Rep. Rahm Emanuel's 5 Point Plan... What do you think?

[nickshepDEM]

Could it work in 2006?


1.) Expand support for higher education. "Make college as universal in the 21st century as high school was in the 20th"; three out of four jobs in the new, high-tech economy require two years or more of higher education.

2.) Create a National Institute of Science and Engineering, like the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Funding for the nih has quadrupled since the 1980s, from $7 billion to $28 billion. "That's why we lead in pharmaceuticals and medical technology." Funding for science has been stagnant—about $5 billion—during that period. "I'd quadruple it and concentrate on nanotechnology, broadband and energy."

3.) Promote energy independence. Reduce foreign oil by 50% in 10 years. Create a hybrid economy. Use government contracts and tax incentives to boost solar and wind power.

4.) "You got a job, you got health care." Give the uninsured vouchers—"I'm not afraid of vouchers"—for use in the insurance system that covers federal employees. Basic coverage, nothing fancy.

5.)Organize a bipartisan summit on the budget. Balance it.

Everything on the table—loopholes, pork, Bush tax cuts. "And then you gotta have a reform piece," Emanuel hydrofoiled. "Actually, that should come first. Clean up the relationship between lobbyists and legislators, same way we did donors and candidates. This place is a cesspool—gotta address the gifts, free trips, the revolving-door lobbying jobs for staff members."

[SoFlaJet]

1. all sounds good

with one glaring problem-republicans will not even allow such treachery to be bandied about on the house floor-not a DEMOCRATS idea-blasphemy

[Pirate Smile]

5. It is to run on for the 2006 elections. It will be their Contract with

America but with a different name.

[Pirate Smile]

2. I haven't heard of this one before -

"Create a National Institute of Science and Engineering".

New and innovative - I like it.

I like the energy independence and universal college also.

Health care? I'd like to hear more.

Bipartisan summit - sounds a bit like kicking the can down the road but that's OK. They are avoiding giving specifics which they can be attacked on while having an item to deal with the issue.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

8. As a former college professor, I don't like universal college

There are already too many students there who don't know why they're there or what they're doing. They make life miserable for themselves, their more motivated fellow students, and their professors.

By the way, I'm not talking about race or social class here. I'm talking about the types, many of them well-off, who are in school only to party and cheer for sports teams.

Rather than simply "universal college," I'd say spend the money on bringing the K-12 per-pupil spending everywhere up to the standards in the most affluent district in the state and offer the same opportunities that affluent kids get.

Then offer free college to the kids who do well in the new improved K-12 system and high-quality vocational training to the rest.

If we just offer "free college," we'll end up with a college experience that's just like high school, a holding tank for late adolescents.

[dogman]

9. High School in the 20th century was not achieved until near the end.

A number in the previous generation were not high school graduates. It mentions two year requirement which woul be JC//vocational level in most circumstances. Your point of raising K-12 standards is good. Qualified students should have access to higher education that is now being priced out of reach however.

[thefloyd]

14. What about

2 year technical school or associates degrees for those who are not interested in college OR do not have the grades.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

19. That would be fine.

I just don't want colleges cluttered up with students who are there simply because they can't think of anything else to do.

What troubles there are on college campuses--sports riots, binge drinking, rapes, vandalism, cheating, plagiarism--are mostly due to the students who have no intellectual interests and are there because their parents want them to get a good job, preferably without "getting ideas."

[bahrbearian]

18. I was a college student with an athlete scholarship.

I really don't believe that athlete's and college go together, but having the opportunity to go to classes then ,show me that I needed to take classes through out my life. I know I was a drag for the "more motivated fellow students" but I was learning also. The "more motivated fellow students" went on the more advanced classes. I went on into life with the wonderful experience of having been to college. Lets try to advance civilization, not selectively advance knowledge.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

20. I'm not talking about athletic scholarships

I'm talking about young people going to college just because it's what 18-22 year olds are supposed to do. For the most part, they don't develop an interest in learning. Instead, they cheat, plagiarize, and try to earn grades without effort or learning anything. They brag about forgetting everything they learned the year before.

[bahrbearian]

22. Oh , I thought you were talking about me, but you were talking ..

about the "chimp"

[Lydia Leftcoast]

24. Among others

:-)

I'd make college entrance free only if it were limited to students who had shown clear intellectual interests as indicated by grades and/or extra-curricular activities and/or independent projects.

It would be impossible to buy one's way into college, as a certain Resident did.

