- Why should working people support you for president?
George Bush and Dick Cheney have dug this country into a very deep hole abroad and at here at home. The next President has no margin for error—no time for on-the-job training. It is time for honest leadership—a President who is willing to be straight with the people.
We need a president who will keep his promise to this generation and the next: the promise to end this war in Iraq, the promise for a vibrant middle class with good jobs, health care and a secure retirement and the promise of a secure place for America in the world.
If I am elected I will keep these promises. I will end the war in Iraq and leave stability instead of chaos behind. I will invest in health care, retirement security and education. Then we can keep the most important promise: to pass on to our children a world and a community better than our own. - How will you work to create good jobs and lift living standards in the United States and around the world?
To create good American jobs in a global economy we have to address the cost of health care, insist on labor and environmental standards in trade agreements, invest in education (pre-school through higher education), and invest in innovation and support bringing new technologies to market.
By the end of this decade the average Fortune 500 company will spend as much on health care as it makes in profit. We cannot compete in a global economy with other countries that do not pass on these enormous health care costs. As a start, we should assist companies with catastrophic health insurance costs. Beyond that we need to invest in universal health care and take a serious look at the competitive impact that legacy costs are having on manufacturers in particular.
Realistically, though, the U.S. not a low-cost country—and that should not be our goal. That means we have to invest in education and innovation in order to keep good production jobs here. In high-cost countries like the United States, companies purchase the labor they cannot get more cheaply elsewhere. We must constantly come up with new technologies BEFORE someone else figures out how to do it more cheaply. Our economic growth depends on advances in technology and advances in knowledge. Our education system and our ability to develop cutting edge technology is our ace in the hole.
But we cannot be beaten to the punch by foreign competitors. For example, the Japanese, Chinese and Koreans invest heavily in the development of next generation batters—lithium ion batteries—that power plug-in hybrid vehicles. Our domestic manufacturers who need this technology for vehicles and other efficiency technology should not have to buy it from other countries. We should build it here. That is why I am proposing to double our investment in bringing this technology to market in the next five years. We can keep production here and help our domestic manufacturers but we have to invest at least as much as our competitors.
Finally, we need a new drive, at all levels of government, to improve the basic infrastructure our economy runs on. That means everything from our roads and bridges to our water and sewer systems, all the way to telecommunications, like broadband. We have to have the best workforce with the best technology to compete.
- What are your ideas for solving the U.S. health care crisis and guaranteeing affordable, quality health care to all?
Everyone—adults and children—should have access to health care in this country. We are 9 million children and 37 million adults short of that goal. Seventy percent of those people are in families with one or more full time worker.
I will be announcing a detailed a more detailed health care plan in coming months. It will meet the following goals: (1) insuring every child, (2) assisting families and companies with the burdens of catastrophic cases; and (3) modernizing and simplifying our system.
The path toward universal coverage starts with the most vulnerable in our society. I would make sure that every child has health insurance—one way we can do this is by expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP)—and I would relieve families and companies of the burden of catastrophic cases.
Beyond that, we should evaluate the best way to provide coverage for the remaining uninsured. Let me be clear—to me it is not a question of if we’re going to provide universal health care—but how we’re going to do it.
I would support experimentation on the state level (like in Massachusetts and California) to determine how employer mandates and individual mandates work best. And I would support states, like my home state of Delaware, that are making the transition to electronic medical record systems that allow doctors and patients real-time access to records and help prevent dangerous and costly mistakes.
Focusing on universal access to health care isn’t enough. Our national health care policy must also include a strategy to keep sky-rocketing costs in check. We can do that by modernizing the system, simplifying it and improving quality. We can modernize health care by using electronic records and providing doctors, nurses and pharmacists with vital histories and information in real time. We can simplify health care by moving to one, universal claims form—some states have already done this and are reducing administrative costs. We can improve health care by taking the best medical practices and applying them to disease management. We must do a better job of promoting prevention and wellness and making sure that people who suffer from common chronic diseases like heart disease and diabetes have adequate access to care, can afford medication and are able to manage and treat their illness and avoid serious complications.
- Do you believe corporate interests have too much power today and, if so, how will you work to restore workers’ rights, rebalance power between corporations and working families and ensure that our nation’s prosperity is shared?
