I’ll start the 3rd debate on Thursday if there are no objections or should I start it tomorrow afternoon?
Thank you for you post foolsguinea.
Tomorrow is fine with me, I tend to write these up in Word on my own time anyway and post them when they are finished. I’ve been jotting notes for upcoming debates from your list…I like this format…
My campaign thread: My Presidential campaign - Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share - Straight Dope Message Board
A statement by Elendil’s Heir, a candidate for the Democratic Party’s nomination for President of the United States.
The Economy
I am, at heart, a capitalist, and a free and fair trader. Capitalism, for all its faults, has given us the most vibrant and innovative economy in the world, providing opportunities to many millions. In a robust global economy, money and jobs will flow freely from place to place. That will be sometimes to our detriment and sometimes to our benefit, depending upon the particular industry or business. I firmly believe that, overall, it will be to our national economic benefit. The U.S. is still a major manufacturer and exporter, and it’s in our longterm self-interest to encourage free and fair trade everywhere. Where particular American industries or businesses are hurt by trade, we should offer retraining and other alternatives. I welcome the Federal Reserve’s recent decision to cut short-term interest rates, and as President I’ll do all I can to ensure sustainable growth while reducing the grotesque Federal deficit with which the Bush Administration has saddled us all.
Health Care
We need to learn the lessons of the failed 1993-1994 Clinton policy initiative and work more closely with the American business community, both big and small employers, and the HMOs and insurance companies, to figure out the best approach. Health care is a massive and vital portion of the American economy, but we spend far more and get far less for their medical care, compared to other industrialized countries. We can do much better on this front. I don’t believe that a single-payer system is feasible in this country, either economically or politically. Instead, I’ll be open to any plan which provides quality health insurance to the greatest number of Americans - particularly children - while seeing that unnecessary bureaucracy is tamped down, and our country’s leading role in medical research is maintained.
Social Security
I’m not an alarmist on Social Security, but it seems obvious that the status quo cannot - and will not - hold forever. As Baby Boomers retire, the system will become increasingly strained. America’s youth have serious doubts that they’ll ever see a penny from Social Security when they retire, and I can’t say I blame them. I admit I’m no expert on Social Security, but I’ll appoint people who are. I want to work closely with Congress to build consensus, ensuring a long-term and wise approach to protecting Social Security.
Poverty
We sometimes forget the immense strides that we’ve made in reducing poverty in the U.S. since President Franklin D. Roosevelt said he saw one-third of the nation ill-housed and ill-fed. But we can do much, much more. We should be ashamed that so many go hungry in the most bountiful and agriculturally-productive nation in the history of humanity. Government should offer a hand up, not a hand-out, and that principle will guide my Administration’s poverty policies. I strongly support subsidized daycare for poor working moms, expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit, vocational training, and more frequent increases in the minimum wage tied to the CPI. I also support direct Federal assistance for our nation’s many strained foodbanks, which are seeing more and more hungry people, here in Ohio and across the country.
I have a general question on Health Care & Poverty to all the candidates.
Do you see a way to implement a plan that relieves the burden of outrageous health care costs to small business? They do not have the buying power of large corporations and so are at a huge disadvantage and pay significantly more or cannot offer their employees a package that approaches what corporate America and Union shops can offer.
How can this be addressed?
Do you agree that revitalizing the small business segment of America is a desired goal of the US government?
Jim
Absolutely, small businesses founded the American Country as we know it today - I for one want to keep small independent businesses in American Townships.
As for the government’s role therein? I say pushing the healthcare industry to have standardized small business packages and mandatory small business programs as part of their overall yearly spending.
Small enterprises are the backbone of the American economy. More people work for small enterprises than for Fortune 500 companies, and they need good, affordable healthcare as much as anyone. I’d create incentives for small businesses to band together for savings in healthcare, a model very successfully followed by the 17,000 small-business members of the Council on Smaller Enterprise (COSE) here in Cleveland. There’s (bargaining) strength in numbers.
Thank you for that question, What Exit?. I wouldn’t call it a goal of my government, but I would call it a by-product of any good government. And by “good government”, I mean one that secures the rights and property of all its citizens. My intention as president would be to help shape American government into a good one.
Since I already covered the company-provided health care question, I’ll just address the revitalization of small business. I think the best way to revitalize small business is to allow for free and fair competition. There are, in my opinion, too many laws and regulations that were brought about by the influence of powerful lobbyists and special interests. I would ask Congress to repeal legislation that favors any particular company or industry over another, and to replace it with legislation that allows me, as chief executive, to protect the right of small businesses to compete fairly against large businesses. I would direct executive agencies to do the same with respect to regulations.
Thank you for your response.
Could you please list the specific federal government programs that you will cut spending on, and the amount by which you will cut these programs. Similarly, please list the taxes you would raise and how much you would raise them, and how much revenue you expect per year from these increases, and whether these increases will be applied to the deficit, or spent elsewhere without reducing the deficit.
Again, please be specific.
The deficit for 2007 is approximately$172 billion, not including spending on Iraq and Afghanistan. Spending on Iraq and Afghanistan is somewhere around $195 billion in 2008, with about $37 billion to Afghanistan and $158 billion to Iraq.
