The first presidential debate two Wednesdays ago provided yet another reminder of the painfully conflict-averse nature of this president. It drives some progressives crazy that, even within the confines of corporatocracy, Obama could inspire outrage against the brown-shirt Romney-Ryan rabble if he had the nerve to use his gifts. With that in mind, I’m turning over today’s post to guest blogger Gabriel Heilig, a friend and colleague of mine who has written what he describes as the speech President Obama ought to deliver to the nation if he wants to start to claim any semblance of leadership. I invite you to try to imagine Obama announcing a major televised address and, on the appointed night, appearing at the presidential podium to deliver the following speech.
Gabriel, by the way, is a fierce and soulful thinker and advocate, an op-ed author (e.g., Baltimore Sun), and the founder of Action Resumes, which he ran at the Pentagon for 14 years. I respect the hell out of him, and I hope to feature him here again soon.
____________________
Calling out the RepubliCons
© Copyright 2012 Gabriel Heilig
“My fellow citizens, America is a very resilient country, but our ability to solve our problems is being weakened and compromised. It’s being weakened by Congress’s refusal to serve the American people’s interests, and it’s being compromised by a flood of unidentified money. All that money is not helping you. It’s only buying loopholes for the wealthy.
“Not long ago, I sent plans to Congress to end financial abuses on Wall Street. Soon there were 3 lobbyists on Capitol Hill for every Member of Congress. Ask yourself: Were those lobbyists up there thinking about you?
“Because that’s what this election is all about. Who’s spending time in Washington thinking about you? Who’s protecting you?
“Republicans keep saying the stimulus package did nothing. That’s not true. The stimulus created a lot of jobs and also saved a lot of jobs. Some of the jobs it created are fixing roads and bridges across America right now. And it saved jobs in ways that few people realize. We saved jobs for nurses, teachers and principals, by funding state governments to pay their salaries. But after 2010, when Republicans took control of many state governments, over 650,000 public service jobs were eliminated on the ground of “cutting big government.”
“Nurses. Teachers. Policemen. They’re not ‘big government.’ They’re your neighbors. In the last 3 years, over 52,000 public health professionals were fired. Are they “big government”?
“Because that’s what this election is about. Your neighbors, and their jobs, as well as yours.
“You should know that during the last 3 years our economy has created more jobs in the private sector than a Republican Congress and a Republican President created in 8 years. That’s the reason I said the private sector is doing fine, because it is doing better now than it did during their 8 years in office. That’s a fact. My opponents don’t like to hear that—or a lot of other facts—but it’s true.
“What’s also true is that when Republicans fire 650,000 public workers, that makes it harder to sustain a National Recovery. Economists have calculated that our unemployment rate would be down to 7%, except for all the public employees who’ve been fired in states run by Republican governors and legislatures. That’s a fact. They’ve fired close to three-quarters of a million Americans. That’s a fact. Do they sound like “job creators” to you?
“My team and I have been working to rescue and revive the economy. Yet each time we’ve brought plans to do this to Congress, the Republicans act as though spending tax money to create jobs for Americans is un-American. Time and again, they refuse to invest in America. In you and your neighbors.
“But guess what—those tax dollars—that’s our money. Our taxes belong to us—not to some foreign government. The reason we pay taxes is to do things for ourselves that we want done. That’s our money. In a democracy, we discuss debate, and decide how to spend our money.
“But wealthy people have a different strategy. Through banks and private equity firms, they borrow money from the Federal Reserve at 0% interest. Then they make interest on this money, which has cost them nothing, by investing it in international money markets. It’s not illegal to do this—but it’s completely risk-free for them. Making money this way is tilting the economy like a huge pinball game, so everything slides in one direction. And the people who do this are the same ones that refuse to lend money to small new businesses, despite the fact that small new businesses create most of the new jobs in America.
“Governor Romney likes to say that talk is cheap. I say his talk costs too much when it puts your neighbors out of work. When it tilts the economy toward just one group. When it takes all it can, but refuses to give what the country needs.
“As a member of that group, on income of more than $21 million dollars—$7 million of it in interest—Governor Romney paid 13.9% in taxes last year. 13.9%. Is that the rate you’re paying?
“Governor Romney criticizes my foreign policy. I’d like to hear him explain his foreign policy toward the Cayman Islands and Swiss bank accounts. And when Governor Romney was Governor of Massachusetts, he had the worst record of job creation in the state’s history. The state was 47th in job creation in America. That’s a fact.
“Now Governor Romney wants to run the entire economy. But take a look at what Governor Romney did as Governor of Massachusetts and as CEO at Bain Capital. Many more jobs were lost in the companies Governor Romney and Bain bought out, than jobs were created. He and Bain bought troubled companies, stripped their assets, fired their workers, pocketed huge consulting fees, and then sold the hulks that were left. One of Mr. Romney’s colleagues at Bain just wrote a book defending giving tax money to the rich, defending the practice of sending jobs overseas. That’s the Bain approach. That’s the Romney approach.
“Are Governor Romney and his friends “job creators”? Ask the people they fired.
“Governor Romney can keep calling wealthy people like him ‘job creators,’ but the only jobs he’s creating are jobs building car elevators in his homes—and jobs for clerks and counselors at unemployment offices.
“That’s what this election is all about. Creating jobs here, or shipping them overseas.
Repairing highways, and bridges—or building car elevators.
