 1990s, education is economic development. If we're going to compete, we need to overhaul America's public education system from top to bottom, by providing:
ENSURING OPPORTUNITY FOR ALL
Our new economic strategy also includes special efforts to empower poor people to work their way into the American mainstream:
For the working poor, we will make work pay by reforming and expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, so that it ensures that anyone who works full-time, year-round, will earn enough to support his or her family above the poverty line.
For low-income entrepreneurs, we will support public and private partnerships that extend small loans and business advice to poor people with the ideas and drive to start their own small businesses.
We've got to break the cycle of dependency and put an end to permanent dependence on welfare as a way of life. by really investing in the development of poor people and giving them the means, the incentives, and the requirement to go to work. Welfare should be a second chance, not a way of life. We'll give people on welfare training and education for up to two years. But after that if they can work, they'll have to do so.
2. A Revolution in Government
The national government must once again be an engine of economic opportunity, not an obstacle to it, and that requires that we revolutionize the way government works.
Washington insiders of both parties think that the only way to improve government ls to spend more on programs already on the books, or combine cabinet agencies in a new organizational chart. We need a different approach.
Like every successful corporation, the federal government has to be completely restructured for greater productivity. It has to dedicate more resources to investing In the future and less to current consumption. It ought to grow no faster than the economy itself. It needs to decentralize and be more entrepreneurial. And it has to give workers more authority to make decisions and offer the public better products.
I want to radically change government and give American taxpayers more for their money, by offering people more choices, delivering new services in different ways, and eliminating unnecessary layers of management: by reexamining every dollar of the taxpayers' money we spend and every minute of time that the government puts in.
That's what we've tried to do in Arkansas. We've balanced the budget every year, improved services and provided more choices, and treated our citizens like our customers and our bosses — because they are.
Revolutionizing the federal government will require four basic reforms:
INVEST IN THE FUTURE, NOT THE PAST
If we're going to get more for our money, we need a federal budget that invests more In the future and spends less on the present and the past. We need a three part budget — a past budget for interest payments and paying off S&L and bank failures; a present budget for spending on current consumption; and a future budget for investments that will make our people richer.
Today, only 9 percent of the budget is directed to investing in our future — education and training, child health, environmental technologies, basic research, and infrastructure. We need to double that share, and pay for it by converting resources no longer needed for defense to investments needed to rebuild our economic security.
LIMIT THE GROWTH OF FEDERAL SPENDING
To bring down the deficit and stop the government's stifling of economic growth, we have to control spending on current consumption programs. A Clinton Administration will limit the rate of increase in the consumption budget to the rate of increase in personal incomes, so the budget grows no faster than the economy and no faster than the average American's ability to pay for it.
Making Congress live by this rule will cut the deficit dramatically in five years, and unleash hundreds of billions of dollars of capital for the private investment that drives prosperity.
RAISE PRODUCTIVITY AND CUT BUREAUCRACY
The mission of government ls to expand opportunity, not bureaucracy. We need to make government an arena of innovation by introducing productivity standards from successful businesses.
In a Clinton Administration, we will cut the administrative costs of the federal government by 3 percent a year and let every office and agency develop its own strategy for fulfilling its mission with fewer resources. This reform not only will save billions of dollars every year; it will stimulate new ways of delivering public service.
HEALTH CARE FOR EVERY AMERICAN
In the first year of a Clinton Administration, we'll deliver quality, affordable health care to all Americans. If we're going to fundamentally change government, we must devote special attention to dramatically changing the way we deliver health care in this country. We are the only advanced nation in the world that does not provide health care to all its citizens and does not take the lead in controlling health care costs.
If we are to be economically competitive in the next decade, we simply must overhaul our health care system. We don't need to reduce quality, we need to restructure the system.
We spend 30% more than any other country on health care, and get less for it. Millions of Americans can't change their jobs for fear of losing their health care coverage and not being able to get insurance because of "pre-existing" health conditions. Thousands of American businesses are losing jobs because health care costs are a 30% handicap In the global marketplace.
We can control costs, improve quality, expand preventive and long-term care, maintain consumer choice, and cover everybody. We don't need to raise taxes, but we do need to take on health insurance companies and bureaucracies, drug manufacturers, and other powerful interests. By eliminating administrative waste in the current system, controlling costs and ending fraudulent billing practices, we can generate $100 billion in savings to finance a new national health care system.
We need to make four sweeping changes in American health care:
1. Guarantee Universal Coverage: We'll spend over $800 billion this year on health care, yet more than 34 million people remain uninsured and millions more don't receive the coverage they need. Every American should have access to affordable, quality care.
2. Control Costs: We can cover every American with the money we're already spending, if we demand insurance reform to end the administrative waste of the current system, control the unnecessary spread of excessive technology, stop drug prices from going up at three times the rate of inflation, reduce billing fraud that may account for up to $75 billion a year, and force the people who send bills and the people who pay them to agree on how much health care should cost.