[IndyOp]

23. I would like to deal with this issue by offering high school

students a real choice -- if they aren't ready for college -- and many are not -- offer them a chance to serve their country by working a job with a non-profit or government organization.

Returning college students (those who have had jobs and have decided to enroll to earn a degree and get a better job) are highly motivated students. They are also more mature - simply by virtue of their age - and more pleasant to be around.

:kick:

[sandnsea]

41. The alternative is worse

Go to the car wash and stand around and listen. If 18-22 year olds have to be somewhere while they figure out who they are, I'd much rather they be in college than hanging on the street corner.

[loyalsister]

47. Agreed

I think it also devalues people whose interests and learning strengths are not compatible with college.

[flpoljunkie]

49. Excellent idea! Spend the money on K-12 funding across the board.

Jesse Jackson was right about investing on the front end. It is a travesty that we in this country refuse to invest in the future of our children--which is our future.

[welshTerrier2]

3. has he ever heard of: "FOREIGN POLICY" ???

a majority of Americans consider the war in Iraq to be the most pressing issue facing the country ...

all of his issues are important but if Democrats don't articulate a strong vision on foreign policy and make it a central component of their platform, they will not regain control of either the White House or the Congress ...

[dogman]

6. This goes to the poll Russert showed.

The dems are seen as weaker on National Security. That is the impetus behind Clark's securingamerica.com.

[loyalsister]

48. Yet, some of us don't relate to it

BECAUSE we are living the horrors of the domestic policies he knows nothing about.
This is why I am so tired of people pushing this guy.

[dogman]

54. This indicates you know nothing about him.

He has addressed these policies also. He is trying to break through to the other side so we can have a large enough majority that it can't be so easily stolen.

[dogman]

4. Of course it could.

But it's not likely. This is the point of Dean's answer to Russert. We can have a plan but, with Republican control of the process, it wont fly. We've already heard they require a majority of the majority and the K Street project gives them control of lobbying.

[upi402]

7. TV News pundits will say Dems have no ideas

or Dems have no plan.
TV news will ignore this, therefore we have no ideas, nor plans. And Corporate news will continue to spin the "no ideas" propaganda.

[leftofthedial]

10. well, for starters . . .

three out of four jobs in the new, high-tech economy require one to live in India or Singapore or China

[thefloyd]

11. Needs Foreign policy initiative

Emanuel's initiatives play to Democrats strenghths but surely Cons will play the weak on terror card in coming elections.

[Poiuyt]

12. How do you like this compared with Robert Reich's Covenant with America?

See this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=2236280

[thefloyd]

13. Also avoid 'Universal Healthcare' verbage

Replace with 'Single Payer' insurance plan. Cons will Jump all over Universal Healthcare as "Socialized Medicine" "Socialism". Also, tie the economic benenefit of health insurance to an Economic Boom. Now I am not a PHD Economist but common sense would surely indicate cheaper healthcare = Economic Boom. Main thing Democrats should hammer home.
Removing the most expensive aspect of Business today will surely lead to prosperity for all.

[endarkenment]

35. Vouchers = complicated bullshit.

Expand medicare to everyone and let the rightwing foamers attack medicare as socialism and get everyone over 65 to vote against them. Don't bother labelling it anything.

I agree that the second point is to jump all over the economic beneift of reduced health care costs flowing directly to those corporations who, over the last 50 years or so, have been responsibly providing health care benefits to their employees and are all struggling to continue to do so.

[sandnsea]

42. We have it in Oregon

It's really not complicated at all. Poor are on medicaid. Working low income receive a subsidy that is used to get regular health insurance. Think of it as a necessary phase to get to universal coverage. Although I am hearing more support for Medicare for all lately. We might be able to make a straight jump by the time Bush is done fucking up the economy. If not, don't throw health insurance subsidies out the window. It's a good stop gap measure and will make a huge difference in the lives of millions of people.

[OzarkDem]

45. Agree, vouchers don't control costs

Its a system fraught with too many problems and loopholes that usually tends to force too little accountability on the provider and too much burden on the patient.

[mestup]

15. So college and nanotechnology is more important than health care?

Jeebus!

Let's improve our PUBLIC k-12 schools first. And why punish unemployed people with "if you've got a job, you've got insurance."

Single payer national health care for all.

[OzarkDem]

46. Guess we have to wait for Rahm to get sick

and lose his health insurance before he adds that one.

True sign of leadership is someone who doesn't have to experience a problem personally before they're willing to do something about it.

