The following is presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich's plan for bringing good jobs back to America. It and much more information about this visionary candidate can be found on his campaign website.
Join the Kucinich group on Gather: http://kucinich2008.gather.com/
Learn more about the campaign: www.kucinich.us
Putting America Back to Work IN America
Our country is facing twin crises: high unemployment and a decrepit infrastructure. At the same time, millions of manufacturing and high-tech jobs are being shipped overseas. I have a plan that will turn our problems around and put Americans back to work in America.
By pulling out of NAFTA, we can return jobs that have been lost, including high-wage jobs in the information technology field. By initiating a WPA-style jobs program that puts Americans back to work rebuilding America, we can create millions of jobs and simultaneously improve our quality of life.
As a nation, we face a predicament of either buy American, or bye-bye America. Unless we cancel the WTO and pull out of NAFTA, corporations will continue to move jobs out of the country and produce goods in developing and third-world nations (with great costs to those countries' workers and environment). In order to buy American, we have to assure that goods are still being produced in America. That's why we must first cancel the WTO and pull out of NAFTA, which have lost us millions of jobs and spurred a soaring trade deficit.
I have a Jobs Plan that will put 2 million Americans back to work at a living wage in such enterprises as rebuilding schools, designing roads, refurbishing environmental projects, and manufacturing steel for water systems. The Kucinich jobs plan will also increase the quality of life in America, by making highways safer, water cleaner, and schools more conducive to learning.
Right now, unemployment stands at 6.2% nationally. Long-term unemployment has become a persistent problem. Nearly 2 million Americans have been looking for work unsuccessfully for over 6 months, while over 9 million Americans are unemployed. According to the Economic Policy Institute, there are three unemployed people for every job opening.
Ironically, at the same time so many Americans can't find work, there is so much work to do. The crisis of our decaying infrastructure is something we see every day when we sit in traffic bound by orange barrels that line our highways. It is something that school children experience at their desks, crowded together under leaking roofs. In cities, municipal sewer systems overflow into rivers, streams, and estuaries. These events occur with increasing regularity as systems age. Infrastructure problems threaten our productivity, our economy, our environment, and our health.
It is time to put America back to work. It is time to address the twin crises by putting unemployed Americans to work rebuilding America's neglected infrastructure. The Kucinich plan will make that happen.
The Kucinich Jobs Plan to Rebuild America
The Kucinich plan calls for the creation of a low-cost federal financing mechanism to administer $50 billion in zero-interest loans every year to localities for infrastructure projects for ten years. Twenty percent of these funds would be targeted for school construction and repair.
The Kucinich plan also calls for a 15% reduction in the military budget, redirecting that $65 billion towards hometown security issues such as education, jobs, and health care for all.
State and local governments would continue to issue bonds to finance infrastructure projects. But under the Kucinich plan, the federal government would be authorized to buy those bonds. States would have to repay the principal, but unlike normal municipal borrowing, these bonds would pay zero interest. So, the cost of borrowing for infrastructure improvement would be reduced by half.
The federal government would hold these bonds in the Federal Bank for Infrastructure Modernization (FBIM). The bank, as an extension of the Federal Financing Bank under the Treasury, would administer the loans. The loans would bear a small fee of one-quarter of one percent of the loan principal to cover the administrative costs of the FBIM. In order to provide the money for the loans, the FBIM would hold a portion of the Treasury securities that the Federal Reserve normally holds.
The Fed currently holds about $300 billion in Treasury securities. Transferring about $50 billion annually to the FBIM would still allow the Fed to operate as it does now to add liquidity to the system. The Fed, instead of buying securities, would buy the mortgage loans of the states. This way, the FBIM's finances would be integrated by the Federal Open Market Committee so as not to disrupt its ability to promote economic stability.
This amount would be varied, so that the funds could be used as a tool to foster stable economic growth. During times of economic slowdown, the FBIM would make more loans available to spur investment. During times of economic boom, the FBIM would make fewer loans available.
All of the jobs within this new system would be living-wage jobs, because I would raise the minimum wage to at least $8 an hour and create an index so that the minimum wage rises automatically with cost of living increases. If we establish both universal health care and universal pre-kindergarten, workers will no longer be plagued by the high costs of health care and child care. The net savings of these programs is enormous, and as result, I believe we will have a healthier society and a more resilient economy.
The Kucinich Plan to Keep Jobs in America
The exodus of jobs from our shores and the "race to the bottom" for workers around the world is an obvious result of NAFTA and the WTO, both of which make it impossible to place taxes or tariffs on outsourced work. The search for countries where workers are unrepresented and environmental rules are lax must end. NAFTA, WTO, "Fast Track" legislation, and the Free Trade Area of the Americas must be rejected and replaced with Fair Trade policies in which bilateral trade agreements are negotiated to provide for living wages for workers and environmental safeguards. Canceling NAFTA and the WTO will enable the U.S. to protect high-tech jobs from outsourcing. This, plus careful monitoring of H-1B visa practices, will slow the tide of outsourcing.