3. Improve Preventative Care: We'll provide primary and preventive care in inner city and rural areas where health care is not readily available today, and we'll increase children's access to health care by putting clinics in schools where it is needed.
4. Provide More Choices In Long-Term Care: We should provide health care to the elderly when they need it — before they spend themselves into poverty. Our senior citizens should make their own choices about how to spend their health care benefits. In Arkansas, we created a program that gives seniors the right to take money which used to be available for nursing home care and spend it on home health care, personal care, transportation to senior centers, hiring a nurse or attending an adult day care center. I want a federal health system that gives seniors all over the country the same choices.
This is our revolution for the federal establishment: We want a government
keyed to investing in the nation's prosperity and future: a government willing to discipline its spending according to the people's ability to support it; a government that makes itself more productive every year, by searching out and creating new and innovative ways of providing public service; and a government that guarantees health care for every American.
3. A Revolution in the American Workplace
We desperately need an educated, well-trained work force and a productive and disciplined federal government that invests in the future. But American workers and Americans businesses are going to have to change, too.
In the last decade, the stock market tripled while average wages went down.
It's time for a revolution in the American workplace that will radically raise the status of the American worker and tear down the Berlin Wall between labor and management.
Outdated economic arrangements are holding America back, and we need to create new, dynamic and flexible workplaces where workers at the front line are involved in the decisions that affect their productivity, and entire levels of middle management can be eliminated. While business and workers have to undertake most of these changes themselves, government can help, too.
NEW ENTERPRISE TAX CUT
In a Clinton Administration, we won't provide special capital gains tax breaks for rich investors who clip coupons and trade securities; instead, we will encourage entrepreneurs who risk their savings to create new companies, the main source of new jobs in our economy. Half of the profits from original investments in new firms will be excluded from tax, so long as the investment is held at least five years.
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
In a Clinton Administration, we won't dole out special-interest tax breaks for various sectors; instead we will encourage firms to invest in their own long-term prosperity. The current research and development tax credit will be made permanent.
TARGETED INVESTMENT TAX CREDIT
To encourage investment in America, we'll provide a carefully-targeted investment tax credit for small and medium-size companies that create new jobs with new plant and equipment.
NO DEDUCTIBILITY FOR IRRESPONSIBILITY
It's time to eliminate tax breaks that reward the old arrangements and serve the rich and powerful, Instead of average workers who generate the nation's real wealth.
In a Clinton Administration, we'll encourage firms to reward workers for their performance and share profits with all employees, by restricting a company's ability to deduct special payments if they are limited to top executives. Companies will be allowed to deduct bonuses tied to profits for top executives only if other employees also receive bonuses; and companies will be allowed to deduct golden-parachute payments to managers only if they also provide severance packages for other employees.
We'll end the practice of allowing companies to take unlimited tax deductions for excessive executive pay. If a company wants to overpay its executives and underinvest in its workers, it can do so — but it shouldn't get special treatment from Uncle Sam.
We'll end the practice of allowing companies to take tax deductions for the costs of moving jobs overseas. American companies need to invest in keeping jobs and factories here for a change.
4. Competing and Winning in the World Economy
Our plan for America focuses on making every American more productive and every U.S. company more competitive, and we owe every worker, entrepreneur and industry a solemn pledge that their hard work will not go down the drain. Therefore, our plan includes a national economic strategy for winning In the global marketplace, by opening up trade and breaking down foreign barriers.
The American people aren't protectionists. Protectionism is just a fancy word for giving up: we want to compete and win. That is why we need a new trade policy that says to Europe, Japan and our other trading partners: we favor an open trading system, but if you won't play by those rules, we'll play by yours. A Clinton Administration will insist on tough trade policies.
BRINGING PRODUCTS TO MARKET
Just as we have an agency to coordinate basic research into new military technologies, we should create a new federal agency to support and coordinate research in developing new, critical, civilian technologies and moving these ideas to the marketplace.
We will put in place a transitional plan for converting from a defense-
technology economy to a civilian technology economy, preserving the high-wage, high-value skills of many thousands of our best scientists, engineers and workers. And to help support this effort, for every dollar we reduce the defense budget for research and development, we will expand the civilian R&D budget.
A Clinton Administration will do its part to help ensure markets for U.S. products and services by opening up trade, because U.S. exports create jobs for Americans.
We must do everything possible to open up markets now closed to American products.
In a Clinton Administration, we will provide the leadership for Japan and the European countries to join us not only in multilateral trade negotiations, but also in coordinated efforts to stabilize and expand the economies of the new Eastern European free countries and the Latin American debtor nations.
We will provide the leadership for Japan and the European countries to join us in coordinating our macroeconomic policies for stable growth throughout the developed world. And we will provide the muscle to open up Japan's markets to competitive U.S. products. using a stronger and more carefully targeted "Super 301" approach.
5. A New National Security Policy
In the aftermath of the Cold War, we need a new national security policy that enables us to lead the world we have done so much to make, and that supports our urgent efforts to take care of our own people and their needs. We cannot do one without the other.
