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anyone is actually interested in a real "discussion" on this discussion board.
A strong, vibrant middle class is at the core of the American Dream. Nothing speaks more to the promise of America than the idea that if you work hard, you and your children can succeed in our great country.
So the American Dream Initiative is a positive agenda for change that will unite Democrats across the country. Many Democrats worked hard to make this American Dream Initiative a reality -- the Democratic Leadership Council, the Progressive Policy Institute, the Center for American Progress, the Hope Street Group, NDN, and Third Way.
As Democrats, we know the other side is not taking care of America. Republicans are bankrupting our country and failing to address the problems of Americans. Incomes have been stagnant for five years. Republicans say that the economy is great for everyone, but they have done nothing about the costs that are eating away the paychecks of hardworking Americans. Democrats will work to get health care costs down, to get college tuitions under control, to address the rising costs of gasoline, to cut middleclass taxes, and to reward companies that create jobs here at home.
Democrats did it before, and we can do it again.
We all know that the Republicans have made a mess out of the country's finances. With federal spending up, deficits up, and debt rising out of control, this year once again they cut taxes by $70 billion for the wealthiest Americans, but the average middle-class households got just $20. Now that is not even enough for seven gallons of gas. Democrats know we must stop passing on debts to our children and start doing what is best for our country and our children, by getting deficits under control.
Democrats did it before, and we can do it again.
To paraphrase the historic 1992 election campaign, "It's the American Dream, stupid!" And if it is the American Dream, then it is, as it should be, the American middle class. The simple fact is America's middle class is the core of America's greatness. With all due respect, rich people did not make America great. Every society throughout history has had the rich and the poor. It was America's destiny to create something new, a middle class that provided upward mobility for the poor and opportunity for the many. Our strength, our economy, our values derive from the promise of America, the promise of lifting yourself up through hard work in a society that rewards results.
Almost a century ago, American industry began offering millions of workers the chance to earn their way into the middle class. Workers responded with the most extraordinary work ethic. They lifted up the American economy. They won two World Wars against fascism, the Cold War against communism, and oversaw the largest expansion of human freedom the world has ever seen.
Our middle class is not only the foundation of America's economic success; American consumers carry the global economy as well. American businesses drive innovation, and American workers set the bar for productivity. The American middle class is America's competitive advantage -- hard work, fair play, the basic bargain that you will have a chance to live out your dreams.
When I was growing up, we used to call those middle-class values. Like many Americans, I can look back and know that those values were lived out in my family. My four grandparents didn't finish high school. My father's father started work in the Scranton Lace Company at the age of 11, before the turn of the last century. But he sent his three boys to college. My father went on a football scholarship to Penn State.
My mother never had the chance to attend college. That motivated her throughout her life -- she's now 87 -- to take courses at local colleges. She expected me to go to college and encouraged me to get the best education I could. And, like tens of millions of post-war families, my father came home after his Navy service in World War II to start a business. It was a very small business, but it was his piece of the American Dream.
My father had a middle-class attitude summed up by this refrain: When you work, work hard; when you play, play hard. But don't confuse the two.
So my father put my mother, my brothers, and me to work in his small drapery business. We actually printed the drapery fabrics. Most people think of a print plant as having large machines with bulks of fabric. But in our little print plant, we did everything by hand. The fabric was laid out on long tables. We had squeegees to put the paint in the screen and we pushed the paint by hand across the fabric to make the imprint. Then we picked the fabric up, moved it, put it down, and did it all over again.
Eventually, my parents moved to the suburbs so that we children could have the best schools and best recreational opportunities. He and my mother achieved a comfortable life. But they not only had high expectations for their family, they had high expectations for their community and their country.
My story of hard work that lifts the individual, the family, and the community is the American Dream story. We ended the last century with America's economic might at its peak, with Americans at their most optimistic, and with opportunities for almost everyone who wanted to work hard to make the most of their God-given abilities. We got there in large part because of the Democratic Party's philosophy of governing. We asked individuals to take responsibility for themselves, but also to chip in and help their communities. And we asked people to expect that their government would take responsibility for properly spending their hard-earned tax dollars and ensuring the underpinnings of fairness and opportunity for all.
