My Economic Policy
By John Kerry
The Wall Street Journal
Wednesday 15 September 2004
As I travel across this country, I meet store owners, stock traders, factory foremen and optimistic entrepreneurs. Their experiences may be different, but they all agree that America can do better under an administration that is better for business. Business leaders like Warren Buffett, Lee Iacocca and Robert Rubin are joining my campaign because they believe that American businesses will do better if we change our CEO.
Since January 2001, the economy has lost 1.6 million private-sector jobs. The typical family has seen its income fall more than $1,500, while health costs are up more than $3,500.
Today, American companies are investing less and exporting less than they were in 2000 - the first time investment and exports have been down during any presidential term in over 70 years. At the same time, our trade deficit has grown to more than 5% of the economy for the first time ever, a troublesome and unsustainable development.
The economy still has not turned the corner. Over the last year, real wages are still down and even the jobs created in the past 12 months represent the worst job performance for this period of a recovery in over 50 years. Indeed, the total of 1.7 million jobs created over the last year is weaker than even the worst year of job creation under President Clinton, and below what is needed just to find jobs for new applicants entering the work force.
Forty-three months into his presidency, George Bush's main explanation for this dismal economic record is an assortment of blame and excuses. Yet what President Bush cannot explain is how the last 11 presidents before him - Democrats and Republicans - faced wars, recessions and international crises, and yet only he has presided over lost jobs, declining real exports, and the swing from a $5.6 trillion surplus to trillions of dollars of deficits.
While the private sector will always be America's engine for innovation and job creation, President Bush has failed to take any responsibility for missing opportunities to strengthen the conditions for investment, economic confidence and job creation.
When the economy needed short-run stimulus without increasing the long-run deficit, President Bush got it backwards, passing an initial round of tax cuts that Economy.com found had no effect in lifting us out of recession. He then passed more deficit-increasing tax cuts that Goldman Sachs described as "especially ineffective as a stimulative measure." When small businesses and families needed relief from skyrocketing health-care and energy costs, he chose sweetheart deals for special interests over serious plans to reduce costs and help spur new job creation.
With the right choices on the economy, America can do better. American businesses and workers are the most resilient, productive and innovative in the world. And they deserve policies that are better for our economy. My economic plan will do the following: (1) Create good jobs, (2) cut middle-class taxes and health-care costs, (3) restore America's competitive edge, and (4) cut the deficit and restore economic confidence.
* Create good jobs. I strongly believe that America must engage in the global economy, and I voted for trade opening from Nafta to the WTO. But at the same time, I have always believed that we need to fight for a level playing field for America's workers.
I am not trying to stop all outsourcing, but as president, I will end every single incentive that encourages companies to outsource. Today, taxpayers spend $12 billion a year to subsidize the export of jobs. If a company is trying to choose between building a factory in Michigan or Malaysia, our tax code actually encourages it to locate in Asia.
My plan would take the entire $12 billion we save from closing these loopholes each year and use it to cut corporate tax rates by 5%. This will provide a tax cut for 99% of taxpaying corporations. This would be the most sweeping reform and simplification of international taxation in over 40 years. In addition, I have proposed a two-year new jobs tax credit to encourage manufacturers, other businesses affected by outsourcing, and small businesses that created jobs.
American businesses are the most competitive in the world, yet when it comes to enforcing trade agreements the Bush administration refuses to show our competitors that we mean business. They have brought only one WTO case for every three brought by the Clinton administration, while cutting trade enforcement budgets and failing to stand up to China's illegal currency manipulation. That not only costs jobs, it threatens to erode support for open markets and a growing global economy.
* Cut middle-class taxes and health costs. Families are being increasingly squeezed by falling incomes and rising costs for everything from health care to college. But spiraling health-care and energy costs squeeze businesses too, encouraging them to lay off workers and shift to part-time and temporary workers.
Under my plan, the tax cuts would be extended and made permanent for 98% of Americans. In addition, I support new tax cuts for college, child care and health care - in total, more than twice as large as the new tax cuts President Bush is proposing.
I have proposed a health plan that would increase coverage while cutting costs. It builds on and strengthens the current system, giving patients their choice of doctors, and providing new incentives instead of imposing new mandates.
My health plan will offer businesses immediate relief on their premiums. By providing employers some relief on catastrophic costs that are driving up premiums for everyone, we will save employers and workers about 10% of total health premiums.
Our hospitals and doctors have the best technology for saving lives, but often still rely on pencil and paper when it comes to tracking medical tests and billing. As a result, we spend over $350 billion a year on red tape, not to mention the cost of performing duplicative or redundant tests. My plan will modernize our information technology, create private electronic medical records, and create incentives for the adoption of the latest disease management.