Foreign and domestic policy are inseparable in today's world. If we're not strong at home, we can't lead the world. And if we withdraw from the world, it will hurt us economically at home.
We need a strong defense to maintain our national security. As President, I pledge to maintain military forces strong enough to deter and when necessary to defeat any threat to our essential interests.
We can and must substantially reduce our military forces and spending, because the Soviet threat is decreasing and our allies are able to and should shoulder more of the defense burden. But we still must set the level of our defense spending based on what we need to protect our interests. First let's provide for a strong defense. Then we can talk about defense savings.
We need to replace our Cold War military structure with a smaller, more flexible mix of capabilities to meet new threats. I would restructure our forces to:
My plan would bring cumulative savings of about $100 billion beyond the Bush plan. If favorable political and military trends continue, and we make progress on arms control, we may be able to scale down defense spending still more by the end of the decade. However, we should not commit ourselves now to specific deeper cuts ten years from now. The world is changing quickly, and we must retain our ability to react to potential threats.
Also, we must not forget about the real people whose lives will be turned upside down when defense is cut deeply. The government should look out for its defense workers and the communities they live in. We should insist on advance notification and help communities plan for a transition from a defense to a domestic economy. I have called for a new advanced research agency—a civilian DARPA— that could help capture for commercial work the brilliance of scientists and engineers who have accomplished wonders on the battlefield.
Likewise, those who have served the nation in uniform cannot be duped on the job market. We've got to enlist them to help meet our many needs at home. By retirement options, limiting re-enlistment and slowing the pace of recruitment, we can build down our forces in a gradual way that doesn't abandon people of proven commitment and competence.
The defense policy I have outlined keeps America strong and still yields substantial savings. The American people have earned this peace dividend through forty years of unrelenting vigilance and sacrifice and an investment of trillions of dollars. And they are entitled to have the dividend reinvested in their future.
THE SOUL OF OUR NATION
We must do all these things, and something more. The economic challenges we confront today are not just a matter of statistics and numbers. Behind them are real human beings and real human suffering. I have seen the pain in the faces of unemployed workers in New Hampshire, policemen in New York and Texas, Computer company executives in California, middle-class people everywhere. They're all showing the same pain and worry I hear in the voices of my own people in Arkansas, including men and women I grew up with who played by the rules and now see their dreams for future slipping away.
That's why we're offering a radical new approach to economics. If we offer these hard-working families no hope for the future, no solutions to their problems, no relief for their pain, then fear and insecurity will grow, and the politics of hate and division will spread. If we do not act to bring this country together in common cause to build a better future, David Duke and his kind will be able to divide and destroy our nation. Our streets will get meaner, our families will be devastated, and our very social fabric — our goodness and tolerance and decency as a people — will be torn apart.
I believe with all my heart that the very future of our country is on the line. That is why these are not just economic proposals. They are the way to sae the very soul of our nation.
To:
- Get our economy moving again
- Restore our economic leadership
- Create high skill, high wage jobs
- Fight for the forgotten middle class
- Radically change government
- Inspire responsibility
- Build a greater sense of community
- Reclaim the future for our children
- Restore the American Dream
Paid for by the Clinton for President Committee
Dear Fellow American,
Our country is in trouble. We're falling behind economically, and drifting apart with no sense of common purpose or common good. Our people are really hurting. For ten years, the middle class has declined, poverty has exploded, and only the rich are doing better.
When he isn't denying that an economic crisis exists, the President blames Congress for our problems. Then the Congress blames him back. It's time someone took responsibility to change things.
I am running for President with a specific plan for economic change — a plan to jumpstart our economy in the short term and a new long-term strategy to turn our country's economy around and restore the American Dream for all.
The plan includes a tax cut for the middle class, and asks the rich to pay their fair share. It calls for health insurance for every American; dramatic education reform to help our children and our schools to do better; and a public and private investment strategy to create new jobs. And it calls for a revolution in government to provide more choices and more services with less bureaucracy.
I hope you will take the time to read this plan. It's time you had a President who cares, takes responsibility, and knows what he wants to do for America for a change. You deserve more than slogans and 30-second TV commercials. You deserve more than political rhetoric and outdated proposals. In these pages, I spell out in plain language what I intend to do as President.
But I want you to do more than simply read this plan. I want your ideas for making it better; and I want your help in making it a reality.
This is more than a campaign. It's a crusade for change. A crusade to restore the American Dream for the forgotten middle class and build a better life for our children.
Sincerely,
Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
A PLAN FOR AMERICA'S FUTURE
The American Dream is in trouble. Around the country, families are hurting.
And while ordinary people everywhere are working harder and making less, our leaders in Washington are looking out for themselves and for their friends, but not for the country and the people who make it great.
The forgotten middle class is discovering that the reward for a decade of sacrifice and hard work is more sacrifice and hard times: They've paid higher taxes on lower incomes and gotten less in return, while the rich got tax cuts, poverty increased, and the President and Congress got pay raises and health insurance.
