June 09, 2009 03:38 PM UTC

Economic Justice

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• by: jflerlage

One of my highest priorities, when elected to Congress, is to support initiatives that move our country toward greater economic justice.

In the short term that means reforming health care;  providing universal health care and eventually removing business from the business of providing health care. It means ensuring all our citizens have access to a quality education for themselves and so that our businesses have high quality workers. It means simplifying the tax code to reduce the burden of tax preparation costs.  It means eliminating subsidies and tax breaks that do not serve the common good. It means creating incentives to do business in America. It means fair trade that respects our borders, ensures business have access to foreign workers when required, protects our environment and respects the rights of workers in America and elsewhere. It means ending a system of private profits and public losses. It means fair and transparent credit terms. It means ending “too big to fail.” And it means ensuring shareholders have the right to eliminate incentives to executives that do not serve the long term interest of the shareholder and corporation.

The federal deficit and growing debt burden are among the most critical problems facing America today and are the two most important long-term problems of our economy. Economic justice means dealing with these problems in our generation and not passing the debt onto our children. Balancing the budget will be achieved by reforming health care, achieving energy independence and energy security, creating a growing economy, reducing government waste, and realigning the budgets of our executive departments as conditions improve. Economic justice means providing a dignified retirement for all Americans to include the protection of social security and the integration of seniors into appropriate jobs such as in our schools and day care centers.

Economic justice also means getting what you pay for in taxes. I can assure you that the rejection of all requests for legitimate appropriations ensures that we do not achieve a fair return for the people of our District. I can also assure you that rejecting virtually all requests for information and assistance under the America Recovery and Reinvestment Act (stimulus bill) does not serve the people of this District, either.

Why not send someone to Washington who will serve the people?