Over the past five years, we have gone in a very different direction. A policy of fiscal discipline and budget surpluses was abandoned for one that racked up debt and proclaimed that deficits don't matter. A policy that focused on helping the middle class get bigger and stronger was replaced by one that helped the strong get stronger and the rich get richer in the mistaken belief that the rest of the country would eventually get their share.
The result is that, for the first time ever, America has experienced four straight years of rising productivity and falling incomes. Americans are earning less while the costs of a middle-class life have soared. In the last five years, college costs have risen 50 percent; health care, 73 percent; gasoline, more than 100 percent. Rising home costs have pushed people farther and farther from their work. A lot of Americans can't work any harder, borrow any more, or save any less. And those same rising costs for health care, retirement, transportation, and energy are impacting our businesses as well.
It's time for a new direction. For five years we have lived with deficits. Our new American Dream agenda will help bring back fiscal responsibility. For five years we have lived with stagnating wages. Our plan will make the basics of life in the middle class, health care, education, and retirement affordable for those who take responsibility. For five years we have allowed the rest of the world to overtake our higher education system. This plan puts us on the road to universal college and lifelong training.
For five years, the doors of opportunity and ownership have been closing for too many Americans. This new agenda will open those doors to everyone who is ready to work. For five years, we have seen poverty increase for millions of Americans. The ideas in our agenda will make sure every American will get a fair wage, access to college and home ownership, and a path out of poverty and into the middle class.
We have seen what it is like to have a Republican leadership that puts middle-class Americans last and ignores the real challenges we are facing: globalization, stagnating wages, higher energy costs. There is a better way. It is time for Democrats to show how an agenda for change can turn the country around and bring the American Dream back within reach.
This American Dream Initiative is an agenda that eases the fears of middle- class families and sustains the hopes of families struggling to make it into the middle class. This broad, inclusive agenda is missing one key ingredient -- a Democratic Congress to enact it.
This new opportunity agenda can help Democrats around the country. It can be the basis for a discussion about the challenges that middle-class Americans face here at home. We can tell people that we are for renewing the American Dream of a college degree, a home, health care, a secure retirement, and the chance to get ahead in a growing economy where rising bottom lines mean rising incomes for all workers. We can replace trickle-down economics with rise-up economics. We can make sure that everyone has a chance to rise up and fulfill their dreams for the future.
To expand opportunity for all, we need a new ethic of responsibility from both the public and the private sectors. We must cut the deficit through specific actions, making long-term investments to grow the economy, and rein in corporate abuses by shining a light on CEO pay packages and by increasing accountability and oversight over pensions and mutual funds.
It's time for a new direction on the economy that focuses on Main Street as well as Wall Street.
The starting point for the American Dream is a growing economy that benefits workers, as well as CEOs. America lives out its best values when wealth is growing for everyone. And a clear distinction between Democrats and Republicans in this election is our focus on the government's responsibility to help the private sector and the middle class grow, and to make sure that economic growth is broadly shared. When our companies are highly profitable, as many are right now, it is in everyone's interests that workers share in that success. So incomes rise and the middle class grows, and the whole economy is lifted.
But that isn't happening and it's time to start asking why. The national government needs a strategy to create an economic climate in which the private sector can generate jobs, raise incomes, and increase wealth. To unleash the power of innovation and enterprise, we need to restore fiscal responsibility, open new markets, and enforce trade laws. We need to make smart economic investments in such areas as broadband, scientific research including stem cell research, and alternative fuels. We need an Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), like the one created by the Defense Department after Sputnik went up in 1957, that will spur research into energy technology. That will in turn lead to the creation of new highways, new jobs, and new exports, just as ARPA's research led to the microprocessor, the Internet, and so much else.
With a smart energy policy we can create millions of new good jobs, ease the burden on middle-class pocketbooks, and lead the way against climate change, all at the same time -- to say nothing of enhancing our security in an increasingly dangerous world.
