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Please, if you will, kindly take a few minutes to read what John said in 2003.
Speaker: John Reid Edwards (NA)
Title: Address On Rewarding Work And Creating Opportunity
Date: 2003-06-17
Location: Washington, DC
Speech
Remarks As Prepared For Delivery
Thank you for coming. A couple weeks from now, on the 4th of July, folks all over this country will line our streets to thank God and our forefathers for this remarkable dream called America.
Our ancestors came here to escape a world where birth was destiny, and build a nation where all are born with the right to control their own destiny. For more than 200 years, our country has been propelled by this single, powerful idea: that all Americans should have the opportunity to rise as far as their hard work and God-given potential can take them.
That idea is the very bedrock of America as President Andrew Jackson put it, Equal opportunity for all, special privileges for none. Take that away, and the dream our forefathers fought and died for will no longer exist.
And yet, in the first years of what ought to be America's greatest century, too many of our leaders have walked away from the values that got us here: Work, responsibility, country, a fair shake for all and a free ride for none.
Our great free enterprise system has been rocked by some at the top who put their own fortunes ahead of their company's future and their employees' hard work. Our democracy has been wounded by some at the top who put favors for the few ahead of what's right for the whole nation. Worst of all, the character of our country has been betrayed by some at the top who want the measure of an American to be how much she is worth, not how hard or how well she works.
Here in Washington, some of our most powerful leaders stand accused of letting big campaign contributors write special favors into law. And tonight, a President and Vice President who have doled out special privilege more quickly than any administration ever will begin a two-week sprint to collect, in return, more special-interest money more quickly than any administration ever.
Back home in North Carolina, most folks don't care one bit about Republicans or Democrats or the politics of Washington, D.C. They don't ask much from government, but what they ask for means a lot. They want their leaders to honor their values, keep their country safe and strong, be smart with their money, and give them a chance to make the most of their future. Those folks don't ask a lot from the companies they work for, either. They want the same bargain that built this country: the simple chance to work hard and make a better life for their children when they do.
As I travel around the country, I meet people with a lot on their minds: How can I keep my family safe? How can I pay the bills when the cost of health care and college is going up and my paycheck isn't? How can I ever retire when my nest egg just got wiped out? Deep down, people's big worry is, how am I going to give my children a better life if hard work is no longer the way to get ahead?
In the weeks to come, I will say more about how we can restore that basic bargain, by bringing our values to bear on a health care system that costs too much and expects too little, an education system that should be our steadiest ladder of opportunity, not the most uneven, and a free enterprise system that made America the greatest engine of prosperity and job creation on earth, but has been betrayed by a handful of swindlers.
Today, I want to talk about our economy and about the character of our country.
For the past two years, Republicans and Democrats have been debating about what policies will get the economy
going again. But it's time we had a debate that is more urgent, and in the long run, even more important.
The truth is, no matter what either party tells you, the greatest thing holding our economy down isn't that wealth is taxed too much or that the government spends too little. More than anything else, what's holding our economy down is the callous view of a few at the top in Washington and in the corporate world that the values that got us here can now be left behind.
American's small businesses create jobs better than any government program. Our markets allocate capital more efficiently than any bureaucrat.
Yet our free enterprise system also depends on values: innovation, integrity, hard work, and great rewards for honest success. When those values disappear, our country suffers. The flood of corporate scandal in these past few years has not only torn at the roots of public confidence, but washed away the financial security of millions of Americans through layoffs, bankruptcies and destroyed pensions.
Our economy, our people, and our nation have been undermined by the crony capitalists who believe that success is all about working the angles, working the phones, and rigging the game, instead of hard work, innovation and frugality.
And these manipulators find comfort in an Administration which, through its own example, seems to embrace that ethic.
We will never turn this country around until we put our economy and our government back in line with our values.
