The vigorous contest
of Democrats seeking the 2020 presidential nomination has produced excellent
policy proposals to address major issues. Senator Bernie Sanders,in Des Moines
ahead of the Iowa AFL-CIO convention, announced a comprehensive plan to at
least double union membership during his first term as president, rebuilt the
middle class and substantially raise wages. This is from the Sanders campaign:
“Corporate America and
the billionaire class have been waging a 40-year war against the trade union
movement in America that has caused devastating harm to the middle class in
terms of lower wages, fewer benefits and frozen pensions,” Sanders said. “That
war will come to an end when I am president. If we are serious about rebuilding
the middle class in America, we have got to rebuild, strengthen and expand the
trade union movement in America.”
Sanders’ Workplace Democracy Plan would essentially repeal Iowa’s Chapter
20 law that stripped the rights of public sector workers to collectively
bargain for better benefits and safer working conditions by giving all public
sector workers the freedom to negotiate.
The sweeping proposal
to strengthen unions would end right to work laws, give every union worker in
America the right to strike and ban the replacement of striking workers.
As president, Sanders
also pledged to sign an executive order preventing large, profitable
corporations that engage in union busting, outsource jobs overseas or pay
workers less than $15 an hour from receiving federal contracts.
The plan would also
make it substantially easier to form a union and stop employers from ruthlessly
exploiting workers by misclassifying them as independent contractors or denying
them overtime by falsely categorizing them as a “supervisor.”
Other key elements of
this proposal include:
Requiring companies that merge to honor existing union contracts.
Bringing workers, employers and the government together across industries to negotiate wages, benefits and working conditions through sectoral bargaining.
Stop corporations from forcing workers to attend mandatory anti-union meetings as a condition of continued employment.
Protect the pensions of workers.
Establish federal protections against the firing of workers for any reason other than “just cause.”
In addition, the plan
makes sure that all union workers would be better off under Medicare for All.
If Medicare for All is signed into law, companies with union-negotiated health
care plans would be required to enter into new contract negotiations overseen
by the National Labor Relations Board. Under this plan, all company savings that
result from reduced health care contributions from Medicare for All will accrue
equitably to workers in the form of increased wages or other benefits.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, 2020 Democratic candidate for president, proposes a plan to reduce mass incarceration and reform the criminal justice system without infringing on public safety (c) Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com
The vigorous contest of
Democrats seeking the 2020 presidential nomination has produced excellent
policy proposals to address major issues. Senator Elizabeth Warren released her
plan to reduce mass incarceration and reform the criminal justice system
without infringing on public safety. This is from the Warren2020 campaign:
Charlestown, MA – Today, Elizabeth Warren released her plan to reduce mass incarceration and reform our criminal justice system. Elizabeth believes we need to reimagine how we talk and think about public safety, spending our budgets not on putting people in prison but on community services that lift people up. It is a false choice to suggest a trade off between safety and mass incarceration – we can decarcerate and make our communities safer.
Her plan details how she will reform all aspects of our system:
what we choose to criminalize, how law enforcement and prosecutors engage with
communities and the accused, how long we keep people behind bars and how we
treat them when they’re there, and how we reintegrate them when they return.
“We will reduce incarceration and improve justice in our country
by changing what we choose to criminalize, reforming police behavior and
improving police-community relations, and reining in a system that preferences
prosecution over justice. When people are incarcerated, we will provide
opportunities for treatment, education and rehabilitation, and we’ll continue
those supports for returning citizens as they reenter our communities. Most
importantly, we’ll rethink the way we approach public safety — emphasizing
preventative approaches over law enforcement and incarceration. That’s the way
we’ll create real law and order and real justice in our country.”
The United States makes up 5% of the world’s
population, but nearly 20% of the world’s
prison population. We have the highest rate of
incarceration in the world, with over 2 million people in
prison and jail.
Our system is the result of the dozens of
choices we’ve made — choices that together stack the deck against the poor and
the disadvantaged. Simply put, we have criminalized too many things. We send
too many people to jail. We keep them there for too long. We do little to
rehabilitate them. We spend billions, propping
up an entire industry that
profits from mass incarceration. And we do all of this despite little evidence that
our harshly punitive system makes our communities safer — and knowing that a
majority of people currently in prison will eventually return to our
communities and our neighborhoods.
To make matters worse, the evidence is clear
that there are structural race problems in this system. Latinx adults are three times more
likely to be incarcerated than whites. For the exact same crimes, Black
Americans are more likely than whites to be arrested, charged, wrongfully
convicted, and given harsher sentences. One in ten Black
children has an incarcerated parent.
Four words are etched above the Supreme Court:
Equal Justice Under Law. That’s supposed to be the promise of our justice
system. But today in America, there’s one system for the rich and powerful, and
another one for everybody else. It’s not equal justice when a kid with
an ounce of pot can get thrown in jail, while a bank executive who launders
money for a drug cartel can get a bonus. It’s long past time for us to reform
our system.
Real reform requires examining every step of
this system: From what we choose to criminalize, to how law enforcement and
prosecutors engage with communities and the accused, to how long we keep people
behind bars, how we treat them when they’re there, and how we reintegrate them
when they return.
We cannot achieve this by nibbling around the
edges — we need to tackle the problem at its roots. That means implementing a
set of bold, structural changes at all levels of government.
And it starts by reimagining how we talk and
think about public safety. For example:
Public safety should mean providing every
opportunity for all our kids to get a good education and stay in school.
It should mean safe, affordable housing that
keeps families together and off the streets.
It should mean violence intervention programs
that divert young people from criminal activity, before the police become
involved.
It should mean policies that recognize the
humanity of trans people and other LGBTQ+ Americans and keep them safe from
violence.
It should mean accessible mental health
services and treatment for addiction.
It is a false choice to suggest a tradeoff
between safety and mass incarceration. By spending our budgets not on
imprisonment but on community services that lift people up, we’ll
decarcerate and make our communities safer. Here’s my plan.
Rethink Our Approach to
Public Safety
It’s not enough merely to reform our
sentencing guidelines or improve police-community relations. We need to rethink
our approach to public safety, transitioning away from a punitive system and
investing in evidence-based approaches that address the underlyingdrivers of violence
and crime — tackling it at its roots, before it ever has a chance to grow.
Break the school-to-prison pipeline. Schools increasingly rely
on police officers to carry out discipline while neglecting services that are
critical to the well being of students. At least fourteen million students
attend schools with a police officer but without a single counselor, social
worker, psychologist, or nurse. It’s no surprise that tens of thousands of
students are arrested annually, many for minor infractions. Zero tolerance
policies start early — on average 250 preschoolers are
suspended or expelled every day — and, even in the youngest years, students of
color bear the brunt. In
later grades, Black and Brown students are disproportionately arrested
in schools, while students with disabilities face an increased risk of
disciplinary action.
Every child should have the opportunity to
receive the support they need to thrive inside and outside of the classroom.
Adverse childhood experiences such as poverty, violence at home, homelessness,
family separation, or an incarcerated caretaker are proven to negatively impact child
development. I will equip schools with resources to meet their students’ needs
by providing access to health care to support the physical, mental, and social
development of children, improve their overall school readiness and
providing early intervention services.
We should decriminalize truancy and instead increase the number of school
mental health personnel and provide schools with resources to train teachers
and administrators in positive behavioral interventions, trauma-informed
alternative discipline practices, and implicit bias to
limit suspensions, expulsions, and minor-infraction arrests. We should require
that any police department receiving federal funds provide mandatory training
in the scientific and psychological roots of discrimination, youth development,
and de-escalation tactics to officers assigned to school campuses. I’ll
rescind Trump’s executive order that
allows school districts to participate in the 1033 program, giving them access
to military-grade weapons. And I’ll fully fund the Office of Civil Rights of
the Department of Education so that it can investigate school districts with
dramatic disparities in school disciplinary actions.
Reduce homelessness and housing insecurity. Children that experience
homelessness are more likely to drop out of school and more likely to become
involved with the criminal system. But as housing and rental costs skyrocket
and federal housing assistance doesn’t keep pace, housing insecurity is
growing, particularly for families of color. A Warren administration will
commit federal funding to the goal of ending homelessness in our country.
My housing plan will
help, by investing $500 billion over 10 years to build, preserve, and rehab
affordable housing, creating 3.2 million new housing units and bringing down
rental costs by 10%. It would also help families, especially families of color,
buy homes and start to build wealth. Substantially improving housing
affordability isn’t just good for the economy and for working families — it
will also reduce homelessness and crime.
Invest in evidence-based interruption programs. To improve safety in our
communities, we also need to invest in programs that prevent violence and
divert criminal behavior. Models in cities like Boston, Oakland and Chicago demonstrate that
we can successfully reduce homicide and gun violence rates through creating
cross-community partnerships and focused deterrence on
the small percentage of people most likely to commit violence. These programs
are cost-effective and
have multiplier effects:
transforming community climate, improving health outcomes, and boosting local
economies. My administration will invest in piloting similar programs at scale.
Decriminalize Mental Health Crises. The solution for someone
experiencing a mental health crisis should not be a badge and a gun, but police
officers have become America’s de facto first mental health providers.
Historically, 7–10% of police encounters involve a person affected by mental
illness, and people with untreated severe mental illness are sixteen times more
likely to be killed during a police encounter. People with mental illnesses are
not incarcerated at higher rates because they are prone to violence. To
the contrary, most are arrested for non-violent offenses,
many because they lack access to necessary services. But incarcerating people
with mental illness is more expensive as
providing appropriate community-based treatment — instead of shuttling people
into a system not built to meet their needs, we should invest in preventing
people from reaching those crisis points in the first place. Medicare for All
will provide continuous access to critical mental health care services, decreasing
the likelihood that the police will be called as a matter of last resort. I’ll
also increase funding for “co-responder” initiatives that connect law
enforcement to mental health care providers and experts. And my administration
will pilot evidence-based
crisis response efforts to provide needed services to individuals struggling
with mental illness.
Invest in diversion programs for substance abuse disorder. People who struggle with
addiction should not be incarcerated because of their disease. Mass
incarceration has not reduced addiction
rates or overdose deaths, because substance abuse disorder is a public health
problem — and it’s long past time to treat it that way. We know that diversion
programs are both more humane and a better investment than incarceration — for
every dollar we invest in
treatment programs, we can save $12 in future crime and health care costs. I’ll
support evidence-based safe injection sites and needle exchanges, and expand
the availability of buprenorphine to prevent overdoses. And my CARE Act would
invest $100 billion over ten years to increase access to high quality treatment
and support services. It would provide the regions most affected by the opioid
crisis with the resources they need, and would allow state, local and tribal
governments to use CARE Act funds to provide incarcerated individuals, and
individuals in pre-trial detention, with substance use disorder treatment.
Change What We Choose to
Criminalize
We face a crisis of overcriminalization. It has filled our prisons and devastated entire neighborhoods.
Addressing the crisis starts by rethinking what we choose to criminalize. It is
easy for legislators, fearful of being labeled soft on crime, to rubber stamp
every new criminal and sentencing proposal, no matter how punitive. It’s
equally easy for them to look the other way when the wealthy and well-connected
abuse the rest of us. But from the Senate on down, elected lawmakers have an
obligation to do better than that. Here’s where we can start.
Repeal the 1994 crime bill.The 1994 crime bill exacerbated incarceration rates in
this country, punishing people more severely for even minor infractions, and
limiting discretion in charging and sentencing in our judicial system. That
punitive “tough on crime” approach was wrong, it was a mistake, and it needs to
be repealed. There are some sections of law, like those relating to domestic
violence, that should be retained — but the bulk of the law must go.
Address the legacy of the War on Drugs. For four decades, we’ve
subscribed to a “War on Drugs” theory of crime, which has criminalized addiction,
ripped apart families — and largely failed to curb drug use. This failure has
been particularly harmful for
communities of color, and we need a new approach. It starts with decriminalizing marijuana and
erasing past convictions, and then eliminating the remaining disparity between
crack and powder cocaine sentencing. And rather than incarcerating individuals
with substance abuse disorders, we should expand options that divert them into
programs that provide real treatment.
Stop criminalizing homelessness. Housing provides safety
and stability, but too many experience
homelessness. To make matters worse, many cities have criminalized homelessness
by banning behavior
associated with it, like sleeping in public or living in vehicles. These laws
draw people into the justice system instead of giving them access to the
services they need. They disproportionately impact communities of color, LGBTQ+ people, and people with disabilities,
all of whom experience higher rates of homelessness. Rather than treating the
homeless like criminals, we should get them with the resources they need to get
back on their feet.
Stop criminalizing poverty. A simple misdemeanor like
a speeding ticket shouldn’t be enough to send someone to spiraling into poverty
or worse — but often the fines and fees levied
by our legal system bury low-income people who are unable to pay under
court-related debt, with no way out. We abolished debtors prisons nearly two
hundred years ago, but we’re still criminalizing poverty in
this country — low-income individuals are more likely to find
themselves entangled in the system and less likely to
find their way out. There is no justification for imposing unreasonably high
punitive burdens on those who are least able to bear them. As president, I will
fight to:
End cash bail. Around 60% of the nearly
750,000 people in jail have not been convicted of a crime — and too often,
those jails are overcrowded and inhumane. Our justice
system forces its citizens to choose either to submit to the charges brought
against them or be penalized for wanting to fight those charges. We should
allow people to return to their jobs and families while they wait for trial,
reserving preventive detention only for those cases that pose a true flight or
safety risk.
Restrict fines and fees
levied before adjudication. In many
jurisdictions individuals are charged cost-prohibitive pre-trial fees, sending
them into debt even if they are ultimately acquitted of a
crime. In cases of pre-trial civil forfeiture, an individual often cannot
recover property seized prior to conviction. I’ll reverse the Trump
administration’s policy expanding
pre-trial civil forfeiture at the federal level, and restrict the use of civil
forfeiture overall.
Cap the assessment of
fines and fees. Jailing someone who can’t
afford to pay thousands of dollars in fines on an hourly minimum wage salary is
not only cruel — it’s ineffective. Criminal debt collection should be capped at
a percentage of income for low-income individuals. States should also eliminate
the profit incentive that drives excessive fees and fines by capping the
percentage of municipal revenues derived from the justice system, and diverting
seized assets into a general fund.