[EVDebs]

16. You can pay for the programs using "Capital Repatriation" ..., since

the Republicans will claim that Dems and Greens "really mean they want to raise taxes", as I heard Debra Saunders claim on Phil Matier's show on KRON-TV (San Francisco) while debating with a Dem political consultant.

Capital Repatriation is now bringing home something like $350 Billion, but just for this year only since Bush is only willing to allow it for this year. It is repatriating capital that was offshored, along with jobs, because US globalized multi-national firms could offshore the money and invest it overseas. The money could have stayed here and been taxed at 25% but it is being used as a 'job creation program' overseas. The money is now being allowed back into the US but to be taxed at only 5%.

This Capital Repatriation should be made PERMANENT.

See the Amer Shareholders Assn's Capital Repatriation Scorecard
www.americanshareholders.com/news/asa-repat-08-19-05.pdf
but be sure to read between the lines. Idiots who support 'globalization' like Thomas Friedman need to realize, like his earlier Lotus and the Olive Tree did, that globalization's problems need to be ameliorated. You can't go on stripping US workers of pensions and healthcare just so they can be just like the overseas low cost labor pool.

Furthermore, Warren Buffett says to raise corporate taxes
www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0306-01.htm

"Corporate income taxes in fiscal 2003 accounted for 7.4% of all federal tax receipts, down from a post-war peak of 32% in 1952. With one exception (1983), last year’s percentage is the lowest recorded since data was first published in 1934. Even so, tax breaks for corporations (and their investors, particularly large ones) were a major part of the Administration’s 2002 and 2003 initiatives. If class warfare is being waged in America, my class is clearly winning."

Corporate welfare needs to be made more in the media and public spotlight, don't you think ?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

21. Another way to pay for things: Make the Pentagon find and pay back the

$2.3 trillion that have gone missing in the past twenty-five years.

Whether it was embezzled or used for black ops, I'd tell the Pentagon no more increases in funding till you find that missing money.

I think the American people would understand if we emphasized 1) how much $2.3 trillion is (a trillion one-dollar bills would make a stack that reached beyond the moon) and 2) what we could have done instead with it (like fund universal healthcare for x many years.)

[EVDebs]

34. Yes, and restore oversight of intell committees in House and Senate

That alone could have prevented the 'stovepiping' and shadow-intell groups like OPR and Chalabi's Iranian connection treason.

If the R's didn't control those committees and the intell flow we probably wouldn't have been steamrollered into Iraq...and maybe even the 9-11 intell failures wouldn't have happened.

Prior to 9-11 there were very few FAA Air Marshals. August 6, 2001's PDB comes in and I doubt seriously if Bush even read it. After 9-11 there are now thousands of FAA Air Marshals. Go figure.

"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure"

[thefloyd]

17. Intelligence Reform!!!

Not CIA specifically but how CIA intelligence is USED for declaration war HINT HINT

[jocapo]

25. K.I.S.S.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2248246

[ruggerson]

26. Sounds good

but needs a wedge issue that scares the moderates into voting Dem.

My suggestion: privacy legislation tailored so that it will PREVENT the government from intervening in private, family medical decisions.

[nickshepDEM]

27. Stem Cell Research...

The Democrats 'Gay Marriage'.

Stem Cell Research is the perfect wedge issue. Republicans who embrace Stem Cell Research run the risk of losing their conservative base. Those who disapprove of Stem Cell Research lose any chance of winning indy's and moderates.

[rosesaylavee]

28. Yes, it can work - I heard this for the first time in

September I think. Where has it been and why hasn't it been highly touted as the PLAN? (Or maybe I am just out of the loop which is very possible.)

[Pirate Smile]

33. Since the Democrats don't control anything and can't actually enact

their plan, they will be running on it in 2006. On Sunday on MTP, Dean said the plan wouldn't be announced until 2006.

The plan will be unveiled with some campaign name, like the Republicans did with the "Contract with America" in 1994.

[rosesaylavee]

36. Good. Thanks for the info.

[OzarkDem]

44. I wouldn't tout it as "the plan"

Its pretty much incomplete, and still needs some work before it could be labeled a comprehensive plan for Dems.

I'm sure if he works on it a little more he can come up with something better.

[DrDan]

29. incomplete - not a peep about gay marriage!

or continuing the assault on the poor through medicare/medicaid cuts and social security reform

and NO TAX cuts for the wealthy

We need reps who are in touch - not ruling with their emotions

[flpoljunkie]

30. To eliminate usury, regulate the "spread" in credit card interest rates.

The "spread" is the difference between the interest rate a bank charges a borrower and the interest rate a bank pays a depositor. Right now the "spread" is outrageously high. Compare the pitifully small interest rate of savings accounts and CD's (if we can afford either) and the 29.99% credit card companies are allowed to charge when cardholders miss a single payment!