We have to move away from George Bush's and Ronald Reagan's failed experiment in trickle-down economics and political neglect. It didn't produce growth or upward mobility. It didn't prepare average Americans to better compete in the new world economy. But we must also move beyond the old Democratic theory that says we can just tax and spend our way out of every problem we face.
For 11 years, we've had no national economic vision, leadership, or strategy.
We need a new approach that will move this country in a radically new direction.
We need a new economic program that empowers people, rewards work, and organizes America to compete and win again. We need a national economic strategy to lift the country out of recession and restore hope and opportunity for the long term.
We can take direct steps right now to end this recession:
- We can help rebuild consumer confidence with an immediate infusion of much-needed cash, by cutting taxes for middle-class Americans and for families with children.
- We can create hundreds of thousands of jobs by accelerating current highway spending and opening up the housing market to more first-home buyers.
- We can relieve broad public anxiety with measures to protect for a time the health-care coverage and mortgage or rent payments of those who lose their jobs.
- We can expand credit by urging banks to continue serving sound businesses and to offer fair credit-card rates to good customers.
- And we can expand U.S. production by
insisting that Japan and Germany do their part to
maintain global economic growth, by stimulating their
economies to purchase more exports from the U.S. and
elsewhere, and by immediately paying more of the costs
of their own security.
Just as important, we need a long-term
strategy to restore strong growth and upward mobility,
so our children can lead a better life. We need a clear
plan for America's future to:
1. Empower every American to be more productive by changing the way we educate our children and train every worker.
2. Revolutionize government so that it becomes an engine of opportunity again, not an obstacle to it. We need to invest our resources in the nation's long-term growth and health, and give the taxpayers a government that works.
3. Encourage American companies and
American workers to reorganize the workplace and the way
we do business, to make sure corporations behave
responsibly and to increase genuinely productive
investment and innovation throughout the economy.
4. Stand up for American workers and businesses by
expanding trade on just and fair
terms.
5. Define a new national security
policy that enables us to lead the world we have done so
much to make, and that supports our urgent efforts to
take care of our own here at home.
GETTING AMERICA MOVING AGAIN
Under George Bush, America has had the
slowest economic growth, the smallest income gains, and
the fewest new jobs created of any administration since
Herbert Hoover's. Middle-class people are spending more
time on the job, less time with their children, and
bringing home less money to pay more for health care,
housing, education, and taxes.
Ten years ago, the United States had the
world's highest wages: today, we rank 10th, and we're
still falling. During George Bush's presidency, Germany
and Japan have achieved productivity gains three and
four times greater than ours, because they educate and
train their people better, they invest more in the
future, and they organize their economies for global
competition—and we don't.
George Bush and Ronald Reagan let S&L
criminals and self-serving CEOs build an economy out of
paper and perks, instead of people and products. But
they did not do it alone. Democrats in Congress joined
with the Republican White House in cheering on the
S&L boom until it went bust at a cost to taxpayers
of $500 billion, and in tripling the national debt while
average people's taxes have kept on going up.
America needs a new President who will
provide the leadership to get the country moving again,
who will challenge the nation to compete in the world
and win again, and who will help lift the poor out of
poverty and restore real prosperity to average people —
the vast majority of middle-class Americans who still
live by American values, and whose hopes, hearts and
hands still carry the American Dream.
ENDING THE BUSH RECESSION
Our first responsibility is to move
quickly to end the current recession. We ought to take
five steps right away to help working people and get the
economy moving again. First, reduce the federal tax
burden on the middle class whose taxes went up in the
'80s while their wages went down. Second, expand the
children's tax credit to give additional tax relief to
families who need it. Third, provide an economic
lifeline to hard-working people who lose their jobs.
Fourth, help jumpstart the economy by several, specific
presidential actions. finally, use America's influence
in the world to enlist economic support from other
countries.
The Bush recession is eating into the incomes of middle-class Americans across the country. We can't restore consumer confidence until we restore consumer cash. One quick and right way to do that is to reduce the tax bite on average families — and so reverse the policies of George Bush and Ronald Reagan, who raised taxes for most middle-class Americans and cut them sharply for the wealthy.
We should cut middle class taxes immediately by 10 percent, and pay for it with higher income taxes on those earning more than $200,000. The deficit won't go up, and the richest Americans will pay their fair share (though still a smaller percentage of their incomes than they paid in '70s).
2. Expand the Children's Tax Credit
Families with children deserve additional tax relief. The value of the tax exemption for children has dropped dramatically since World War II, while the tax burden and the cost of raising a family went up. In 1948, a typical family of four paid just 0.3% of their income in federal income taxes. Today, a similar family pays 30 times as much.
We need to stop taxing away the money parents need to raise a family, and restore the value of the children's tax exemption. We should replace the current $2,150 dependent's exemption with up to an $800 per-child tax credit, which would be equivalent to exempting from tax as much as $5,330 for a family in the 15 percent tax bracket. This change would mean additional tax savings this year of up to $480 per child for an average-Income family.
