The Economy
Have you traveled outside the United States lately? Our dollar is rapidly becoming worth less in the global economy. Anyone that has traveled abroad knows how little our dollar buys. Even Canadian currency is worth more that our dollar.
The federal debt is killing our economy and our children’s future. Our debt has now surpassed $9.5 Trillion, or $31,000 for every man, woman and child living in the United States.
And why aren’t Democrats or Republicans even talking about this issue? Because, sadly, neither Democrats nor Republicans have the fiscal discipline or the political will to stop or even reduce their irresponsible behavior. During Norm Coleman’s six-year term as Senator, our debt has increased over $3 Trillion-- nearly 1/3 of the entire total Federal debt!
If Republicans are supposed to be fiscal conservatives, they are doing as bad a job on this as they are doing with the rest of the government.
We have to stop this profligate spending and start paying our own way. When I’m elected to the U.S. Senate, the first bill I would introduce would be to place an absolute spending cap at current levels for four years. This would at least slow down the financial bleeding and start the country in the right direction.
If we want to spend money on something new, then we have to find to stop spending on something else. We all have to live within our means—you do it every day. It’s time our government does the same.
Gas Prices
There are two main reasons why gas prices have now gone over $4.00 per gallon. The first reason is the high demand for gas, and the second reason is the shrinking value of our dollar.
Our dollar has fallen in value during the past several years due to our huge federal debt and our huge balance-of-trade deficit. If the dollar was worth what is was 10 years ago, gas prices would be in the $2.50/gallon range, not $4.00. Our $9.5 Trillion federal debt is finally hitting us all in the pocket book.
Combine this massive debt with our huge trade deficit-- which consists mainly of imported oil-- and the dollar will continue to shrink while gas prices continue to rise. We must cut our oil imports and begin using clean energy alternatives such as biofuels, hydrogen cells, solar power, wind power and geothermal power as a substitute for oil. Brazil has done this using sugar cane, and America’s farmers and American ingenuity can do at least as well. We just need to elect people with the political will to quit talking about it and just do it.
War in Iraq
It’s now incontrovertible that our own government misled us into starting a war with Iraq. It’s also now incontrovertible that this was a huge mistake. Didn’t we learn anything from Vietnam and the Gulf of Tonkin?
The real war against terrorism is not being fought in Iraq. It’s taking place in countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan and rogue states throughout the world.
We cannot go back in history. We broke Iraq, and we’re obligated to fix it. But enough is enough. The war has been a huge contributing factor to the demise of our economy, and five years and thousands of lives is more than enough.
America has been in Iraq longer than we were involved in World War II. Everyone, including the Iraqi people and the Iraqi government, wants us out. It’s time to get out of Iraq as quickly as possible and in the spirit of true democracy, let the Iraqi people determine their own destiny.
Expanded Rights for the Young People of America
18-year-old citizens of the United States should be given all legal rights of adulthood. If they can vote, join the military, and fight our wars, they certainly have earned the right to legally have a beer.
Health Care Reform
Health care costs too much and too many people either do not have health care coverage or they cannot afford it. For far too many of our fellow citizens, their primary health care provider has become the emergency room at the local hospital. And nothing is more expensive than this type of treatment.
Unfortunately the drug companies, the insurance companies and the largest health care providers have Congress jumping at their beck and call.
But before giving up entirely on the private health care system and going to a Universal Health Care plan, I would propose that we use the Government’s current Medicare System and open up that system to all Americans on a cost basis. Let the private sector compete with the public sector and see who wins. I would mandate that Medicare negotiate with the drug companies for lower costs or direct them to go to foreign suppliers for our drugs. Why should Canadians pay 50% less than Americans for their drugs?
Social Security and Medicare
Unfortunately, due to our unchecked spending, both of these financial safety nets are not sustainable into the future. Everyone in Washington knows that these programs need to be changed in order to insure that all Americans will be able to count on these benefits in retirement—but nobody wants to tackle the problem. All Congress does is commission studies which tell us what we already know: that the system is broken. The sooner we get serious about finding real solutions, the better off we all will be.
It’s actually fairly simple economics: these entitlement programs either have to decrease their costs or increase their income. There are several ways to do both. You can index benefits to life expectancy, means-test benefits, raise the Social Security tax, reform our health care system to reduce costs, or adopt a combination of these fixes. But the longer we wait to take action, the more difficult it will be to keep these programs from going broke.
The War on Drugs
America’s vaunted “war on drugs” has been a costly and miserable failure. Did we learn nothing from Prohibition? All we have succeeded in doing is to create a huge criminal enterprise that thrives on supplying outlawed drugs, and a huge criminal population for essentially nonviolent crimes.
Education works; eradication and incarceration does not. We have to work on the demand side of this equation and educate people about the destruction that drugs can cause while providing treatment for those who become addicted, not jail cells. We should regulate and tax these drugs, not continue to create an opportunity, an industry and an entire underground economy for major crime.
Gay Rights
It’s long past time to acknowledge that the equal protection clause of the United States Constitution applies to all Americans, regardless of their sexual preference, in the same way it applies to all of our citizens regardless of race, religion or gender.
Money in Politics
I’ve been an Independent representing Minnesota in the U.S. Senate. I didn’t have to raise millions of dollars to get there. But while I was there, I saw – up close and firsthand—how the insatiable chase for big money affects the work of the Congress.
Many of our citizens believe that Congress is now bought and paid for by huge special interests. I would like to tell them this is not so—but I can’t.
This year’s U.S. Senate race in Minnesota will raise and spend over $40 million dollars from the candidates alone. Special interest and political party spending might double that total. Our political system is completely out of control. Why do rich people and business interests give so much money? It is because they get a huge return on their investment.
Ask yourself: why do we pay the highest drug prices in the world, when many of those drugs and treatment advances are invented right here in the United States? Why is our health care system the most expensive in the world? Why haven’t we stopped relying on oil for our main source of energy and moved on to clean energy alternatives?
Special interests contribute millions and millions of dollars to incumbent Senators to make sure nothing changes—or that any changes are to their benefit. In many instances, special interest groups are literally writing the legislation that their bought-and-paid-for legislators carry into the Congress. Since the Supreme Court has endorsed this method of legalized bribery in politics, we can’t limit the amount of money in politics. But what we can do is to provide an alternative path to elected office with publicly financed campaigns.
The cost of providing public money to candidates for Congress would be pennies compared to what we now pay as a result of the legislation that comes out of this legalized bribery. So the second bill I would introduce in the U.S. Senate would be to provide a “clean money” option for candidates to get elected.
The plan is actually quite simple: every eligible and registered voter in the United States would be entitled to a $100.00 voucher that they could give to the federal candidate of their choice. Candidates would then have to go back to their districts and convince their voters to give them the vouchers to finance their campaigns, not get it from special interest fundraising in Washington.
Gun Rights
I believe that the second amendment to our Constitution is as important as any of the others. I believe that all law abiding citizens have the right to own and bear arms.