A New Deal For American Citizens
02/10/2005
Paul Munnis
We Americans are a resilient and a resourceful people and when allowed to dream and to develop our dreams then we can and we do create miracles on our planet and even in outer space itself. The last 100 years of American progress are proof positive of that.
Democrats are rocking and rolling in reaction to the poorly conceived social proposals of the GOP, all of which are designed to kill off our American miracle and in response to our changing nation and various world events impacting us. The GOP view of the world is one of oil seizure, and reducing opportunity for Americans. They are on a path to destroy quality of life in America.
It’s a mistake to let the GOP have the initiative for social change. We need to respond with better programs and much more innovative plans than what the GOP sponsors. Its now a war of ideas in the political arena.
Here is what our Democratic response must be to these key challenges of our times. It amounts to a New Deal for the citizens of America. The Democratic Party must champion these positive changes.
The Collapse Of Our Private Pension System.
Social Security must replace the private pension system offering a national pension at age 68 to all U.S. Senior citizens. When the original Social Security program was initiated we had private pensions and they were paid for by American companies as worker benefits. Social Security was just a supplement.
Now that corporations are no longer providing for public pensions then they must pay more than just a dollar in matching funds into American Social Security allowing us to expand to meet our future needs. Fees will have to rise in the range of $2.50 to $3 in matching company funds and rise to those levels for workers per worker. If workers can afford to buy stocks for retirement per the GOP plan they can surely afford to pay much less into a national pension plan.
Considering the huge productivity increases and the cost of pension programs for corporations, that is a really good price to pay for protecting workers even for companies who are now paying far more. It’s a bargain for workers too. Considering that few companies are paying taxes any longer then they can well afford it.
These changes will strengthen Social Security and allow a guaranteed national pension system. Cash benefits can then be increased to meet real retirement needs. The future cost of running the program can be covered if we get started right now. These new funds must not go to the U.S. Government to purchase government debt. They should be invested in American stocks by the Social Security Administration and we should create a private venture capital lending group administered by Social Security and free of manipulation by Washington to loan money to American businesses. Social Security should buy a seat on the Stock Market and become the broker for American retirees. The resultant group should form a Freddie Mac Type of holding company to loan out venture capital to American businesses. Not all of the Social Security money should be invested, just a portion of that being repaid in a given year.
Legislation designed to make Washington start to pay back its debt to Social Security must be initiated and that will have the effect of paying down the national debt too since much of that debt is to ourselves and is owed to Social Security. The money coming back can be funneled into the venture capital and stock purchase funds of the Social Security Administration. This one aspect alone will make the American economy perform much better than it is now doing and provide an ROI that will asssure the future funding of our Social Security System.
A Collapse Of Our National Healthcare Insurance Program.
With corporations refusing to pay for healthcare insurance in America it is now time that we create a national healthcare plan for Americans based upon the Canadian model. It should be a shared payer system. It should offer guaranteed minimum benefits. The costs of services should be standardized across our nation.
Specifically, Medicare Part A should be available to all Americans, and be paid for out of general tax revenues. Medicare Part B should be an opt-in program and we should be required to pay for it ourselves out of pocket. Medigap insurance should be available to the public and for corporations to offer as supplemental worker benefits. A national prescription drugs program with pricing that rivals Canada’s should be available to all Americans. The current mess in prescription drugs created by the 108th Congress should be scrapped along with its $175 Billion dollar price tag. The cost of Medicare Part B should be made tax deductible for workers. The cost of Medigap insurance should be made tax deductible for companies. A wide variety of government provided health benefits should be consolidated and the funds used to help pay for the conversion. The new program should be phased in over a ten year period. Social Security should administer the program.
The Trade Gap and Our American Education System
Excise taxes on foreign imports should be levied with the money used as a simple per capita distribution to our public and private schools and with no strings attached. The IRS should administer the program and it should be based upon a school census as of December 31st of each year. Both higher and lower education must be involved. This will provide funds needed to assure quality education of students. Grant programs to pay for distance learning for rural students must also be made available to rural schools from these funds.
Transitional Job Market Management
We have too many workers now and we are downsizing in the most inhumane way that we could possible create. It is cruel and unjust to workers who have spent a lifetime working to extend American business and to be treating them this way in their senior years. The old are being kicked off the jobs and the younger workers are being treated like slaves.
When we had a robust industrial society then we were able to develop programs to manage unemployment. Now we Democrats are challenged to develop programs dealing with retirement transition in a post industrial era. The GOP has been remarkably insensitive to a need for these work transition programs aimed at helping seniors ease into retirement and protecting our younger workers.
The treatment of our younger workers as productivity driven slaves to make up for the declining availability of plenty of well educated workers makes solving these problems doubly difficult and yet the answer lies in easing the burden of corporations for hiring the elderly while changing our work laws away from protecting seniors and over to ways of assuring younger workers that they have assured job protection.
Democrats must create and sponsor such legislation and reform our Labor Department away from being an advocate for companies and their management and morph it back to its roots of advocacy for American workers.
We need to form a national Labor Court and workers need, just as in our Small Claims Courts, to be able to take their job related beefs to the court for hearings and for adjudication and do it without a lawyer. Within the company itself a number of elected workers will act as a job grievance revue committee. They will be paid for their work in this capacity with tax credits. They will revue labor cases, arbitrating where possible and referring the more stubborn cases to the Labor Courts as needed.
Money to pay for this new system of worker protection will come from the companies and the workers themselves. A dollar a week per worker will be paid for by the company and matched by the worker. When we look at the resulting $104 dollars per year per worker and multiply it by a workforce of 50 million people, we will be easily able to afford high quality justice for Labor relations.