We can pay for it without raising the deficit, by enacting a combination of spending reforms, such as cutting the $200 billion annual budget for the federal bureaucracy, and tax changes designed mainly to close tax loopholes for high-income people.
This change, along with middle-class tax reform, would deliver real tax relief
tor those who work hard and play by the rules. Combining the impact of these two reforms, our plan would cut federal taxes for an average-income family with two children by as much as $1,300.
3. Provide an Economic Lifeline for Health Care and Housing
Under George Bush, a smaller share of people who lost their jobs are receiving unemployment benefits - less than 35 percent - than in any previous downturn since the 1930s. The process of restoring economic confidence should have begun six to nine months ago by extending these benefits, but George Bush blocked efforts to do so until November, and even then agreed only reluctantly.
We must do more during our country's current economic emergency. Millions of Americans are terrified that if they lose their jobs, they could lose their homes and their health care coverage, too. We need to restore confidence by providing an economic lifeline for middle-class families facing unexpected unemployment. People who work hard and pay taxes deserve a fair break; during the economic emergency, we can provide temporary ways of enabling families to keep up with their health care premiums and mortgage or rent payments.
Under this program, each state will be able to design its own economic lifeline plan. For health care coverage, some may choose to help families buy into the medicaid system, others may provide additional direct payments: For mortgage and rent payments, some may choose to work with private banks, others could expand loan provisions under their existing housing programs. Washington will cover the initial cost of the program — and ensure that those who receive help pay it back, once they are working again, through automatic withholding.
4. Jumpstart Economic Demand
George Bush has refused to do anything to get the economy going again. Our people can't afford to wait any longer. We need to take four immediate steps to jumpstart the nation's economic growth right away:
a. By front-loading the new highway bill so that we spend the first two years of money in the first year, the President could create 200,000 jobs.
b. By raising the ceiling on mortgage loans eligible for Federal Housing Administration insurance to cover 95 percent of the median price of a home in every metropolitan area, the President could enable as many as a half-million young families to buy their first homes this winter and spring.
c. By urging federal regulators to send a clear signal to banks not to call in good loans that are performing, and not to hesitate to make sound loans, the President could help keep thousands of small businesses open and expanding.
d. By calling on banks to renegotiate loans downward and bring down the interest rates they charge on balances of good credit-card customers, in line with the falling interest they pay on a depositor's savings or checking account, the President could help relieve the consumer and business debt burden of millions of families.
These four measures, all within the President's discretion, would cut the recession short and reduce the pain and economic stress of millions of Americans.
5. Use U.S. Influence in the World to Boost the U.S. Economy
Throughout his term, George Bush has neglected to use America's influence with other advanced countries to insist that in the modern global economy, they too must do their part to keep world growth going. We need a President who will not only defend the country well, but who also recognizes that in the post-Cold War world, our national security is largely economic.
More of the costs of preserving the military security of Asia and Europe can be shifted immediately to Japan and Germany, releasing billions of dollars that can come home to America and spur U.S. production. Japan and Germany also should be told. in no uncertain terms, that it is time for them to help shoulder more responsibility for worldwide economic growth today by stimulating their economies in order to boost U.S. exports.
A LONG-TERM PLAN TO REGAIN OUR ECONOMIC LEADERSHIP
We face a fundamental economic challenge today — to create a high-wage, highgrowth, high-opportunity national economy that will carry America into the 21st century, instead of a hard-work, low-wage economy that's going nowhere. We need a long-term national strategy to meet this challenge and win.
Our new economic strategy will restore the American Dream of upward mobility by enabling every person and every business to become more productive. This strategy rewards work, expands opportunity, and empowers people — so America can compete and win again.
In the new world economy, American economic growth will come not from more federal spending and more federal bureaucrats, but from America's workers learning more and working smarter, from America's entrepreneurs taking risks and going after new markets, and from America's companies designing better products and taking a longer view.
We need to pursue a five-part long-term strategy:
1. Empower every American to be more productive by changing the ways we educate our children and train every worker.
2. Lead a revolution in government so it becomes an engine of opportunity again, not an obstacle to it.
3. Encourage American workers and American companies to reorganize
the workplace and the way we do business, to increase genuinely productive investment and innovation throughout the economy.
4. Stand up for American workers and businesses by expanding trade on just and fair terms.
5. Define a new national security policy that enables us to lead the world we've done so much to make and look out for the interests of our own people at home.
1. Empowering Every American to Get Ahead
America can be a high-wage, high-growth, upwardly-mobile country only if America's workers have advanced skills. And in the new world economy, in which capital and technologies cross national borders easily and quickly, the only way for workers to prosper in well-paid jobs with growing incomes ls to become lifelong learners and innovators.
If we're going to turn this country around, we've got to empower every American with the education and training to get ahead. We need radical reform throughout our education and training systems, stretching from the age of pre-schoolers to the time most people retire.
