An animated John Kerry, junior Democratic senator from Massachusetts, delivered a scathing critique of the Bush Administration’s economic policies Tuesday during a speech to the Cleveland City Club.
“They have chosen tax giveaways that reward the wealthiest Americans over tax cuts for everyday working Americans now,” he said. “They have chosen to throw large tax giveaways at the largest companies, instead of helping to grow small businesses.”
Joined by former Ohio Senator John Glenn, Kerry spoke to the crème de la crème of Cleveland’s Democratic Party elite, bemoaning Bush’s approach to corporate responsibility.
“While the President talks tough about corporate accountability, his administration has worked tirelessly to undermine reform and sabotage any meaningful oversight of the accounting industry,” he said. “He even tried to cut next year’s budget for the SEC by $200 million — further weakening enforcement of corporate infractions.”
Kerry, the latest Democrat to weigh a presidential run, outlined his own policies and seemed at times to actually have declared his candidacy. And, in response to a question of whether Al Gore’s running would affect his own campaign, he replied, “It is not contingent at all.”
Kerry proposes that all Americans receive a payroll tax “holiday” on the first $10,000 of earnings for one year, which would benefit most those with limited incomes.
“Every worker in America would immediately receive a $765 tax cut and every two-income family would get revenue of $1,530,” he said.
Kerry rebuked Republicans who have bedeviled attempts to raise the federal minimum wage.
“Even as the American worker has increased productivity almost 75 percent in the last three decades, you would have to raise the minimum wage to $8.14 an hour just to restore the purchasing power that it had 33 years ago,” he said. “And all we’re trying to do, which they refuse to do, is get it up to $6.55.”
Kerry also called on members of his generation to stand up to the plate of leadership in environmental and economic policy. He decried the Bush Administration’s capitulation to special interests in Washington.
“We were presented with a defense bill that gave away $250,000 to an Illinois firm to research caffeinated chewing gum; $750,000 for grasshopper research in Alaska; $250,000 for a lettuce geneticist in Salinas, California, and $64,000 for urban pest research in Georgia,” he said. “That’s our defense bill?”
In addition, he suggested that the Congress adopt a “Corporate Subsidy Reform Commission,” which would ensure that special interests do not receive undue consideration in spending bills. He also adamantly called for an end to allowing companies to mine on federally owned land for free.
Kerry also declared that the time to work on a sound energy policy, and improve more efficient transportation infrastructure, is long overdue.
“They think we can drill our way out of our energy problems – they stand pat as $1.8 billion in federal largesse is lavished on oil and gas while alternative energies compete for the scraps of a mere $24 million in federal venture capital,” he said. “And they remain content to let hardworking Americans be held hostage by a handful of nations that rig the world’s oil market.”
Instead, he said that America must invest in technologies of the future to create new jobs and revive American ingenuity.
“Since developing new energy technologies is a research-requiring, pathbreaking activity, we can create thousands of well-paying new jobs,” he said.
Further, he argued that America must bring its transportation up to date, which would create new jobs and improve energy efficiency. “To excite a generation, we should build high speed rail where it is feasible,” he said. “Why should we lag behind France, Germany and Japan?”
Kerry drew out the differences between his proposed candidacy and that of Bush, asserting that America “has a choice between two competing visions.”
“The Bush Administration sees an America where tax cuts for the wealthy are the only priority, even if they prevent any real investments for economic progress, hurt the budget and violate the very value of fairness,” he said. “I see an American where every working family has real opportunity for a better life, an America where when it comes time for tax cuts, the middle class are the first in line.”
At a press conference after the speech, he stumbled over the details of his economic policy, often rehashing what he had previously said.
He was more adamant, however, in emphasizing his distance from the current Administration. Despite voting for the Iraqi war resolution, Kerry remained strongly in opposition to what he saw as a Bush Administration gambit to politicize the issue before the midterm elections.
“All of the important issues were drowned out by Iraq,” he said. “They made a conscious decision to bring that up.”
Kerry’s address in Ohio was not accidental; with 20 Electoral College votes, it ranks seventh in the nation. The state has sent eight men to the White House, and has historically been a fertile ground for Democratic candidates. Bush captured Ohio by a narrow three percentage points in the 2000 election.