From a speech in 1999. (Mods, since it's a speech on his website, I'm assuming it's public domain and so am including more than four paragraphs).
http://www.house.gov/sherrodbrown/oldsite/cityclub.htmPrivatization: Undoing America's Sense of Community
Friday, February 12, 1999, The City Club of Cleveland
U.S. Congressman Sherrod Brown
"... Four years ago this very conservative class of Republicans wanted a revolution of sorts. Turn all power back to the states. Privatize. Government can't do anything right. Privatize. You can spend your money better than the government can. There was never any talk of community. Nor hardly ever any debate or discussion starting with the word "we."
They didn't look like America. Or think much like America. Of the 73, only seven were female. Only one was African-American. None was Hispanic. They wanted to privatize almost everything. They started with the National Park System. About 50 of them proposed privatizing the national park system by selling our parks to corporations. We could have the Phillip Morris Smokey Mountains and the Liberty Taco Bell. A far right Washington think tank, to the cheers of many in the GOP freshman class in 1994, suggested charging admission to government buildings such as the Capitol. "Think," one GOP supporter chortled, "think of the wear on the marble steps when you count the number of feet that have walked on it, and the brushing up against the walls. Others, like their counterparts in the Ohio legislature, advocated privatizing prisons. Private prisons all over the country, often skimping on security, have seen more violence and prison escapes than ever before....
These Republican revolutionaries saved the best for last. Urged on by conservative newspapers like the Wall Street Journal, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and the Washington Times, Republicans moved to privatize perhaps the best government program in this nation's history, Medicare. Privatize it, they said, in order to save it.
Look, private industry is good. It's the dynamic engine of job growth in our state and across our country. There are many things the market does very well, but putting the public's welfare first is not one of them.....Profits drive the private sector. Profits are the primary motivating force in our economic system and shareholders rightly demand profitability. And the best way to increase profits is to minimize costs and maximize prices. HMOs understand that providing health insurance to Medicare beneficiaries who need little health care is far more profitable than providing it to those who need expensive care. Drug companies have figured out that charging seniors, who are on fixed incomes and who lack a drug benefit, the highest prescription drug prices in the world is hugely profitable. ....
.... Clearly the market deserves its very important place in our society. It's the dynamic engine of job growth in our state and across the country. The market creates wealth and raises our standard of living. There are many things the market does very well.
But when the market doesn't work and its failure harms individuals and diminishes the nation's successes, the government has a role. Sometimes markets -- and I think the prescription drug market provides an excellent example -- must be regulated and sometimes marketplace dynamics aren't the answer.
There is risk in creating an economy and a society that is devoid of any public conscience. A market economy that operates without public safeguards will create a vast gulf between those who reap the rewards and those who are left outside. The purpose of publicly owned national parks is to protect open space and preserve our nation's natural heritage. The purpose of privatized national parks is to maximize profit -- through development and commercialization. The purpose of public prisons is to protect the public, to punish, and to rehabilitate. The purpose of privatized prisons is to maximize profit -- by reducing staff and possibly cutting back on security. The purpose of public medical systems is to provide the best health care possible to help people, especially children and the elderly, live longer, healthier lives. The purpose of privatized medical systems is to maximize profit -- through private insurance companies denying benefits and instituting incentives to withhold care.
Our nation has a compelling interest to maintain a steady, mutually beneficial balance between the public and private sectors. Private companies are important. Public programs are important. Government regulations are important.
Over the last few years, we've seen the U.S. economy expand. We've balanced the federal budget and are on our way to begin paying down the national debt.....We all talk about our strong economy, and it is taking us in the right direction. But the surge in wealth across the country has not reached everyone yet. While the stock market expands, median wealth -- not the average -- was ten percent lower in 1995 than in 1983. The richest one percent held half of all outstanding stock and trust equity, according to a Federal Reserve survey.
To put this in some perspective, Bill Gates's net worth, some $46 billion, is larger than the combined net worth of the bottom 40 percent of American households. Or think of it this way. Take Bill Gates's $46 billion. Divide it by his work hours during the last 24 years since he founded Microsoft. His time is so valuable that if he dropped a $500 bill, it would only be worth his time to bend over and pick it up if he could do it in fewer than four seconds.
While these may be times of relative peace and prosperity, there is another reality. In Ohio, nearly 22 percent of our state's children live in poverty. More than one-third of the nation's elderly can't afford the cost of the medicine their doctors prescribe for them. We're increasingly enclosing ourselves in gated communities with private security forces while we abandon the core of our cities. Incredibly, the number of private security guards now exceeds the number of publicly employed policemen.
We are in danger of becoming a land of two societies. One society for the more affluent and another for the less well-off. They don't talk to each other. They don't know each other. They don't understand each other. That's why our public institutions, like Medicare and Social Security, are so important. Their charge is to leave no one behind....
MORE
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