RADICALLY RAISING THE LEVEL OF PUBLIC EDUCATION
In the 1990s, education is economic development. If we're going to compete, we need to overhaul America's public education system from top to bottom, by providing:
- Preschool for every child who needs it, and full funding for the successful Head Start program.
- A national examination system for all elementary and secondary schools, to push our students to meet world-class standards in math, science and other core subjects.
- Annual report cards for every state, school district and school, measuring their progress toward meeting these world-class standards.
- A nationwide apprenticeship program to enable the half of all high-school students who are not college bound to choose courses of study designed by their schools with local businesses, that will teach them advanced skills and guarantee them well-paying jobs when they graduate.
- A domestic GI bill that will pledge college assistance to any student who wants it — the middle class as well as the poor. Congress will create a national trust fund out of which anyone can borrow money for a college education, so long as they pay it back either as a small percentage of their future income over time, or with a few years of voluntary national service as teachers, police officers, or child care workers. This radical overhaul of the American educational system will be financed by dedicating a portion of the peace dividend to these investments and by redirecting the current student loan program. It is the best investment we can make in our common future, and it will pay for itself many times over.
PROVIDING LIFELONG
LEARNING AND TRAINING
- For adults shortchanged by the educational system in the past, we will ensure that every state has a clear, achievable plan to provide adult literacy services to everyone who needs them, give everyone with a job a chance to earn a GED, and wherever possible, to do it where they work.
- For every American worker, we will ensure opportunities to learn new skills every year. Today, American business spends billions of dollars on formal training programs — the equivalent of nearly 1.5 percent of their payrolls — but 70 percent of it goes to the 10 percent at the top of the ladder. We'll require employers to offer every worker his or her share of those training dollars, or contribute the same amount to a national training fund.
ENSURING OPPORTUNITY FOR ALL
Our new economic strategy also includes special efforts to empower poor people to work their way into the American mainstream:
For the working poor, we will make work pay by reforming and expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, so that it ensures that anyone who works full-time, year-round, will earn enough to support his or her family above the poverty line.
For low-income entrepreneurs, we will support public and private partnerships that extend small loans and business advice to poor people with the ideas and drive to start their own small businesses.
We've got to break the cycle of dependency and put an end to permanent dependence on welfare as a way of life. by really investing in the development of poor people and giving them the means, the incentives, and the requirement to go to work. Welfare should be a second chance, not a way of life. We'll give people on welfare training and education for up to two years. But after that if they can work, they'll have to do so.
2. A Revolution in Government
The national government must once again be an engine of economic opportunity, not an obstacle to it, and that requires that we revolutionize the way government works.
Washington insiders of both parties think that the only way to improve government ls to spend more on programs already on the books, or combine cabinet agencies in a new organizational chart. We need a different approach.
Like every successful corporation, the federal government has to be completely restructured for greater productivity. It has to dedicate more resources to investing In the future and less to current consumption. It ought to grow no faster than the economy itself. It needs to decentralize and be more entrepreneurial. And it has to give workers more authority to make decisions and offer the public better products.
I want to radically change government and give American taxpayers more for their money, by offering people more choices, delivering new services in different ways, and eliminating unnecessary layers of management: by reexamining every dollar of the taxpayers' money we spend and every minute of time that the government puts in.
That's what we've tried to do in Arkansas. We've balanced the budget every year, improved services and provided more choices, and treated our citizens like our customers and our bosses — because they are.
Revolutionizing the federal government will require four basic reforms:
INVEST IN THE FUTURE, NOT THE PAST
If we're going to get more for our money, we need a federal budget that invests more In the future and spends less on the present and the past. We need a three part budget — a past budget for interest payments and paying off S&L and bank failures; a present budget for spending on current consumption; and a future budget for investments that will make our people richer.
Today, only 9 percent of the budget is directed to investing in our future — education and training, child health, environmental technologies, basic research, and infrastructure. We need to double that share, and pay for it by converting resources no longer needed for defense to investments needed to rebuild our economic security.
LIMIT THE GROWTH OF FEDERAL SPENDING
To bring down the deficit and stop the government's stifling of economic growth, we have to control spending on current consumption programs. A Clinton Administration will limit the rate of increase in the consumption budget to the rate of increase in personal incomes, so the budget grows no faster than the economy and no faster than the average American's ability to pay for it.
Making Congress live by this rule will cut the deficit dramatically in five years, and unleash hundreds of billions of dollars of capital for the private investment that drives prosperity.
RAISE PRODUCTIVITY AND CUT BUREAUCRACY
The mission of government ls to expand opportunity, not bureaucracy. We need to make government an arena of innovation by introducing productivity standards from successful businesses.
In a Clinton Administration, we will cut the administrative costs of the federal government by 3 percent a year and let every office and agency develop its own strategy for fulfilling its mission with fewer resources. This reform not only will save billions of dollars every year; it will stimulate new ways of delivering public service.
