President Clinton's Convention Speech: highlights from the prepared text

Highlights from the prepared text for President Clinton's Convention Speech:

"It turns out that advancing equal opportunity and economic empowerment is both morally right and good economics, because discrimination, poverty and ignorance restrict growth, while investments in education, infrastructure and scientific and technological research increase it, creating more good jobs and new wealth for all of us."

...

"In Tampa, the Republican argument against the President's re-election was pretty simple: we left him a total mess, he hasn't cleaned it up fast enough, so fire him and put us back in."

...

"I like the argument for President Obama's re-election a lot better. He inherited a deeply damaged economy, put a floor under the crash, began the long hard road to recovery, and laid the foundation for a modern, more well-balanced economy that will produce millions of good new jobs, vibrant new businesses, and lots of new wealth for the innovators."

...

"The Recovery Act saved and created millions of jobs and cut taxes for 95% of the American people. In the last 29 months the economy has produced about 4.5 million private sector jobs.  But last year, the Republicans blocked the President's jobs plan costing the economy more than a million new jobs. So here's another jobs score: President Obama plus 4.5 million, Congressional Republicans zero."

...

"Now there are 250,000 more people working in the auto industry than the day the companies were restructured.  Governor Romney opposed the plan to save GM and Chrysler. So here's another jobs score: Obama two hundred and fifty thousand, Romney, zero."

...

"The Republicans call it Obamacare and say it's a government takeover of health care that they'll repeal.  Are they right? Let's look at what's happened so far. Individuals and businesses have secured more than a billion dollars in refunds from their insurance premiums because the new law requires 80% to 85% of your premiums to be spent on health care, not profits or promotion.  Other insurance companies have lowered their rates to meet the requirement.  More than 3 million young people between 19 and 25 are insured for the first time because their parents can now carry them on family policies.  Millions of seniors are receiving preventive care including breast cancer screenings and tests for heart problems.  Soon the insurance companies, not the government, will have millions of new customers many of them middle class people with pre-existing conditions.  And for the last two years, health care spending has grown under 4%, for the first time in 50 years."

...

"Both Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan attacked the President for allegedly robbing Medicare of 716 billion dollars. Here's what really happened. There were no cuts to benefits. None. What the President did was save money by cutting unwarranted subsidies to providers and insurance companies that weren't making people any healthier. He used the saving to close the donut hole in the Medicare drug program, and to add eight years to the life of the Medicare Trust Fund. It's now solvent until 2024. So President Obama and the Democrats didn't weaken Medicare, they strengthened it."

...

"Remember, Republican economic policies quadrupled the debt before I took office and doubled it after I left. We simply can't afford to double-down on trickle-down."

Just What Exactly Doesn't Benefit Everyone?

It's been said that, "any public institution that doesn't benefit everyone should not be paid by everyone."

Interesting idea, but much depends on how one judges "doesn't benefit everyone". For instance, housing subsidies can reasonably be described as benefiting everyone. How? Obviously they benefit the people getting the subsidies directly because those whose wages are too low to otherwise afford decent housing can then afford some approximation of decent housing. Obviously they benefit property owners in areas where there is a demand for housing but the costs of building/maintaining housing outpace the amount that can be paid by low wage earners ... thus helping make it economically viable for rental property investors to build properties to meet the need for housing. Less obviously, they also benefits all of the customers of companies that employ low wage earners, as it helps those companies keep their wages low and thus avoid raising prices for their goods and services.

Do you ever shop at a store that employs people for low wages? If so, you've almost certainly benefitted indirectly from housing assistance.

Further, housing assistance, food stamps, etc. reduce desperation, which helps avoid things like riots and property damage. That's good for anyone who own property. Do you own property? If so, then you've at least indirectly benefitted from housing assistance, food stamps, etc.

Do you hope to retire? If so, then you can reasonably expect to benefit from social security and Medicare. (Although you might not benefit at today's levels, assuming that the politically insane continue to thwart efforts to re-balance the income limit and continue to thwart things like universal healthcare that -- if done even vaguely close to half as well as most of the rest of the world -- should reduce our percentage of GDP/capita spent on healthcare ... which would certainly benefit all of us.)

Speaking of healthcare, healthy workers are a huge boon to employers ... they don't have to worry about their skilled employees being out so much. That's a giant monetary benefit to employers and by extension some benefit to all fellow employees as a result of the employer being more stable because of the healthy workforce.

So, what exactly is this public institution that supposedly doesn't benefit everyone?

We live in a very interconnected society. Short of hermits, I don't think you'll find anyone who isn't benefitted by most every program of any significant size in some way ... even if only indirectly.