Doing Right By America

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Senator Tom Daschle

In just over 100 days, the American people will make an historic and fateful decision.

They will decide whether we stay the course we’re on, or move our country in a new and better direction.

As I’ve traveled around South Dakota and the nation, I’ve heard a lot about the hopes and dreams Americans have for their families. I’ve listened to ranchers and farmers, teachers and mothers, police officers and firefighters.

I am always humbled by the honesty of their message. Families in South Dakota and across our nation aren’t asking for special deals or special advantage. All they want is a fair opportunity on a level playing field. They want to know that there’s only one set of rules, and that the game isn’t rigged against them.

Most of all, they want to know that as we make decisions affecting the future of our country, our first priority is Doing Right by America.

If a policy isn’t going to make us stronger and safer, if it’s not going to expand opportunity and put common sense ahead of ideology, then it’s not doing right by America.

Doing Right by America rejects the defeatist view that we have enough money to rebuild Iraq, but not enough resources to take care of America.

At its heart, Doing Right by America means fulfilling our moral responsibility – together – to create a better future for our children and grandchildren.

It’s a simple value that Americans have always lived by, but it’s been pushed aside these last four years. Boardroom priorities have crowded out kitchen-table needs, and special interests – like Enron, Halliburton, and the giant oil companies – have undermined our common purpose. Years of progress in spreading opportunity for regular Americans has been turned on its head.

We’re all proud that America is a place of great wealth and success. But the genius of America has never been just the ability of the rich to get richer. The true genius of America has always been the promise that all Americans who work hard and play by the rules will have the opportunity to succeed.

The promise of opportunity is what inspired my grandparents, and tens of millions of other immigrants, to start a new life here.

And nearly every day, I hear a new story that reminds me that my most important responsibility is defending the opportunity of regular Americans to build a better life for themselves and their children.

Middle-class families deserve an opportunity to compete for good jobs that reward work.

They deserve an opportunity to send their children to good schools, and then on to good colleges and universities, without busting the family budget.

They deserve an opportunity to purchase health insurance at a reasonable price so they can see a doctor – one they choose – when they’re sick or injured, and so they can fill a prescription if their doctor writes one.

They deserve the opportunity to be safe – safe in their communities and safe in their homes.

And, after a lifetime of hard work and years of paying into Social Security, they deserve the opportunity to retire with dignity and security.

That’s not a lot to ask. But in some ways, it’s everything. Widening the circle of opportunity and prosperity – year after year, decade after decade – is what makes America great. It’s our heritage, and it must be our legacy.

But today, those with power often seem to have lost sight of this fundamental value and the difference between right and wrong.

We saw that a few months ago, when a major telecommunications company gave one of its executives a severance package worth more than $8 million. This executive had worked there for only seven months, and he was leaving because he hadn’t done his job well.

As the company handed the failed executive his $8 million check, it handed out something else to 12,000 of its rank-and-file workers: pink slips.

That’s not doing right.

Around that same time, a man I’ve known for years called my office. His name is Brad Besler. He’s 47 and a fourth-generation rancher in western South Dakota. He and his wife, Fern, have five children – four have graduated from college, and the youngest is still in grade school.

Brad called my office because South Dakota is entering its fifth straight year of drought and he’s worried. Two years ago, the drought was so bad, and trying to survive it was so stressful, that he suffered a stroke that left him blind in one eye. A few months ago, he had another stroke.

If the drought is anywhere near as bad this year, he says he’ll have to sell his entire herd of cattle – the only income his family has. If that happens, he’ll have to drop his family’s health insurance, which runs $896 a month.

He’s trying desperately to avoid that because – with a blind eye, a bad back, and a history of strokes – he knows that if he loses his coverage, it will be next to impossible for him to ever get health insurance again.

Listening to Brad Besler, two things strike you. The first is his incredible courage and willingness to work hard to support his family.

The second is that Brad’s government seems to have forgotten about him.

We’re not doing right by Brad Besler. And in my view, we’re not doing right by America when we hand over millions to a lucky few who already have so much, while ignoring the real needs of those who are working so hard and so honestly.

But that’s exactly what’s happening in America today. There’s an ever growing list of government policies that reward wealth, not work. That’s not an accident; it’s a conscious choice.

With Republicans in control of the entire federal government, it often seems as if their leaders are trying to narrow the circle of opportunity and prosperity in America. And they’ve put the needs of middle-class families on the back burner.

We see that even as the economy slowly improves. Corporations reap most of the benefits, while regular workers continue to struggle. In fact, during this recovery, corporations have gotten twice their normal share of the increase in national income, while workers have received their lowest share in over 50 years.

As the chief economist at Merrill Lynch observed: “We’ve had a redistribution of income to the corporate sector.”

Or as Warren Buffett, one of the wealthiest men in America, put it: “If there’s class warfare going on, my class is winning.”

