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House Journal: Page 1887: Tuesday, April 25, 1995

There are a lot of these things that are related one to the
other. But it is perfectly clear that the economics are changing
the face of American society. You can see it in the difference
in income in rural America and urban America. You can see it in
the difference - the aging process in rural America as compared
with urban America. And if we want to preserve the American
Dream, we have go to find a way to solve this riddle.
I was born in the year after World War II at the dawn of the
greatest explosion of opportunity in American history and in
world history. For 30 years after that, the American people,
without regard to their income or region, grew and grew
together. That is, each income group over the next 30 years
roughly doubled their income, except the poorest 20 percent of
us that had an almost 2.5 times increase in their income. So we
were growing and growing together.
For about the last 15 or 20 years, half of us have been stuck so
that our country is growing, but we are growing apart even
within the middle class. When you put that beside the fact that
we have more and more poor people who are not elderly - which
was the case when I was little, but now are largely young women
and their little children, often where there was either no
marriage or the marriage is broken up so there is not a stable
home and there is not an adequate level of education to ensure
an income - you have increasing poverty and increasing splits
within the middle class. That is the fundamental cause, I
believe, of a lot of the problems that we face in America and a
lot of the anxiety and frustration we see in this country.
Every rich country faces this problem. But in the United States,
it is a particular problem - both because the inequality is
greater and because it violates the American Dream. I mean, this
is a country where if you work hard and you play by the rules,
you obey the law, you raise your children, you do your best to
do everything you're supposed to do, you ought to have an
opportunity for the free enterprise system to work for you.
And so we face this challenge. I have to tell you that I believe
two things: One, the future is far more hopeful than worrisome.
If you look at the resources of this country, the assets of this
country, and you compare them with any other country in the
world, and you imagine what the world will be like 20 or 30
years from now, you'd have to be strongly bullish on America.
You have to believe in our promise.
Secondly, I am convinced we cannot get there unless we develop a
new way of talking about these issues, a new political
discourse. Unless we move beyond the labeling that so often
characterizes, and in fact mischaracterizes, the debate in
Washington, D.C.
Now we are having this debate in ways that affect you, so you
have to be a part of it, because one of the biggest parts of the
debate is, how are we going to keep the American Dream alive?
How are we going to keep America, the world's strongest force
for freedom and democracy, into the next century, and change the
way the government works?
There is broad consensus that the government in Washington
should be less bureaucratic, less oriented toward rule-making,
smaller, more flexible, that more decisions should be devolved
to the state and local government level, and where possible,
more decisions should be given to private citizens themselves.
There is a broad agreement on that.
The question is, what are the details? What does that mean? What
should we do? What should you do? That's what I want to talk to
you about. There are clearly some national responsibilities,
clearly some that would be better served here at your level.

Iowa General Assembly

Index: House Journal (76th General Assembly: Session 1)

© 1995 Cornell College and League of Women Voters of Iowa

Comments? hjourn@legis.iowa.gov.

Last update: Sun Jan 14 21:05:02 CST 1996
URL: /DOCS/GA/76GA/Session.1/HJournal/01800/01887.html
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