Eliminate fees for
necessary services. Private companies and
contractors can charge incarcerated people for essential services, like phone
calls, bank transfers, and health care. Private companies also profit from
charging individuals for their own incarceration and supervision, including
through fees for re-entry, supervision, and probation. As I detailed in my plan
to end private prisons, I will end this practice and ensure that private
companies don’t get rich from exploiting vulnerable people.
Accountability for the wealthy and the well-connected. Equal justice also means
an end to the impunity enjoyed by those with money and power. Instead of
criminalizing poverty and expanding mass incarceration, I’ve proposed a
new criminal negligence standard for
executives of corporations with more than $1 billion in annual revenue when
their company is found guilty of a crime or their negligence causes severe harm
to American families. Instead of locking up people for nonviolent marijuana
crimes, I’ve proposed putting pharmaceutical executives on the hook to report
suspicious orders for controlled substances that damage the lives of millions.
And I’ve proposed new certification requirements for
executives at giant financial institutions so that we can hold them criminally
accountable if the banks they oversee commit fraud.
Reform How the Law Is
Enforced
While reform begins with deciding what
constitutes a crime, the authority to enforce the law includes tremendous
discretion. Law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and judges make countless
decisions every day that shape the reality of how our criminal justice system
functions for the millions of Americans it comes into contact with. We must
critically examine each aspect of the enforcement process to ensure that it is
both just and consistent with public safety.
Law Enforcement Reform. The vast majority of police officers sign up so they can protect
their communities. They are part of a profession that works tirelessly and
takes risks every day to keep us safe. But we also know that many people of
color, including Native Americans, disproportionately experience trauma at the
hands of law enforcement, sometimes with life-altering consequences. On
average, three people are
shot and killed by the police every day, a disproportionate number of them
young and Black. Others are arrested and
entered into a system that unduly penalizes even minor infractions.
Everyone is less safe when
trust erodes between the police and the communities they serve. Yet we’ve
continued to allow policing practices that are both ineffective and
discriminatory. It’s time to fundamentally change how police work is done in
America: funding what works; replacing failed policies with effective,
evidence-based practices that do not violate individual rights; and reframing
our approach to public safety to prioritize prevention over punishment. Here’s
how we do it.
Improve access to
treatment and early intervention. For
the third straight year, the number of suicides among law
enforcement in 2018 outnumbered the line-of-duty deaths. Law enforcement
officers experience higher rates of
addiction, post-traumatic stress, and other trauma related disorders. I’ll
invest in mental and emotional health support to help our officers do their
job, including by expanding promising pilots like peer intervention and early warning programs.
Improve data collection
and reporting. For nearly a century, we
have measured crime in this country. It’s time we measure justice — and act
when we don’t measure up. Today there is no comprehensive government database
on fatal police shootings, ethics issues, misconduct complaints, or use of
force incidents. My Justice Department will establish a rigorous and systematic
process to collect this data, provide relevant data collection training to
local law enforcement, and make data publicly available wherever possible.
We’ll use that data to prioritize federal oversight and to hold police
accountable for the portion of the bad policing outcomes for which they are
responsible. And we’ll work with interested departments to use their own data
to improve their legitimacy in the communities they serve and inform more just
and effective policing.
Increase federal
oversight capacity. The Obama Justice
Department used its authority to investigate police departments with a pattern or practice of
unconstitutional policing — but resource constraints limited the number of
interventions carried out. Meanwhile, the Trump administration hasn’t
initiated any investigations
at all. I’ll reverse the Sessions guidance limiting the use of consent decree
investigations, and triple funding for the Office of Civil Rights to allow for
increased investigations of departments with the highest rates of police
violence and whenever there is a death in custody. In this way, we can further
incentivize police departments with persistent issues to adopt best practices.
Empower State Attorneys
General. Even an expanded DOJ will
not be able to provide oversight for many thousands of law enforcement agencies
in this country. And accountability for unconstitutional policing shouldn’t
simply shut down under a hostile President like Trump. To build a more durable
system, I’ll incentivize states to empower their attorneys general to
conduct their own oversight of police behavior nationwide.
Demand increased civilian
oversight. Community engagement can
fill the gap and provide oversight where the federal government, even with
increased capacity, cannot. Approximately 150 communities have
civilian oversight boards, but that covers only a small percentage of law
enforcement agencies in America. To expand local oversight and democratic
engagement in policing, I will implement a competitive grant program that
provides funding to communities that establish an independent civilian
oversight mechanism for their police departments, such as a civilian oversight
board or Office of Civilian Complaints. These boards should have a role in
officer discipline and provide input on hiring police executives as well as
hiring and promoting within the departments they oversee.
Establish a federal
standard for the use of force. When
cities employ more restrictive policies for police use of force, they improve
both community trust and officersafety. I will direct my
administration to develop and apply evidence-based standards for the use of
force for federal law enforcement, incorporating proven approaches and
strategies like de-escalation, verbal
warning requirements, and the use of non-lethal alternatives. At the federal
level, I’ll prohibit permissive pursuit policies that often result in collateral damage, like
high-speed chases and shooting at moving vehicles. And I’ll work with local law
enforcement agencies to ensure that training and technology deployed at the
federal level can be implemented at all levels of government, helping to limit
the use of force while maintaining safety for officers and the communities they
are sworn to protect.
Increase federal funding
for law enforcement training. Improved
training can reduce the number
of police-involved shootings and improve perceptions
of police legitimacy. But if If we want police practices to change, then the
way we train our officers must change — both when they are hired and throughout
their careers. My administration will provide incentives for cities and states
that hire a diverse police force and provide tools and resources to ensure that
best practices on law enforcement training are available across America,
providing local police with what they need to meet federal training
requirements, including training on implicit bias and the scientific and
psychological roots of discrimination, cultural competency, and engaging
individuals with cognitive or other disabilities. And we should support evidence-based continuing
education for officers throughout their careers.
Restrict qualified
immunity to hold police officers accountable. When an officer abuses the law, that’s bad for law enforcement,
bad for victims, and bad for communities. Without access to justice and
accountability for those abuses, we cannot make constitutional due process
protections real. But today, police officers who violate someone’s
constitutional rights are typically shielded from civil rights lawsuits by
qualified immunity — a legal rule invented by the courts that blocks lawsuits against
government officials for misconduct unless a court has previously decided that
the same conduct in the same context was unconstitutional. Qualified immunity
has shielded egregious police misconduct from accountability and drawn
criticism from across the politicalspectrum. Last month,
for example, a federal appeals court in Atlanta granted qualified immunity to a
police officer who, while aiming at a family’s dog, shot a 10-year-old boy while
the child was lying on the ground 18 inches away from the officer. Just two
weeks ago, another federal court used qualified immunity to dismiss a lawsuit
against a school police officer who handcuffed a sobbing seven-year-old
boy for refusing to go to the principal’s office. This makes no
sense. I support limiting qualified immunity for law enforcement officials who
are found to have violated the Constitution, and allowing victims to sue police
departments directly for negligently hiring officers despite prior misconduct.
End racially
discriminatory policing. Policies
like stop-and-frisk and “broken windows” policing have trampled the
constitutional rights of countless Americans — particularly those from Black
and Brown communities — without any measurableimpact on violent
crime. I’ll end stop-and-frisk by directing the Justice Department to withhold
federal funding from law enforcement agencies that continue to employ it and
other similar practices, and I’ll work with Congress to pass legislation to
prohibit profiling at all levels of law enforcement.
Separate law enforcement
from immigration enforcement. The
data are clear. When local law enforcement is mixed with immigration
enforcement, immigrants are less likely to
report crimes, and public safety suffers. It’s time to
stop directing law enforcement officers to do things that undermine their
ability to keep communities safe. My immigration plan will
address this by ending the 287(g) and “Secure Communities” programs, putting in
guidelines to protect sensitive locations like hospitals and schools, and
expanding protections for immigrant survivors of violent crimes that come
forward and work with law enforcement.
Demilitarize local law
enforcement. Officer safety is
critically important. But we don’t build trust between police and communities
when we arm local law enforcement as if they are going to war. Militarizing our
police contributes to mutual fear and distrust, and there is evidence to
suggest it can actually make officers themselves less safe. As President,
I will eliminate the transfer of military-grade weapons and lethal equipment to
local police via the 1033 program, prohibit local law enforcement from buying
military equipment with federal funding, and create a buy-back program for
equipment already in use in our communities.
Expand the responsible
use of body cameras and protect citizen privacy. Body cameras don’t solve every problem, but used consistently
and appropriately they can decrease the use of force and misconduct complaints.
The federal government should expand funding for body cameras — especially for
smaller jurisdictions that struggle to afford them — in exchange for
departments implementing accountability policies that
ensure consistent and responsible camera use. I’ll also establish a task force
on digital privacy in public safety to establish guardrails and appropriate
privacy protections for this and other surveillance technology, including the
use of facial recognition technology and algorithms that exacerbate underlying
bias. And I’ll make it clear that individuals have every right to record an interaction with
the police.
Reduce gun
violence. We’ve learned the hard
way in Massachusetts that the job of our police is made exponentially harder by
the weapons flooding our streets. Common sense gun reform and meaningful
safeguards will improve safety for law enforcement and the communities they
serve. In 2017, almost 40,000 people died from guns in the United States. I
have a plan with the goal
of reducing that number by 80%, including by expanding background checks,
establishing a federal licensing system, and holding the gun industry
accountable for the violence promoted by their products.
Prosecutorial and Judicial Reform. Our current criminal
system is complex and places enormous power in the hands of the state. The
government controls what leads to pursue, what charges are levied, whether a
plea is offered, and how long someone spends behind bars. It has massive
resources at its disposal, and enjoys few obligations to share information and
limited oversight of its actions. All of this makes it challenging to ensure
that the accused can go to trial, can get a fair trial, and can receive a just
and reasonable sentence if convicted. To make matters worse, race permeates
every aspect of the system — people of color are twice as likely to
be charged with crimes that carry a mandatory minimum sentence. Reform requires
a transparent system that emphasizes justice, that gives people a fighting
chance — and truly treats everyone equally, regardless of color. Here’s how we
can start.
Strengthen public
defenders and expand access to counsel. The
Sixth Amendment provides every American accused of a crime with the right to an
attorney — but too many defendants cannot afford one, and too often, public
defenders are under-resourced, overworked, and overwhelmed. If we expect fair
adversarial trials, we need to balance resources on both sides of each case in
every jurisdiction. I’ll fund federal public defenders and expand targeted
grant funding for public defenders at the state level, to ensure that they have
the tools to effectively defend their clients. I’ll also reopen and expand
DOJ’s Office for Access to Justice, which worked with state and local
governments to expand access to counsel. We should ensure that our public
defenders are paid a fair salary for their work, and that their caseloads allow
for the comprehensive defense of their clients. Finally, I’ll provide funding
for language and cultural competency training, including on gender identity and
treatment of individuals with disabilities, so that public defenders are best
able to serve their clients.
Rein in prosecutorial
abuses. Prosecutors are enormously powerful and
often not subject to
scrutiny or accountability. I will support a set of reforms that would rein in
the most egregious prosecutorial abuses and make the system fairer, including
reducing the use of coercive plea bargaining by
DOJ prosecutors at the federal level, establishing open-file discovery, and
putting in place responsible standards for evidence gathering. I’ll establish a
Commission on Prosecutorial Conduct to make additional recommendations for best
practices and monitor adoption of those recommendations. And I’ll create an
independent prosecutorial integrity unit to hold accountable prosecutors who
abuse their power.
Expand access to justice
for people wrongfully imprisoned. Defendants
who are wrongfully imprisoned have the right to challenge their detention in
court through a procedure known as habeas corpus. The Framers believed this
right was so important to achieving justice that they guaranteed it
specifically in the Constitution. It’s particularly important for minority
defendants — Black Americans, for example, make up only 13% of the population
but a plurality of wrongful convictions. In
1996, at the height of harsh federal policies that drove mass incarceration,
Congress made it absurdly difficult for
wrongfully imprisoned individuals to bring these cases in federal court. Since
then, conservative Supreme Court Justices have built on those restrictions —
making it nearly impossible for
defendants to receive habeas relief even when they have actual proof of
innocence. We should repeal these overly restrictive habeas rules, make it
harder for courts to dismiss these claims on procedural technicalities, and
make it easier to apply new rules that emerge from these cases to people who
were wrongfully imprisoned before those rules came into effect.
Protect the rights of
survivors. Crime victims have the
right to safety and justice, the right to be consulted and informed about the
status of their case, and the right to be treated with dignity and respect. We
should provide support for those who have experienced trauma, including medical
care and safe housing. This is particularly true for those who have experienced
sexual assault or violence at the hands of an intimate partner. I’ll also fight
to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act and provide full funding to
eliminate the rape kit backlog across the country.
Appointing a diverse
judicial bench. The justice system should
reflect the country it serves. Judicial appointments are primarily white and male, and
large numbers tend to have a prosecutorial background.
Diversity of experience matters. That’s why I have pushed for increasing the
professional diversity of our federal judiciary to insulate the courts
from corporate capture, and
why I support gender and racial diversity for judicial nominees. I’ll appoint a
diverse slate of judges, including those who have a background defending civil
liberties or as public defenders.
Take into account the
views of those most impacted by the system.As
President, I will establish an advisory board comprised of survivors of
violence, along with formerly incarcerated individuals. I’ll consult with this
advisory board and listen to the needs of those who have first-hand experience
with the system as we find fair and just solutions to the challenges we face.
Reforming Incarceration
The federal prison population has grown 650% since
1980, and costs have ballooned by 685%. This explosion has
been driven in large part by rules requiring mandatory minimum sentences and
other excessively long sentencing practices. These harsh sentencing practices
are not only immoral, there’s little evidence that they are effective. As president
I will fight change them.
Reduce mandatory minimums. The 1994 crime bill’s
mandatory minimums and “truth-in-sentencing” provisions that require offenders
to serve the vast majority of their sentences have not proven effective.
Congress should reduce or eliminate these provisions, giving judges more flexibility in
sentencing decisions, with the goal of reducing incarceration to mid-1990s
levels. My administration will also reverse the Sessions memo that
requires federal prosecutors to seek the most severe possible penalties, and
allow federal prosecutors discretion to raise the charge standards for
misdemeanors and seek shorter sentences for felony convictions.