“Talk is cheap, Governor Romney says? He should sit down and talk to workers at auto plants in Ohio, Michigan and Kentucky, in Tennessee, Georgia and South Carolina. Governor Romney wrote an article in The New York Times saying that the government should let General Motors and Chrysler go bankrupt, through a managed bankruptcy, managed by other private sector companies. But the private sector hasn’t been lending money to anyone’s companies, much less companies on the brink of collapse. And neither did Bain Capital.
“Governor Romney’s argument is false. His advice would have ended the US auto industry. If we had done what Governor Romney proposed, GM and Chrysler—and all their workers and suppliers—all of that productive labor would have been lost.
“My team and I made a decision to bet on America’s auto industry, and today we are all winning that bet. General Motors is once again the largest car company in the world, selling cars not just here and in Europe but across Latin America and in China.
“Because that’s what this election is all about. Betting on American business, or betting against it. Providing jobs for American workers, or taking those jobs away. Decisions by Republicans in Congress and in state houses have hurt the recovery. The worst hit cities across this country during the past 3 years have been state capitols. Because that’s where a lot of public employees worked—until they were fired by their Republican bosses.
“Well, people can’t buy anything with money they don’t earn. So they stop buying. That causes other people to lose their jobs. And that hurts the economy.
“This election will be a turning point for America. My team and I have been offering plans to move our economy forward. Our programs have had some success, but Republicans keep voting no, and filibustering, and refusing even to discuss our plans. Their way of growing the economy involves throwing people out of their jobs and handing tax breaks to the wealthy. That’s not helping. The wealthy are winning their bets. They don’t need more help.
“Because that’s what this election is all about. Betting on the wealthy, or betting on you. Helping the wealthy to get wealthier, or helping people pay their mortgages.
“In this election we can return to the road we took under the Republicans for 8 years: the road that brought us smack into the Great Recession of 2008. If you look at the Republicans’ plans, that’s where they want to take America again. Governor Romney tried those ideas in Massachusetts. He left after one term. If his plan was so wonderful and he was such a business expert, why didn’t he serve a second term and finish what he started?
“Governor Romney likes to say that as President, I’ve been ‘in over my head.’ How would he know? He won’t get his feet wet or his hands dirty. When his ideas didn’t work in Massachusetts, he didn’t run again. He ran away. Even now, he runs away from his record. He won’t say what he thinks about immigration. It’s all a secret plan. But his past isn’t a secret. That’s what this election is all about. Getting the job done—or walking away.
“My team and I want to complete our work. We didn’t create this recession, but we’re doing our level best to end it. And we’re not getting much help from Republicans.
“Let’s be truthful: One person didn’t cause this recession, and one person won’t end it. My team and I work a lot of hours, but we can’t do it alone. We need partners. And for the last 3 years, we haven’t had partners. Just critics and slogans and wild accusations.
“‘Socialists. Communists. Not born in America.’
“One Republican Member of Congress actually said there are 81 Communists in Congress. (Oh, he’s absolutely correct. I meet with all 81 of them, every month—in a little replica of the Kremlin I ordered built at Camp David.) Let’s be serious. In a democracy, we make decisions together. But it’s hard to negotiate with people who keep saying 'No.' If Republicans don’t like our ideas, they can propose their own. But they don’t seem to have any plans—at least not any they’re willing to discuss in detail. Just slogans and accusations. But no plans. No details. Nothing to negotiate.
“When I came into office, the economy was on the brink of imploding. Years of questionable decisions had left us in a dangerous place. As soon as we took office, my team and I had to rescue the economy. Now we need to re-grow it. In my next speech, I’ll lay out a series of plans about how we—and I say we because this will involve many Americans—can do this by working together in our own communities. I’m convinced that, working together, we can do a lot to restore our economy. And we can do it in ways that will not cost a lot of money.
“You elected me to work with Congress—and you elected Congress to work with me. Well, I hear a lot of complaints from Congress, but I haven’t been seeing much work. Recently, I sent Congress a jobs bill. They refused to even bring it to a vote. What kind of job performance is that? Not only are they not voting on creating jobs for you and your neighbors—they’re not even doing their own jobs.
“By the way, since Republicans like to moan and groan about public service pensions, you may be pleased to learn that all Members of Congress, even if they serve one term, will receive health care and pensions for the rest of their lives. And Republicans are complaining about a teacher’s pension?
“Well—if that’s where you want your future and your country to go, vote for the Republicans and Governor Romney: they’ll get you there in a hurry. I’m convinced that going back to the policies that got our economy in so much trouble—that won’t help. We tried giving new, additional tax breaks to the wealthy, and all we’ve gotten is a lot of talk about ‘job creators’—by Republicans who keep voting against jobs.
“Talk is cheap, Governor Romney? Not when you’re talking to your offshore bankers about your offshore accounts—paid for by companies that sent our jobs offshore—with tax breaks paid for by the American taxpayers. That kind of talk keeps costing this country a lot of money, whether Governor Romney pays taxes on it or not.
“Because that’s what this election is all about. Talk, and accusations. Or performance, and a commitment to complete what we’ve started. This election is about your mortgage and your children’s tuition—or offshore accounts and middle-of-the-night tax breaks.
“Each of us gets a vote. I hope you use yours so it does you and your family the most good.
“Thank you for listening. May God continue to bless you and your family, and our United States of America.”