And I won't be afraid to take on prescription drug or medical malpractice costs. We will make it easier for generic drugs to come to market and allow the safe importation of pharmaceuticals from countries like Canada. Finally, we will require medical malpractice plaintiffs to try nonbinding mediation, oppose unjustified punitive damage awards and penalize lawyers who file frivolous suits with a tough "three strikes and you're out" rule.
This plan will make our businesses more competitive by making our health care more affordable.
* Restore America's competitive edge. America has fallen to 10th in the world in broadband technology. Some of our best scientists are being encouraged to work overseas because of the restrictions on federal funding for stem-cell research. President Bush has proposed cutting 21 of the 24 research areas that are so critical to long-term growth. We need to invest in research because when we shortchange research we shortchange our future.
My plan would invest in basic research and end the ban on stem-cell research. It would invest more in energy research, including clean coal, hydrogen and other alternative fuels. It would boost funding at the National Science Foundation and continue increases at the National Institutes of Health and other government research labs. It will provide tax credits to help jumpstart broadband in rural areas and the new higher-speed broadband that has the potential to transform everything from e-government to tele-medicine. I would promote private-sector innovation policies, including the elimination of capital gains for long-term investments in small business start-ups.
To ensure we have the workers to compete in an innovation economy, we need more young people to not only enter but complete college, we need more young women and minorities to enter the fields of math and science, and we need to make it easier for working parents to get the lifelong learning opportunities they need to excel at both their current and their future jobs.
* Cut the deficit and restore economic confidence. When President Bush was in New York for the Republican convention, he did not even pay lip service to reducing the deficit. His record makes even Republicans wary. From missions to Mars to a pricey Medicare bill, President Bush has proposed or passed more than $6 trillion in initiatives without paying for any of them. The record is clear: A deficit reduction promise from George W. Bush is not exactly a gilt-edged bond.
Americans can trust my promise to cut the deficit because my record backs up my word. When I first joined the Senate, I broke with my own party to support the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings deficit reduction plan, which President Reagan signed into law. In 1993, I cast a deciding vote to bring the deficit under control. And in 1997, I supported the bipartisan balanced budget agreement.
I will restore fiscal discipline and cut the deficit in half in four years. First, by imposing caps, so that discretionary spending - outside of security and education - does not grow faster than inflation. If Congress cannot control spending, it will automatically be cut across the board. Second, I will reinstitute the "pay as you go" rule, which requires that no one propose or pass a new program without a way to pay for it. Third, I will ask for Congress to grant me a constitutionally acceptable version of line-item veto power and to establish a commission to eliminate corporate welfare like the one John McCain and I have fought for.
I am not waiting for next year to change the tone on fiscal discipline. Every day on the campaign trail, I explain how I pay for all my proposals. By rolling back the recent Bush tax cuts for families making over $200,000 per year, we can pay for health care and education. By cutting subsidies to banks that make student loans and restoring the principle that "polluters pay," we can afford to invest in national service and new energy technologies. My new rules won't just apply to programs I don't like; they will apply to my own priorities as well.
Cleaning up President Bush's fiscal mess will not be easy, but to ensure a strong and sustainable economic future we have to make the tough choices to move America's growing deficits back in the right direction.
On Nov. 2 we will have a national shareholders meeting. On the ballot will be the choice to continue with President Bush's policies or return to the fiscal sanity and pro-growth polices that proved so successful in the 1990s. You will choose.
Mr. Kerry is the Democratic Party's candidate for president.
Below is the text of an email I received from FAIR today. It raises some valid points regarding the form, legitimacy, and content of the Killian memos that allege that the President disobeyed a direct order by not showing up for his physical and that he skipped at least five months of his Air National Guard Service. I'll have more on why the issue is important tomorrow.
FAIR-L
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
Media analysis, critiques and activism
http://www.fair.org/activism/cbs-memos-knox.html
ACTION ALERT:
The Mysterious Case of the CBS Memos
September 16, 2004
The secretary of George W. Bush's National Guard commander, coming
forward to describe memos supposedly written by her boss as "correct" but "not
real" (Dallas Morning News, 9/14/04), has deepened the mystery about
the disputed documents.
Marian Carr Knox is a compelling witness who provides substantive
reasons to doubt the authenticity of the memos bearing the signature of Lt.
Col. Jerry Killian-- forcing CBS News to run an interview with her (CBS
Evening News and 60 Minutes II, 9/15/04) that cast doubt on aspects of its
September 9 reporting on the Bush Guard story. At the same time, she
debunked several of the specific reasons other news outlets had given
for questioning the memos that were featured in that report.
For example, an ABC News report (Nightline, 9/9/04) questioning the
documents featured members of Killian's family charging that their
relative would not have written anything like these memos. Killian's
widow asserted that he "did not take copious notes" and "carried everything
in his mind," while his son said, "It was not the nature of my father to
keep private files like this, nor would it have been in his own interest to
do so."