To put the United States at the cutting edge of new energy-efficient technologies, we should create a strategic energy fund that will sponsor research into the potential of cellulosic ethanol, bio-diesel, and other flexible fuels. We should support the development of plug-in hybrids, clean burning diesel, and other high-mileage vehicles.
For five years, the Bush administration has given special tax breaks to the privileged few and increased the middle class's share of the burden. We need a new economic formula of Democratic Capitalism. The way to ensure prosperity is to build an expanding middle class, not a shrinking one, and to give the members of the middle class a stake in that prosperity. The American Dream Initiative proposes letting employees and investors draw their own conclusions about inflated CEO salaries by asking the Securities and Exchange Commission to require that corporations disclose full CEO compensation and how that relates to profitability and average worker pay.
A raise for hard-working Americans on the minimum wage is long overdue. In the last seven years, Congress has voted to raise its own salary by over $30,000 while refusing to raise the minimum wage. Since economic arguments and appeals to conscience haven't worked, I have introduced legislation to prohibit Congress from giving itself another raise until it increases the minimum wage.
Now I would like to go even further: No pay raise for Congress or the executive branch until the incomes of average Americans start to rise again.
The most important asset most Americans will ever own is their home. But a home is not just a financial asset; it's a symbol of security, of family, of community, of a stable middle-class life. The American Dream Initiative suggests several ways to expand the chance to own a home. One is to make the home mortgage deduction available for everyone, not just the half of American homeowners who itemize deductions on their taxes. Homeowners' subsidies aren't even reaching the people who need them the most -- families with incomes below $50,000. I think that is backward. We ought to fix this problem by giving an additional 10 million Americans a tax incentive to invest in their own homes.
We also need to give every child a shot at getting into the middle class and building his or her own stake in America. Today the chance to get ahead depends more and more on the family into which you are born. It really depends upon whether your family has the assets to take advantage of opportunities. That wasn't the way in America in the past. That is why the American Dream Initiative proposes that our country follow Britain's lead by providing a baby bond to each of the 4 million children born in America every year -- a $500 savings bond at birth and another at age 10. These bonds would signal louder than words and rhetoric that America is investing in its children. And they would provide an incentive even to low-income parents to invest more in their own child's future.
But eventually that child is going to have to decide whether he or she can afford to go to college. It is past time to make college affordable for every American.
If homeownership is the most visible symbol of the American Dream, the most important doorway into the middle class is education beyond high school. Today a college graduate earns twice as much as a high school graduate. That is a million-dollar bonus over the working lifetimes of today's college seniors. America used to rank first in the world in the percentage of young people with a post-secondary degree. Now we have fallen to seventh -- not because our young people don't try but because too many don't finish.
The most overwhelming obstacle to finishing college is the expense. College costs have increased faster than inflation for 25 years in a row. The result is that college graduation rates have stayed flat for years. About 70 percent of Americans own their own home. About 85 percent have health care. About 42 percent own retirement accounts. But only 30 percent have a college degree. The percentage is higher for Americans under 35, but less than 50 percent. And in Washington, the Republicans are making it even harder by cutting student assistance and raising interest rates on student loans.
Yet America's success in the global economy depends on the skills and education of our people. That's why we need a bold strategy to provide 1 million more college and community college graduates a year by 2015.
The American Dream Initiative proposes a new performance-based American Dream grant that will award states money based on the number of students that attend and graduate from their colleges and universities. We also propose combining all of the confusing existing tax breaks for college into a single refundable $3,000 tuition and training tax credit. Under these proposals, more than half of our young people could finish college with a degree within a decade. And any student willing to work part time or perform community service could go to a four-year public college practically free.
With these additional new funds, colleges should be held more accountable for their students' success. We should start by asking colleges to publish complete data on their graduation rates. We should also demand that they practice truth in tuition by setting multiyear tuition and fee levels so that incoming freshmen can know in advance how much four years of college will cost.
We also need a new direction toward a secure retirement for every American who is willing to save. No one's dream ought to end in a nightmare in their older years. Just 50 years ago, more than half of senior citizens lived below the poverty line. But Social Security, pension plans, and rising incomes combined to change that.