Corporate America is stronger every day at the expense of working men and women. The President may claim this is a healthy economy, but that's only true if you don't ask middle-class Americans. They know that their wages aren't going up as fast as the cost of gas or a month's rent, and they know that their job isn't as safe as it once was.
It's all in the numbers. In 2006, we had the lowest share of our national income going to wages and salaries since 1929—not a good economic year itself. If you look at the "recovery" after our latest recession, you'll see that wages and salaries grew only 2 percent in five years, while corporate profits grew by 13 percent. This may be an economy that is good for corporate kingpins, but those numbers don't paint a pretty picture for a family of four that is trying to find a way to get their kids through college and maybe have a little left over at the end.
There are a couple causes for this. This decade has seen attacks on organized labor, from workers at the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security, private contracting of services, to changing definitions of supervisors. At the same time, globalization has doubled the global workforce. Hundreds of millions of workers in China and India are now competing for American jobs, and our country is all too content to let them go.
What bothers me the most is that hard working people, America’s middle class, are being left behind in pay and benefits—at a time when business is posting record profits. Business argues that wage increases have been slow because of retirement and health care costs—that’s part of it but that’s not the whole story here. When you have guys like the CEO of Home Depot, getting $210 million to take a hike you’ve got priorities that are just totally out of whack.
The two most important things we can do to balance power is revitalize labor to give employees a collective voice and make sure that corporations are accountable to their shareholders.
Shareholders should have a voice in setting executive compensation and keeping them honest. I support allowing shareholders to vote on issues like executive compensation. Shareholders have a critical role to play in corporate accountability. I would repeal the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, which harmed investors’ power to bring crooked executives to justice.
I’m proud to have worked on the most comprehensive corporate reform legislation in decades—the Sarbanes Oxley Act. We’ve been hearing a lot of grumbling from CEOs and the Chamber of Commerce that it is too strict—but let’s evaluate what’s happened since the law was enacted in 2002. Investors have better information, dozens of companies have restated their earnings to remedy accounting errors and crooked executives have been sent to jail—at the same time the stock market closed out 2006 with a record breaking year.
Critics argue that requiring CEOs to attest to the accuracy of a company’s financial statements and the soundness of its internal controls is too distracting—but what could be more important to shareholders than the accuracy and integrity of a company’s financial statements?
I haven’t seen any evidence that we should roll back protections—a company that cannot or will not institute and maintain the internal controls necessary to meet the high standards of financial integrity and corporate accountability should not go public in the United States.
- What role do you believe unions play in our economy and society, and what will you do to restore the freedom of all working people to join together in unions to bargain for a better life? Do you support the Employee Free Choice Act that passed the U.S. House of Representatives on March 1 and is being considered in the U.S. Senate and will you make it law?
When unions are at their strongest, the middle class is at its strongest and wages grow. When unions are on defense the middle class standard of living is stagnant.
I think we sometimes forget that labor built the middle class and that there isn’t a white collar worker that is treated well by his employer or a piece of social legislation that exists that isn’t because of organized labor. We have a strong middle class in this country because of labor.
My administration would honor the importance of unions. The people I would appoint to the Department of Labor would understand and value labor. They wouldn’t be afraid to use the word union.
I would make sure that the NRLB is a fair forum to contest unfair labor practices.
I would reverse the NLRB’s decision broadening the definition of “supervisor.” This is just a backhanded way to deny many workers their historic right to organize.
And I would enact the new protections in the Employee Free Choice Act, which I am proud to co-sponsor in the Senate.
I got elected when I was 29 years old for one reason – labor. I was this kid who could not possibly win running against a guy who was practically a legend in my state. But two months before the election labor endorsed me and my whole political life changed. And every day I remember that. If you look at my record on the fights we have had in the last few years you’ll find that I’ve always been on your side: Common situs (or site) picketing when I first arrived in the Senate; raising the minimum wage; worker safety; opposing Social Security privatization; protecting Davis-Bacon wages; overtime protections; unemployment compensation and family and medical leave to name a few.
- How will you approach helping low-income individuals and families secure living wage jobs, health care, housing and other basic needs to escape the trap of poverty?
