from the Howard Dean website:
The Fund to Restore America
Governor Dean will begin his work to improve the economy by proposing a two- year, $100 billion Fund to Restore America, designed to add more than one million new jobs to the economy. The Fund will benefit the economy in both the short and long term.
The Fund will be distributed to states and localities to assist communities that have been worst hit by the economic downturn. Some of the money will be used to improve homeland security by hiring and training first responders, public health personnel and security providers for critical installations and ports, and for purchasing new and improved equipment. Other funds will be awarded to states and cities to build new or to renovate and repair their failing infrastructure, including schools, roads, rail, water, wastewater, electrical and telecommunications systems.
The Fund will place a special emphasis on helping disadvantaged and minority communities, which have been hard hit by the downturn and have recovered the least. At the beginning of the Bush administration, the unemployment rate among African- Americans was 8.2 per cent. In September of this year, the rate had climbed to 11.2 per cent. One out of three young African-Americans in the work force is unemployed. Four hundred thousand more African-Americans of all ages are without jobs than the day President Bush took office. The Latino community is also carrying more than its share of the economic failures of this administration, with an unemployment rate of 7.5 per cent — nearly 30 per cent higher than January 20, 2001.
More Help for States and Communities
The downturn in the economy plus the jobless recovery has placed an enormous burden on the budgets and resources of states and cities. As a result, services have been curtailed, workers have been laid off and state and local taxes have soared. The plight of the states creates a continuing, major drag on the national economy. Economists generally agree that rapid action to relieve the fiscal burdens on the states would be one of the most effective ways to stimulate the economy and create new jobs. Governor Dean’s economic plan will offer both immediate help and a long-term commitment to helping the states in two specific areas: education and homeland security.
Aid to Special Education
The federal government has promised to pay 40% of the cost of special education, but presently pays less than 17 percent. As President, Governor Dean will work to fully fund special education. By taking some of the pressure off state and local budgets, this move will create jobs through rehiring of teachers and other essential employees, and free up resources to meet other critical needs and reduce taxes.
Homeland Security
The Bush administration has left the US without the resources to adequately protect our nation against possible terrorist strikes and unprepared to deal with the aftermath of such attacks. The critical requirements of our first line of defense — police, firefighters, hospital personnel and other first responders — have become unfunded mandates imposed on state and local governments. States and localities are struggling with the problems of insufficient people, inadequate training and nonexistent or obsolete equipment. Governor Dean’s $100 billion proposed Fund to Restore America will help meet many of these homeland security needs, but the Governor will also make a long- term commitment to increase funding by at least $5 billion a year over currently proposed Bush administration levels.
More Capital for Small Businesses
Small businesses create more jobs each year than large corporations. But entrepreneurs and small business people are too often handcuffed by a lack of growth and working capital. So good ideas languish and businesses fail to realize their potential. Small businesses are especially important to minority communities. They offer not only jobs, but also the opportunity to build wealth through ownership. Governor Dean will revitalize the lending and investment programs of the Small Business Corporation. He will establish a Small Business Capital Corporation within the Small Business Administration. The mission of the corporation will be to expand the modest secondary market that currently exists for SBA- guaranteed loans. Based on the model of mortgage financing that has increased American home ownership levels to the highest in the world, the SBCC will bring additional capital resources to small businesses.
Targeted Economic Development
The Governor believes we need a community and regional growth strategy for the 21st century, rather than the out-of-date concepts that dominate current thinking.
Federal spending for economic development totals more than $30 billion a year and is delivered through a bewildering array of programs, departments and agencies, each with its own requirements, mandates, matching requirements and timetables. Some are focused on business, some on transportation, others on workers, or pollution control. Putting together effective strategies for economic development at the state and regional level involves months and years of frustration and delay.
America’s national economy is actually made up of several regional economies, and the economic strength of each region varies from time to time. Yet our economic development efforts are built on national platforms, as if the entire economy moved in unison. There is little or no coordination at the national or regional level.
In a time of scarce federal dollars and a crying need for more and better jobs, an effective economic development delivery system is more than a need — it is a necessity. Governor Dean would improve the system dramatically by reinvigorating the National Economic Council and creating a White House Office of Economic Growth that would work with governors and mayors to create vital regional growth strategies, and break through bureaucratic logjams to deliver results.
A More Effective Trade Policy
Governor Dean believes that international trade is essential to the continued growth and health of the American economy and to the creation and strengthening of the middle class throughout the developing world. Promoting middle class societies is not only the right thing to do; it's also in our own self-interest. Our efforts will create consumers for our goods and improve our national security because nations with middle classes are generally more stable, more democratic, and less likely to foster terrorism. So the question is not whether one is for or against trade: The question is under what rules should trade be conducted, for whose benefit should the rules be drawn, and how should they be enforced.
An Eye on the Future: Investments in 21st Century Growth
For over a hundred years, a critical part of the United States economy has been manufacturing — building the goods the world wants to buy. The Dean economic agenda will emphasize creating a level worldwide playing field in which American manufacturers can compete with success.
But the Governor’s plan also emphasizes investing in the industries of tomorrow, so that the US will remain a leader in such important sectors as biotech, renewable energy and other technology and information based enterprises.
Over the coming decades, a global communications platform for voice, data and video will emerge that will generate large incremental productivity advances in business while also spawning an incalculable number of new enterprises and lines of business within existing companies. A technology sector that will have great impact on the pace and scale of this change will involve enterprises that are experimenting with and developing optical, molecular and atomic scale platforms that will replace the silicon based chips and storage devices in use today.
Federal investments in research and development can play a leadership role in these areas, and the federal government can serve as a convener, bringing together industry, academia and state and local governments to foster development in areas of opportunity. The Governor is also particularly concerned that broadband is made available to rural America, so that jobs dependent on the rapid transmission of large amounts of data can be created anywhere in the US.
The political and economic toll of our continuing dependence on imported carbon based fuels is not sustainable The Dean administration will expand energy research, which is now funded at half the rate it was 8 years ago, while reassessing other areas to assure that the ongoing work contributes to the nation’s economic strength. |