Knox, however, told the New York Times (9/15/04) that "Mr. Killian had
her type memorandums recording the problems" with Bush's Guard service, and
that "he kept them in a private file under lock and key."
Like many skeptics of the documents, ABC also drew attention to
superscript characters that appear in the memos (Good Morning America,
9/10/04), stating that "forgery experts...say that this kind of
superscript was not available on a typewriter in 1972 or 1973." Yet
Knox (Dallas Morning News, 9/14/04) said that her old typewriter, while not
used to create the memos CBS featured, did "ha[ve] a key with the 'th'
superscript character that has been the focus of much debate in the CBS
memos."
Several other assertions made by document experts in an ABC (9/10/04)
online piece appear to be similarly ill-grounded. "The font used in the
memos is Times Roman, which was in use for printing but not in
typewriters," ABC reported. Actually, Times New Roman, as the font is
usually called, was adapted for the IBM Selectric (a brand of
typewriter Knox said she used-- Dallas Morning News, 9/14/04) by the font's
original designer, Stanley Morison, in the late 1960s (AIGA Design Forum,
3/10/04; Media Matters, 9/10/04).
(Much has been made of the fact that the typeface apparently used in
the memos resembles the default typeface of the common Microsoft Word
word-processing program, which is Times New Roman. But a side-by-side
comparison of the characters in the document with MS Word characters
shows that they are obviously not identical; the numeral characters in
particular are quite distinct. See JuliusBlog, 9/10/04).
With a credible first-hand witness to Killian's correspondence coming
forward to cast doubt on the memos' authenticity, however, one has to
conclude that the skeptics of the documents may well be right, if for
many of the wrong reasons. (Some skeptics did raise the same questions
involving terminology used in the memos that were cited by Knox in her
comments.)
But while Knox greatly undermines the documentation of the CBS
reporting, it is important for critics to recognize that she corroborates the
substance of that reporting. "The information in them is correct," she
told the New York Times (9/15/04). "It looks like someone may have read
the originals and put that together."
That "someone," a report in Newsweek (9/30/04) suggested, may have been
Bill Burkett, a former Texas National Guard lieutenant colonel who has
charged that Bush's Guard records were culled in 1997 to eliminate
"anything there that will embarrass the [then] governor" (Dallas
Morning News, 2/11/04). While these charges were dismissed by the White House at the time, if Burkett is the source of memos that accurately reflect the
thinking of Bush's commander, that would support the notion that Burkett had access to National Guard files that no longer seem to exist. An anonymous person at CBS told the Times-- 9/15/04-- that Burkett was a source for the network's reporting, but did not say that he provided the memos.
If Burkett is the source of the documents, it's not certain that the
memos are forged recreations and not originals. Dennis Adams, a Guard
associate of Burkett's, told the New York Times (9/16/04) that Burkett told him
of the document destruction, and that "some of the things in the trash
were pulled out." Given that the documents have not yet been conclusively
shown to have been created on a computer, it remains a possibility that they
are originals salvaged by Burkett-- perhaps typed by someone other than
Knox.
Nevertheless, the testimony by Knox does raise questions about whether
CBS News exercised due diligence in evaluating the memos before using them
to buttress its September 9 reporting. Some document experts have said
subsequently that CBS ignored concerns they raised about the memos (ABC
News, 9/14/04; Washington Post, 9/15/04), which could indicate that the
network cut corners in its fact-checking process.
On the other hand, CBS could have been legitimately reassured that some
of the issues that the experts raised-- such as the use of superscript--
were not incompatible with documents of the era. An internal review of CBS's
newsgathering on this story could help to clear up questions about the
network's journalistic performance.
And even if CBS stands by its promise of confidentiality to the source
who provided the memos, the network could do more to help other news
outlets investigate the origins of the curious documents-- notably by releasing
higher-quality scans that would facilitate analysis of their production.
(USA Today, which reported having copies of the same documents, could
also make high-quality electronic versions available.)
But media should not lose sight of the fact that if questions about how
CBS reported this story are important, it is mainly because the story
itself is important. The information in the memos that Knox vouched for
includes assertions that Bush was suspended from flying for refusal to
obey a direct order to take a required flight physical, and for failure
to perform to standards of the Texas Air National Guard. Knox also
bolsters the allegation that Bush's commanding officer was under pressure to
"sugar coat" Bush's records-- and that he was willing to "backdate" records to
benefit Bush.
The fact that someone was able to bring these charges to CBS, even
though they no longer seem to exist in Bush's official records, lends at least
some credence to the very serious charge that Bush's records have been
sanitized. Whether or not CBS's journalistic standards will hold up
under the scrutiny they will no doubt receive in coming days, it's clear that
evidence of an official cover-up of Bush's service record is a more
pressing story than whatever reportorial failings Dan Rather might be
guilty of.