We should take back the Bush tax cuts from the very wealthy and instead invest in health care and retirement security; preschool; teachers and class size reduction; expanding the tax benefits (like the Earned Income Tax Credit) for low income people; and affordable housing. Equally important, we must protect workers’ rights to organize and raise the minimum wage.
First, health care. The path to universal care starts with insuring every child. We have to move toward a universal system. But our first goal should be immediately insuring every child by expanding the Childrens Health Insurance Program to cover every eligible child.
Second, retirement security. We must protect social security, not privatize it. We must protect defined-benefit pensions by making sure they are fully funded. Make personal saving easier for workers who don’t have pensions by requiring employers to contribute to 401k-type funds and allowing workers to carry with them the same retirement accounts from job to job.
Third, improve education. Preschool should be available for every child. In addition we need to invest more in our teachers and attract and retain talented people to the profession. Half of all new teachers leave the profession in 5 years. We should pay our teachers more. And we should focus again on reducing class size in the early grades. Finally, we need to expand Pell Grants and create a single refundable tax credit of $3,000 so that a college education is affordable for everyone.
Fourth, affordable housing. We should crack down on predatory lending. We should fund Section 8 vouchers to meet the needs of people who are eligible. Only one in three eligible families gets assistance. Hundreds of families living in high rent cities have no place to go. We should also help states and local governments build affordable housing by doubling funding for Community Development Block Grants. Finally we should expand the Low Income Housing Tax Credit to lower the financing of housing developments so that rental prices are more affordable.
Finally, we have to protect workers' rights to negotiate good wages and good benefits with their employers. This administration has lined up 10 deep to strip away about 100 years of labor progress. We can slow them down by passing the Employee Free Choice Act. But we won’t be able to stop them until we have a Democrat in the White House.
- What solutions do you propose to help workers handle their work and family responsibilities?
I have long fought to help working Americans balance their many responsibilities. I supported the Family and Medical Leave Act for six years before it was finally enacted and helped beat back amendments that tried to weaken it when we finally passed it in 1993. I'm also a supporter of the Healthy Families Act, which would give workers seven paid sick days every year. This will allow them to take time off to go to the doctor or to care for a sick child or parent without worrying about losing their job or hurting their income.
Beyond that I think it is imperative that we provide parents with more support – from preschool and afterschool care to health care for children. Nearly 12 million children over the age of 5 are in some type of childcare because their parents are working. Unfortunately, childcare is all too often difficult to find or unaffordable. Only one in seven eligible children eligible for care assistance receives it. Parents need affordable quality child care in order to get and keep a job, and fulfill their role as a provider to the family.
Additionally, if we make universal preschool a goal of our country – this will help the 8 million or so families that have children aged 3 to 4 who currently face costs of between $3,000 to $9,000 for child care. Imagine that, rather than paying several thousands of dollars for child care, parents have the option of enrolling their child in a preschool program – allowing the parents to work and the children to arrive at kindergarten ready to learn.
Every parent who wants to should be able to send their child to preschool. Every child in this country should have health care. Parents should have access to afterschool programs – 14.3 million children shouldn’t have to take care of themselves after school every day.
- What will you do to revitalize our manufacturing sector, stop the export of our best jobs and reform our trade policy so it supports good jobs at home and contributes to a healthy environment and equitable development here and abroad?
Our trade policy should not reward exploitation of people or low environmental standards. I’m not voting for any more trade agreements that don’t consider labor and environmental standards. That not only hurts the people in the countries we make the agreements with but it also puts American jobs at risk. We should guarantee American workers the security they deserve.
But it is also time we stop playing defense. We need an offensive plan to create and protect American jobs. Whether we like it or not, we are in global economy. Our growth and our jobs will depend on constantly coming up with new technologies before someone else figures out how to do it more cheaply. We have to stay ahead.
We're not just losing jobs to low-wage countries. We've lost the windmill industry to Europe, and Germany and Denmark don't take jobs from us by being low cost. They take it by encouraging innovation and training their workforces in growth industries. That's why I've supported legislation that would make us more competitive by increasing our emphasis on science, math, and engineering so that we are ready for what the coming decades bring us.
