Edwards Outlines Key Economic Policies to Help Middle-Class & Working Families

Edwards Outlines Key Economic Policies To Help Middle-Class And Working Families
Edwards brings "America Belong to Us Week" to New York to spotlight his plan to shake up Washington, and fight for hardworking Americans on the kitchen table issues they care most about
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
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New York, New York – Today, as part of "America Belongs to Us Week," Senator John Edwards discussed our country's growing economic divide and his bold vision to restore the promise of the American Dream to hardworking Americans and their children. At a rally in Washington Square Park to support the striking Writers Guild members and Broadway stagehands, Edwards said he is the one candidate the American people can trust to shake up Washington, stand up to irresponsible corporations and their lobbyists and fight for one America where the dream of America is shared by all, not the chosen few who work on Wall Street.

"The problem of Two Americas is especially true here in New York City," said Edwards. "Investors lost $74 billion this year – but last week it was reported that Wall Street is paying out $38 billion in bonuses this year just the same. At the same time we learned of these record-high bonuses, a new report revealed that one in six New Yorkers goes hungry.

"It's no accident that the economy is working well for Wall Street. Our economy is designed to benefit the wealthy and the powerful because it was designed by the wealthy and the powerful. Last year, the securities and investment industry spent $61 million on lobbying. Since 1996, the number of Washington lobbyists has tripled to 36,000 – that's 60 lobbyists for every member of Congress.

"Putting the power in this country back on the side of middle-class families won't be easy. It's going to take a president who's willing to go to Washington and shake things up. Politicians in Washington have forgotten who they're fighting for. They shouldn't be fighting for Wall Street – they should be fighting for Main Street. When I'm president, we're going to take on Wall Street's excesses and make things right for hardworking American families. Because this is America, and everyone – no matter where they come from – deserves the chance to work hard, get ahead and live the American Dream."

To return the promise of the American Dream to millions of hard-working families, Edwards will:

*End abuses in the credit card industry: Interest rates and fees have skyrocketed since rates were deregulated in 1978 and fees in 1996. Today, almost all of the top 10 issuers of credit cards reserve the right to change the APR on the account at any time, for any reason. A single late payment – even by as little as minutes – can result in penalty interest rates that average almost 25 percent. Edwards will pass the Borrower's Security Act to ban the worst abuses in the credit industry, like (1) raising interest rates when a borrower runs into problems, even if they are current on their account, (2) interest rate increases applied to past balances, and (3) a lack of a grace period before imposing penalty rates and late fees. He will also create a new federal agency to protect consumers against unsafe financial products.
*Reform the tax system: Repeated, regressive tax cuts on capital gains and dividends have shifted the tax burden onto middle-class workers. Billionaire managers of hedge funds and private equity funds shower Congress with financial contributions to protect their special tax rate – a rate that is far lower than what most Americans pay. That's wrong. As president, Edwards will increase the savings rate by giving more than 20 million families up to a dollar-for-dollar match on their retirement savings. But he will also insist on fairness. And that means raising the capital gains rate to 28 percent for families making above $250,000 a year so the wealthiest investors don't pay lower tax rates than regular families do. And it means closing the billionaire tax benefit for hedge funds.
*Address the mortgage crisis: There are millions of families facing foreclosure, but banks have renegotiated fewer than 1 percent of mortgages. A wave of defaults is threatening to swamp our economy and devastate families. As president, Edwards will get families out of these mortgages with a Home Rescue Fund and pass a strong national ban on predatory mortgages.

http://johnedwards.com/news/press-releases/20071127-economic-policies/

http://johnedwards.com/issues/ :)

and whose endorsements mean nothing to front runners.These are those that may not even be able to vote and still he is their champion.This is not politics as usual!

Edwards 2008!