Raise the age for criminal liability. We know that cognition
and decision-making skills continue to develop beyond the teenage years.
For that reason, many states have
raised the age of adult criminal liability to at least 17, or granted
additional discretion to prosecutors when charging offenders between the ages
of 16 and 18. The federal government should do the same — raising the age of
adult criminal liability to 18, eliminating life-without-parole sentences for
minors, and diverting young adult offenders into rehabilitative programs
wherever possible.
End the death penalty. Studies show that capital punishment is often applied in a
manner biased against people of color and those with a mental illness.
I oppose the death penalty. A Warren administration would reverse Attorney
General Barr’s decision to move
forward with federal executions, and Congress should abolish the death penalty.
Use the pardon and clemency powers broadly to right systemic
injustices. The president has significant powers to grant clemency and
pardons, and historically presidents have used that power broadly. But
today’s hierarchical process
at DOJ results in relatively few and conservative clemency recommendations.
I’ll remove the clemency process from DOJ, instead empowering a clemency board
to make recommendations directly to the White House. I’ll direct the board to
identify broad classes of potentially-deserving individuals for review,
including those who would have benefited from retroactivity under the First
Step Act, individuals who are jailed under outdated or discriminatory drug
laws, or those serving mandatory minimums that should be abolished.
Improving conditions in prison. Today prisons are
often understaffed and overcrowded,
making them dangerous for both inmates and corrections officers. Even as we
fight to reduce incarceration levels, we should support improved staffing
levels and better training for corrections officers, and humane conditions for
those behind bars. As president, I will:
Ensure that incarceration meets basic human
rights standards. From inadequate health care to dangerous overcrowding,
today our prison system is not meeting the government’s basic responsibility to
keep the people in its care safe. I’ll embrace a set of standards for the
Bureau of Prisons to fix this. That includes accommodating religious practices,
providing reasonable accommodations for prisoners with disabilities, and
limiting restrictive housing in
accordance with evidence-based best practices. We should ensure that trans
people are assigned to facilities that align with their gender identity and
provide the unique medical and psychiatric care they need, including access to
hormone treatments and help with adjusting to their care. And we should
eliminate solitary confinement, which provides little carcerative benefit and
has been demonstrated to harm prisoners’ mental and physical health,
in favor of safe alternatives.
Protect special
populations. Vulnerable individuals
like pregnant women, victims of domestic violence, people with disabilities,
and LGBTQ+ individuals often require special protections while behind bars.
I’ll implement a rigorous auditing program to ensure that prisons are adhering
to legal requirements to
protect LGBTQ+ individuals and others from sexual violence and assault while
incarcerated, and prosecute prison staff who engage in misconduct. I’ll ensure
that juveniles are not housed in adult facilities. I’ll also eliminate the use
of solitary confinement for protective purposes. Instead, I’ll direct the
Bureau of Prisons to establish a set of standards and reforms to protect the
most vulnerable in our prison system in a way that does not involve confining a
person for more than 20 hours a day.
Invest in programs that
facilitate rehabilitation. The
evidence is clear: providing education and opportunity behind bars reduces recidivism when
people leave prison. But when prison populations went up and budgets went down,
rehabilitation services were often the first cuts. In a world where the vast
majority of prisoners will eventually leave prison, this makes no sense. I’ll
double grant funding for these services in our prisons, expanding programs
focused on things like vocational training, anger management, and parenting
skills.
Expand mental health and
addiction treatment. 14% of prisoners
meet the threshold for serious psychological distress, and many more struggle
with addiction — but too often, they receive prison time rather than treatment.
And instead of increasing access to treatment in prison, the Bureau of Prisons has reduced it.
Providing mental health treatment during incarceration reduces recidivism. We
must take a comprehensive approach to incarcerated people who face mental
health and addiction challenges, including requiring an adequate number of
counselors and addiction specialists, individualized treatment, and increased
access to medication-assisted treatment.
Eliminate private
prisons. I have called to eliminate private prisonsthat
make millions off the backs of incarcerated people. We should also end
all-foreign or “criminal alien requirement” facilities, which are reported to
have higher negative outcomes.
Support Reentry
The period after release from prison can be
challenging for returning citizens. During this critical period, they are more
likely to be unemployed, more likely
to be rearrested, more likely
to overdose, and more
likely to die. Recidivism rates
remain high, in part because our prisons have not fulfilled their
rehabilitative function, and in part because lack of opportunity after release
drives individuals to re-offend. On top of all of this, more than 60,000
inmates in our prisons are there because of technical violations
of their parole — for offenses as minor as a speeding ticket. We need
evidence-based programs and interventions to break the cycle of incarceration
and set formerly incarcerated individuals up for success when they return to
their families and their communities. This is particularly true for youth and
minors, who are especially vulnerable when returning to an unstable
environment. Here are some of the steps I will take.
Pressure states to eliminate collateral sanctions. Millions of Americans are
currently on parole or probation. We know that reducing the barriers to full
reintegration in society reduces recidivism, but the system is rife with
collateral consequences that hamper reentry for formerly incarcerated people
who have served their time — from restrictions on occupational licensing to housing to
the disenfranchisement of
over 3 million returning citizens. We should remove those barriers and allow
those who have served their time to find work and fully rejoin their
communities.
Reduce needlessly restrictive parole requirements. Technical parole and
probation violations make up a large number of all state prison admissions,
sometimes for infractions as minor as a paperwork error. While many rules are
made at the state level, the federal government should seek to remove those
barriers wherever possible, reduce parole requirements for low-level offenders,
and remove the threat of jail time for minor parole violations.
Reduce discrimination during reentry. I’ll reverse the guidance that
exempts privately run re-entry programs that contract with the Bureau of
Prisons from anti-discrimination laws, restoring protections for individuals
with disabilities and those that encounter discrimination on the basis of their
sexual orientation or gender identity.
Establish a federal expungement option. Many states provide
a certificate of recovery for
nonviolent offenders who have served their time and maintained a clean record
for a certain number of years. This should be replicated at the federal level.
Ensuring Reform at the
State and Local Level
The federal government oversees just 12% of the
incarcerated population and only a small percentage of law enforcement and the
overall criminal legal system. To achieve real criminal justice reform on a
national scale, we must move the decisions of states and local governments as
well.
My administration will work with state and
local governments and incentivize adoption of new federal standards through the
grantmaking process. Federal grants make up nearly one third of
state budgets, and states and local authorities spend about 6% of their budget on
law enforcement functions. My administration would reprioritize state and local
grant making toward a restorative approach to justice, and expand grant funding
through categorical grants that require funds to be used for criminal justice
reform and project grants that require funding to be allocated to specific
programs.
When necessary, my plan would also use federal enforcement authority. My
administration would expand on the
Obama-era practice of using Department of Justice consent decrees and other
judicial settlements to enforce federal standards and remedy constitutional
violations at the state and local level. My plan would also leverage the
federal government’s Spending Clause authority and ability to impose civil
rights mandates using cross-cutting requirements to ensure that state and local
governments comply with federal criminal justice reform standards.
Senator Bernie Sanders, at Second Democratic Debate, has released his plan to reform the criminal justice system.
The vigorous contest of Democrats seeking the 2020 presidential nomination has produced excellent policy proposals to address major issues. Senator Bernie Sanders released his plan to reform the entire criminal justice system. This is from the Sanders campaign:
Blueprint aims to reform every aspect of America’s dysfunctional criminal justice system, ridding it of institutional racism and corporate profiteering
COLUMBIA, SC – Senator Bernie Sanders, who is running to be the Democratic candidate for president, released a comprehensive plan to reform the entire American criminal justice system in a speech he delivered August 18 in the Greenview neighborhood of Columbia, South Carolina. The plan is designed to root out the institutional racism and corporate profiteering that is plaguing the existing system.
“If we stand together, we can eliminate private
prisons and detention centers. No more profiteering from locking people
up. If we stand together we can end the disastrous “war on drugs.” If we stand
together we can end cash bail. No more keeping people in jail because
they’re too poor. If we stand together we can enact real police department
reform and prosecute police brutality. If we stand together, there is nothing,
nothing, nothing that we cannot accomplish.”
Sanders has fought mass incarceration during his decades in Congress, and
he campaigned
for president in 2016 on a pledge to end for-profit prisons —
a pledge that other Democrats have subsequently decided to support 4 years
later. Sanders’ new plan reiterates his original call to ban for-profit
prisons, and builds on his leadership on criminal justice with new proposals
for a top-to-bottom reform of America’s law enforcement, judicial and
incarceration systems. They include:
End for-profit
greed in our criminal justice system, top to bottom
Ending for-profit greed in our criminal justice system, top to
bottom, including banning cash bail and banning civil asset forfeiture, which
allows police departments to seize property from people who have not been
accused or convicted of a crime.
Ensure the criminal justice system is not the “best justice
money can buy” by vastly increasing funding for public defenders and creating a
federal formula to ensure populations have a minimum number of public defenders
to meet their needs, and working with states to set a minimum starting salary
for public defenders.
End
Mass Incarceration and Excessive Sentencing and Inhumane Incarceration and
Transform the Way We Police Communities
Reversing mass incarceration and setting a
goal of cutting the incarcerated population in half.
Transforming the way we police our
communities, creating an unarmed civilian corp of first responders to handle
mental health emergencies, homelessness, and other low-level issues that should
not require contact with the police and criminal justice system.
Creating national standards for use of police
force that emphasize de-escalation rather than violence, and holding police
misconduct to strict federal standards, including limiting qualified immunity
for police officers, creating a federal deadly use of force database, and a
registry of disreputable officers.
Ending the War on Drugs, including legalizing
marijuana and expunging past convictions for marijuana-related offenses and finally
ending the sentencing disparities for crack cocaine and powder cocaine
offenses.
Abolishing the death penalty and solitary
confinement.
Enacting a Prisoner Bill of Rights for
incarcerated individuals, including living wages, access to families, access to
educational and vocational training, and the right to vote.
Reverse the
Criminalization of Communities, End Cycles of Violence and Provide Support to
Survivors of Crime
Reversing the criminalization of disability, addiction, and homelessness.
Treat children in the criminal justice system
as children. This means raising the age to charge children in adult court to
18, ending long mandatory minimum sentences and life without parole sentences
for youth, decriminalizing truancy, and investing in youth diversion programs
and alternatives to the court and prison system.
End cycles of violence and interrupt them
before they begin. This means focusing law enforcement resources on solving
homicides and other serious crimes, funding Cure Violence programs and similar
proven violence interruption models, and ending the national rape kit
backlog.
Support the victims and survivors of crimes by
providing sustained resources to survivors and their families, including mental
health care, trauma recovery services, relocation services, and assistance with
basic needs.
The vigorous contest of Democrats seeking the 2020 presidential nomination has produced excellent policy proposals to address major issues. Senator Elizabeth Warren details a plan to transform America’s approach to trade: “Trade can be a powerful tool to help working families but our failed pro-corporate agenda has used trade to harm American workers and the environment. My plan represents a new approach to trade — one that uses America’s leverage to boost American workers and raise the standard of living across the globe. The President has a lot of authority to remake trade policy herself. When I’m elected, I intend to use it.” Here are the details, as provided by the Warren campaign:
Charlestown, MA – Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is running to be the 2020 Democratic candidate for president, released her plan to break decades of Washington consensus and transform every aspect of America’s current approach to trade.
America enters trade negotiations with enormous leverage because it is the world’s most attractive market. A Warren Administration won’t hand that leverage to big corporations to use for their own narrow purposes. Elizabeth will use it to create and defend good American jobs, raise wages and farm income, combat climate change, lower drug prices, and raise living standards worldwide. Under Elizabeth’s plan, America will engage in international trade — but on our terms and only when it benefits American families.
The plan is the third pillar of Elizabeth’s economic patriotism agenda. Read more about her plan here and below:
Last month, I released my economic patriotism agenda
— my commitment to fundamentally changing the government’s approach to the
economy so that we put the interests of American workers and families ahead of
the interests of multinational corporations. I’ve already released my ideas for
applying economic patriotism to manufacturing and
to Wall Street. This is my
plan for using economic patriotism to overhaul our approach to trade.
For decades, big multinational corporations have bought and
lobbied their way into dictating America’s trade policy. Those big corporations
have gotten rich but everyone else has paid the price. We’ve lost millionsofjobs to
outsourcing, depressedwages for American
workers, accelerated climate
change, and squeezed America’s
family farmers. We’ve let China get away with the suppression of pay and labor rights, poor environmental
protections, and years of currency manipulation.
All to add some zeroes to the bottom lines of big corporations with no loyalty
or allegiance to America.
We need to completely transform our approach to trade.
America enters into trade negotiations with enormous leverage because America
is the world’s most attractive market. As President, I won’t hand
America’s leverage to big corporations to use for their own narrow purposes —
I’ll use it to create and defend good American jobs, raise wages and farm
income, combat climate change, lower drug prices, and raise living standards
worldwide.We will engage in international trade — but on our terms
and only when it benefits American families.
A New Approach to Trade
My plan is a new approach to trade — one that is different
from both the Washington insider consensus that brought us decades of bad trade
deals and from Donald Trump’s haphazard and ultimately corporate-friendly
approach.
Unlike the insiders, I don’t think “free trade” deals that
benefit big multinational corporations and international capital at the expense
of American workers are good simply because they open up markets. Trade is good
when it helps American workers and families — when it doesn’t, we need to
change our approach. And unlike Trump, while I think tariffs are an important
tool, they are not by themselves a long-term solution to our failed trade
agenda and must be part of a broader strategy that this Administration clearly
lacks.
To ensure that American families benefit from international
trade in the decades to come, I want to invest in American workers and
to use our leverage to force other countries to raise the bar on everything
from labor and environmental standards to anti-corruption rules to access to
medicine to tax enforcement. If we raise the world’s standards to our level and
American workers have the chance to compete fairly, they will thrive — and
millions of people around the world will be better off too.
Achieving this vision isn’t about tough talk or tweets. We
must do the hard work of transforming every aspect of our current approach to
trade: from our negotiating process to the negotiating objectives we pursue to
the way we enforce agreements. That’s what I intend to do.
A Trade Negotiation Process that Reflects America’s
Interests
Our current approach to negotiating trade agreements works
great for the wealthy and the well-connected. The negotiating text is
kept confidential from
all but a small set of advisory groups comprised mostly of corporate
executives and industry trade group representatives. Once those corporate
interests are finished whispering in the ears of our negotiators, the completed
text is released. Then, under the expedited “Fast Track” procedure
Congress typically uses to approve trade agreements, our elected
representatives must vote up or down on the agreement with no ability to
propose and secure any changes to it. Meanwhile, the negotiators who
constructed it often breeze through the revolving door to
take jobs with the corporations whose interests underlie the deal.
This is undemocratic and obviously corrupt. In a Warren
Administration, we will negotiate and approve trade agreements through a
transparent process that offers the public a genuine chance to shape it:
Trade negotiators will publicly disclose negotiating
drafts and provide the public with an opportunity to comment. When
federal agencies write new rules, they typically must publish a proposed
version of the rule and permit the public to submit comments on it. I will
adopt a similar approach for our trade deals. Prior to negotiations, our
negotiators will publish a draft of their proposals in the Federal Register,
let the public offer comments on the draft, and take those comments into
consideration during negotiations. And then as talks proceed, they will publish
drafts of the negotiating texts so the public can monitor the negotiations.
Trade advisory committees will prioritize the views of workers and consumers. I will ensure that there are more representatives from labor, environmental, and consumer groups than from corporations and trade groups on every existing advisory committee. And I’ll expand the current list of advisory committees to create one for consumers, one for rural areas, and one for each region of the country, so that critical voices are at the table during negotiations.
The US International Trade Commission will provide a regional analysis of the economic effects of a trade agreement. Trade agreements can hollow out communities and transform regional economies. Yet the report the ITC provides before Congress considers a trade agreement only includes a nationwide analysis of a trade deal’s economic impact. I will push for the agency to provide a region-by-region analysis so the public and Members of Congress can understand how an agreement is likely to affect the places they live and represent.
The congressional approval process will offer more
opportunities for the public and elected representatives to shape trade
agreements. I will seek expedited congressional approval of trade
agreements only when every regional advisory committee and the labor, consumer,
and rural advisory committees unanimously certify that the agreement serves
their interests. I will also expand the list of congressional committees that
must review any agreement before it is eligible for expedited consideration.
Together, these changes will ensure that our negotiations
reflect the views of American families, not corporate interests.
Using Our Leverage to Demand More for American Families
and to Raise the Global Standard of Living
While a better process will produce better agreements, we
also must fundamentally shift the goals of our trade agenda so they are aligned
with the interests of America’s families.
With certain important exceptions, we live in a low-tariff
world. Modern trade agreements are less about the
mutual reduction of tariffs and more about establishing regulatory standards
for everything from worker rights to pollution to patent protections.
My approach to trade reflects that reality. For too long, we
have entered into trade deals with countries with abysmal records on labor, environmental, and human rights issues.
In exchange for concrete access to the American market, we get vague
commitments to do better, which we then hardly enforce. The
result is that millions of people in our trading-partner countries don’t gain
the benefits of higher standards — and companies can easily pad their profits
by shifting American jobs to countries where they can pay workers next to
nothing and pollute the air and water freely.
That will end under my Administration. I am establishing a set of standards countries must meet as a precondition for any trade agreement with America. And I will renegotiate any agreements we have to ensure that our existing trade partners meet those standards as well.
My preconditions are that a country must:
Recognize and enforce the core labor rights of the International Labour Organization, like collective bargaining and the elimination of child labor.
Uphold internationally recognized human rights, as reported in the Department of State’s Country Reports on Human Rights, including the rights of indigenous people, migrant workers, and other vulnerable groups.
Recognize and enforce religious freedom as reported in the State Department’s Country Reports.
Comply with minimum standards of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.
Be a party to the Paris Climate agreement and have a national plan that has been independently verified to put the country on track to reduce its emissions consistent with the long-term emissions goals in that agreement.
Eliminate all domestic fossil fuel subsidies.
Ratify the Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions.
Comply with any tax treaty they have with the United States and participate in the OECD’s Base Erosion and Profit Shifting project to combat tax evasion and avoidance.
Not appear on the Department of Treasury monitoring list of
countries that merit attention for their currency practices.
A country should only be considered an acceptable partner if
it meets these basic standards. Shamefully, America itself does not meet many
of these labor and environmental standards today. I am committed to fixing that
as President. And to help bring other countries up to these standards, I’ll
revitalize our commitment to providing technical assistance to help countries
improve.
I will also go beyond these minimum standards in key areas
to promote the interests of American workers and families.
Labor. I will ensure trade agreements protect
Buy American and other programs designed to develop local industry, contain
strong rule-of-origin standards to promote domestic manufacturing, protect
worker pensions, promote equal pay for equal work for women, and prohibit
violence against workers. Unlike previous trade deals agreements that
have put labor standards in side agreements that
are difficult to enforce, I will make labor standards central to any agreement.
Climate Change and the Environment. Climate
change is real, it’s man-made, and we’re running out of time to address it.
America should be leading this fight, but we have turned our backs on our
responsibilities — with communities of color in the U.S. and developing countries bearing
a disproportionate amount of the harm.
Beyond requiring implementation of the Paris Climate accord
and the elimination of fossil fuel subsidies as preconditions for any trade
agreement, I have already proposed a Green Marshall Plan to
dedicate $100 billion to helping other countries purchase and deploy
American-made clean energy technology.
But we must do more. I will push to secure a
multilateral agreement to protect domestic green policies like subsidies for
green products and preferential treatment for environmentally sustainable
energy production from WTO challenges. And because big corporations
will move their production to the countries with the weakest greenhouse gas
emissions standards — undermining global efforts to address climate change and
penalizing countries that are doing their part — I will impose a border carbon adjustment so
imported goods that these firms make using carbon-intensive processes are
charged a fee to equalize the costs borne by companies playing by the rules.
Prescription Drugs. Last year, Americans spent more
than $500 billion on
prescription drugs. That’s a 50% increase since 2010. Nearly 3 in 10Americans
report not taking their medicine as directed because of costs. And yet, one of
the core elements of America’s current trade agenda is guaranteeing
pharmaceutical firms monopoly protections so they can avoid competition from
generic drugs — driving up costs and reducing access to
necessary medicine abroad, and undermining our
efforts to reduce drug prices here at home. That’s exactly what
the Trump Administration has done as part of their failed effort to renegotiate
NAFTA.
While medical innovation is important, there is no link between
extremely long exclusivity periods and pharmaceutical innovation. These are
giveaways to drug companies, plain and simple, which allow them to maintain
ludicrously high drug prices.
As President, I will fight to bring down the costs of
prescription drugs here and around the world. I will never use
America’s leverage to push another country to extend exclusivity periods for
prescription drugs. I will support efforts to impose price controls on
pharmaceuticals. And I will actively seek out opportunities to reduce
exclusivity periods in our existing trade deals in exchange for securing other
changes that will help America’s working families.
Agriculture. For decades, trade deals have squeezed family
farmers, with Black farmers losing their land particularly quickly.
Between the trade fights incited by Trump’s haphazard tariffs and a series
of natural disasters,
America’s farmers are now facing the worst crisis in almost 40
years. They are also facing unprecedented levels of uncertainty and
instability. Trump’s tariffs have reduced crop prices, threatened farmers
already operating on razor-thin margins, and opened up new non-American markets
against which our farmers are now forced to compete. Like trade deals of the
past, Trump’s NAFTA 2.0 is written to help giant multinational agribusinesses
at the expense of family farms, and it
will do nothing to solve the newly created market insecurity Trump’s tariffs
have caused.
As President, I will fight for trade agreements that reward
American farmers for their hard work by negotiating for fair prices for goods,
breaking up the monopolies in grain
trading and meat packing, and protecting domestic markets to create stability
for America’s family farms. And I will impose Country-of-Origin Labeling rules
to protect American producers and provide transparency to consumers.
Consumer protection. We must ensure that the food we
eat is high-quality and safe. But our trade agreements have limited safety
standards and the inspection of imported foods,
while simultaneously enabling a new flood of food imports that overwhelm food
safety inspectors. In my Administration, our trade pacts will require
imported food to meet domestic food safety standards, including enhanced border
inspection requirements.
As with imported food, our current trade deals require us to
allow imports of other products and services that do not meet domestic safety
and environmental standards. My trade agreements will ensure that imported
products and services must meet the same standards as domestic products and
services.
Antitrust. We are in an era of massive
consolidation across many sectors of the economy. One of the reasons why is
that we have a narrow, permissive approach to mergers that looks only at
economic efficiency and consumer welfare instead of assessing the impact that a
merger will have on competition itself.
In recent years, we have added this problematic
standard into trade agreements and
proposed it as the defining objective for competition policy in new and renegotiated agreements.
Under my administration, we will not propose this standard in any new
agreement, and we will work to renegotiate agreements to remove it.
Delivering for American Families with Stronger
Enforcement
Our approach to enforcing trade agreements drives down
standards worldwide and undermines American families. We offer big corporations
fast and powerful methods to enforce the provisions that benefit them but make
it nearly impossible for Americans to enforce labor and environmental
protections. Foreign governments only fear a challenge to strong rules that
might hurt corporate bottom lines, not to weak rules that might not adequately
protect workers, the environment, or public health.
I will entirely reorient our approach to enforcement so we drive standards up, not down. I’ll start by ending “Investor-State Dispute Settlement,” or ISDS, the favorable enforcement approach we offer corporations. Under ISDS, a company that believes that a new law violates some aspect of a trade agreement can skip the courts and challenge the law before an international panel of arbitrators. If the company wins, the panel can order that country’s taxpayers to pay out billions in damages — with no review by an actual court. What’s worse, the arbitration panels handing out these binding rulings are often made up of corporate lawyers whose day jobs are representing the very same companies that seek judgments before them.
Companies have used ISDS to undermine laws intended to benefit the public interest. A French company challenged Egypt when it increased the minimum wage. A Swedish company challenged Germany when it decided to cut back on nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster. These cases have real effects across the globe: an ISDS panel’s decision to hear a challenge that Philip Morris brought against Uruguay’s anti-smoking campaign prompted several other countries to abandon similar public health efforts.
As President, I will not include ISDS in any new
agreement and will renegotiate existing agreements to remove ISDS from them.
And I’ll strengthen our approach to enforcing labor and environmental
standards. Unlike a corporation under ISDS, a labor union seeking to enforce
labor standards can’t bring a claim on its own — it must convince the federal
government to bring a claim on its behalf. Even in the face of overwhelming
evidence, our government can refuse to act for diplomatic or other unrelated
reasons.
As a result, the federal government has only pursued one such claim in
the last 25 years. In that one case, the American government, AFL-CIO, and
Guatemalan unions spent nine years trying
to challenge the Guatemalan government for violating the labor chapter of one
of our trade deals because Guatemalan workers were being murdered for trying to
join a union. In the end, we lost because the
trade agreement required a showing that the violations had affected trade.
I will replace this broken process by creating independent
commissions — made up of experts in the area — to monitor potential violations,
respond to complaints, and investigate claims. The commissions must review and
investigate claims promptly so that claims don’t languish for years. If
one of these commissions recommends that the United States bring a claim
against another country, the United States will be required to do so, without
exception.
I will also fix the problem that arose in the Guatemala case
by pushing to remove language from our deals that require us to show that a
violation of rights was “sustained or recurring” and “affecting trade or
investment.” A violation is a violation, and I won’t let another case like
Guatemala happen ever again.
I will strengthen our enforcement approach in other ways as
well:
Under WTO rules, a country designated as a “non-market economy” can face more serious trade penalties. I will push for a new “non-sustainable economy” designation that would allow us to impose tougher penalties on countries with systematically poor labor and environmental practices. We cannot allow countries that treat their workers and the environment poorly to undercut American producers that do things the right way.
I already have a plan to move the lead American trade negotiator — the Office of the United States Trade Representative — within my new Department of Economic Development. That will ensure that America’s trade policy supports our broader economic agenda of defending and creating good American jobs. I will also create a new labor and environment enforcement division at the USTR to more effectively enforce obligations, and embed a labor attache at U.S. embassies to monitor compliance with our labor standards.
Unlike the current approach that lets our government ignore unfair trade practices, my administration will create automatic triggers to initiate investigations into unfair trade practices. If those investigations produce compelling evidence of a violation, the Department will impose trade remedies immediately until the offenders show they are no longer engaging in an unfair trade practice. These automatic triggers will also apply to violations of labor and environmental standards.
Finally, when we impose duties to support particular
domestic industries, I want to ensure that the money we collect actually goes
to American workers, instead of being sucked up by
executives and shareholders. I will fight to change our trade laws so
that we review duties every six months and lift the duties if companies can’t
demonstrate the benefits of the duties are going to their workers.
The
vigorous contest of Democrats seeking the 2020 presidential nomination has
produced excellent policy proposals to address major issues.Senator
Elizabeth Warren details a plan for Rural America that “will help create a new farm economy where family farmers have
financial security and the freedom to do what they do best. Farmers of all
backgrounds will finally have the economic freedom to pursue diverse,
sustainable farming — and get paid up front for doing so. Americans will have
a steady and affordable supply of food. Kids in rural communities will have
healthy lunches grown in their backyards and packaged at local food hubs run by
small town entrepreneurs. Taxpayers won’t pay twice — once at the grocery
store and once through their taxes — for overproduced commodities. We will
replenish our soil and our water to chart a path towards a climate solution and
achieve the goals of the Green New Deal.”Here are the details, as provided by
the Warren campaign:
Charlestown, MA – Elizabeth Warren released her plan to invest in rural America and build a new farm economy. Her plan includes creating a public option for broadband and ending government giveaways for private internet service providers, investing in rural health care, and taking strong anti-trust action against hospital mergers that threaten access to basic services. She outlines how her plans for universal child care and high-quality early education, student debt cancellation, building and rehabilitating affordable housing, and tackling the opioid crisis will restore opportunity in rural America.
Warren also lays out how she will replace the government’s failed approach to the farm economy and address our climate crisis head-on by paying farmers for sustainable farming practices that can help us fight climate change.
Warren released her plan before kicking of a 4-day tour across Iowa. Read more about her plan to invest in rural America here. Read more about her plan to build a new farm economy here.
