PLYMOUTH, N.H. ? On Monday October 6, Senator and Presidential Candidate John Edwards spoke to a modest crowd at Plymouth?s Pease Public Library, sharing his ideas on the economy, public and higher education, healthcare, civil liberties, and his connection to the working class. Edwards was highly critical of the Bush Administration, offering his own solutions to the many problems now faced by Americans.
Talking of the Presi-dent, Edwards stated, ?He has the audacity to say to the American people, he wants the 2004 campaign and election to be a debate about values. We ought to give him a debate about values.? He said Bush?s values aren?t the values of the American people. ?We can show very clearly this President is not con-nected to the American people. He does not understand what their lives are like, and he certainly doesn?t share their beliefs or their values,? saying that?s an argument he would make ?every single day, every chance I get with this President.?
Edwards believes the President is trying to shift the tax burden from the wealthy to the middle class, saying, ?he wants to eliminate the Capital Gains Tax, he wants to eliminate the Dividends Tax, he wants to eliminate the taxation of large estates. All that is the taxation of either wealth or unearned in-come on wealth.? By eliminating those forms of taxation, accord-ing to Edwards, that tax burden gets shifted to people in the middle class.
He said these are wrong ac-tions ?as a matter of our values and what we believe in,? and dissolv-ing these taxes is bad for the economy. Edwards stat-ed, ?This country?s economy grows when the middle class grows,? when their income goes up, and when poor people get ?lifted up? into the middle class. He said that?s how the economy moves forward, citing economic boom post WWII, during the early seventies, and during the second half of the Clinton Administration. He added, ?It?s not happening now,? saying Bush has got it ?exactly backwards.?
?[Bush] is trying to create wealth for people who already have wealth. I be-lieve in wealth creation, but why don?t we create wealth for people who don?t have wealth. Why don?t we help people in the middle class and people who are poor to buy a home and have a decent job and a good place to live? That?s what we ought to be doing.? Edwards stated we need to help people save, match-ing dollar for dollar the savings of families up to a thousand dollars in order to create a ?nest egg? for every family.
Edwards called No Child Left Behind a disaster, where the quality of a public education depends of the affluence of the community. ?As the affluence level goes down, so do the odds of getting a good public school education. Do we really believe that the quality of the start that a child gets in life, the quality of their education, should depend on where they live or what the color of their skin is or what the affluence of the neighborhood or community is? I don?t believe that. I don?t think most of America believes that.? He said its nothing but a political issue for the President, while it was a per-sonal issue for him, referring to his own public school education.
Edwards would create a national initiative to improve teacher pay, ?so that we get good teachers and keep the teachers that we have.? He wants to give bonus pay any-one who teaches in areas, where we need them the most.? Edwards would also give scholarships to young people who commit to teach in a school in a disadvantaged area.
Edwards claimed as President he would make health care a ?birthright for every child born in America. Just like public education, mandatory. Not access to health-care, I?m talking about required healthcare coverage.? He said the biggest problem is the HMO?s, the insurance industry, and the big drug companies in Washington. ?They stop every effort we make to bring healthcare costs under control.? Senator Edwards, Senator McCain, and Senator Kennedy wrote the Pa-tients Bill of Rights, which tried to give people control over healthcare decisions. It passed through the Senate, but the President blocked it. ?Every day we were trying to pass it, the lobbyists for all those health insurance industries were out there working against us.? Edwards said we?d never get health-care costs under control ?until we have a President who will stand up to these people.?
Edwards concluded his address with an issue ?that goes to the heart of what makes this country great.? He said we couldn?t allow people like John Ashcroft take away our rights, our freedoms, our liberty, and our privacy. ?I want my chil-dren and grandchildren looking back twenty or thirty years from now to say, ?when the heat was on, my country stood up for freedom, they stood up for the things that make this country what it is.?? As President he would go further than changing the Patriot Act by creating an independent watchdog office of civil rights and civil liberties, ?to make sure, particularly in times like these, that our civil rights and civil liberties are not being eroded by the government.?
Edwards was asked to name the greatest issue concerning him about the country. He named two: First was what?s happening to the availability of opportunity. ?I think that opportunity is disappearing for the vast majority of Americans; that includes economic opportunity, educational opportunity, the opportunity to have decent healthcare. It?s those things that give people the chance to do what they?re capable of doing.? His second great concern, the way the rest of the world views America now.
The Edwards TV commercials talk about Bush taking money from special interest groups and lobbyists, while Edwards himself doesn?t take a cent from like organizations. He was asked how he was paying for his campaign. ?I don?t mean to sound holier than thou about this, I?m a presidential candidate. We have to raise money in this world, and I raise money just like everybody else. What I don?t do is take contributions from Washington Lobbyists.?
When asked if he were to receive the Democratic nomination, how would he appeal to Republican voters, Edwards said, ?The Republicans are struggling exactly the same way most Americans are struggling in this economy with loss of jobs, with healthcare problems, with what?s happening in their public schools. I think I will be able to communicate with all kinds of voters.?
The College for Everyone plan would give qualified underprivileged students a full year of col-lege tuition free if they work ten hours a week. Edwards projected this program would cost three bil-lion dollars. He was asked how he would get the three billion for the underprivileged, how does he determine who?s underprivileged, and what do students do after their first free year. Edwards said he would pay for it by stopping the tax cuts for people who earn over two hundred thousand dollars a year, and by closing a group of corporate tax loopholes. ?All of that generates enough money to pay for everything I?m proposing, including this plan, plus hundreds of billions of dollars towards deficit reduction.?
With the College for Everyone plan, Edwards said, the idea is to get kids into college so they get in-volved and see what?s available to them as far as scholarships, financial aide, and loan programs, ?instead of having them decide not to go when they?re high school seniors, that?s the whole concept.”