As I discussed in response to question 2 above, to compete in a global economy and protect jobs we have to address four things: (1) health care and retirement costs, (2) trade (3) education and (4) infrastructure and innovation.
- What are your ideas to develop a reasonable immigration system that protects the rights of all workers and provides a path toward citizenship for hard-working, tax-paying immigrants who come to our nation seeking a better life?
I support efforts to reform our broken immigration system. We have to find a reasonable way to deal with the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants living and working here. Those who play by the rules should be given a way to come out of the shadows.
Massive deportation is not who we are as a nation, and it’s not the least bit feasible. Of the millions of undocumented immigrants living here, at least 1.6 million are children. Deportation is impractical, at best; costing an estimated $206 billion over 5 years. It would take more than 200,000 buses, extending in a line 1,700 miles from San Diego to Alaska to deport 12 million people.
But I don’t think we’ll fix this until dynamics on both sides of the border change. As long as people can’t find good-paying jobs in their home countries, they will find a way to come here. Until we get serious with U.S. employers who hire undocumented workers, undocumented immigrants will have plenty of incentive to take the tremendous risk to cross the border illegally.
We must make employers accountable. Economic growth should not be built on the broken backs of desperate people.
- What will you do to make America a leader again in respecting human rights and civil rights at home and around the world?
In the aftermath of September 11, as the world mourned with us, we had an opportunity to lead. The world looked to us to form a new coalition to face the threat of international terrorism and defend the very values the terrorists had attacked.
Regrettably, the President and this administration saw it differently. He accepted a Faustian bargain. He abandoned our uncompromising commitment to the rule of law and individual rights in the belief that it was the only way to secure the United States against the threat of terrorism.
My firm belief and absolute conviction is that this Faustian bargain has had the ironic effect of making us less safe, not more safe; it has emboldened terrorists, not dissuaded them, and it has diminished us in the eyes of our friends and allies.
I would do three things to return to our national values, and to restore the rule of law and civil liberties. First, I would restore habeas corpus, ensuring that every individual held in American custody had the ability to argue before a court of law that his detention was erroneous or illegal -- and it is clear that we have been holding a number of people erroneously for years, without contact with their families, under the most difficult conditions. This has to stop. Second, I would close down secret, extra-legal CIA prisons in other countries where detainees are held incommunicado and cruelly mistreated. Third, and I've been saying this for years, I would close down Guantanamo Bay, a facility that symbolizes for the international community the Administration's numerous transgressions against the rule of law and lack of respect for basic human rights and civil liberties.
- What is your position on the U.S. involvement in Iraq?
Before the war, in July 2002, I chaired hearings of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that predicted many of the problems the U.S. would encounter in Iraq. At the first hearing, I said: “The least explored but in many ways the most critical question relates to our responsibilities for the day after Saddam is taken down… It would be a tragedy if we removed a tyrant in Iraq, only to leave chaos in his wake.” Over the past four years, I have traveled to Iraq seven times and made major policy recommendations at every critical juncture of the war.
Today, I am the only candidate to have offered a comprehensive plan to bring stability to Iraq so that U.S. troops can responsibly withdraw. My plan cuts through the false choice many believe we face between continuing on President Bush's failing course and handing the problem off to the next President or just leaving and hoping for the best.
My Plan for Iraq, which I developed with Leslie Gelb, President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, was first published in May, 2006. It recognizes that while leaving Iraq is necessary, it is not a plan. We also need a plan for what we leave behind, so that we do not undermine American interests for a decade by leaving behind a civil war that turns into a regional war. It would be a huge mistake to leave Iraq in a way that gets our sons and daughters out but forces us to send their sons and daughters back in.
Sectarian violence among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds is the major impediment to stability in Iraq. No number of troops can solve that problem. The only way to hold Iraq together and create the conditions for our armed forces to responsibly withdraw is to give Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds a way to share power peacefully. That requires a sustainable political settlement, which is the primary objective of the plan.
The Biden-Gelb plan would:
- Keep Iraq together by giving its major groups breathing room in their own regions and control over the fabric of their daily lives, including the police, education, jobs, marriage and religion. Limit the central government to common concerns like defending the borders and distributing oil revenues.