I'm not a soak the rich anti-capitalist, but dammit making money earned from guessing on stocks being taxed less than money earned from work - white collar or blue collar - never made a lick of sense to me, and I say this as one who has a high six figure portfolio. I WANT moderate taxtaion. I WANT efficient government which does not throttle free enterprise, but I also WANT fair taxes that generate enough revenue to run an effective government in the first place.

His economic stuff is generally very good. I wish he would get more traction as my second choice (first - Bill R - has no chance).

from selling their stock options with the benefit of insider knowledge. Increasing taxes on capital gains as well as requiring corporate executives with insider knowledge to announce their exercising stock options WEEKS BEFORE they actually sell the stock would go a long way to prevent a lot of the ripoffs that occur all the time.

Edwards (like Kucinich) has also brought up the problem of trade agreements like NAFTA and how this hurts American workers by giving unfair advantage to the multinational corporations who build factories in China to utilize cheap labor. The American public does not pay less for goods made by cheap foreign labor. The corporations merely pocket the savings as increased profits.

Since manufacturing is the only kind of business that creates real wealth for a country, the trade agreements like NAFTA, as well as current tax laws and tariffs, hurt small and medium-size businesses, which would put more Americans to work if they had a level playing field. Working Americans would buy products made by other Americans which would significantly reduce the trade deficit. Having more Americans working and paying income taxes and Social Security taxes would reduce the federal deficit and the state deficits, and do so without even raising anyone's current taxes. The government surpluses of the late 1990's were due mainly to the fact that many more people had good paying jobs and were paying taxes than there are today.

lkj

She has had it up on her website for weeks

Hillary has had her plan up for many weeks now. And if you do a side by side comparison, you will see some similar items

But some similarities exist yes.

Compare Hillarys healthcare plan to the one Mitt Romney enacted in Massachusetts. THEN talk to us about similarity. :eyes:

Does Mitt's plan limit premium increases? Does Mitt allow the Fed govt to negotiate drug prices? Does it allow import of drugs from Canada? Does it prohibit denying coverage for pre-existing coverage?

Hillary's does all that and more

the need to be completely and utterly original in your plans. If people are rational and from even VAGUELY the same point on the political spectrum how different can their plans be? I mean MOST of my economic plans would look pretty close to, say, Dennis Kucinich's on many issues. Mitt's MA plan helped people. Not all and not perfectly - but I'll take the achievable good over the theoretically perfect any day. Same on economics. Neither HRC or JE are firebrand socialists, but both are Democrats. What major gaps would people actually want or expect?

enough to mention that Hillary's health plan sounded a lot like his during one of the debates.

these issues for MONTHS. She waited to see how Edwards developed his positions and is now copying Edwards' positions that are getting the best traction.

You should pay attention to the facts

I thought people tuning into this thread might find this interesting, I found it in the Huffpost.

PAUL KRUGMAN, NEW YORK TIMES:

I think it's not a fair test because voters -- even primary voters -- are NOT getting a clear picture of the candidates' positions. You'll have to dig it up, but I'm sure I saw a poll in which Democratic voters believed that Hillary was the leftmost candidate and Edwards the rightmost.

The candidates are all much more progressive/populist than anyone would have imagined a couple of years ago. Edwards tends to come up with the policy proposal first, but he's eventually emulated by the others -- and you have to be a serious political groupie to be in the business of inferring positions not from the policies, but by which month they're announced in. Basically, nobody is running on the pro-business, anti-class-warfare platform. We're all populists now.

He's been doing, and saying this for a while now. But most of the time, it's only the very inside people that know this fact.

A little more to add:

JOE KLEIN, TIME MAGAZINE:

I don't think it's quite fair, either...in part because of the reason that Krugman cites....I think also, fairly or not, Edwards is tarred by his gazillions, his haircuts, and house, and by the perception that this is just expediency on his part. Paul Wellstone would have been a much truer test. Fred Harris, too.

My question, how do we tell the rest of the country?


The First Family

And welcome, if I haven't said so before.

as president. It would be great to have "we the people" mean something again.

K&R

:kick: