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Want to See Clinton's Vision For America? Read this and then let's get out the vote.
First of all, go vote, everyone. I just got back from my polling place and voted a straight Dem ticket. When I got home, I stumbled across this article which outlines what the U.S. would look like if Clinton's agenda were implemented and, speaking as a pretty hardcore Sanders supporter, it's pretty encouraging.
The vast majority of families would be able to send children to public colleges and universities tuition-free. Four-year-olds would have universal access to pre-K, and child care would be massively subsidized so as to cap costs at 10 percent of a family’s income. All workers would get 12 weeks paid family leave and 12 weeks paid medical leave, in case they need to care for a new child, a sick family member, or themselves. The child tax credit would be doubled for families with young children and made available to poor families with little earnings.
Eleven million undocumented immigrants would gain a pathway to citizenship. Medicare would be expanded to people as young as 55, and allowed to negotiate down drug prices with pharmaceutical companies, and every state would have a robust public option. All states would expand Medicaid coverage to anyone living underneath the poverty line, and subsidies for health care on the exchanges would be more generous. The government would cover out-of-pocket health costs through the tax code. Federal money would be able to pay for abortions for people with government-paid insurance. Social Security benefits would increase. The minimum wage would be at least $12, maybe $15 an hour, and firms could unionize through card check rather than having to go through elections.
There would be an injection of $500 billion — $275 billion of which comes from federal coffers — into rebuilding roads, highways, mass transit, airports, seaports, broadband networks, electrical grids, water pipes, and other forms of infrastructure. This would be the largest public works push from the federal government since the building of the interstate highway system in the 1950s. Much of that money would go to directly hiring workers, particularly youth in minority communities. The Clinton campaign estimates that the $500 billion would create about 6.5 million jobs, more than half of which come from public money.
“I think a lot of Clinton’s proposals are very much a step in the direction of a Nordic-style or social democratic welfare state,” Lane Kenworthy, a sociologist at the University of Arizona and author of Social Democratic America, says.
Eleven million undocumented immigrants would gain a pathway to citizenship. Medicare would be expanded to people as young as 55, and allowed to negotiate down drug prices with pharmaceutical companies, and every state would have a robust public option. All states would expand Medicaid coverage to anyone living underneath the poverty line, and subsidies for health care on the exchanges would be more generous. The government would cover out-of-pocket health costs through the tax code. Federal money would be able to pay for abortions for people with government-paid insurance. Social Security benefits would increase. The minimum wage would be at least $12, maybe $15 an hour, and firms could unionize through card check rather than having to go through elections.
There would be an injection of $500 billion — $275 billion of which comes from federal coffers — into rebuilding roads, highways, mass transit, airports, seaports, broadband networks, electrical grids, water pipes, and other forms of infrastructure. This would be the largest public works push from the federal government since the building of the interstate highway system in the 1950s. Much of that money would go to directly hiring workers, particularly youth in minority communities. The Clinton campaign estimates that the $500 billion would create about 6.5 million jobs, more than half of which come from public money.
“I think a lot of Clinton’s proposals are very much a step in the direction of a Nordic-style or social democratic welfare state,” Lane Kenworthy, a sociologist at the University of Arizona and author of Social Democratic America, says.