Credit card companies have been allowed to "run amok" with their late fees and increasingly usurious interest rates. We must tell our representatives in Congress that this is totally unacceptable for a party that purports to represent working Americans.

After enabling the passage of the egregious bankruptcy bill, a one-sided giveaway to banks and credit card companies. Make this point 6 to your 2005 plan to take back Congress! Take a stand for working Americans!

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/0512.gordon.html

Credit cards are especially dangerous because of the business practices of credit-card companies. Buried in those offers you receive daily in the mail are fine-print contract terms not subject to negotiation. Cardholders who miss a single payment may be hit with two separate charges: a $39 fee and a penalty interest rate of 29.99 percent or higher. Those who mistakenly go over their credit limit no longer have their cards declined. Their purchase is charged, along with a $35 fee and—you guessed it—the 29.99 percent penalty rate. These fees can quickly double or triple the underlying debt on the card. Perhaps most egregiously, even families who pay their bills on time can be hit with penalty rates. Under a practice known as “universal default,” companies can raise rates based on a change in a customer's credit score, a dispute he has with another creditor, or even a purchase he makes that they don't like. These new rates apply even to old credit, so if you bought a washer and dryer and new clothes for the kids, all at 7.99 percent interest, you can get socked with a 29.99 percent rate—even if you have made every payment on time.

Practices such as these are great for the industry's bottom line. From 1996 to 2003, the money credit-card companies make from fees has more than quadrupled, to $7.7 billion. Families aren't making out quite as well. Penalty fees and interest combined now cost average credit-card holding households more than $800 each year. All told, Americans cough up about $90 billion annually in interest and penalty payments on credit cards. That's $90 billion that could have gone into car repairs or college tuition or savings accounts—and ends up in company bottom lines instead.

[dutchdoctor]

31. It take it you got that from Time's homepage

here is the link for the rest of the article:
www.time.com/time/columnist/klein/article/0,9565,1129493,00.html

Why not make it a ten point plan? It somehow sounds better...

Some suggestions for the other five points:
1) keeping the government out of private medical decisions (abortion, Terri Schiavo)
2) A sensible foreign policy, modernising the UN.
3) Election reform, paper ballots
4) promote stem cell research (can be combined with the National Institute of Science)
5) Equal rights to gay partners, married or not..

[Festivito]

32. Amazing how ANYTHING sounds good.

Wish I had my own prepared list.

BTW, what's this COST? Why would the incredulous believe this without admission of its cost.

I'm too shell-shocked by lying and subterfuge in current politics. In 200 years we've come to an awful place.

[vespucci]

37. yea.....but let's not be afraid

yea....but let's not be afraid to say who we are! I am a liberal and
proud of it.....why are we hiding behind stuff like "progressive"...
I don't even know what that is?

[saracat]

38. Women's Righta aren't important enough to even be mentioned!

DLC crap.

[RazzleDazzle]

39. Sounds a little excessively corporate-friendly to me

maybe it's just late and I'm tired or something?

Or perhaps I should say insufficiently people-friendly?

[Chicago Democrat]

40. What about Iraq? What about the Patriot Act? What about New Orleans?

THESE ARE THE TOUGH ISSUES..


Nice goals.... meanwhile american democracy is in flames.

[OzarkDem]

43. Health care only for those with jobs?

What happens when you get sick and can't work?

Guaranteed access to affordable health care for all. Period. Its a basic human right.

[vespucci]

52. It IS a basic human right

and this country should be made to provide it....if you
are employed it is already there.....so the unemployed
should be covered by the standard of just being an "american".

[Orlandodem]

50. Dems MUST support a strong military. We must not be afraid

to say that we believe in a strong national defense. We need to have an honest foreign policy also but we need to make Americans believe we'll pull the trigger if need be.

[loyalsister]

51. I like it for the most part

National Institute of Science and Engineering sounds fresh and progressive. Optimistic, even.
I am unclear how health care would work for small businesses. Or self employs.
I think that cutting to the chase with single payer might be the way to go. The middle class is getting squeezed. Baby boomers less secure about health care options. They are ready sooner than people think.

Overall, I think it's a good working model.

[madfloridian]

53. What about those who are NOT working....health care.

I have noticed all our Democrats saying if you work you get health care. So...lots of people are not working, are they advocating the privatization of Medicaid?