If you believe that we should simply pull out of Iraq and not spend any money on it at all starting in 2009, there is still $37 billion in spending on Afghanistan, and the federal deficit has not been addressed at all.
Regards,
Shodan
Greetings, everyone. Although I am unable to commit to participating in all these debates, I would like to comment on this issue as the candidate of the Spiritual Progressive Party.
We believe that government is the institution which is charged with shaping societal institutions to reflect the values of the nation. The values which we wish to promote are social equality, respect for diversity, protection of individual rights and freedoms, and responsible stewardship of the natural environment. We believe that it is impossible for individuals to exercise their right to acheive their full human potential while living in extreme poverty, and the alleviation of such poverty is therefore a central responsibility of government.
Although we respect and value the contributions of economic scientists, we reject the philosophy of the “Austrian school”, which assumes a priori that the freer markets are, the better; in practice, this philosophy degenerates into defining “good” results as those produced by free markets, and thus serves as propaganda for the class interests of the rich. In short, although we look to economists to tell us what we can do, we look to philosophers, ethicists, and theologians to tell us what we should do, and to politicians to reconcile the two. We therefore have no objections on principle to government interfering with the economy in order to acheive a more just society, although we are always attentive to arguments about the likely efficacy of such interference.
In the matter of health care, we stand for a system of universal, government-run health insurance. This is not “socialized medicine” in the sense that doctors would not be employed by, nor hospitals owned by, the government. Rather, the government would provide everyone with health insurance, which individuals could then use to freely choose among providers, who would compete with each other based on quality of clinical care rather than on price. Our current system of competing for-profit insurance companies is tremendously wasteful, considering the duplication of paperwork, money spent on advertising, and of course the effort that these companies put into not paying claims, since it is not in their economic interest to do so. These bureaucrats, admen and claims deniers are getting paid, so on paper they may appear to be “productively” employed, but in real life they are not providing any real service to the nation, illustrating the limitations of economic statistics.
Any physician, including myself, will tell you that the time spent negotiating with insurance company bureaucrats constitutes a huge burden, either forcing us to spend less time on patient care or hurting our bottom line by having to hire others to do this for us. The bureaucracy needed to manage one unified system, especially one which has no incentive to deny payments for needed care, will be much less. Admittedly, there will need to be a large initial investment in job retraining programs for the millions of insurance company employees who will be thrown out of work by the advent of universal health care, but this is a temporary expense for a permanent benefit.
Under universal coverage, all Americans will be covered by insurance which will be paid for out of taxes; for most Americans, this will mean a net increase in disposable income, since the tax hike will be offset by the savings in health insurance. What services are covered, and at what rates, will be determined by a panel representing both patients and medical professionals, appointed by the President, who will ultimately be accountable to the voters for the decisions made by this panel. This will be good for small businesses straining under the burden of healthcare costs, and for American businesses competing on a global scale. There may or may not need to be copays for certain services; in my personal and professional experience, the application of the “moral hazard” paradigm to healthcare costs is unrealistic. Most people don’t like to go to the doctor, and therefore consume fewer healthcare services than they really should, even without financial disincentives to get care! Punishing the vast majority of people in order to restrain the tiny handful of hypochondriacs from wasting resources is not the most efficient way to acheive that end.
I fully agree with my Libertarian colleague that the proposals put forth by my Democratic colleagues (both on this board and in real life) would likely amount to government subsidization of the private insurance companies, which are already doing quite well! Proposals which amount, in effect, to the government buying private insurance for the poor, may increase the number of persons covered, but do not address the fundamental problems with private insurance; inefficiency and economic incentive to not cover services. These proposals will not attack the root causes of spiraling healthcare costs, and will not be economically sustainable in the long run. The solution is to put the private insurers out of business entirely!
I thank you for your time. I will strive to respond to questions, but apologize in advance if my other responsibilities do not allow me to do so. God Bless America, and Everyone Else, Too.
Well, i’m for Universal Health Care, so effectively I would be shifting the burden off of small businesses and onto pretty much everyone in the form of taxes.
It would be great to help defend small businesses; the problem is that defending them would mean attacking something else.
I don’t know if that is true. Most corporate welfare goes only to large corporations. Is removing corporate welfare the same as attacking?
Would providing more low cost loans to small businesses be an attack?
(of course that is a different type of corporate welfare, just on a very small scale)
Giving breaks to companies that then employ workers outside the US appears foolish compared to giving inexpensive loans to small businesses that will employ local workers.
I’d say yes to both of those things. You can’t aid one group without giving them an advantage over another.
Perhaps there could be more incentives in general to employ local workers.
In general, I believe that supporting small businesses contributes to desirable social goals. It is empowering for people to live in a society where they can realistically hope to own their own business should they so desire, and it benefits consumers to have a broader diversity of goods and services available. I believe it contributes to social cohesion for people to build personal relationships with those they do business with. So, yes, I would agree that supporting small business is a desirable goal (although it may at times conflict with other desirable goals).
In closing, I would like to say that I am prepared to end my campaign and endorse the candidate who can best explain why all the Google ads are for marriage counseling. In the words of Abraham Lincoln, WTF?
Most likely because of the appearance of the word “Marriage” in the OP. (See future debate number 6.)
I have started the third debate: The SDMB mock election Debate #3: Global Warming, Energy Policy, Green Issues & Tech.