The Collapse Of Our Oil Based Economy
With gasoline becoming so expensive it is now desirable to cut the use of private owned automobile gas consumption. Gas rationing and exorbitant gas pricing is not a fair answer to the problem for our citizens.
To do this Germany has shown us the way. Tolls must be collected on a per mile basis and on all interstate highways. Part of the revenue must then go to the states to help offset the costs of their chosen programs. Part of the revenue must go to developing a much better interstate transportation system built around rail, bus, and a modernized interstate highway system.
Conversion to hybrid automobile technology must be accelerated with tax credits and the Federal government must be the first to convert its fleet of government owned car and light trucks to the hybrid technology. States should immediately follow suit. This will bring the price difference down to where the public can also then afford to convert over to hybrid vehicles. Legislation that demands an industry improvement on gas mileage is again necessary and desirable.
We must also put in place a plan to recon our nuclear power plants and to modernize and assure their complete safety even as we build at least 20 more of them a year for a decade. This means developing the court ordered safety standards for Yucca Mountain nuclear storage facilities and seeking even safer harbors for storage of the waste. The GOP has dragged its feet too long on getting this job done.
We need to rethink the use of aluminum in packaging and food storage. It is very energy intense to produce it.
We also need to legislate the sole sale of low cost, long life, low intensity bulbs to light the homes, and offices of America.
The use of bio-diesel fuel and ethanol as gasoline supplements must be made a national standard and then left untaxed. Thus if a gallon of gas has 20% ethanol content then that 20% of a gallon must be tax free.
The Retirement Of The Baby Boom Generation
Rather than be so fearful of this we should look upon it as an incredible opportunity for increased volunteerism in America plus an opportunity for retired citizens to contribute socially, culturally and artistically to our national fabric.
Specifically, we should create opportunity for seniors to help solve child care problems for their children and their grandchildren by allowing them to provide tax free child care assistance to family members. Other jobs for retirees must also be available especially in caring for their peers who may need home health care assistance, meal preparation assistance, health transportation, shopping assistance, and other health related assistance to peer seniors and ought to become a tax free industry run by seniors for seniors. We should be thinking of forming leverage with the grey power in America and not about suffering a grey burden.
In the arts we should have grants and form community arts groups as well as community gardening clubs. Our seniors should be asked to help America to bloom.
Rural America should plan to welcome senior citizens and their bankrolls, plus help them to meet their retirement real-estate needs. Planned senior rural communities offering a high quality of life for retirees, the encouraging of senior run shops and businesses, as well as for providing excellent public transport and on premises support services should be available to all in these planned communities. An opportunity for rural America to blossom and to flourish exists and nobody can testify to this more than Jeb Bush the Governor of Florida who has devoted a huge part of his state planning to meet the needs of seniors.
With states now free of the costs of health insurance burden and with educational costs under control they can then afford to focus on this unique opportunity for terrific American rural community development.
HEW should take the initiative in creating planning templates and developing financial models and funding assistance plans for rural planners. The idea is that when the baby boom crunch abates then we will be left with high quality communities ripe for further development and designed to ease overcrowding in nearby cities.
Divorce and the American Family
With the national divorce rate now at over 50% and the number of people, with both adults and children affected by this divorce rate, then the Democratic Party needs to hold a national conversation on the subject and sponsor legislation that arises from the dialog with Americans. We should hold the conversation over CSPAN, the Internet, NPR, and PBS. We should engage people of all political persuasions. We need national consensus and we need the American citizens to make the sale to the legislators.
The whole subject of our divorce laws creating disadvantage for people must be reexamined and evaluated in light of the huge numbers of people being impacted.
For example “live in boyfriends” who are sexually and physically abusing children must be totally discouraged. The social welfare load relief from just that one facet of reform would alleviate a lot of expenses in American government. Do you suppose the Churches of America might be encouraged to sign on to such a program?
Fathers and mothers must not be discouraged from earning more money and a cap on child support must be developed.
Special efforts at hiring and keeping those workers who are the sole support of their children must be made.
The development of “Divorce Insurance” as a new industry segment needs to be also explored.
If Democrats dare to listen then they will be clearly told by our fellow citizens what needs to be done.
Internet Taxation:
We believe that Internet sales are now destroying large numbers of retail job opportunities in America. We should now begin to tax Internet sales of goods and services and both onshore and offshore sales should be included including interstate sales. Two forms of tax must then exist. The first is Federal and the second is State taxes. The monies raised must be used to help pay for some of the programs that we have discussed above.
Conclusion:
These are seen as the key challenges of our times. Democrats should not be reacting to GOP proposals to manage issues with negativity but instead respond with well thought out proposals of our own that we can sell to the public as better ideas than the GOP has. Taken in the aggregate the GOP programs are destructive while these programs are constructive. We need to sell hope and a better future. It will be an easy sell.
Change is inevitable and Democrats have to change with the times. If we are going to be involved in change then let’s shape it to fit our own vision of a better nation.
Does this mean more taxes for Americans or does it mean rethinking of what we tax, how we tax it, and the goals that we hope to accomplish via taxes? Could it actually presage tax reductions?
We think in fact that when planned in the aggregate that these programs can lessen the monetary burdens on American citizens as a result of these social program changes. Perhaps from the tax pocket one is paying more, yet from the childcare, transportation, health insurance, divorce, and pension pockets then one is paying much less. If we can balance the two then we could actually lower taxes on the American worker because we will be bringing companies back to paying for part of the social costs of American life. That is fair because they benefit from a tranquil nation, a decent infrastructure and a quality workforce.