To the business students here today, I want to say: You can do more than anyone else to restore our values to the business world. The captains of industry who create jobs and wealth deserve to be rewarded richly, but it's wrong when they walk away with staggering bonuses while regular workers' pensions are cut. It's wrong to manipulate tax laws and accounting rules to inflate corporate profits. I hope you will remember and respect your responsibilities to your community throughout your careers.
America can withstand a plunge in corporate valuations, but we cannot abide a plunge in corporate values. We can overcome the worst job market for people seeking work since the Depression, but not an economic theory that says work doesn't matter.
Except for a brief respite in the '90s, for most of my adult life American politics has been stuck in the grip of two competing and unsatisfactory theories. The first, which I thought we'd disproved in the '80s, was the conservative notion that America should ask the least of those with the most. That idea was so far wrong, it took our country a decade to recover, and yet our leaders are making the same mistake again, this time with feeling. The second theory, which I thought we'd banished in the last decade, was the notion among some in my party that we could spend our way out of every problem. It didn't work, yet some in my party want to bring it back.
It's time for a new approach that trusts people to make the most of their own lives and gives them the chance to do so. It's time to stop emboldening entrenched interests and start empowering regular people. Above all, it's time to end the failed conservative experiment and return to the idea that made this country great: Instead of helping wealthy people protect their wealth, we should help working people build their wealth.
The President and I agree on one thing: this campaign should be a debate about values. We need to have that debate, because the values of this president and this administration are not the values of mainstream America, the values all of us grew up with opportunity, responsibility, hard work.
There's a fundamental difference between his vision and mine. I believe America should value work. He only values wealth. He wants the people who own the most to get more. I want to make sure everybody has the chance to be an owner.
For a man who made responsibility the theme of his campaign, this president sure doesn't seem to value it much in
office. We've lost 3.1 million private sector jobs.
Over $3 trillion in stock market value lost. A $5.6 trillion budget surplus gone, and nearly $5 trillion of red ink in its place. Bill Clinton spent 8 years turning around 12 years of his predecessors' deficits. George Bush erased it in two years, and this year will break the all-time record.
Yet even with all those zeroes, the true cost of the administration's approach isn't what they've done with our money, it's what they want to do to our way of life. Their economic vision has one goal: to get rid of taxes on unearned income and shift the tax burden onto people who work. This crowd wants a world where the only people who have to pay taxes are the ones who do the work.
Make no mistake: this is the most radical and dangerous economic theory to hit our shores since socialism a century ago. Like socialism, it corrupts the very nature of our democracy and our free enterprise tradition. It is not a plan to grow the American economy. It is a plan to corrupt the American economy and shrink the winners' circle.
This is a question of values, not taxes. We should cut taxes, but we shouldn't cut and run from our values when we do. John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan argued for tax cuts as an incentive for people to work harder: Americans work hard, and the government shouldn't punish them when they do.
This crowd is making a radically different argument. They don't believe work matters most. They don't believe in helping working people build wealth. They genuinely believe that the wealth of the wealthy matters most. They are determined to cut taxes on that wealth, year after year, and heap more and more of the burden on people who work.
How do we know this? Because they don't even try to hide it. The Bush budget proposed tax-free tax shelters for millionaires that are bigger than most Americans' paychecks for an entire year. And just last week, Bush's tax guru, Grover Norquist, said their goal is to abolish the capital gains tax, abolish the dividend tax, and let the wealthiest shelter as much as they want tax-free.
Look at the choices they make: They have driven up the share of the tax burden for most working people, and driven down the burden on the richest few. They got rid of even the smallest tax on even the largest inheritances on earth. This past month, in a $350 billion bonanza of tax cuts on wealth, they couldn't find $3.5 billion to give the child tax credit to poor people who work. Listen to this: They refused to cut taxes for the children of 250,000 American soldiers who are risking their lives for us in Iraq, so they could cut dividend and capital gains taxes for millionaires who were selling stocks short until the war was over.