ACTION:
Please encourage CBS News to conduct a review of the standards used in
its September 9 reporting on Bush's National Guard service-- while
continuing to pursue the important questions raised in that reporting about a
possible cover-up of Bush's record.
CONTACT:
CBS Evening News
mailto:evening@cbsnews.com
Think The current Administration will keep you safe? Think again. (Courtesy of Eric Alterman and MSNBC)
******
John Kerry voted FOR 16 of the 19 Pentagon spending bills while he was in office. Since 1997, Kerry voted FOR every single regular DOD appropriation bill and FOR every authorization bill. John Kerry did NOT specifically vote against the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, did NOT specifically vote against the M1-A ABRAMS tank or the Patriot Missile (he has opposed extension of our nuclear capability, including Star Wars).
As Secretary of Defense,
CHENEY called for the elimination of the Apache helicopter,
CHENEY called for the elimination of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle,
CHENEY called for the elimination of the M-1s
CHENEY called for the elimination of the F-14 and the F-16
CHENEY called for the elimination of the B-2 bomber (which Kerry also opposed for its nuclear capabilities).
CHENEY called for the elimination of the MX missile.
CHENEY helped cut the defense budget by $300 BILLION.
******
Seems to me that the Vice President was aganst almost all of our major weapons systems. What would we be fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq with if Dick Cheney had his way? The VP also criticized Reagan's Defense Budgets as needless overspending.
The U.S. Secret Service apparently has a new job: violating Freedom of the Press.
Michael Moore somehow wangled press credentials for the Republican National Convention from USA Today, but when other media figures tried to interview him, the Secret Service cordoned him off and refused to allow anyone to approach (transcript below).
1st clip begins at 31:19
NPR Reporter Andrea Seabrook: Hello Frank. I'm standing here with Michael Moore, the filmmaker who made Fahrenheit 911. Mr. Moore, why are you here?
Michael Moore: I'm here writing a guest column each day for USA Today.
Seabrook: OK, so you have credentials to...
Secret Service Agent Come around here
Seabrook: I'm going to have to join him. They're kicking me out of this exact area but I can go around to...They just asked me to come around to the other side here.
NPR Convention Anchor Fred Stachio (phonetic spelling): Andrea Seabrook on the floor with Michael Moore.
Seabrook: [unintelligible]
Stachio: I know you're still there. I just want to be sure that you can still hear us while your being moved, Andrea.
Seabrook: Well, well I'm not...the Secret Service has blocked off that area. They're calling it a...a hazard because of the number of people who are a gathered around him. There aren't that many people, but the Secret Service won't let me around him anymore, so I think a the access to him might be cut off for a moment. We'll try to get back with him.
2nd clip begins at 39:55
Seabrook: Yes, I am in the middle of a...you might be able to hear the Secret Service yelling into my mic at the same time. There, there are a bunch of Secret Service that have surrounded Michael Moore's section. There are three or four reporters with him right now, but they are trying to kick all of the reporters and press photographers who are around him out of his area. The convention staff is also here. They're standing here telling us that we have to move from this are...they're obviously disturbed by the fact that Michael Moore is here and want as little public here as possible.
Stachio: Can we hear? Can we hear what's going on? Can you stick a mic in there? I don't know if we can hear.
Seabrook: Yeah...ah...eh...they've sort of moved me away from that area.
Stachio: I don't understand. Who is it? Is it Secret Service?
Seabrook: It's Secret Service which is interesting because the Secret Service of all agencies is the one that remains...is the least involved in the sort of political...political kinds of things, but of course they always cover the candidates and they have to be involved in the convention like this. They claim that what they're doing is for safety reasons, although there is a almost nobody around Michael Moore right now. So a we'll see if I can a...
Secret Service Agent: [crosstalk] thank you very much
Seabrook: Yeah, I'm being herded back in four different ways right now.
I don't much care how John Kerry earned his Purple Heart Medals, it's pretty obvious that some prominent Republicans also earned some for minor wounds -- Like Bob Dole, who said his first such award was for a self-inflicted (accidental) shrapnel wound that the Army treated "with Merchurachrome and a Purple Heart".
What I do care about is that the GOP delegates are ridiculing every Purple Heart ever awarded by wearing their little Purple Heart Band-Aids. These people need to grow up. At least they are finally showing how they really feel about the men and women in our military. This is less dignified brand of the instruction Spartan mothers gave sons on their way to war: come home with your shield, or on it. The GOP apparently doesn't believe you've done your duty unless you come back on your shield -- and how many of their sons (those of the delegates and the politcians) are in harm's way?
Comments are back on, and the blog-spammers are back. Nice.