The Bush Administration has embraced the concept of outsourcing American jobs overseas as a new form of international trade. Where is the patriotism in this? U.S. companies are expected to ship 200,000 jobs a year to India in the near future, in pursuit of lower wages, and we have already lost a significant fraction of our manufacturing jobs to countries overseas. In this continued loss of control over the development of our own technology and materials, and the continued loss of hundreds of thousands of American jobs, we are creating serious threats to our national and economic security.
I am advocating a new policy to replace our current H-1B and L-1 visas, a policy that does not put skilled American workers in the high-tech industry at risk. There are many tech-industry jobs that could be done by Americans who are out of work, and often the immigrants who come to our country on H-1B visas find themselves in indentured servitude situations.
We cannot continue to tolerate the loopholes and offshore profit shifting that corporations engage in to get out of paying their fair share of taxes. We must also take a much harder line on corporate crime, by increasing the roles of the FTC, the SEC, and the Justice Department in addressing it.
We live in strange times when patriotism merely extends to unnecessary wars and not to protecting the lives and welfare of American families by keeping jobs here. It is necessary to promote a new corporate responsibility and sense of shared commitment, so that the race to minimize wages for workers and maximize shareholder profits in already profitable businesses is considered unpatriotic and punishable by tax policy. We must reject Bush's efforts to transfer more and more wealth upward, by creating an intelligent tax structure that promotes the public good.
My entire mission is aimed at increasing the benefits to the public good. My campaigns are financed completely by ordinary individuals, not large corporations. I am not beholden to any corporate interests; there are no strings attached. My campaigns and my work represent all the people of our nation, not just the wealthy elite.
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Comments: 24
The infrastructure plan is more than needed. I know everyone complains about big government, but we still have a large government which has now been created to spy on its citizens. Look at our defense spending; it's obscene as well. America recouperated from the Depression of the 1920s/1930s by increasing the war machine during WWII and then investing in infrastructure once it ended. The high paying jobs created gave us our boom of the 1950s and lasted until American products fell below standard and was surpassed by (at that time) Japan.
Isolationism is one of looking at the idea of leaving NAFTA and the WTO. The democratic values that we value in this country are not represented by these economic institutions. The citizens of WTO and NAFTA member countries have little or no input into the policies these economic institutions embody. So really it is not about cutting America off from the rest of the world. It is about making the institutions that govern the global economy more democratic. It is about ending the policies that allow corporations to jump from country to country, in search of cheap labor and weak environmental regulations.
Dennis Kucinich understands that the people of the world can either thrive together or suffer together. As president he would do more than any other candidate to help put an end global poverty. Economic institutions like the WTO and NAFTA perpetuate the idea that the developed world is out to exploit the developed world. When America exits these institutions it will be better able to reach out to the third world, fight terrorism at its roots, and prevent future failed states. Not to mention that Kucinich actually cares about helping people and building a better world. Every one of his policies reflects his world view that humanity can either swim towards a better life together or, divided, sink into conflict.
One look at his wife tells that story. But I was referring to his 'big' ideas on getting out of Iraq, getting out NAFTA and all his other hairbrain schemes. This big ship we call America turns slowly... Dennis does not grasp that.
Don, you surely must know how foolish you look when you make such ignorant statements. People tell you often enough. Why do you do this to yourself?
Lost Soul, even I have to draw lines somewhere. Please tell me we will never come to the point where Democrats date, much less MARRY Republicans.
I have been reading about the SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT agenda, which is no more than a philosophy to bring ordinary human beings (us) under the full control of a narrow human elite. That means
1) End to sovereignty
2) Abolition of private property
3) Restructure of the family unit
4) Restrictions on mobility
The methods of achievement for these objectives funded by or tax money
NAFTA is a key component of this nightmare. Most candidates now are all for it.
Kucinich is the only one who has his head on straight and actually does care about the people.
Don, I think even you and your acceptable sized girlfriend/wife would not be too happy about that end scenario.
Just another example of how the far right just does not get it. Trade with other nations does not HAVE to require losing every significant job in the nation. I dare say the country was in a tad better shape economically when there were tariffs and restrictions to trade. You may wish to argue that all you like, but the facts bely your position.
You got a problem with Hee Haw? That's some fine entertainment.
Republicans have been marrying Democrats for years. I am the product of such a mixed marriage and that one survived for fifty-five years and kidney failure not my mother was responsible for my father's death.
David,
Well said!
NAFTA represents all that is wrong with global capitalism. Like other neoliberal efforts it is billed as "free trade", which is designed to stimulate growth and uplift communities out of poverty. In reality, though, its simply a vehicle for powerful MNCs and powerful states to introduce massive privatization, strangulation of government and its safety nets, along with the introduction of other structural reforms and lending programs.