The president keeps promising his plan will create jobs but it hasn't, it won't, and that's not why he did it. He said he wanted to end the double taxation of dividends. Then he turned around and signed a bill that lets people shelter dividends from companies that don't pay taxes at all, including companies that evade taxes by setting up headquarters in Bermuda.
This President says he can't afford to fund No Child Left Behind, but his tax bill ought to be called No Tax Shelter Left Behind.
It is wrong to reward those who don't have to work at the expense of those who do. If we want America to be a growing, thriving democracy, with the greatest work ethic and the strongest middle class on earth, we must choose a different path.
As President, I will put the government, the economy, and the tax code back in line with our values. No more tax breaks for corporations that move their headquarters overseas or buy life insurance on janitors and make themselves the beneficiaries.
No more tax breaks for CEOs who give themselves millions in top-hat pensions while giving no pensions at all to ordinary workers. No more playing games with the budget and driving up deficits. And no more of the Bush administration's war on work.
First, I will ask Congress to cancel the 2001 and 2003 income, dividend, and estate tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans in the upper two brackets. In these times of national sacrifice, we should not be asking less of the most fortunate. I agree with Bill Gates, Sr., the father of the richest man in America, that in a world where taxes must be paid, the people who inherit massive estates ought to pay taxes too. I agree with Warren Buffett, the shrewd investor and another of America's richest men, who said that something is deeply wrong when a billionaire has a lower tax rate than his secretary.
Second, I will give America a tax code that rewards work, not wealth. Today, middle-class families pay income tax on their earnings at a rate of up to 25%, plus another 7.65% in payroll tax. Yet under the law President Bush just signed, a CEO who pays himself whatever he wants can sell millions of dollars in stock and pay tax at a total rate of 15%.
Let me say that again: Somebody who has worked long hours his whole life to save for his son's college has to pay taxes at more than twice the rate as his boss. Where I come from, that man's hard work means at least as much to the future of this country not half as much as what his boss does. After the biggest lapse in corporate responsibility in our lifetimes, we shouldn't be letting a CEO who pays himself hundreds of times more than his workers pay lower taxes than the workers themselves.
Mr. President, I challenge you. Explain why you think a multimillionaire should pay 15% on his next million, while a fireman has to pay over 30% for each extra dollar of overtime. Mr. President, explain how you square that with America's values.
When I am President, I will stand up for a simple principle that will strengthen our economy and put it back in line with our values: Ordinary Americans shouldn't pay higher taxes on the work they do than the most fortunate pay on the wealth they own.
Under my plan, the wealthiest one-third of one percent of taxpayers those who claim capital gains and have annual incomes over $350,000 -- will pay the same rate on capital gains 25% -- that two teachers who earn $35,000 pay on their incomes. In turn, we'll use the money not for new programs, but to restore fiscal discipline and to give tax cuts to middle-class Americans who live from paycheck to paycheck.
Third, I will cut taxes to encourage savings and wealth creation for the middle class and working poor, not take away their tax cuts. I believe ordinary Americans are taxed too much, not too little. As a direct result of this President's policies, all across this country people are seeing their property taxes, their sales taxes, their state and local income taxes, and their college tuition bills go up. Now some in my party want to take away their federal income tax cuts, too. That's wrong. The answer to Republicans who have made middle-class incomes and nest eggs go down should not be Democrats who make middle-class taxes go up.
I know this President wants to make the next election about taxes. That's why I'm going to tell America the whole story: This president is the reason your taxes are going up. I'm going to cut them.
You see, I have a much different economic vision than this President. I believe the backbone of the American economy is the hard work, determination, and ingenuity of the middle class, not the insiders. I believe the way to grow the economy is to grow and strengthen the middle class, not shrink its size and add to its burdens. I believe the way a rich nation gets richer is by giving all its citizens the chance to get richer, not by only helping those like me who've already succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.