HEALTH CARE FOR EVERY AMERICAN
In the first year of a Clinton Administration, we'll deliver quality, affordable health care to all Americans. If we're going to fundamentally change government, we must devote special attention to dramatically changing the way we deliver health care in this country. We are the only advanced nation in the world that does not provide health care to all its citizens and does not take the lead in controlling health care costs.
If we are to be economically competitive in the next decade, we simply must overhaul our health care system. We don't need to reduce quality, we need to restructure the system.
We spend 30% more than any other country on health care, and get less for it. Millions of Americans can't change their jobs for fear of losing their health care coverage and not being able to get insurance because of "pre-existing" health conditions. Thousands of American businesses are losing jobs because health care costs are a 30% handicap In the global marketplace.
We can control costs, improve quality, expand preventive and long-term care, maintain consumer choice, and cover everybody. We don't need to raise taxes, but we do need to take on health insurance companies and bureaucracies, drug manufacturers, and other powerful interests. By eliminating administrative waste in the current system, controlling costs and ending fraudulent billing practices, we can generate $100 billion in savings to finance a new national health care system.
We need to make four sweeping changes in American health care:
1. Guarantee Universal Coverage: We'll spend over $800 billion this year on health care, yet more than 34 million people remain uninsured and millions more don't receive the coverage they need. Every American should have access to affordable, quality care.
2. Control Costs: We can cover every American with the money we're already spending, if we demand insurance reform to end the administrative waste of the current system, control the unnecessary spread of excessive technology, stop drug prices from going up at three times the rate of inflation, reduce billing fraud that may account for up to $75 billion a year, and force the people who send bills and the people who pay them to agree on how much health care should cost.
3. Improve Preventative Care: We'll provide primary and preventive care in inner city and rural areas where health care is not readily available today, and we'll increase children's access to health care by putting clinics in schools where it is needed.
4. Provide More Choices In Long-Term Care: We should provide health care to the elderly when they need it — before they spend themselves into poverty. Our senior citizens should make their own choices about how to spend their health care benefits. In Arkansas, we created a program that gives seniors the right to take money which used to be available for nursing home care and spend it on home health care, personal care, transportation to senior centers, hiring a nurse or attending an adult day care center. I want a federal health system that gives seniors all over the country the same choices.
This is our revolution for the federal establishment: We want a government
keyed to investing in the nation's prosperity and future: a government willing to discipline its spending according to the people's ability to support it; a government that makes itself more productive every year, by searching out and creating new and innovative ways of providing public service; and a government that guarantees health care for every American.
3. A Revolution in the American Workplace
We desperately need an educated, well-trained work force and a productive and disciplined federal government that invests in the future. But American workers and Americans businesses are going to have to change, too.
In the last decade, the stock market tripled while average wages went down.
It's time for a revolution in the American workplace that will radically raise the status of the American worker and tear down the Berlin Wall between labor and management.
Outdated economic arrangements are holding America back, and we need to create new, dynamic and flexible workplaces where workers at the front line are involved in the decisions that affect their productivity, and entire levels of middle management can be eliminated. While business and workers have to undertake most of these changes themselves, government can help, too.
NEW ENTERPRISE TAX CUT
In a Clinton Administration, we won't provide special capital gains tax breaks for rich investors who clip coupons and trade securities; instead, we will encourage entrepreneurs who risk their savings to create new companies, the main source of new jobs in our economy. Half of the profits from original investments in new firms will be excluded from tax, so long as the investment is held at least five years.
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
In a Clinton Administration, we won't dole out special-interest tax breaks for various sectors; instead we will encourage firms to invest in their own long-term prosperity. The current research and development tax credit will be made permanent.
TARGETED INVESTMENT TAX CREDIT
To encourage investment in America, we'll provide a carefully-targeted investment tax credit for small and medium-size companies that create new jobs with new plant and equipment.
NO DEDUCTIBILITY FOR IRRESPONSIBILITY
It's time to eliminate tax breaks that reward the old arrangements and serve the rich and powerful, Instead of average workers who generate the nation's real wealth.
In a Clinton Administration, we'll encourage firms to reward workers for their performance and share profits with all employees, by restricting a company's ability to deduct special payments if they are limited to top executives. Companies will be allowed to deduct bonuses tied to profits for top executives only if other employees also receive bonuses; and companies will be allowed to deduct golden-parachute payments to managers only if they also provide severance packages for other employees.
We'll end the practice of allowing companies to take unlimited tax deductions for excessive executive pay. If a company wants to overpay its executives and underinvest in its workers, it can do so — but it shouldn't get special treatment from Uncle Sam.
We'll end the practice of allowing companies to take tax deductions for the costs of moving jobs overseas. American companies need to invest in keeping jobs and factories here for a change.
4. Competing and Winning in the World Economy
Our plan for America focuses on making every American more productive and every U.S. company more competitive, and we owe every worker, entrepreneur and industry a solemn pledge that their hard work will not go down the drain. Therefore, our plan includes a national economic strategy for winning In the global marketplace, by opening up trade and breaking down foreign barriers.