My Plan to Invest in Rural America
A strong America requires a strong rural America. Rural communities are home to 60 million people, hundreds of tribal nations, and a growing number of new immigrants who account for 37% of rural population growth. These communities feed our nation. And they are leading the country in sustainable energy, generating 99% of America’s wind energy and pioneering efforts to harness solar energy.
But both corporate America and leaders in Washington have turned their backs on the people living in our rural communities and prioritized the interests of giant companies and Wall Street instead. Burdened by student debt, young people are leaving rural communities to find jobs elsewhere. Big broadband companies exclude entire communities – especially tribal communities and rural communities of color – from access to high-speed Internet. Rural communities are losing access to quality health care. Climate change – from more severe floods to extreme heat – is changing the rural way of life. And farmers are forced to compete with giant agribusinesses on an uneven playing field.
Our failure to invest in rural areas is holding back millions of families, weakening our economy, and undermining our efforts to combat climate change. It’s time to fix this.
Protecting Access to Health Care in Rural Communities
Health care is a human right. But people can’t fully exercise that right in communities lacking access to basic services like primary, emergency, and maternity care. That is what’s happening across rural America, where the prevalence of chronic diseases like heart disease and diabetes is higher, as is the risk of dying from the leading causes of death in the country compared to urban areas. Barriers to coverage, disappearing health facilities, and a shortage of health professionals are denying rural communities the high-quality health care they deserve.
Insurance coverage continues to remain out of reach for many people living in rural communities – and even for those with coverage, rural America is quickly becoming a medical desert. In less than a decade, 112 rural hospitals have closed, with hundreds more teetering on the edge. Those that do remain open operate on razor-thin margins from uncompensated care, lower patient volume, and insufficient reimbursement.
That’s why I support Medicare for All, so that every person will have access to affordable care no matter where they live. That means access to primary care and lower health care costs for patients – and less uncompensated care for hospitals, helping hospitals stay afloat. We also need to increase reimbursement rates for rural hospitals and alleviate unnecessary restrictions that make it difficult for them to serve their communities. Medicare already has special designations available to rural hospitals, but they must be updated to match the reality of rural areas. I will create a new designation that reimburses rural hospitals at a higher rate, relieves distance requirements, and offers flexibility of services by assessing the needs of their communities.
But we can’t stop there. Higher rates of consolidation for both for-profit and non-profit hospitals are making it harder to access care. And yet, many hospitals can evade federal antitrust enforcement either because the value of the merger is too small to trigger mandatory review or because the Federal Trade Commission’s purview over non-profit hospitals is constrained. Vertical integration is also increasing as more hospitals acquire physician practices, and some states have deliberately sheltered hospitals from federal antitrust action. I will boost the federal government’s oversight of mergers and anti-competitive behavior to make sure that health care companies play by the rules and put the needs of patients first.
As President, I will direct the FTC to block all future mergers between hospitals unless the merging companies can show that the newly-merged entity will maintain or improve access to care. If a proposed merger helps maintain or improve access to health care, that’s fine. But when it is a first step to closing hospitals or slashing basic services, then a Warren administration will block it.
I’ll also put forward a set of reforms to strengthen FTC oversight over health care organizations, including establishing new federal regulations and guidance to require that all mergers involving health care centers be reported to the FTC. I’ll authorize the FTC to conduct reviews of non-profit hospitals for anti-competitive behavior, update Department of Justice guidance on vertical mergers, and crack down on vertically integrated health care companies that are raising costs without improving the quality of care. And I’ll work with states to repeal Certificate of Public Advantage, or COPA, statutes that shield health care organizations from federal antitrust review and can leadto the creation of large monopolies with little to no oversight.
We also have a responsibility to make sure that places that have experienced a loss in services or are otherwise medically underserved can better meet the needs of their communities. That’s why I will increase funding for Community Health Centers by 15 percent per year over the next five years. I will also establish a $25 billion dollar capital fund to support a menu of options for improving access to care in health professional shortage areas, including: constructing a new facility like a Community Health Center, Rural Health Clinic, School-Based Health Center, or birthing center; expanding capacity or services at an existing clinic; establishing pharmacy services or a telemedicine program; supporting a diabetes self-management education program; improving transportation to the nearest hospital; or piloting models like mobile clinics and community paramedicine programs.
Rural communities have been particularly impacted by the opioid epidemic, with the rate of opioid overdose deaths having been higher there than in urban areas in recent years. I’m pushing for $100 billion over 10 years to end the opioid crisis, including $2.7 billion for the hardest-hit counties and cities and $800 million in direct funding for tribal governments and organizations. Funding can be used for prevention and early intervention services at federally qualified health centers and rural health clinics and to train health professionals on treating substance use disorders in rural and other medically underserved areas.
To ensure access to quality health services, we must also close the health care workforce gaps across rural America. Nearly 60% of Health Professional Shortage Areas – those lacking sufficient primary care physicians, physician assistants, nurses, dentists, pharmacists, EMTs, and home health aides – are in rural regions. More than 3,600 additional doctors are needed to close the rural physician workforce deficit today, but Congressionally-imposed caps on medical residencies and unstable funding of the National Health Service Corps (NHSC) have made this gap nearly impossible to close. What’s more, this shortage is rapidly increasing as rural physicians near retirement and fewerincoming medical students plan to practice in rural areas.
As President, I will make sure we expand our health care workforce by investing more resources in building the pipeline of medical professionals in rural areas. This starts by dramatically scaling up apprenticeship programs as proposed in my Economic Patriotism plan to support partnerships between unions, high schools, community colleges, and a wide array of health care professionals to build a health care workforce that is rooted in the community. I’ll lift the cap on residency placements by 15,000 – and because residents are more likely to practice where they train, I’ll target half of new placements in medically-underserved areas such as rural residency programs, residency programs with Rural Training Track programs, and the Indian Health Service (IHS), while working with rural programs to ensure that they can take full advantage of these increases. I’ll also significantly expand the NHSC loan repayment program to $15 billion and the IHS loan repayment program to $1 billion over the next 10 years to cover full loan repayment for 5 years of service and to increase the number of health professionals serving rural and Native American communities.
Building Economic Security in Rural America
My plan doesn’t stop at health care. Every American is entitled to some basic financial security, no matter where they live. But people living in rural communities face challenges that can threaten that security. My plans are designed to address these challenges and allow people in rural communities to thrive economically.
Take child care. Today, a majority of rural communities lack sufficient access to child care. On average, rural families spend more of their incomes on child care than families in urban areas. My plan for Universal Child Care will provide access to high-quality child care in every community that is free for millions and affordable for everyone. The federal government will also work closely with local providers and tribal governments to make sure there are high-quality child care options available in every community – including home-based child care services, which rural families are more likely to use.
Rural communities also face unique housing challenges. More than 150 rural counties have a severe-need for affordable rental housing and 38% of rural counties have moderately-severe rental housing needs. Home values in rural areas have also been slower to recover from the financial crisis. My housing planinvests $523 million to create 380,000 affordable rental homes in rural communities and provides an additional $2 billion to help homeowners with underwater mortgages still struggling to recover from the financial crisis. It also invests $2.5 billion to build or rehabilitate 200,000 homes on tribal lands, where overcrowding, homelessness, and substandard housing have reached crisis levels.
And the student debt crisis hits rural areas particularly hard. In part because of huge student debt burdens, young adults are leaving rural communities for jobs in cities. Just 52% of rural student loan borrowers remain in a rural area, compared to 66% of those who did not take out loans – and those with more debt are more likely to leave. My plan to cancel up to $50,000 in student loan debt will mean that recent graduates won’t need to flock to urban centers to find jobs that will help them pay down these loans. And my plan to provide universal free technical, two-year, and four-year public college will make sure that no student is ever put in this situation again. We need to make it possible for students to see rural communities as places of opportunity where they can live, work, and build a future for themselves.
A Public Option for Broadband
One of the best tools for unlocking economic opportunity and advances in health care, like telemedicine, is access to reliable, high-speed Internet. In the twenty-first century, every home should have access to this technology – but we’re not even close to that today. According to the FCC, in 2017 26.4% of people living in rural areas and 32.1% of people living on tribal lands did not have access to minimum speed broadband (25 Mbps/ 3 Mbps), compared to 1.7% in urban areas. And given the notorious loopholes in FCC reporting requirements, these figures underestimate the gap.
At the same time, while urban areas may be more likely to have access to fiber broadband, many residents can’t afford to connect to it. Nearly 27% of households in Detroit and Cleveland had no Internet access in 2017, and households with incomes below $35,000 comprise 60% of households without broadband access, despite making up just 31% of the national population.
We’ve faced this kind of problem before. Prior to the late 1930s, private electric companies passed over rural communities they felt offered minimal profit opportunities, leaving the families living there literally in the dark. Just like the electric companies eighty years ago, today’s biggest internet service providers (ISPs) have left large parts of the country unserved or dramatically underserved.
Not only that, they have deliberately restricted competition, kept prices high, and used their armies of lobbyists to convince state legislatures to ban municipalities from building their own public networks. Meanwhile, the federal government has shoveled billions of taxpayer dollars to private ISPs in an effort to expand broadband to remote areas, but those providers have done the bare minimum with these resources – offering internet speeds well below the FCC minimum.
This ends when I’m President. I will make sure every home in America has a fiber broadband connection at a price families can afford. That means publicly-owned and operated networks – and no giant ISPs running away with taxpayer dollars. My plan will:
Make it clear in federal statute that municipalities have
the right to build their own broadband networks. Many small towns and
rural areas have turned to
municipal networks to provide broadband access in places that the private
market has failed to serve – but today, as many as 26 states have
passed laws hindering or banning municipalities from building their own
broadband infrastructure to protect the interests of giant telecom companies.
We will preempt these laws and return this power to local governments.
Create an Office of Broadband Access in my Department of Economic Development that will manage a new $85 billion federal grant program to massively expand broadband access across the country. Under my plan, only electricity and telephone cooperatives, non-profit organizations, tribes, cities, counties, and other state subdivisions will be eligible for grants from this fund – and all grants will be used to build the fiber infrastructure necessary to bring high-speed broadband to unserved areas, underserved areas, or areas with minimal competition.
The federal government will pay 90 cents on the dollar for construction under these grants. In exchange, applicants will be required to offer high-speed public broadband directly to every home in their application area. Applicants will have to offer at least one plan with 100 Mbps/ 100 Mbps speeds and one discount internet plan for low-income customers with a prepaid feature or a low monthly rate.
Of these funds, $5 billion will be set aside specifically for 100% federal grants to tribal nations to expand broadband access on Native American lands. In addition to necessary “last mile” infrastructure, tribes will be able to apply for funds to build the missing 8,000 miles of middle mile fiber on tribal lands.
Appoint FCC Commissioners who will restore net neutrality. I will appoint FCC Commissioners who will restore net neutrality, regulatinginternet service providers as “common carriers” and maintaining open access to the Internet.And I will require all telecommunications services to contribute fairly into the Universal Service Fund to shore up essential universal service programs that provide subsidies to low-income individuals, schools, and libraries to increase broadband adoption, including signing into law and building on the Tribal Connect Act, so that we can work toward every tribal library having broadband access.
Bolster the FCC’s Office of Native Affairs and Policy. This office holds trainings, technical assistance, and consultations for Indian Country. Providing it with dedicated, increased funding to expand its capacity will help close the digital divide.
Improve the accuracy of broadband maps. Weak FCC oversight has allowed ISPs to greatly exaggerate how many households they serve and has given ISPs added fuel to downplay their failures and protect themselves from regulation. To provide universal broadband access and crack down on anti-competitive behaviors, the government has to know how extensive the problems are. I will appoint FCC Commissioners who will require ISPs to report service and speeds down to the household level, as well as aggregate pricing data, and work with community stakeholders – including tribal nations – to make sure we get this process right. Then, we will make these data available to the public and conduct regular audits to ensure accurate reporting.
Prohibit the range of sneaky maneuvers giant private providers use to unfairly squeeze out competition, hold governments hostage, and drive up prices. It’s time to crack down on all the anti-competitive behaviors that giant ISPs have used to steamroll the competition. We will return control of utility poles and conduits to cities, prohibit landlords from making side deals with private ISPs to limit choices in their properties, and ban companies from limiting access to wires inside buildings. We will make sure that all new buildings are fiber-ready so that any network can deliver service there, and we will also enact “Dig Once” policies to require that conduit is laid anytime the ground is opened for a public infrastructure project.
Ensure every person has the skills to fully participate
in our online economy. Even when there’s access to broadband internet
– and even when it’s available at an affordable price – people may still not
take advantage of it because they don’t know how to use it. That’s why I will
work to pass the Digital Equity Act,
which invests $2.5 billion over ten years to help states develop digital equity
plans and launch digital inclusion projects.
Creating and Defending Jobs in Rural America
Expanding broadband is just the first step to boosting economic opportunity in
rural communities. We need to do more to bring high-quality jobs back to rural
areas and small towns and negotiate trade agreements that keep jobs in the U.S.
– and don’t ship them overseas. That’s why I’ve committed to creating a National Jobs Strategy focused
specifically on regional economies and trends that disproportionately affect
rural areas and small cities. And why I will spend $2 trillion in green research,
manufacturing, and exporting to create more than a million new
jobs, reversing the manufacturing losses that many rural communities have
experienced over the last two decades.
I’ve also called for a $400 billion commitment in clean energy research and
development – funding that will go to land grant universities, rural
areas, and areas that have seen the worst job losses in recent years. I’ll
dramatically scale up worker training programs, spending $20 billion on
apprenticeships and instituting new sectoral training programs to boost job
opportunities for people across Rural America.
Immigration is also revitalizing local
economies and reversing population
decline in a number of rural communities. I’ve called for expanding legal
immigration – done the right way and consistent with our principles – to grow
our economy, reunite families, and meet our labor market demands. My immigration plan
will raise wages for everyone and make sure that businesses won’t be able to
get away with dirty tricks that undercut pay.
And I will build a new approach to
our trade policy to make sure that the new, high-quality jobs
we create stay right here in America. As part of my new plan, I’ll
fundamentally change our negotiation process so that rural communities are
explicitly represented at the table, and use our leverage to demand more for
workers and farmers by raising standards worldwide.
