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Friday, Jul 10, 2009
Sen. Hillary Clinton says acute job losses, "reckless" tax cuts, and record trade and budget deficits prove that Bush is "woefully missing in action" on the U.S. economy.
Mar 5, 2004 | Good morning, and thank you so much, John [Podesta], not only for that introduction, which is more generous than deserved, but because of the leadership that you are now providing through the Center [for American Progress], on behalf of issues that are critical to America's long-term prosperity and values ...
At issue is whether we are willing to make the investments and, frankly, the mid-course corrections, to ensure that the strength of three words, "made in America," continues to stand for something here at home and around the globe. And this debate is not just about other countries, or even just about multinational corporations. The debate ... is really about whether or not this administration has any economic policy, any strategy for sustaining and growing jobs, and any clue about what it takes to have a manufacturing sector in the 21st century ...
What I regret deeply in the current climate, in this administration, is the air of fatalism, of defeatism, that I hear all too often. It is one thing to say outsourcing is a good thing, which I don't agree with, and I believe Mr. Mankiw was appropriately criticized for -- it's another thing to have no ideas, to come with no new strategies. The only idea -- and I don't think it can be called a strategy -- that we've heard from this president is to create a position in the Department of Commerce, which has yet to be filled, so it was merely a line in a speech on Labor Day. It wasn't an idea, it wasn't a strategy, and it wasn't even serious. So that idea that we're not pulling everybody together, that team America is not on the field, ready to compete, with a good offense and a good defense, that I think is out of keeping with the history of how America has risen to economic challenges in the past.
Now we know that countries like China and India are creating jobs by the tens of millions, they're improving their education system, they are joining the global economic community. I don't think we can, in good conscience, fault them, or criticize them, or begrudge them the opportunity to put to work tens of millions of people who are, for the first time, making, by their standards, a living wage, are moving into a small but growing middle class, are sending children to school, are doing what we have done, and which we model so successfully. I don't fault anyone for competing with us. I fault us for not being smart enough to know how to compete effectively, and that's what I want to talk about today.
Because I don't think our country has an economic strategy. It certainly is very well hidden, if it exists anywhere. And yet we know we are in the midst of an American job crisis. Some have accepted that as inevitable. The unavoidable result of free trade, the unavoidable result of lower standards for labor or the environment, the inevitable result of what happens when others get access to technology that we may have innovated, but that certainly we can't keep behind closed doors or throw up fences around our borders to prevent others from enjoying.
And the Bush administration's answer to do nothing is worse than a failed policy, it really is no policy at all. So how could we, then, proceed? And how can we take these statistics ... with the loss of jobs that we've experienced in the past three years, and begin to turn that around? ... Today's record low levels of manufacturing employment, although there were some signs in just the last few days that maybe there's a turnaround, but the decline has been so stark, coincides with our largest trade deficits ever recorded, and of course our largest budget deficits as well.
So while demand continues to rise for manufactured goods that are made by American companies, increasingly those products are being manufactured elsewhere. And the Bush administration's fiscal policies actually exacerbate this problem. The fiscally reckless tax cuts are not only a cause of alarm because of our movement from budget surplus to budget deficit, but we are moving also to a projected $4 trillion increased debt, from a point in January, 2001 of a $5.6 trillion projected surplus. This matters. This is bad economic policy, as well as reckless fiscal policy. It will provide, inevitably, fewer resources for both public and private investments. It stands for an overall steady decline in America's position in global markets. It makes us dependent on foreign lenders, and it is troubling that in just the last week, some of those foreign lenders, whom we are so dependent upon, have begun to signal that they might diversifying their portfolios, and no longer be such ready supporters of America's debt.
If we look down the road, whether it is next year or two years from now, I think it is absolutely clear that we will see private capital crowded out of the capital markets because of the increasing need to feed the government debt. We will see interest rates rise, which we know has effects not only on private sector borrowing, but on consumer borrowing as well, and we will be on a path to even further economic decline and more difficult decisions before we can reverse our situation.
Now how do we address this? Well, we're going to do several things. On April 27th, the Democratic leaders of the House and Senate will jointly host a summit on manufacturing, similar to what my husband held after his election, before he took office as president, the Economic Summit in Little Rock, Arkansas, where I think not only did we get people from a broad cross-section of experience in the economy come together, but we actually helped to educate all of us about what the options really were. I think that is long overdue. We are getting very little good information out of this administration about what the consequences of their policies are for the average American and for the average American's job. We will invite a range of leaders to this summit, and be able to discuss a variety of solutions that we hope can serve as a basis for debate in this upcoming election.
I also think there are some actions that we could take even now, and I care desperately about the outcome of the election in November, and believe that four more years of this administration would not be in the best interest of our country on many grounds, but I would like to see, for the sake of our country, some of these actions and these midcourse corrections taken ...
One area that is going without adequate attention from this administration is what's called "alternative energy," what I like to call "smart energy." There is no reason that the United States cannot and should not be the leader in smart energy technology ... it should be as important a commitment by our government as any issue you can imagine right now. Because the payoff would be tremendous. As we speak, both Japan and the European Union are making those investments in smart energy. Japan is going so far as to begin the construction of model hydrogen stations, so that even though we're a long way from the fuel cell technology being commercially applicable for auto use, they want to be ready. And to invest more now in that kind of thinking and that kind of spin-off would pay great dividends ...