The American people aren't protectionists. Protectionism is just a fancy word for giving up: we want to compete and win. That is why we need a new trade policy that says to Europe, Japan and our other trading partners: we favor an open trading system, but if you won't play by those rules, we'll play by yours. A Clinton Administration will insist on tough trade policies.
BRINGING PRODUCTS TO MARKET
I will help American business and American workers win the race for new technologies by beating foreign competitors subsidized by their governments.
Just as we have an agency to coordinate basic research into new military technologies, we should create a new federal agency to support and coordinate research in developing new, critical, civilian technologies and moving these ideas to the marketplace.
We will put in place a transitional plan for converting from a defense-
technology economy to a civilian technology economy, preserving the high-wage, high-value skills of many thousands of our best scientists, engineers and workers. And to help support this effort, for every dollar we reduce the defense budget for research and development, we will expand the civilian R&D budget.
OPEN WORLD MARKETS
A Clinton Administration will do its part to help ensure markets for U.S. products and services by opening up trade, because U.S. exports create jobs for Americans.
We must do everything possible to open up markets now closed to American products.
In a Clinton Administration, we will provide the leadership for Japan and the European countries to join us not only in multilateral trade negotiations, but also in coordinated efforts to stabilize and expand the economies of the new Eastern European free countries and the Latin American debtor nations.
We will provide the leadership for Japan and the European countries to join us in coordinating our macroeconomic policies for stable growth throughout the developed world. And we will provide the muscle to open up Japan's markets to competitive U.S. products. using a stronger and more carefully targeted "Super 301" approach.
5. A New National Security Policy
In the aftermath of the Cold War, we need a new national security policy that enables us to lead the world we have done so much to make, and that supports our urgent efforts to take care of our own people and their needs. We cannot do one without the other.
Foreign and domestic policy are inseparable in today's world. If we're not strong at home, we can't lead the world. And if we withdraw from the world, it will hurt us economically at home.
We need a strong defense to maintain our national security. As President, I pledge to maintain military forces strong enough to deter and when necessary to defeat any threat to our essential interests.
We can and must substantially reduce our military forces and spending, because the Soviet threat is decreasing and our allies are able to and should shoulder more of the defense burden. But we still must set the level of our defense spending based on what we need to protect our interests. First let's provide for a strong defense. Then we can talk about defense savings.
We need to replace our Cold War military structure with a smaller, more flexible mix of capabilities to meet new threats. I would restructure our forces to:
- Stop production of the B-2 bomber. That alone could save $20 billion by 1997.
- Reduce conventional forces in Europe. We can meet our responsibilities there with less than the 150,000 troops now proposed by the President.
My plan would bring cumulative savings of about $100 billion beyond the Bush plan. If favorable political and military trends continue, and we make progress on arms control, we may be able to scale down defense spending still more by the end of the decade. However, we should not commit ourselves now to specific deeper cuts ten years from now. The world is changing quickly, and we must retain our ability to react to potential threats.
Also, we must not forget about the real people whose lives will be turned upside down when defense is cut deeply. The government should look out for its defense workers and the communities they live in. We should insist on advance notification and help communities plan for a transition from a defense to a domestic economy. I have called for a new advanced research agency—a civilian DARPA— that could help capture for commercial work the brilliance of scientists and engineers who have accomplished wonders on the battlefield.
Likewise, those who have served the nation in uniform cannot be duped on the job market. We've got to enlist them to help meet our many needs at home. By retirement options, limiting re-enlistment and slowing the pace of recruitment, we can build down our forces in a gradual way that doesn't abandon people of proven commitment and competence.
The defense policy I have outlined keeps America strong and still yields substantial savings. The American people have earned this peace dividend through forty years of unrelenting vigilance and sacrifice and an investment of trillions of dollars. And they are entitled to have the dividend reinvested in their future.
THE SOUL OF OUR NATION
We must do all these things, and something more. The economic challenges we confront today are not just a matter of statistics and numbers. Behind them are real human beings and real human suffering. I have seen the pain in the faces of unemployed workers in New Hampshire, policemen in New York and Texas, Computer company executives in California, middle-class people everywhere. They're all showing the same pain and worry I hear in the voices of my own people in Arkansas, including men and women I grew up with who played by the rules and now see their dreams for future slipping away.
That's why we're offering a radical new approach to economics. If we offer these hard-working families no hope for the future, no solutions to their problems, no relief for their pain, then fear and insecurity will grow, and the politics of hate and division will spread. If we do not act to bring this country together in common cause to build a better future, David Duke and his kind will be able to divide and destroy our nation. Our streets will get meaner, our families will be devastated, and our very social fabric — our goodness and tolerance and decency as a people — will be torn apart.
I believe with all my heart that the very future of our country is on the line. That is why these are not just economic proposals. They are the way to sae the very soul of our nation.
Copyright © 2023 Eric M. Appleman/Democracy in
Action. 