House Journal: Page 12: Monday, January 14, 2002
Workers worry about earning enough to make ends meet and losing their jobs.
Parents fear that they cannot afford adequate health care if their children are sick.
Seniors struggle to heat their homes and buy high-cost prescription drugs on
retirement incomes shrunken by low interest rates.
But Iowa’s problems extend beyond the short-term. Our state is being left behind
with an economy that cannot compete and win in the 21st century. No child should
have to leave his or her hometown and family to find a good job, but it happens in our
state every day. Iowa has the highest percentage of two-income families in the nation
simply because there are not enough good jobs here to sustain a family. That’s why our
best and brightest children leave the state after graduation for better opportunities in
other states.
So we face two challenges. In the immediate future, we must ensure economic
security for Iowa families and businesses by addressing rising heath care costs, energy
costs, and stagnating wages. For the years ahead, we must modernize Iowa’s economy
to bring development and good jobs to Iowa communities that are losing population,
and in some cases losing hope.
That’s why Democrats are offering an ambitious plan to provide economic security
now and growth for Iowa’s future. It is a plan that will make Iowa America's 21st
century state.
We will help Iowans weather the current economic downturn by making
prescription drugs more affordable for seniors; expanding health insurance coverage to
protect all Iowans; raising the state’s minimum wage; and helping consumers make
informed and money-smart choices about the services they buy.
We will modernize Iowa for a competitive future by strengthening the economy and
providing opportunities for children who want to stay and work in Iowa; improving and
reforming schools, demanding accountability and holding them safe from budget cuts;
streamlining government by eliminating redundant services and putting more services
on-line; and investing in clean, renewable and profitable energy sources like ethanol.
Our plan will promote innovation and entrepreneurship and will clear away
barriers to economic progress, including high utility costs, insufficient and out-dated
high-tech infrastructure, and low wage jobs. It will invest in our children and workers
through better, more accountable education and worker re-training, incentives that
promote the growth of high wage jobs, and small and high-tech enterprises -
particularly in communities with declining populations. It will put our economy,
schools, workers, companies and farms on the cutting edge of new technology, so they
are more productive and profitable. It will make government more efficient and more
consumer-friendly. It will assure that Iowa children receive the best education in the
world.
Our proposal is fiscally responsible. The slowing of Iowa’s economy and the
resulting dramatic fall in state revenues have forced state government to tighten its
belt as Iowans are having to do. But because of the forethought of Democratic
legislators ten years ago, Iowa has both an emergency rainy day fund to tide us over in
tough times and a mandate to enact only fiscally responsible, balanced budgets. Our
plan adheres to that philosophy of fiscal responsibility that Democrats put into law a
decade ago.
© 2002 Cornell College and
League of Women Voters of Iowa
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