Evidence overwhelmingly shows that neoliberalism fails. There is no exception with NAFTA. But the profits for the MNCs are staggering, meanwhile. And these measures, as you point out, are wholly undemocratic. They have the opposite effect of enslaving the population to massive national debt, for instance.
The US and Britain preach "free trade" and economic liberalization, but in truth, these countries obtained their own economic dominance through years and years of protectionism. The best recent examples of countries actually developing are India and China, two countries that did not accept washington's neoliberal medicine. Instead, they pursued growth their own way, and they often employed protectionist measures. States that follow the "Washington consensus" are often the most tragic cases in recent history: Brazil, Argentina, etc., etc. Just look at the results of their cooperation and openness.
Kucinich is by far the bravest politician running for president because he is right on these issues and he is up against some pretty powerful interests. He's abolutely correct on this issue, and many others.
Eugene McCarthy, Bobby Kennedy, Ralph Nader, Dennis Kuchinich and numerous others have articulated critiques of irresponsible corporate profiteering and indifference to the manipulation of social contracts between people and nations. These latter day mini-prophets, despite the technology available for reaching a wide and dispersed audience, have failed to coalesce mankind's progressive dreams of freedom and opportunity against the inertia, division and obstruction of "the system". Their candidacies have diluted our demands for change within the two party system that controls elective politics in the this nation.
We remain divided in our search for a consensus that can speak effectively to our fellow Americans struggling with the economic and social complexities of large populations and immense economies. Young adults, in particular, have generally adopted an indifferent stance regarding politics. They seem aware their participation is inadequate to bring change and the information they receive is so manipulated and homogenized that it is meritless.
For me, Dennis Kucinich presents the appearance of the enthusiastic and dedicated head cheerleader for Slippery Rock State at the pep rally for Saturday's game against Ohio State. He's honest and true, commited and determined ... he knows what the team is up against and he will give his all to fight to win ... but he's NOT a quarterback. In the House he articulates what 'should' be said, but is ineffective in leading his fellow Congressmen to a condition of statesmanship.
Advertising, propaganda, common wisdom - as well as threat and intimidation - serve to corrupt, complicate, disperse and diffuse efforts by these leaders' messages to refocus policies and concepts from the crrent priority of 'more' to some sense of 'better'. We have become conditioned to our values being co-opted by "new and improved" when we cynically understand that repackaging does not mean newly conceived. These wishful leaders have no access to the resources necessary to 'outsell' the 'system'. It is, as Mark Twain is said to have admonished , " ...the best government money can buy".
We are conditioned to seek and reward simplicity. The issues humanity faces are complex, intertwined and, often, conflicted. Enlightened consideration of long term goals and solutions for problems is NOT rewarded by a population whose next month's bills represent the possibility of bankruptcy. Corrective action is viewed as 'backward' looking ... and "press on..damn the torpedos ... full speed ahead" is the motto we are taught. To stop and consider the future costs of environmental rape, waste and pollution, corporate considation and vertical monopolies, global control of labor and raw materials are all too difficult for us to fathom individually and too unprofitable to be considered by the 'system'. While I remain more optimistic than the last seven years should allow, the future is murky, at best.
The Republicans continue their corporate search for a cardboard cutout candidate and a 'message' that will energize and re-connect their base while expanding the information-age weapon of wonderous warrantless wiretapping "security". Virtually ALL the Democrat candidates for President offer, to me, a substantially more thoughtful and humane approach to governing than W's chauvenist simplicity and empire building. Kucinich stands out with revolutionary spirit. Hillary's respectfulness for money and power remind me that she and Bill effectively neutered Al Gore's intellectual effectiveness. Barack's articulate evangelism offer a grander vision of our human potential, and Biden, Dodd and Richardson demonstrate that competent, good men can dedicate their intellects and political wisdom toward positive public service.
I have comitted my efforts to support for John Edwards in the hope of bringing about serious change. His substantive, detailed policy and program planning seems to show understanding of and preparation for addressing the issues the United States faces. The marginalization, both subtle and overt, of his campaign efforts by media, coreporate and Republican spokemen suggest his past successes against powerful interests in the legal arena hve them spooked. I would like to see a return to a populist foundation for our interaction with the world ... just a thought.
Since that time the demographics have completely changed, and groups like the 2020 caucus have formed in the Minnesota State Legislature. These bipartisan groups across the country are planning to deal with the coming tsunami in the workplace, and in State budget priorities.
Meanwhile, these kinds of policies, that could have been written by Walter Mondale, keep the attention of those on the left and the right who call for protectionism, job programs, and programs that are no longer in sync with demographics.
I'll stop before I start quoting Bob Dylan lyrics.
I still have reserves about the wage hike, as when they do this, the Unions will just get another forced wage increase, and we'll be right back were we are now.
The WTO has frequently been criticized for protecting the interests of the world's most powerful economies. African nations - among others - have correctly pointed out that they are being asked to adopt free market policies while the US continues to subsidize its own farms and products.