That isn’t good for most American families, and it isn’t doing right by America.

We can do better, and we have done better. During the Clinton Administration, America created 21 million new private-sector jobs. Now, just four years later, the Bush Administration is on track to have the worst job-creation record since the Great Depression.

During the first two-and-a-half years of the Bush Administration, we lost over three million private-sector jobs. And although the economy has finally started to recover some jobs in recent months, the new jobs pay, on average, 13 percent less than the jobs they’re replacing.

As a result, too many average families are losing ground, even as they work harder and harder. And to make matters worse, the Bush Administration continues to demand that millions of employees lose their right to overtime pay.

Since President Bush took office, real weekly earnings for average Americans have not grown at all – but their expenses have soared. Gas prices have gone up 23%; college tuition has gone up 28%; and health care premiums have gone up 36%.

And while the middle class is getting squeezed, huge corporations are growing rich. While consumers are struggling with record gas prices, Chevron-Texaco is reporting record profits. While family incomes have stagnated, overall corporate profits have risen by more than 50%.

A generation ago, the average American CEO made about 50 times more than the average worker. Now, thanks to bad policies and even worse values, the average CEO makes 300 times more than the average worker.

That’s just not right. And unless we change course, it’s going to get worse.

Instead of fighting to keep good jobs here, Republican leaders in Washington are using tax breaks to reward companies for shipping jobs overseas. Businesses are walking jobs out of the country, and the government is holding the door for them.

A few months ago, President Bush’s top economic advisor told us that sending jobs overseas “is probably a plus for the economy, in the long run. The President believes this.”

The President also seems to believe it’s okay to send millions of dollars in unemployment pay to former Iraqi soldiers, while denying help to American workers whose jobs have been shipped overseas.

That’s doing wrong by America.

As the election nears, the President’s economic team has been grasping for ways to make a bad economy sound good. To deal with the loss of more than 2 million manufacturing jobs, they floated the idea of redefining “manufacturing jobs” to include fast-food workers preparing Big Macs and Whoppers. Manufacturing once meant building cars or fabricating steel for good wages – now the Bush Administration says it might mean putting a burger on a bun for minimum wage.

That’s not being straight with America.

And we’re not doing right by America by running up trillions in new debt and pretending it’s not a problem.

During the Clinton Administration, we turned huge deficits into record surpluses. Now, just four years later, $5 trillion of expected surpluses have turned into $3 trillion of new debt.

As a result, we are giving our children something they don’t want and don’t deserve: a $25,000 birth tax. That’s the share of our national debt owed by every child in America. My two grandchildren both inherited that debt the moment they were born.

It wasn’t long ago that Republicans came to Washington promising fiscal discipline. Instead of keeping that promise, they’ve taken us on a four-year fiscal binge that has squandered record budget surpluses and created record budget deficits.

In 2000, Republican leaders, including President Bush, promised that “[t]he Social Security surplus is off-limits, off budget, and will not be touched.”

Four years later, they’ve already raided $500 billion from Social Security to pay for tax cuts, and they’re planning to take another $2.4 trillion – $2.4 trillion – over the next 10 years.

That’s your money. It comes out of your paycheck. It’s supposed to be there when you retire. It’s not supposed to be used to pay for tax breaks for millionaire CEOs or to reward companies for shipping American jobs overseas.

Looting Social Security is not doing right by American workers and retirees, and we can’t let it happen.

The Bush Administration is draining trillions from Social Security, borrowing hundreds of billions from China and Japan to pay our debts, sending billions of dollars to Iraq for roads and schools, and then planning on cutting billions here at home for education, environmental protection, medical research, Head Start, and nutrition programs for pregnant women and children. The Administration even wants to cut $1 billion from homeland security at the very time it’s warning of likely new terrorist attacks.

That’s not doing right by America, and it doesn’t make any sense.

But this Administration is making a habit of decisions that don’t make much sense.

A couple of months ago, the Secretary of Health and Human Services defended the Administration’s plan to provide health care to all Iraqis, but not to all Americans. He said, “Even if you don’t have health insurance in America, you get taken care of. That could be defined as universal coverage.”

Try telling that to the nearly 44 million Americans who are uninsured – 4 million more than when George Bush took office – and the millions more who are under-insured.

Try telling that to the millions of families who, year after year, are watching out-of-control health insurance premiums bust the family budget.

Or try telling that to the Lakota woman in South Dakota whose sister died a few months ago from a stomach cancer that went undetected because the Indian Health Service didn’t have money to refer her to a specialist.

In America today, seniors can’t afford the medicine they need and have discovered that last year’s Medicare law is a sham that provides billions to insurance and drug companies. Many veterans can’t use the VA health system anymore because of arbitrary, budget-driven barriers to care. And 32,000 National Guard members and reservists who are serving in Iraq will lose their health coverage when they come home because the Bush Administration refuses to extend their coverage.