- Secure support of the Sunnis, who have no oil, by guaranteeing them a proportionate share of oil revenues.
- Increase, not end, reconstruction assistance but insist that the oil-rich Arab Gulf states fund it and tie it to the creation of a jobs program and to the protection of minority rights.
- Initiate a diplomatic offensive to enlist the support of the major powers and Iraq's neighbors for a political settlement in Iraq and create an Oversight Contact Group to enforce regional commitments.
- Begin the phased redeployment of U.S. forces this year and withdraw most of them by early 2008, with a small follow-on force to keep the neighbors honest and to strike any concentration of terrorists.
- Will you change our nation’s tax and budget priorities? If so, how?
Yes. We need to make substantial national investments in health care, education, alternative energy and retirement security. We can afford to – but we have to set some new priorities.
The first thing we have to do is end the Iraq war. It is costing us $100 billion a year.
I will only extend the Bush tax cuts for the middle class. The middle class – not the super wealthy – are the engine that drive our economy. I would roll back the Bush tax cuts for those in the top 1 percent – those making over $435,000 a year, an average of $1.4 million a year. Their tax break is costing us $85-$100 billion a year. Tax breaks for the super-wealthy don’t trickle down to the rest of us – they vanish into offshore accounts.
I won’t spend $1 trillion dollars to repeal the estate tax for millionaire heirs like Paris Hilton – I would exempt estates up to $7 million dollars per couple and leave the tax in place for the remaining 7,000 or so estates that would have to pay it.
I would roll back tax cuts on dividends and capital gains. In the 1990s there was no lack of incentive to invest under the tax rates that were then in place. The current rates on capital gains and dividends were enacted as a short-term stimulus and then were extended. Allowing them to expire would not harm our economy.
Beyond that we should eliminate loopholes – if someone owes taxes on investments they should pay them – and close the tax gap by shutting down offshore shelters. For example, in 2005 the government didn’t get $17 billion it was legally owed in capital gains taxes because there just weren’t adequate records of the gains people had made. We should require brokerage firms to track and report this information.
- What do you propose to do to strengthen Social Security and private pensions to ensure that America’s workers can retire with a secure income?
No one in this country should work their whole life only to end up with nothing. Retirement security requires three things: Social Security, pensions and personal savings, and affordable health care.
I believe that we need to make modest changes to Social Security in order to put them on sound footing for the future. Social Security does not face an immediate crisis. With no changes, Social Security can pay full benefits through 2041. After that it can pay 74 percent of benefits. So let’s end this talk of privatization and get real about changes that will put Social Security on sounder footing.
We need to bring Democrats and Republicans together – the way we did in 1983 when a bipartisan group of senior leaders from both parties put politics aside to fix Social Security. All the options should be on the table – including raising the cap on income subject to the Social Security tax ($97,500 is the maximum for 2007).
Beyond that, we must protect defined-benefit pensions and discourage movement to contribution plans. We should insist on greater security for workers in the private sector who have pensions which are chronically underfunded. That’s why I supported the Pension Reform Act last year that required greater company funding and strengthened the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation that was facing deficits exceeding $23 billion.
Finally we should make personal saving easier for workers who don’t have pensions by requiring employers to contribute to 401k-type funds and allowing workers to carry with them the same retirement accounts from job to job.
- What do you believe are the opportunities and challenges facing public education, and how would your administration deal with each? What policies would you support to help close the achievement gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students, including making college more accessible and affordable?
Our school system was designed to meet the needs of an industrial and agricultural economy. It served us well. But now we are in a global economy. We need a system that will drive a knowledge-based, innovation-powered global economy where employers can get their talent from anywhere. Our challenge is to produce a generation that is equipped to constantly come up with new technologies BEFORE someone else figures out how to do it more cheaply. Our education system is our ace in the hole.
My mother has an expression: “children tend to become that which you expect of them.” I want a country where we expect much from America’s children.
Every child must graduate from high school. Every qualified student should get a minimum of an associates’ degree.
We are far from there. Two-thirds of students entering high school graduate. About two-thirds of those go on to college. Half of those who go to college get a degree. So for every 100 9 th graders, just 18 earn a degree within 6 years of graduating high school.