Bolstering Small and Local Business
Small businesses are critical to the economic vitality of rural communities,
but people in rural communities face challenges accessing capital and financial
services to start, grow, and operate their businesses. The number of rural counties
without a locally owned community bank has doubled since 1994,
and 86 new rural
banking deserts have appeared since 2008, leaving these communities with no
banking services within 10 miles. That’s why I’ve proposed allowing the
U.S. Postal Service to partner with local community banks and
credit unions to provide access to low-cost, basic banking services online and
at post offices.
What’s more, 25% of new rural
banking deserts have been in communities of color. Credit and small loans are
critical to starting and growing a small business, but longer distances between
a borrower and their bank are associated with more credit denials and higher interest rates on
loans. That’s why I will establish a $7 billion
fund to close the gap in startup capital for entrepreneurs of
color, which will support 100,000 new minority-owned businesses, provide over a
million new jobs, and further boost economic development in rural areas.
Private equity firms have further harmed local businesses, buying up everything
from mobile home parks to hospitals to nursing homes to local newspapers,
loading them up with debt, sucking them dry, and leaving workers to pick up the
pieces. I’ll rein in Wall
Street to hold private equity firms accountable and keep them
from destroying businesses that bring economic opportunity – and jobs – to
small towns and rural communities across the country. It’s time to
prioritize the long-term interests of American workers, not the short-term
interests of big financial institutions.
Building a New Farm Economy
Rural America is also the home of our nation’s agriculture
sector, but today, farmers are getting squeezed by giant agribusinesses that
are gobbling up more land and driving down prices. In 1935, there were 6.8 million farms in
the United States – but in 2017, there were just above 2 million. What’s more,
as the number of farms has decreased, the size of each remaining farm has
dramatically grown – from an average of 155 acres per farm in 1935 to an average
of 444 acres per farm
today. Meanwhile, the farmer’s share of the food dollar has plummeted to
just 14.6 cents in 2017
– the lowest number since
the USDA began reporting this figure in 1993.
That’s why I’ve pledged to
address consolidation in the agriculture sector by reviewing – and reversing –
anti-competitive mergers and breaking up big agribusinesses that have become
vertically integrated. I’ll also support a national right to repair law for
farmers, reform country-of-origin labeling, and restrict foreign ownership of
American agriculture companies and farmland.
And I’ll take it one step further – charting a new farm economy that
replaces our government’s failed approach with one that guarantees farmers a
fair price and protects our environment.
The cost of each and every one of these investments is fully offset by my plans
to make the ultra-wealthy and large corporations pay more in taxes. Those plans
include my annual two-cent wealth tax on
fortunes over $50 million and my plan to ensure
that very large and profitable American corporations can’t get away with paying
zero taxes. And the new investments I’m announcing today for universal
broadband access and health care options in rural areas can be offset by
changing the tax laws that encourage companies to merge and reduce
competition.
I want Washington to work for communities all over this country. From expanding
access to broadband to boosting investment in quality jobs, together we can
make big, structural change to create new opportunities all across rural
America
A New Farm Economy
Consolidation in the agriculture sector is leaving America’s family farmers
with lower prices
and fewer choices.
Giant corporations use their market share to squeeze farmers
from both sides. Farmers are pressured into taking on huge debts to pay the
high prices that a small number of large suppliers charge them for inputs like seeds and
fertilizer. Then, farmers are at the whim of a market that is controlled
by meatpackers and grain traders that
can pay them low prices for the
commodities they produce — prices that often don’t cover all the
money farmers had to spend in the first place.
All of this causes tremendous overproduction of
commodities. In the face of lower and lower
prices in the market, farmers are left to produce more to try and
break even. But this just causes prices to go down even further, benefiting the
huge corporations looking to buy goods on the cheap and leaving farmers dependent on the
government to backfill their costs.
As a consequence, the agriculture sector has become one of the largestpolluters in our
economy. As farmers are pressured to plant fence row to fence row and
use more fertilizer in search of a higher yield, rural communities lose their
soil and water and the environment suffers.
Much of this situation is the direct result of government policy. Our current
system of subsidies is supposed to make up
the difference between the low prices farmers get on the market and what they
have to pay to grow food. But instead it lets big corporations at the top of
the supply chain get away with paying artificially low costs while farmers
struggle and taxpayers make up the difference. It encourages overproduction by
guaranteeing revenue regardlessof prices or
environmental conditions. And it feeds climate change.
Farmers are stewards of the land, and they know this system of overproduction
is unsustainable — but without a change in incentives, they have no other
choice.
To fix this problem, we need big, structural change. That’s why I’m calling for
a complete overhaul of our failed approach to the farm economy. Instead
of subsidizing industrial agriculture and starving farmers and rural
communities, my new approach will guarantee farmers a fair price, reduce
overproduction, and pay farmers for environmental conservation.
By making this shift, we can raise farm incomes and reduce taxpayer
expenditures. We can break the stranglehold that giant agribusinesses have over
our farm economy, and expand economic opportunities for small- and medium-sized
farmers, family farmers, women farmers, and farmers of color. We can also
provide consumers with affordable, high-quality, and often local food, while
protecting our land and water and combating the existential threat of climate
change.
Replacing our government’s failed approach to the farm economy
Our agriculture markets are badly broken. American farmers spend their days
toiling over their crops, but at sale time, more than half report
negative income from their farming activity. In 2018, the median income farmers
made from farming activity before federal subsidies was negative $1,316. Why?
Because the market is paying farmers far less than what it costs them to
produce their goods.
And it gets worse. Farm subsidies that are necessary to keep farms afloat in
this market function as an incentive to overproduce by
guaranteeing payments only for certain commodities and encouraging farming
on marginal land. This squeezes small farmers, undermines sustainable farming
for the long-term, and damages our environment.
It hasn’t always been this way. During the New Deal, FDR’s administration
recognized the critical role farmers would play in getting our country out of
the Great Depression. His administration set up a system
that guaranteed farmers fair prices, tackled overproduction, and reversed environmental
degradation. And it worked: for decades, this system
gave farmers the security they needed to thrive, kept consumer prices stable,
and helped restore our country’s farmland.
But starting in the 1970s, giant agribusinessesconvinced the Nixon
Administration to change the system. Corporations called it “deregulating” the
farm economy, but of course, this didn’t actually mean reducing government
intervention. It just meant shifting that intervention from advancing the
interests of farmers, consumers, and the environment to protecting the bottom
line of giant agriculture corporations.
Now, the Department of Agriculture budgets over $10 billion each
year on post-sale subsidies that are supposed to make up for the low prices
that big corporations and livestock giants pay farmers on the market.
Meanwhile, Big Ag pockets the profit:
one study shows
industrial livestock giants, for example, have saved $35 billion over twenty
years from buying feed below the cost of production.
We need a new approach that uses taxpayer money more wisely, provides stable
access to food, and accounts for the complexities of the agriculture
markets. Just like workers need a living wage, farmers need a fair price — one
that covers the costs they have to pay to produce their goods. We need to
replace our failed system with a tried-and-true method that guarantees farmers
that fair price and ends overproduction. Building on the successful model of
the New Deal, my plan calls for a new supply management program — which studies show
would be billions cheaper for
taxpayers than our current subsidy program, yet provide farm incomes that
are higher.
Here’s how it will work. First, we guarantee farmers a price at their cost of
production. To do that, the government would offer farmers a non-recourse loan
that covers most of their costs of production — essentially, an offer to buy
their products at cost if a farmer can’t get a better price from a private
purchaser on the market before the end of the loan period. Farmers can either
repay the loan by selling their products or they can forfeit the products they
used as collateral for the loan at the end of the loan period.
If the farmer does not sell those products to a private buyer during that time
period, then the government will store the products in reserves. As supply
comes off the market as a result, prices will rise. And if prices rise beyond a
certain point, the government can release the supply from the reserves back
onto the market, stabilizing prices once again. This mechanism guarantees
farmers a fair price at a far lower cost than the current subsidy system.
In addition, to address overproduction, farmers will have the option of bidding
acres of land currently used to produce commodities into conservation programs.
USDA will offer attractive prices based on the environmental benefit that
repurposing the land towards conservation programs would provide. This will
provide farmers with the choice — and revenue — to diversify their farms,
rather than face mounting pressure to produce more and more of the same.
.
This approach has advantages beyond guaranteeing farmers a fair price for their
goods. It gives us the tools to stabilize farm income where farmers aren’t
getting prices at the cost of production, like commodity crops and dairy. It enhances
our foodsecurity by giving
the government access to reserves if needed — a particularly important consideration
as climate change continues to disruptfoodproduction. It addresses our
overproduction problem and helps reduce environmental
damage. And it keeps consumer prices relatively stable.
It would also save taxpayers billions. Because a supply management
program only pays for the
amount of commodities that it takes off of the market, it would substantially
reduce costs for taxpayers who, in the current subsidy approach, can end up
paying for every single bushel and bale that farmers grow.
Paying farmers to fight climate change
To transition to a sustainable farm economy, we also need to diversify our
agriculture sector. As President, I will lead a full-out effort to
decarbonize the agricultural sector by investing in our farmers and giving them
the tools, research, and training they need to transform the sector — so that
we can achieve the objectives of the Green New Deal to reach net-zero emissions
by 2030.
This begins with paying farmers for embracing techniques that promote a
sustainable future for all of us. Farmers are already adopting climate-friendly
practices — including proven and profitable techniques
like cover crops. But today,
there are far more farmers who
want to join land conservation programs than there are funds available to
support them. That’s because we have continually underfunded a
tried-and-true program — the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP)
— that provides funding for farmers eager to transition to sustainable
practices, and that delivers substantial returns to
taxpayers.
My plan will make it economically feasible for farmers to be part of the
climate change solution by increasing CSP’s payments for sustainable farming
practices from around $1 billion today to
$15 billion annually – and expanding the types of practices eligible for
compensation – so that every farmer who wants to use their land to fight
climate change can do so. This will put our future investment in
conservation above the level we currently
fund commodity programs. And I will support staff at USDA to empower them in
the fight against climate change, from scientists in Washington all the
way down to the county-level offices tailoring solutions to challenges in their
local communities.
Research and innovation are also essential in supporting a transition to
sustainable farming. I will dedicate resources from the $400 billion
R&D commitment in my Green
Manufacturing Plan towards innovations for
decarbonizing the agriculture sector, including a farmer-led Innovation Fund
that farmers can apply to use towards pioneering new methods of sustainable
farming, like agroforestry.
Our land grant universities also have a critical role to play – but first, we
need to reclaim our land grant universities from Big Ag and restore
them to their core purpose of supporting our family farmers. My
Administration will reinvest inour
land grant universities and focus their agricultural efforts in part on
evaluating farmers’ ideas to decarbonize the agricultural sector and training a
new generation of farmers.
Take on Big Ag to level the playing field for family farmers
We also must take on Big Ag head on if we want to create a new farm economy.
When Nixon’s Secretary of Agriculture told farmers to “get big or get out,”
he paved the way for
the giant agribusinesses that have eroded America’s
rural communities and turned the
agricultural sector into one of the largestpolluters, all
while making huge profits.
That ends now. I will use every tool at my disposal to level the playing field
for family farmers and hold agribusinesses accountable for the damage they’ve
wrought on our farmland.
Break up Big Agribusinesses. Under my plan to level the playing field for
America’s farmers I’ll use every tool I have to break up big
agribusinesses, including by reviewing — and reversing — anti-competitive
mergers.
Strengthen rules and enforcement under the Packers and
Stockyards Act.In 1921, Congress passed the Packers & Stockyards Act (P&S
Act) to protect independent farmers. But Trump has eliminated Grain
Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) — the office
responsible for upholding the
P&S Act — as an independent office. My administration will restore
GIPSA and make it easier for farmers to bring suits against unfair practices —
including by clarifying that they do not have to prove harm across the entire
sector to bring a claim.
Make sure programs benefit independent family farmers,
not the rich and powerful. Agribusinesses exploit loopholes to put
taxpayer dollars that should be going towards family farmers into their own
pockets instead. The Trump administration has handed over billions more into
the pockets of the wealthiest through trade war bailouts. On average, the top 1% of
recipients received over $180,000, and the bottom 80% percent received less
than $5,000. — all without Congressional authorization. I will prevent
huge factory farms from accessing funds intended to benefit family farmers,
like those for payment limitations and for programs like EQIP, and ban
companies that violate labor and environmental standards from accessing funds,
too.
Hold Big Ag accountable for environmental abuses. Agribusinesses
are the likely culprits for
polluting hundreds of thousands of miles of rivers and streams and causing dead
zones in our waters, including in the Chesapeake Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. I
will make agribusinesses pay the full costs of the
environmental damage they wreak by closing the loopholes that
CAFOs use to get away with polluting and beefing up enforcement of the Clean
Air and Clean Water Acts against them, including by working with state and
local officials.
Build out local and regional food systems that support rural farmers and their communities
Because giant agribusinesses control entire supply chains, many small farmers today must send their products to huge packaging and distribution centers that are hundreds of miles away from their farms and from the end consumer. This deprives rural communities from access to produce, contributing to food desertsand obesity.
I will provide farmers and rural communities with the resources they need to build thriving local and regional food systems so that every community has access to healthy food — and the billions in economic opportunities that come with it.
I will use the full power of federal and state procurement to ensure access to local, sustainable produce in all communities. My administration will expand the “Farm-to-School” program a hundredfold and turn it into a billion-dollar “Farm to People” program in which all federally-supported public institutions — including military bases and hospitals — will partner with local, independent farmers to provide fresh, local food.
To meet this additional demand, farmers will need access to local and regional supply chain infrastructure. USDA’s Local Agriculture Market Program (LAMP) currently invests $50M a year in local infrastructure-building projects — which experts estimate falls far short of meeting the substantialdemand. I will increase LAMP’s funding ten-fold, investing $500M a year over the next decade to fund food hubs, distribution centers, and points-of-sale that our rural and small town communities can use.
Create opportunities for diverse and beginning farmers
Farmers of color have experienced a longhistory of discrimination, some of it at the hands of the federal government. From 1910 to 1997, black farmers were stripped of 90% of black-owned farmland. They received a mere fraction of the value of the land they lost — a staggering loss of wealth that is a major contributor to the racial wealth gap. My plan will end the policies that have perpetuated this discrimination and help rural families of color build wealth and sustainable livelihoods.
