|
From the introduction by the Author:
"If you're like most people, I'd wager that for two cents on the dollar you'd say this sounds like an intriguing deal. But then suppose I explained that "two cents on the dollar" means two percent of our $11 trillion national income (gross domestic product, or GDP), which is $220 billion a year -- orders of magnitude beyond the boundaries of Washington debate? If you listen to the "experts" who set the terms of that debate -- the politicians, the mainstream press, and the vast associated network of analysts, advocates, and other talking heads -- you'd conclude such a plan was impossible. If you listen to common sense, however, finding two cents on the dollar to reach the goals I've mentioned seems almost a snap.
Between our proper intuition that two percent is a small number and the Washington consensus that a $220 billion shift in national priorities and resources is beyond imagining lies a chasm in which nearly every claimed "solution" from our political leaders -- indeed much of public debate itself -- turns out to be a hoax. Things don't have to be this way.
The Two Percent Solution will do more than simply reframe the national debate about our collective possibilities; it will help us make dramatic inroads on some of the nation's biggest domestic problems in ways that are broadly acceptable, pragmatic, and just. If this sounds audacious, it has to be, because the price of persisting with today's false fixes will soon be too high. Fewer than ten years remain before the baby boomers' retirement will drain away all the cash and political energy to do anything but cope with their colossal health and pension costs. If you think it's hard now to get a serious discussion going about the 42 million Americans who lack health insurance, the 15 million who dwell in poverty despite living in families headed by full-time workers, or the 10 million poor children whose lives are blighted by dysfunctional schools, then starting in 2010 it will be next to impossible. These problems will take federal cash to help fix -- cash that is mistakenly viewed as "unaffordably liberal" under existing terms of debate, but that as a practical matter will be hard to direct to these priorities if we haven't gotten serious before 76 million boomers start hitting their rocking chairs.
How unserious are we today? Here's all you need to know: In the last decade our economy has grown by 40 percent, but the problems we're talking about have gotten worse, and serious talk of addressing them has all but vanished. Our shrinking ambition is depressingly measurable. In 1992, for example, the first President George Bush proposed a plan to insure 30 million of the then 35 million uninsured, and Democrats slammed it as "too little, too late." Today the outer limit of the current President Bush's "compassion" is a plan that would insure 6 million of the now 42 million uninsured. Meanwhile, no Democrat who wants to be president today would endorse Richard Nixon's plans from the early 1970s for universal health coverage and a minimum family income: Nixon's package is far too "liberal"! Instead, the two parties debate when and how to eliminate the estate tax, the bulk of whose burden falls on the heirs of only three thousand of the nation's wealthiest families.
What happened to America's political will to solve the problems facing ordinary people? The short answer is simple. Since 1994, when the Clinton health care plan imploded in a fiasco that cost Democrats control of the Congress, Democrats have been too scared to think big again. Republicans, emboldened by this Democratic timidity, have chosen to push harder for their traditional priorities of cutting taxes and regulations. What's been lost in the dysfunctional debate of the last decade is a commitment to two long-standing American ideals: equal opportunity and a minimally decent life for citizens of a wealthy nation.
What American politics urgently needs, therefore, is not a new left, but a new center. Domestic debate needs to be re-centered around a handful of fundamental goals on which all of us can agree, whether we call ourselves Republicans, Democrats, or Independents. Yes, there will always be fights over details. But if we first ask, What does equal opportunity and a decent life in America mean, can't we agree that anyone who works full-time should be able to provide for his or her family? That every citizen should have basic health coverage? That special efforts should be made to make sure that poor children have good schools? And that average citizens should have some way to have their voices heard amid the din of big political money?
My aim in this book is to show that these problems have solutions that are affordable, practical, and within reach -- solutions that both liberals and conservatives can embrace. Indeed, both sides will have to join hands to solve them because political power is going to remain closely divided for the foreseeable future. It has been nearly a decade since either party has had a sizable majority in either house of Congress, and no presidential candidate since 1988 has been able to win a majority of the popular vote. That leaves only two options: Either we tackle these challenges together, or we go on pretending to solve them while letting them fester until they explode down the road."
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(127 posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