These aren’t unintended consequences – they are clear choices.

When record debt makes it difficult to repair our crumbling roads and bridges, fund our children’s schools, support our police and firefighters, and honor our commitment to America’s veterans, that’s the result of bad choices.

When American soldiers are sent into combat without armor in their protective vests, when they’re losing limbs and sacrificing their lives because there aren’t enough armored cars, when health services are being cut for veterans, and when the Bush Administration says that there isn’t enough money to let reservists and Guard members buy into the military health system, that’s the result of bad choices.

These choices don’t do right by America, and we need to change them.

There’s something else we need to change. In the last four years, we’ve seen more and more secrecy and less and less accountability in the Bush Administration.

During the past few years, a small group of courageous individuals has stepped forward and said things this Administration didn’t want to hear and didn’t want anyone else to know. In every case, their patriotism, honesty, or competence was attacked.

Senator John McCain found that out. So did the President’s former treasury secretary Paul O’Neill. And so did Medicare actuary Richard Foster, former Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki, and former White House counter-terrorism advisor Richard Clarke.

When Ambassador Joe Wilson told the truth about the Administration’s misleading claims about Iraq’s nuclear weapon capability, some government officials retaliated by disclosing that his wife was a deep-cover CIA agent. For nothing more than political gain, they were willing to endanger the life of one of the people who protect our national security.

That’s not doing right by America. Those aren’t our morals and they aren’t our values.

In the America I know, moms and dads sit at the kitchen table every month and balance the family checkbook. When the car breaks down or there are unexpected doctor visits, there’s a pinch. They don’t expect the government to bail them out when that happens, but they want a fair shake. They want their government to focus on jobs and health care and education, and they don’t want their government to take their Social Security money to pay for tax breaks for millionaires and big corporations.

They want their government to do right by them, and they have a right to expect that.

But when they see oil industry interests coming before their interests . . . and HMO profits coming before the health of seniors ? and special deals for Halliburton coming before the safety of their sons and daughters in Iraq . . . they know their government isn’t doing right by America.

I’m as frustrated as they are about these choices, but I’m not discouraged about our ability to fix things – we can and we will. We can get America back on track by doing right by America.

Doing Right by America means putting our common interests ahead of the special interests. It means paying as much attention to Middle America as we are paying to the Middle East. And it means bringing common sense back to government.

We should be thinking not just about the people who own Wal-Mart, but about the millions of Americans who work and shop there.

We should be changing tax polices so corporations have an incentive to keep jobs here at home, not ship them overseas, and we should aggressively enforce our trade laws to protect workers from unfair competition.

We should be improving roads and bridges and creating millions of jobs along the way, and investing in education, training, and technological innovation so workers who’ve lost jobs can find new ones, and workers who have jobs can get better ones.

And if we are truly going to do right by American workers, it is long past time that we increase the minimum wage, and it is absolutely essential that we stop the Bush Administration from following through with its plan to strip millions of workers of their right to overtime pay.

Doing Right by America means honestly confronting the health care crisis in our country, not pretending that it doesn’t exist. As a first step, we should provide every American with the opportunity to choose from the same health care options, at the same price, as members of Congress have.

If it’s good enough for those of us in government, it ought to be an option for every American who needs health insurance.

Doing Right by America means an honest prescription drug policy that doesn’t funnel billions of dollars in windfalls to drug companies and HMOs, but instead offers seniors the medications they need at a fair price – without the mind-boggling complexity of the Bush Administration’s drug plan.

It means properly funding our children’s schools and giving every American family a guarantee – if your sons and daughters work hard in school and get good grades, they will have a first-rate and affordable college education waiting for them the day they graduate from high school.

And it means putting our nation on the road to energy independence. The next generation should be able to look forward to a future that’s not put at risk by unrestrained pollution and a dangerous dependence on foreign oil.

Finally, Doing Right by America means being honest about performance, both at home and abroad. It’s not pessimistic to acknowledge the problems workers have endured over the past four years; it’s pessimistic to think that we can’t do better.

And it doesn’t endanger our troops to ask questions that might save their lives. If we’re going to do right by them, we have to stand up for them, even if that means asking tough questions about the Administration and its policies. And when our troops return home, we have to make sure they receive the medical attention they earned. We owe them more than empty promises.

We will have a clear choice in November.

We can continue on the course we’re on, where special interests come before common interests, where boardroom issues come before kitchen-table issues, and where opportunity is reserved for a small, members-only club. Or we can choose a new and better direction.

Doing Right By America means that our values guide our policies. Our strength comes from opportunity and responsibility – and a commitment to making sure that our middle-class has a fair chance. It means fixing health care, creating good jobs again, and making education affordable.

Mr. President, we can do this, and we should do it together. Doing Right by America shouldn’t be an idea we just talk about, it should be the value that guides all our decisions in Congress.

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION

Tom Daschle is the Senate Democratic Leader.