Addressing the systematic dispossession of land in communities of color, including Black farmers and Native American communities. Over the past century, Black farmers were stripped of 90% of black-owned farmland and received a mere fraction of the value of the land they lost – largely because they held the land as “heirs’ property,” an unstable and much-exploited form of ownership. I will establish programs to assist heirs’ property owners and make sure they retain access to their land, including building on successes in the 2018 Farm Bill to allow heirs’ property owners to present additional types of documentation to not only access USDA programs, but also other federal programs in FEMA and HUD. I will also fully fund the relending programenacted in the 2018 Farm Bill to expand support services for farmers of color, including legal and technical assistance to help farmers hold on to their land – and prioritize lending organizations operating in states that have enacted model legislation that protects heirs’ property ownership.
Native American communities have also experienced challenges related to fractionated land ownership. This problem was caused by a destructive federal policy from the late 1800s that allotted tribal lands held in common to individual tribal members and sold additional tribal lands to non-Native settlers and commercial interests. This policy eventually led to roughly two-thirds of all reservation lands being taken from tribes without compensation. Several generations later, individual tribal allotments are now co-owned by many people — sometimes hundreds or thousands — making it difficult to use the land or coordinate activities on it.
Expand access to credit and land for new and diverse farmers. Women and farmers of color have been disproportionatelyexcluded from accessing the credit and land they need to farm. The Farm Credit System was founded a century ago as a government-sponsored enterprise to provide credit for farmers — but it has strayed from its central mission and instead is pocketing big profits. I will require FCS to allocate 10% of its $5 billion in annual profits towards supporting new and diverse farmers through regional lending mechanisms. I will make sure that farmers can access land, too, by stopping foreign interests from buying up American farmland and expanding the use of programs like the transition incentives program. Native American Community Development Financial Institutions also provide crucial access to credit in underbanked areas and for underbanked businesses, especially farmers. We should provide significant financial support to Native CDFIs.
Invest in protecting the civil rights of farmers of color. I will fully fund and staffUSDA’s Office of Civil Rights and administrative law courts — so that they have the resources necessary to resolve discrimination complaints at a reasonable pace. I will direct regular audits of USDA to ensure that it is not discriminating against farmers of color in issuing loans or subsidy grants. And I will increase the agency’s transparency by creating an online civil rights database that would regularly report on the complaint process.
***
My plan will help create a new farm economy where family farmers have financial security and the freedom to do what they do best. Farmers of all backgrounds will finally have the economic freedom to pursue diverse, sustainable farming — and get paid up front for doing so. Americans will have a steady and affordable supply of food. Kids in rural communities will have healthy lunches grown in their backyards and packaged at local food hubs run by small town entrepreneurs. Taxpayers won’t pay twice — once at the grocery store and once through their taxes — for overproduced commodities. We will replenish our soil and our water to chart a path towards a climate solution and achieve the goals of the Green New Deal.
The vigorous contest of Democrats seeking the 2020 presidential nomination has produced excellent policy proposals to address major issues. Vice President Joe Biden has presented his plan for Rural America. This summary is provided by the Biden campaign:
Rural America is home to roughly 20% of Americans, but we are all connected to rural
communities in many ways. Rural Americans fuel us and feed us. Rural lands
provide us with places to spend time outdoors with friends and family and
relax.
A healthy, vibrant rural America is essential to the success of our country.
Yet in small town after small town, parents watch their kids and grandkids
leave rural communities because there just is not enough opportunity for them
at home. For too many rural Americans, a pathway to the middle class is out of
reach if they stay in their rural communities.
The moral obligation of our time is rebuilding the middle class, so that this
time everyone comes along regardless of their race, gender, sexual orientation,
disability or zip code. It should not be dependent on whether they live
in a city center, a small town, or a remote area. Everyone means everyone.
As president, Biden will build a pathway to the middle class for rural
Americans, in rural America. He will pursue a rural economic development
strategy that partners with rural communities to invest in their unique assets,
with the goal of giving young people more options to live, work, and raise the
next generation in rural America. It’s not just good for those in rural
America, it’s good for everyone across our country.
I. FUNDAMENTALLY REVITALIZE
RURAL ECONOMIES
Rural America is asset-rich. It feeds and fuels the rest of the country, gives
us places to enjoy the outdoors and spend time with friends and family, and is
home to creative, hard-working Americans. Yet rural America’s economy is
traditionally based on extraction, taking the resources out of rural
communities and never returning the profits.
The Biden strategy for rural economic development will be to partner with rural
communities, invest in their unique assets, and make sure the wealth created in
rural America stays in rural America.
Under this strategy, Biden will:
Strengthen our
agricultural sector by:
Pursuing a trade policy that works
for American farmers. More than 20% of all crops grown and products raised in the United
States are exported, supporting
hundreds of thousands of jobs and helping
to stabilize farm income. But America’s farmers and rural communities have paid
a heavy price for President Trump’s tariffs. While Trump is pursuing a damaging
and erratic trade war without any real strategy, President Biden will stand up
to China by working with our allies to negotiate from the strongest possible
position. And, he’ll make sure our trade policy works for American farmers.
Supporting beginning farmers. America tries to make it easy to start a business, but unless
you inherit the land, it’s much more difficult to start a farm. The Biden
Administration will expand the Obama-Biden Administration’s microloan program
for new and beginning farmers, doubling the
maximum loan amount to $100,000. And, it will increase funding for the U.S.
Department of Agriculture’s farm ownership
and operating loans that typically serve
beginning farmers who grew up on a family farm but need low-cost capital to add
to their family’s operation to support another household.
Fostering the development of
regional food systems. The Biden Administration will
partner with small and mid-sized farmers to help them collectively create
supply chains to deliver fresh produce and other products to schools,
hospitals, and other major state and federal institutions, including the
Defense Department. This will allow these farmers to negotiate their own
prices. And, it will help farmers identify markets for specialty crops and
secondary products, like ice cream produced by dairy farmers to bring in
additional revenue.
Re-investing in land grant
universities’ agricultural research so the public, not private companies, owns
patents to agricultural advances. The Biden
Administration will reinvest in agricultural research by bolstering funding for
the Sustainable Agriculture
Research and Education Program and
the National
Institute of Food and Agriculture. Our farmers
need new technologies to compete in world markets while protecting our soil and
water. These new technologies – and the next new seeds – should be developed
and owned by the American people, not private companies who can use patents to
expand profits.
Partnering with farmers to make
American agriculture first in the world to achieve net-zero emissions, giving
farmers new sources of income in the process. Many
farmers are some of the best stewards of our land, air, and water. The
government needs to partner with them to accelerate progress toward net-zero
emissions. As president, Biden will ensure our agricultural sector is the first
in the world to achieve net-zero emissions, and that our farmers earn income as
we meet this milestone. Toward this end, the Biden Administration will
dramatically expand and fortify the pioneering Conservation
Stewardship Program, created by former Senate
Agriculture Committee Chair Tom Harkin, to support farm income through payments
based on farmers’ practices to protect the environment, including carbon
sequestration. In addition to seeking full federal funding for the program, the
Biden Administration will ensure the program can participate in carbon markets.
Corporations, individuals, and foundations interested in promoting greenhouse
gas reductions could offset their emissions by contributing to Conservation
Stewardship Program payments to farmers for those sequestering carbon — for
example, through cover crops. This will not only help combat climate change,
which Vice President Biden has called an existential threat, but also create additional revenue sources for farmers
at a time when many are struggling to make ends meet. And, this approach will
create a whole series of new businesses that survey, measure, certify, and
quantify conservation results. In addition, the Biden Plan will make a
significant investment in research to refine practices to build soil carbon
while maximizing farm and ranch productivity. Soil is the next frontier for
storing carbon.
Strengthening antitrust
enforcement. From the inputs they depend on –
such as seeds – to the markets where they sell their products, American farmers
and ranchers are being hurt by increasing market concentration. The Biden
Administration will protect small and medium-sized farmers and producers by
strengthening enforcement of the Sherman and Clayton Antitrust Acts and the
Packers and Stockyards Act.
Expand bio-based manufacturing to
bring cutting-edge manufacturing jobs back to rural America. The Biden Administration will create a low-carbon
manufacturing sector in every state in the
country, but not just in cities. As president, Biden will grow the bioeconomy
and bio-based manufacturing to bring cutting-edge manufacturing jobs back to
rural America. This means taking every aspect of agricultural production – from
corn stock to manure – to create chemicals, materials, fabrics, and fibers in a
process that is good for the environment and creates new sources of revenue for
farmers. Key to this strategy will be connecting research universities,
community colleges, incubators and accelerators, manufacturing institutes,
employers, unions, and state and local governments – alone or as part of a
regional pact. The federal government will provide them with significant
funding for deployment of a place-based plan to help their state or region
build a competitive and low-carbon future in manufacturing that reflects
climate impacts in their local communities.
Promote ethanol
and the next generation of biofuels. Joe
Biden believes renewable fuels are vital to the future of rural America – and
the climate. The Biden Plan will invest $400 billion in
clean energy research, innovation, and deployment – more than twice what America spent to
put a man on the moon. And, as part of this effort, developing the next
generation of biofuels will be a top priority. The Biden Plan will invest in
research to develop cellulosic biofuels in a manner that protects our soil and
water and addresses the challenge of climate change, while turning grass, crop
residues, and other biomass into fuel. Doubling down on these liquid fuels of
the future will not only make value-added agriculture a key part of the
solution to climate change – reducing emissions in planes, ships, and other
forms of transportation – but will also create quality jobs across rural
America. From day one, President Biden will use every tool at his disposal,
including the federal fleet and the federal government’s purchasing power, to
promote and advance renewable energy, ethanol, and other biofuels.
Invest in wind and solar energy. President Obama put Vice President
Biden in charge of the Recovery Act, which invested more than $90 billion in clean energy technology. Those
investments contributed to a doubling of the share of domestically produced
wind turbine components and produced a dramatic decrease in solar costs, making wind and solar
power cost-competitive. Biden will build on the Recovery Act by setting an
ambitious but essential goal for America to achieve a 100% clean energy economy
and net-zero emissions no later than 2050. His clean energy plan will accelerate the already dramatic
growth of solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources.
Invest $20 billion in rural broadband infrastructure, and triple funding to
expand broadband access in rural areas. High-speed broadband is essential
in the 21st Century economy. Yet far too many rural communities still don’t
have access to it. Rural Americans are over 10 times
more likely than urban
residents to lack quality broadband access. At a time when so many jobs and
businesses could be located anywhere, high-speed internet access should be a
great economic equalizer for rural America, not another economic disadvantage.
Investing $20 billion in rural broadband infrastructure has the potential to
create more than a quarter million
new jobs. The Biden Plan will
triple Community Connect broadband grants and partner with
municipal utilities to bring cutting-edge broadband connections to communities
across rural America.
Invest in green infrastructure nationwide. As president, Biden will
make smart infrastructure investments to rebuild the nation and to ensure that
our buildings, water, transportation, and energy infrastructure can meet
America’s economic needs and withstand the impacts of climate change. The Biden
Administration will use this infrastructure funding to ensure that rural
communities across the country have access to clean, safe drinking water. It will
modernize the lock and dam system vital to getting rural products to markets,
leveraging the federal resources to the maximum extent possible with the
private sector. And, it will build the roads to give farms and small town
businesses access to markets and an efficient means to participate in the world
economy.
Expand access to credit for new and small businesses. Entrepreneurs
in small towns and rural areas should have access to the capital they need to
realize their dreams. The Biden Administration will dramatically expand funding
for Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) and the Rural
Microentrepreneur Assistance Program to help rural entrepreneurs. Biden will
expand the number of Rural Business
Investment Companies to help
rural companies obtain capital.
II. PARTNER WITH RURAL
COMMUNITIES TO HELP THEM FULLY ACCESS FEDERAL RESOURCES
A contributing factor to place-based inequality across the U.S. is the simple
fact that some communities are more successful at accessing federal dollars and
technical assistance than others. The federal government’s programs are too
often too challenging to navigate for cities and towns that do not have the
ability to hire highly qualified professionals to engage with the system.
The Biden Administration wants to fundamentally change how the federal
government interacts with rural communities that so often do not have access to
federal programs. The Biden Administration will partner with these communities
to help them fully access federal resources to create jobs, build wealth, and
give rural Americans who live in poverty the chance to join the middle class.
The Biden Administration will do this in two ways:
Create a White House “StrikeForce”
to partner with rural communities to help them access federal funds. The Biden Administration will create a White House
StrikeForce consisting of agency leaders who will partner with
community-building organizations in persistent poverty rural communities and
help them unlock federal resources. This approach is modeled on the StrikeForce Secretary Tom Vilsack successfully
established in the U.S. Department of Agriculture during the Obama-Biden
Administration.
III. PROTECT AND
BUILD ON THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT TO IMPROVE ACCESS TO QUALITY HEALTH CARE IN
RURAL COMMUNITIES
The Affordable Care Act was a big deal in rural America, and it should be
protected and built upon. As president, Biden will protect and build on
Obamacare – not get rid of it and start over with something new. He will not
support any policy that means getting rid of Obamacare, whether proposed by a
Democrat or Republican.
Vice President Biden believes that every American has a right to the peace of
mind that comes with knowing they have health insurance and access to
affordable, quality health care. He believes that it’s a right, not a
privilege. It should not be dependent on whether they live in a city center, a
small town, or a remote community.
Rural America faces unique challenges and opportunities when it comes to access
to quality health care. In many rural communities, the local hospital is one of
the largest – if not the largest – employers. Keeping our rural hospitals
open is critical not only for saving lives, but also for supporting local
economies in rural America. Yet, since 2010, more than 100 rural
hospitals across the United
States have closed. Combined, these closures represent the loss of over 10,000 jobs. And, they could mean life or death for
patients in rural communities. Already, someone injured in a rural area has to
travel, on average, nearly twice as
far to get to the closest hospital as someone
injured in an urban area. These critical moments lost in travel time are one
reason an estimated 60% of all trauma fatalities occur in rural
communities.
This problem is at risk of getting even worse. Roughly 1 out of 3 rural hospitals are at risk of shutting
down. And that’s only part of the story. Rural clinics and rural nursing homes
are closing as well.