As incomes have stagnated, however, families are having to put off saving for retirement so they can pay the bills today. Only one-half of American workers are offered a savings plan, and a quarter of them turn it down because they don't think they can afford it. Fewer and fewer employers offer traditional pension plans. More and more are trying to get out of their obligation to fully fund the ones that are left. Our tax code is upside-down. It gives the most benefit to wealthy families who don't need an incentive to save and too little benefit to families where the money will make a real difference.
We need a new bargain that provides retirement security in this mobile workplace. The Republicans have a plan; yes, they still have a plan to privatize Social Security if they get the chance again. The Democrats will protect Social Security and people's retirement.
That is why the American Dream Initiative proposes American Dream accounts, which require every employer to open retirement accounts for its workers. It will also make those pensions portable when workers change jobs. Tax credits would minimize the cost and administrative burden to employers. And a permanent refundable saver's credit could give middle-class and working families a 50-percent matching contribution for their retirement savings.
And, of course, we need a new direction in health care. I still believe in universal coverage. And we know that no single factor does more to ruin the dreams of Americans and hold back the growth of our economy than the soaring costs of health care. Our businesses must compete against countries that offer national health insurance and countries that offer no insurance. That is a terrible place for American business to find itself.
American citizens are seeing health care expenses eat up their disposable income. In some cases they are simply doing without. We need action from Washington to stop the spiral of health care costs. We need to offer every family the chance to give their children a healthy start on their dreams. It is time to pass a small-employers health benefit plan, like the federal employers health benefit plan that would put small businesses across America into one purchasing pool, giving their employees access to the same quality of affordable care that members of Congress enjoy.
The Institute of Medicine reports that patients can expect one prescription error for every day they stay in the hospital. That is bad for patients, and that is bad for our costs. It's time to use 21st-century information technology to cut down on those life-threatening errors, while we save money. It's also time to extend health insurance to every child, to give Americans the tools they need to make healthy choices, and to make a national commitment to find cures for diseases that are sapping individuals and our economy.
We need a new ethic of responsibility from our leaders. Our families can't get away with runaway spending, creative accounting, and wasteful subsidies. Americans have the right to expect responsibility, discipline, and honesty from their leaders -- we have some suggestions for how to do that. For instance, we should restore the pay-as-you-go rule, so Congress can't enact new spending programs or tax cuts without showing how they will pay for them. We should also eliminate $200 billion of unnecessary and wasteful corporate subsidies over 10 years and cut 100,000 unnecessary federal consultants.
These actions will help pay the costs of the proposals we make in the American Dream Initiative. In addition, we need a Congress that will use its investigative powers to look at the no-bid contracts for Halliburton and how $9 billion in U.S. government cash went missing in Iraq. We need to know what role our oil companies are playing in Iraq and why our troops struggled to get bandages and body armor.
The American Dream Initiative agenda focuses on policies here at home. But we will not let the president and the Republicans off the hook for the mistakes they have made and the disastrous policies they have followed abroad. We will hold them accountable every bit as much for national security and homeland security as for their failure to provide Americans with economic security.
So this agenda is all about restoring the American Dream, but there is nothing dreamlike about it. Every single item is something a Democratic Congress could begin putting in place in January 2007. This is a Democratic agenda for the 21st century. But as we were working on it, I found myself thinking often of a 19th century president, Abraham Lincoln, who I secretly believe would be a Democrat if he were here today.
President Lincoln led America into the industrial age and gave birth to the possibility of a new American Dream for millions of our citizens. His administration gave the land grants that set up our system of public higher education, still the world's finest. It also supported an audacious plan to build a railroad all the way across our great continent, a huge step for economic growth. And all of this while the country was embroiled in a painful Civil War.
Lincoln understood that who we are in the world begins with how we live at home. And during the darkest days of that war he said, "My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of Earth." That is still a dream we all share. It is a dream that begins with making America work for its people, and making its people proud to work for America.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, U.S. senator from New York, chaired the Democratic Leadership Council's American Dream Initiative. Adapted from Sen. Clinton's speech to the 2006 DLC National Conversation in Denver, Colo.
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