I will set four goals to get us there: (1) start earlier; (2) put a well-paid, effective teacher in every classroom; (3) reduce class sizes; and (4) graduate every student from high school and help those that are qualified to go on to two or four years of college.
If there is one thing we know from research and experience, it is that a child who goes to preschool with books, structure, and activities, starts school better prepared. She has a better shot of making it to middle school with grade-level reading and math skills, graduating high school, and going to college.
Studies have shown the results. Of kids from similar low income backgrounds who were enrolled in quality preschool 65 percent graduated from high school where just 45 percent of non-preschoolers did.
In a recent study in Chicago kids who did not attend preschool were 70 percent more likely to be arrested for a violent crime by age 18.
The lesson here is focus on the bookends of school: start earlier and finish strong. 12 years of education simply isn’t adequate in a global economy.
That’s why I support moving toward a 16 year public school system where every parent who wants to can send their child to pre-school and where every student goes on to at least two years of higher education. There are 4 million 4 year olds in the US and 4 million 3 year olds. We should have a preschool system that accommodates them all.
We can start down that path by doing three things immediately:
- Fully funding Head Start so that we double the number of children it serves and quadruple the number of toddlers in Early Start ($27 billion over the next five years).
- Expanding help for middle class families paying for college by creating a refundable $3,000 tax credit – which would cover the average tuition at two-year colleges and cover more than half the average tuition. I’m introducing that today in the Senate.
- Expanding Pell grants to $5,100 next year (the maximum grant is $4,310) and to $6,300 in five years.
In between, let’s focus our national education policy on two things: small classes and effective teachers. We can do that by: (1) retaining our teachers and (2) attracting good people to the profession.
Half of all new teachers leave the profession in 5 years.
Teacher attrition costs our schools $2 billion a year. For $3 billion we could transform the way we prepare and support teachers as well as improving teacher pay by: (1) funding mentoring and induction programs for all new teachers so that we can better attract and retain those new to the profession, (2) creating a service scholarship program that would increase the supply of high quality teachers by providing them with scholarship money to defray the costs of education in exchange for a four-year commitment to teaching in a high need school, and (3) designing incentives to reward high quality and effective professional development like National Board Certification.
Other countries (Japan, Germany, Sweden, Finland) have made substantial investments in teachers in the last decade. Some fully subsidize graduate level teacher education or make teacher salaries competitive with engineers. Why haven’t we done the same?
- How do you propose to move our nation toward energy sufficiency, stop global warming and protect our environment?
Our oil dependence and global warming are two of the most pressing national security challenges we face. The next President must do two things: (1) pursue a national energy policy to significantly reduce our dependence on oil and (2) put us on a corrective course to slow global warming.
Oil dependence fuels the fundamentalism we are fighting. More than any other factor it limits our options and our influence around the world because oil rich countries pursuing policies we oppose can stand up to us, while oil dependent allies may be afraid to stand with us: China needs oil from Iran so they won’t confront Tehran. Hugo Chavez stands before the United Nations, calls our country an empire bent on destroying the human species, yet we’re still Venezuela’s number one oil consumer.
Add to that extraordinary growth of energy consumption in India and China. Competition for energy resources will only increase.
We need a substantial national commitment – an Apollo Project – to dramatically increase investment in energy and climate change research and technology so that that United States becomes the world leader in developing and exporting alternative energy and energy efficiency technology. Instead of buying solar panels and other technology from abroad we should be making it here in this country.
In addition I propose we do the following to significantly reduce our need for oil:
- Require all new cars to be flexible fuel vehicles by 2017 that can run on regular gas or home-grown fuel like ethanol. Currently just 5 million cars can do that – every new car in America should be able to.
- Require big companies - those that operate more than 4,500 gas stations - to add alternative fuel pumps so that at least a quarter of all gas stations nationwide have them by 2017.
