LIBERTY and the
PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS
LIFE
· Iraq and the Human Cost of War
· Universal Health Care
· American Jobs and Labor
Iraq and the
Human Cost of War
We must bring our troops home from Iraq now.
We can't end the insurgency because our very presence there is like pouring gasoline on flames.
Since the war began in 2003, roughly 4,000 Americans have died in Iraq (www.projects.washingtonpost.com ). As of October 2006, the best estimate of the total number of innocent Iraqi civilians that have been killed as a result of our presence there is somewhere between 600,000 and 700,000 (www.guardian.co.uk). All too soon those numbers will actually exceed the number of Iraqis killed by Saddam Hussein . How many more Americans and Iraqis have to die before we decide that even the noblest of our goals is not worth the price?
It's for the Iraqis themselves to create a democratic state, if such a thing is possible there. Meantime we're killing our own children, too - our soldiers still lack enough body and vehicle armor to protect themselves. It's a disgrace that we send young men and women into war without the equipment they need to save their lives. That's the bloody price of tax cuts for the rich.
We already see the effects of the Iraq war here at home - in how we failed to respond effectively to Hurricane Katrina, abandoning vulnerable U.S. citizens in their time of need. Because of Iraq, there weren't enough National Guardsmen available to help out in this emergency. A country's first obligation is to its own citizens, yet we have so stretched our resources across the globe that we can no longer meet a crisis here at home.
I know that withdrawing from Iraq will be complex and difficult. But staying there will have even worse consequences.
Although I can't predict exactly what challenges we will face in the future
that might cause us to consider the use of force instead of diplomacy,
I make this pledge to you:
As I represent you in Congress,
I will be guided by the following principle --
If I wouldn't send my children, I won't send yours.
Universal Health Care
It's time to stop playing politics with health care.
Private insurance companies are not more efficient at delivering health care than the government because their only aim is to maximize profits. For government programs (like Medicare), the aim is the common good.
Incumbent Congressman Scott Garrett has tried to scare us with the specter of "socialized medicine." He warns that you won't have a choice of doctor. Do you now? He warns that you won't have a choice of hospital or care facility. Do you now? Most of us have to stay within our health plan, if we're lucky enough to have health insurance at all, or pay an out-of-network ransom to the insurance company. The fact is, private insurance has deprived us of choice - because when you're shackled with debt and health care costs are through the roof, there is no choice. You go where they tell you to go.
The core of any American plan should be universal health insurance for everyone - healthy and unhealthy, rich and poor, old and young, veteran and civilian. We're the richest country in the world; it's time to act like it!
My own preference is for a single-payer system, where individuals could choose to purchase additional medical care through private insurance, as they do in Britain. But I will support any policy that effectively achieves universal coverage. Until the health care crisis can be resolved, I make this pledge to you:
As your representative in Congress,
I will have one aide dedicated exclusively to helping my constituents
get the coverage they're entitled to from their health insurance companies.
When an insurance company tries to put the screws to one of my constituents by denying eligible care or coverage, I will put the screws to the insurance company.
American Jobs and Labor
We need to stop the leakage of American jobs to other countries. In the past, one of the things that labor and management agreed on was the necessity of protecting American businesses from foreign competition. This was because the best technology available was American, and businesses manufactured locally.
But now things have changed. Between the computer, the internet, and the vast improvements in international transportation and technology, it is well within the capacity of any decent sized corporation to move its manufacturing plant to another country where it can find cheaper labor, thereby cutting its American workers off from the fruits that their own sweat did so much to make.
Today, once a corporation reaches a certain size, it is almost guaranteed that it will evolve from an American corporation into an international corporation, with a corresponding loss of loyalty not only to its workers but to America itself.
Even worse, we have reached the point in our politics where this lack of American loyalty has become something we are not allowed to talk about. The idea of "free trade" has become almost a religion.
It's time to face reality. The effects of free trade must be examined and subject to the same harsh and uncompromising analysis that other policies are subjected to. It's time to stand up and say that the policy of free trade should be judged according to its real effects on real people, and in particular on the working people who make up the vast majority of the people in this country.
To working Americans both in my district and outside, I make this pledge to you:
As your representative in Congress,
I will initiate a re-evaluation of the various free trade agreements, from the perspective of the effect those agreements have on American jobs.
And I will do everything in my power to change any agreements that the evidence shows are taking away, rather than producing, American jobs.