I believe the way to make the stock market grow and keep growing is to expand the investor class by attracting, reassuring, and rewarding millions and millions of small investors, not favoring a handful of the biggest ones. I believe the way to create new wealth is by rewarding work and responsibility, not coddling the privileged and going soft on executives, accountants, and analysts who squander other people's money. We've had enough Enrons and WorldComs. It's time to help America prosper the old-fashioned way by earning it.
What's right for our economy, our democracy, and our society is what's right for our values as well: Every American should have the chance to own a piece of the rock. Under my plan, every American will have the chance to be an owner to buy a home, save for college, invest in America, or put money aside for a secure retirement.
First, we'll give struggling families a chance to realize the American dream, with a $5,000 tax credit toward the down payment on their first home. There is no better way to build a strong, secure nest egg, and get ahead for the long haul than owning a home. There is also nothing better than home ownership to give citizens a stake in fighting crime, keeping the neighborhood clean, and building stronger schools. We can help millions of Americans become owners, and create a million jobs at the same time.
Second, we'll reform the tax code to give middle-class Americans the chance to grow their nest-eggs. For families of teachers, nurses, and police officers who can't afford to save right now, we'll cut the capital gains rate in half on gains up to $10,000 held for at least three years.
And we'll allow the vast majority of Americans to get $1,000 in capital gains or $500 in dividends without paying taxes. That will make it much easier for millions of middle-class families to save and invest for college, a new home, retirement, or whatever dream they're working toward. It also means that millions of Americans will have an easier time filling out their taxes because they can rip up two tax forms.
Third, we'll provide a new, progressive tax credit to promote investment, savings and wealth creation for working Americans. Today, only half of Americans have retirement savings. Only 7% of Americans eligible for an IRA actually have one. Our retirement system is already vulnerable, even before my generation the baby boomers begins to retire.
This shouldn't surprise us, because the savings incentives in our tax code are upside down: the better off you are, the greater the incentive for more savings. It's time to provide a good incentive to working Americans, who have the hardest time saving now and will need those savings the most later. Under my plan, low- and moderate-income working families will receive a $1 match for every $1 they save, up to $1,000 each year. A worker who saves the maximum under this plan every year from age 25 to retirement will have a nest egg of $200,000 on top of any other savings, pension, or Social Security.
All these measures will strengthen our economy by strengthening our flagging private savings rate. But we cannot restore real growth until we do something else: strengthen public savings by restoring fiscal discipline here in Washington. As I said, this President has already turned over $5 trillion in surpluses into nearly $5 trillion in deficits.
He just signed a $350 billion tax cut, and he continues to propose extensions of tax cuts for the wealthiest that will cost hundreds of billions more over the next decade. Under the plans I've outlined today, nearly half the money from my capital gains and dividends proposal will be used for deficit reduction. Together with other measures to reduce spending and stop corporate subsidies I have proposed and will continue to propose, these steps will get back on the path of fiscal discipline.
In the end, this debate is about much more than what kind of economic policy we'll have. It's about what kind of values we want to pass along to our children, and what kind of country we want to be.
Here in Washington, we like to think we're important. But what's great about America is that whether you're a senator or a bus driver doesn't make you a better person. You just have different jobs.
America is not a nation of kings and commoners, masters and servants. We're a nation where every person has equal value, every dream deserves an equal chance, and every soul should be as equal in the law of the land as it is in the eyes of God.
I care deeply about this, because it's the reason I'm standing here. My dad worked his whole life in the mill. When I was young, my mom folded sheets on the second shift.
Both my parents started out with nothing, except a blessing that was worth more than diamonds and gold the chance to live in a country whose dream belongs to anyone willing to work for it.
A country where the sweat and toil of mill workers can give a boy the chance to one day run for President is a far different place than a country that says how you're born, not how hard your work, is all that matters. I owe everything I am to the America I grew up in. I hope you'll join with me and fight with all we've got to save it.
Thank you very much.
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