- Improve the fuel economy of their vehicles by at least 1 mile per gallon every year with a goal of reaching a fleetwide average of 40 miles per gallon by 2017. We can do that by adopting a more flexible system that set fuel economy targets based on individual vehicle size and weight. If we increased our fuel economy standards by just 13 miles per gallon from 27.5 miles per gallon to 40 miles per gallon we would eliminate the need to import oil from Saudi Arabia or Venezuela. If we got 100 miles per gallon from domestically made plug-in hybrid vehicles we could eliminate our need for oil from unstable regions like the Middle East. We should couple these new requirements with incentives for domestic manufacturers to retool to protect domestic automobile manufacturing.
- Invest in the technology that our domestic car manufacturers need to be competitive with foreign manufacturers. For example, the Japanese dominate the market for lithium ion batteries that go into hybrids. That’s because they’ve been investing millions in the technology for years. The Chinese and Koreans aren’t far behind. We are playing catch-up and need to move quickly – we should at least double the current investment in the research and development of these batteries (increase it from $40 million a year to $100 million a year).
- Establish a Renewable Portfolio Standard to grow the renewable energy market. Just 2 percent of our energy comes from renewable sources – like solar, geothermal and wind power --we have to do better.
- Get serious about energy efficiency – all of us have a part to play in using energy more effectively. We should expand the energy star program for appliances, make federal facilities more energy efficient and make efficient technologies, like compact florescent light-bulbs easily available for everyone.
Reducing use of fossil fuel and increasing our energy efficiency will also help reduce the greenhouse gas emissions which are causing global warming. But in order to really slow climate change our goal should be to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by the middle of this century.
We need to do two things: (1) get our own emissions under control by capping them and (2) rejoin the rest of the world in finding a global solution to this problem. The United States is the biggest polluter – and we have an obligation to lead here – but climate change is a global problem that requires a global solution. That’s why I have been calling – and will continue to call on – this administration to return to international negotiations. We need a new climate change treaty. Other big polluters like China must be subject to similar restrictions. Doing so will protect the planet and jobs here in the United States.
- What would you do to curb outsourcing of public service jobs to the private sector, which can result in reducing the pay and benefits of workers who perform such services?
Under this administration we've seen a wide-scale effort to privatize services that shouldn't be—from maintenance at Walter Reed to training police in Iraq. Government has a moral responsibility to keep people safe.
It wasn't private contractors who raced into burning buildings on 9/11 or who pulled people off of roof tops in New Orleans. There are certain basic services that should not be contracted out, such as: public safety, postal service, child welfare, and prison systems.
That's why I have called on the military to review its use of private contractors and am moving to end the practice of contracting out basic maintenance of military medical facilities.
And that's why I supported federalizing airport security operations. TSA may not be perfect—but it is much better than the patch-work security operations we had in place prior to 9/11. And that's why I've introduced legislation to stop contracting out of maintenance of military medical facilities and study the efficacy of the military's contracting out basic functions to private firms.
Too often private contractors are not more efficient or less expensive. Look at the waste and fraud reported from entrusting for-profit companies—like Halliburton—with vital tasks like rebuilding Iraq or cleaning up New Orleans.
Two-thirds of the contracts to rebuild the Gulf Coast were handed out without competitive bidding. Contractors were getting nearly $3,000 to nail a free tarp on a roof—when you could have replaced the whole roof for that amount.
As President, I would continue to fight against the outsourcing of public sector jobs that should not be privatized to the private sector.
- What would you do to improve job safety and health protections for workers? What is your view on the appropriate balance between mandatory standards/enforcement vs. voluntary approaches? How would you address the issue of ergonomic hazards, which are responsible for one-third of all workplace injuries?
We need to guarantee American workers the safety they deserve. I believe that all employees should be covered by regulations that ensure a safe working environment and their personal safety on the job. I have been a supporter of OSHA regulations since my early days in the Senate and time and time again I have voted to extend OSHA regulations and have vigorously opposed efforts to restrict the application of OSHA coverage. I am a cosponsor of the Protecting America's Workers Act which extends OSHA regulations to federal, state, and local government employees. In recent years, Republicans have attacked ergonomic protection rules, and I have fought to maintain these standards, including voting against rescinding the OSHA ergonomics rule and voted against prohibiting OSHA from using funds to issue or propose any standards on ergonomic protection. As President, I would remain committed to these OHSA ergonomic safety programs, just as I have been as a Senator.
