That’s wrong.
There are many problems facing America which we need to face together and not alone. Democrats value individual freedom, but we also understand that when it comes to significant challenges facing our nation, we need to come together as the American family to solve these problems.
Senator Reid is right. There is no crisis in Social Security. We know that left untouched, with no legislative changes, Social Security will make every single payment, with cost of living adjustments, for a least 37 years.
DURBIN: But there’s something else we know as well: When it comes to the issue of health care, if we do nothing in the United States Congress, if we allow this system to continue, we know what’s going to happen over the next seven years.
In the four years since President Bush started his first term, the number of uninsured Americans has increased from 40 million to 45 million, the cost of health care has skyrocketed and this administration has done absolutely nothing to address it.
We may face a budget that calls for significant Medicaid cuts, which will mean fewer and fewer people with even the protection of the emergency plan of Medicaid.
Republicans’ only solution: Give people tax cuts. Let them fend for themselves. Remember, we’re all in this alone.
That’s not right and it won’t solve the problem.
We’re proposing significant tax credits for small businesses so they can offer health coverage to their employees. Every business I’ve spoken to in Illinois, large and small, identifies the cost of health insurance as the number one issue facing that business and its success.
And what do we hear from the so-called pro-business administration? Not a word about how to help these businesses offer health insurance to the owners and employees.
We also propose to save money by ordering prescription drugs from Canada, an issue which Senator Dorgan has been our leader on the floor so many times. If it’s safe to eat beef from Canada, it ought to be safe to reimport American drugs from Canada.
And our plan will save lives, as well, by ensuring that drugs are monitored after they’re approved for use, ensuring that children and pregnant women in America have access to health care -- and if they don’t have private coverage, through Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
And then there’s the issue of education; talk about a broken promise.
Four years ago this president came forward, said, "I’ll be the education president and I’ll do it in a bipartisan fashion." Many of us joined him, voting for No Child Left Behind.
We know what happened when it came to funding that important program and now, listen closely, to what this administration has said about Pell grants.
DURBIN: The new rules from this administration would reduce Pell grants for more than 48,000 students in Illinois and eliminate Pell grants entirely for another 1,450 students.
We’re going to fight these new rules and work instead to provide more families with help to pay for college.
We also, of course, want to fully fund No Child Left Behind, honor the federal commitment. We have produced the federal mandate, now let’s create the federal commitment where money is needed.
We also need to expand economic opportunity and jobs. We think all work has dignity and worth. We’re going to fight to increase the federal minimum wage.
My state and several others have gone off with their own initiative, with the Democratic governor and Democratic legislature, to increase the minimum wage. Many others states and workers, primarily women trying to support children, continue to fall behind.
And we want to restore the overtime provisions, which, unfortunately, have cut 6 million American workers off from overtime.
We want to eliminate tax rewards and breaks for countries that ship jobs overseas. How many candidates have said that in how many elections? And why is it nothing can happen on the Senate floor?
The Democratic bill will address that directly.
We also want to fight for fair trade policies and better enforcement of our existing trade agreements.
I have voted for trade agreements. I believe globalization is inevitable. But if the rules that we agree to in these treaties and agreements are not in force, the loser are American businesses and workers, and we have seen those losses nationwide.
Let me also add, on this whole issue of jobs and economic opportunity, the overwhelming tidal wave/tsunami issue, which is coming at us is the failure of pension plans and the failure of health care for retirees. It is coming at us because of bankruptcies and restructuring and because a lot of companies are trying to find a way out of their obligations to retirees. This is an issue that can’t be ignored.
And we believe, finally, that democracy begins at home. Although this election, November 2nd, was, thankfully, not as bad as one four years ago when it came to the way voters were treated, there were so many inconsistencies, irregularities and discouragements for voters to turn out and vote that we believe it is time to set some basic rules for elections nationwide.
DURBIN: We’ll be introducing legislation to do that.
If we take the Republican approach, everybody fends for themselves, then, in fact, we are in this alone; we can’t solve the problems of health and education and job creation. But there’s no problem too big that we can’t solve together. From the Democratic point of view, in America, we’re all in this together.
STABENOW: Well, good morning.
Today we are speaking about the American promise and what that means to every one of us. And we’re speaking about it and focused on it in terms of three very important values: security, opportunity and responsibility.
In the new world that we are in, security is critical. And we are committed both to those who serve us today and their families, and have a very specific agenda that we will move forward to support them, and give them what they need and also those who have served us in the past, whose promises we have made to them in terms of health care and other important quality-of-life commitments for our veterans.
I want to speak specifically today about opportunity.
What a great American value. We don’t believe it’s about opportunity for a few people. We believe it’s about opportunity for everybody: everyone to be able to create wealth, to be able to have a good paying job, a quality job, to be able to have secure retirement.
And we believe as Democrats, and we understand that the most effective way, first of all, to make sure that people have opportunity, is to make sure that they have a high-quality, good- paying job. And that is a major focus of our agenda.
We all know that the promise of America is that if you work hard and play by the rules, you’ll have an opportunity to make it. You’ll have an opportunity to make it for your children. You’ll have an opportunity to be able to save, to be able to buy the house that you want, buy the automobile. We want you to buy several, and American- made from Michigan, by the way.
STABENOW: And we want to make sure that people have the opportunity to dream the big dream for their children and to be able to send them to college so that they can go on and have what we all want, which is something better for our children.