You can read Vice President Biden’s full health care plan here. To specifically help rural Americans, his
plan will also:
Finishing the job of expanding
coverage to low-income adults. Research found that, in states that took up the Affordable Care
Act’s Medicaid expansion, the expansion was a critical tool in keeping rural
hospitals open. Yet, 14 states have still not expanded Medicaid eligibility, and an estimated 4.9
million individuals would be eligible for
coverage but for their state’s inaction. Vice President Biden’s plan will
enroll all of these individuals in a new public option, without a premium and
with benefits like those offered in Medicaid. This isn’t just the right thing
to do, it will help rural hospitals remain solvent. And, under the Biden Plan,
which preserves individuals ability to choose private insurance, these
hospitals won’t be threatened by having to get by on low Medicare reimbursement
rates for all.
Giving rural hospitals the
flexibility they need to keep their doors open and care for their patients. The Biden Administration will provide rural health care
providers with funding and flexibility necessary to identify, test, and deploy
innovative approaches to keeping their doors open and providing care for the
unique needs of rural communities. The Affordable Care Act supports this type
of innovation, for example through demonstration projects like the Pennsylvania
Rural Health Model, which is giving rural hospitals
in the state more flexibility to decide how best to spend dollars to improve
the health of the population they serve. The Biden Plan will expand funding for
these types of demonstration projects, and then accelerate efforts to replicate
proven models to other rural hospitals across the country. And, the Biden Plan
will identify and eliminate federal rules making it harder for rural hospitals
to serve their communities. For example, many rural hospitals serving small
populations do not have enough patients to maintain inpatient care, but those
communities still need a 24/7 emergency department. One approach to ensure they
can keep their doors open is to create a new designation, the Community
Outpatient Hospital, as proposed in the bipartisan Save Rural
Hospitals Act. The Biden Administration will
make sure the federal government is helping rural hospitals meet community
needs, not serving as a roadblock.
Adequately funding our rural
hospitals. To help hospitals keep their doors open,
President Biden supports the elimination of payment cuts and additional
payments for rural hospitals as detailed in the bipartisan Save Rural
Hospitals Act.
Expand primary
care and innovative health care delivery models in rural communities by:
Doubling funding for community
health centers. Community health
centers provide primary, prenatal, and other
important care to underserved populations. The Biden Plan will double the
federal investment in these centers, expanding access to high quality health
care for the populations that need it most. More than half of community health centers are in rural areas.
Equipping rural community health
centers to be hubs for healthy communities. As
president, Biden will establish a grant program to help community health
centers hire social workers or other professionals to coordinate resources
necessary for community health, such as transportation to get patients to
health centers and connections to housing and nutrition services.
Expanding the pipeline of rural
health care providers. The Biden Administration will
use a comprehensive approach to increase the number of rural individuals going
to medical school or other training programs and returning or staying in rural
communities to provide care, with a focus on primary care physicians, nurses,
nurse practitioners, nurse anesthetists, and other in-demand providers. This
initiative will include additional funding for residency programs in rural
areas, expanding theNational Health
Service Corps, and developing high
school-community-college-health-center partnerships to inspire rural youth to
pursue jobs in health care and pursue the advanced credits or industry
credentials that will put them on the path to success in the field.
Building new health clinics and
deploying telehealth in rural America. The Obama-Biden
Administration successfully used the USDA Community
Facility Direct Loan & Grant Program to build
rural hospitals and mental health clinics across rural America and equip them
with the best technology. As president, Biden will expand this grant funding,
with a focus on accelerating the deployment of telehealth for mental health and
specialty care. Telehealth – the use of videoconferencing and other technology
to provide remote care – can be a vital resource for rural communities with
limited access to providers.
——
Previously Released Biden Plans & Rural America
To Protect & Build on the Affordable Care Act, including a public option, which will give rural Americans a new health insurance choice, and other policies to lower health care costs.
For Educators, Students, and Our Future, which will triple funding for Title I schools, including those in rural communities, and expand high school-community college-business partnerships to prepare students for good jobs.
For a Clean Energy Revolution and Climate Justice, which commits our country to fulfilling our obligation to all workers impacted by the energy transition, like coal miners and power plant workers and their communities.
In the months ahead, Biden will release a higher education proposal which will include a policy to support small, low-endowment private colleges that are often anchor institutions in rural communities.
The vigorous contest of Democrats
seeking the 2020 presidential nomination has produced excellent policy
proposals to address major issues. Senator Amy Klobuchar’s “Plan from the
Heartland” seeks to strengthen agricultural and rural communities. This is a
summary from the Klobuchar campaign:
MINNEAPOLIS, MN — Senator Amy Klobuchar is proposing a plan for America’s Heartland that will strengthen our agricultural and rural communities, bridge the rural-urban divide, and make sure that kids who grow up in rural America can stay in rural America. Senator Klobuchar knows that America’s prosperity depends on the success of our farmers and as a senior member of the Agriculture Committee, she’s been a champion for farmers and rural communities in the Senate. Her plan builds on her record of getting things done for rural America and as President, she will:
1. HEARTLAND
ECONOMICS
Support our
farmers. Our farmers are facing significant uncertainty as a result
of recent floods and other natural disasters, unprecedented market
consolidation, low commodity prices, and uncertainty surrounding market access
in some of our biggest export markets. As President, Senator Klobuchar would
invest in growth opportunities like renewables to raise farm incomes and create
good paying jobs, and maintain and expand critical safety nets.
Expand commodity support, disaster programs, and federal crop insurance for our small and family-owned farms. As a senior member of the Agriculture Committee, Senator Klobuchar worked to write and pass three farm bills with strong farm safety nets for our farmers. As President, Senator Klobuchar would push to index farm safety net support levels to reflect changes in our country’s cost of production, low commodity prices, and loss of global market access. She would also work to improve and fully fund permanent disaster programs and improve support levels, loan rates and program delivery. Senator Klobuchar also supports improving and expanding commodity support and federal crop insurance programs and increasing the average premium subsidy for crop insurance. And as dairy farms continue to close, Senator Klobuchar would convene a commission to immediately address the dairy crisis.
Strengthen the Animal Disease Vaccine Bank and prioritize crop and livestock health. Strengthening our agricultural disease prevention, surveillance, and response capabilities is critical to our farmers and livestock producers, as new emerging diseases like African Swine Fever could cause billions in damages should they reach the U.S. Senator Klobuchar understands that we need to be doing everything we can to prevent catastrophic disease outbreaks before they start, and if we do have an outbreak, we need to be prepared. She authored and passed provisions to create a disaster response program and a foot and mouth disease (FMD) vaccine bank to protect farmers against the next disease outbreak. As President, she will fully fund disease eradication programs, support new research, and push for additional emergency support for farmers, producers and ranchers impacted by agricultural diseases.
Ensure safety net programs are targeted to help family-owned and small farms and beginning farmers and make sure farmers know about all the available support programs. Senator Klobuchar has repeatedly led efforts to reform the farm support payment system, including an income cap on eligibility for commodity payments. As President, she will work to ensure payments are directed toward those who need them most, including small and family-owned farms. She would enforce the prohibition against artificial subdivision of farms to avoid limits and work to protect family farms from cuts scheduled under the terms of any budget act. Senator Klobuchar will support regional food systems and also create and expand programs that educate farmers on available programs and opportunities including by supporting existing outreach and extension programs through our land grant universities.
Promote exports
and drive job growth. With 95 percent of the world’s customers living
outside our borders, opening up new markets and lowering trade barriers is
critical to our agricultural and rural economy. Our farmers produce food, fuel,
feed, and fiber, and they need export markets where they can sell their
products. Senator Klobuchar will direct her administration to create a national
rural export strategy to coordinate efforts across agencies and review all
international tariffs in place as of 2021 and she will build on her work in the
Senate to continue to increase access for U.S. agriculture producers. In her
first 100 days as President, she will restart the President’s Export Council,
which brings together business, labor, and agricultural leaders with Members of
Congress and key Administration officials to help promote a comprehensive
export and trade strategy.
Invest in rural
infrastructure and transportation. Rural areas are a major focus of
Senator Klobuchar’s $1 trillion infrastructure plan, and she will require a new
Infrastructure Financing Authority to make investments in rural areas. As
President, Senator Klobuchar will invest in the repair and improvement of rural
bridges that are not part of the federal-aid highway network and invest in the
Harbor Maintenance Trust fund to improve inland waterways and ports, including
funding for the Navigation and Ecosystem Restoration Program to modernize and
expand outdated locks and restore ecosystems along the Mississippi. She
will direct additional resources to help close the backlog in USDA’s Water and
Waste Disposal Loan and Grant Program. To keep rural and general aviation
airports strong, she will continue support for the Essential Air Service and
Airport Improvement Program.
Bring high-speed broadband to every household and business in America. Broadband creates jobs, opens new economic opportunities, and allows America to compete and succeed in an increasingly digital world, but roughly one in four rural Americans say access to high-speed internet is a major problem. In an effort to close the rural-urban divide, Senator Klobuchar has previously announced a commitment to connect every household in America to the internet by 2022. She will focus on creating accurate broadband maps to identify areas that lack adequate access, bringing high-speed internet infrastructure to areas most in need, including by expanding Rural Utility Service grants, and providing greater incentives for existing providers to upgrade their networks to cover unserved and underserved areas. She will also work to quickly implement the recommendations of the Precision Ag Connectivity Task Force to help farmers fully realize the potential of broadband in their operations.
Revitalizing freight and passenger rail. Railroads provide a vital link between rural communities and a cost-effective way for producers to bring their goods to market. As President, Senator Klobuchar will encourage investment in short-line and freight rail networks. She will also address safety concerns including two-man crews, better braking systems, and ensuring communities are prepared to respond to derailments involving hazardous cargo. She will also build on her work pushing for greater competition in freight markets by providing fair treatment for captive shippers, appointing well qualified members to the Surface Transportation Board, and reviewing and addressing consolidation in the freight rail industry. She is also committed to expanding Amtrak service in rural America.
Expand
opportunities for rural small businesses, entrepreneurs and beginning farmers. Rural America
is home to many innovators and entrepreneurs, but we need to do more to help
give them the tools they need to succeed and expand job opportunities in rural
areas. Senator Klobuchar will strengthen USDA programs that support
entrepreneurs like the Value-Added Producer Grants, Rural Microentrepreneur
Assistance Program, Intermediary Relending Program, and Agricultural Innovation
Centers. She will promote regional cooperation to facilitate economies of scale
among businesses, development organizations, government programs, and community
area anchor institutions. She will also fully implement and support the Farm
Bill provision restoring the USDA’s Under Secretary of Rural Development so
that rural development remains a top priority for the department.
Expand access to capital and loans for small and family-owned farms. Senator Klobuchar has worked successfully in the Senate to increase the caps on Farm Service Agency loans to ensure farmers and ranchers have access to the land and capital they need. As President, she will push to further increase the maximum loan amount that an individual farmer or rancher can receive under the direct farm ownership and operating loans, where some loans are reserved for beginning farmers. At the same time, Senator Klobuchar will work to increase the size of Farm Service Agency’s loan portfolio to ensure more farmers are able to access this critical lending source. She would also make sure that equipment updates — that allow farmers to take advantage of technology and innovation — are readily available and that loans and credit are targeted to small and family-owned farms.
Strengthen rural small business lending. Small businesses in rural areas face additional obstacles in accessing credit because many traditional lenders do not have the infrastructure and experience to effectively serve rural America. As President, Senator Klobuchar will expand and strengthen USDA’s Business and Industry Loan Guarantee Program and the Rural Business Investment Program, which supports start-up of venture capital firms, and she will continue support for the Farm Credit System. She will continue to support sensible regulation of community banks and credit unions, which are important sources of credit for rural businesses. She will push to reauthorize the New Market Tax Credit and make sure it effectively serves rural America. She will also improve controls to ensure government programs designed for small businesses actually serve small businesses.
Support agricultural research. The Trump Administration has repeatedly proposed budgets for USDA that cut billions for rural development, conservation, and research. These include the forced closure of agricultural research laboratories and stations. In her first 100 days as President, Senator Klobuchar will re-open these laboratories and give these important programs the support they deserve. She will also publish all government-funded studies on climate change conducted by in-house scientists and in collaboration with land-grant universities. And she will halt the arbitrary relocation of USDA scientific agencies which has resulted in staff attrition and decreased capacity.
Support our new and beginning farmers. Senator Klobuchar believes if we want to continue to maintain our country’s agricultural strength and keep our rural communities vibrant, we need to do more to support our new and beginning farmers and ranchers. As a Senator she has authored several provisions that would expand loans and land transitions to beginning farmers. As President, she would push for a new tax credit for farmers who sell land or equipment to beginning farmers and expand assistance to beginning farmers and ranchers so that they have better access to land, capital, and risk management tools. Senator Klobuchar has also been a champion in the Senate for permanent mandatory funding for the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program, and as President she would continue to promote efforts with non-profit and university partners to provide farm business education and on-site trainings for beginning farmers.
Promote rural
workforce development to connect people to jobs and address workforce shortages. Senator
Klobuchar will address rural workforce shortages and close the skills gap by
promoting apprenticeships so students and workers can get on-the-job training.
She will direct her Secretary of Labor to analyze the use of apprenticeships
and expand apprenticeship opportunities and benefits in rural areas. Senator
Klobuchar is also committed to passing comprehensive immigration reform in the
first year of her presidency. Immigrants accounted for more than a third of
rural population growth from 2000 to 2018 and comprehensive immigration should
include providing a pathway to citizenship and updated policies that will help
rural communities get the workers they need when they need them.
Expand student loan forgiveness to help our farmers. Senator Klobuchar has proposed a loan forgiveness program — modeled after the public service loan forgiveness program — that would forgive federal student loan debt for in-demand occupations that will include farmers and people who choose careers in agriculture.
Agricultural
Competition and Concentration. The concentration across
agricultural markets and steep decline in family farms have resulted in an
increasingly anti-competitive industry. Senator Klobuchar is committed to
reducing barriers for family farmers and promoting fair, transparent practices
that increase competition.
Taking on consolidation. Senator Klobuchar will look at large acquisitions and mergers in the agriculture industry that have already happened and assess whether the integration of services insulate agricultural corporations from competition. She will also make sure that our antitrust agencies have the resources they need to aggressively enforce our antitrust laws. And she will give antitrust agencies and courts the legal tools necessary to promote competition by updating legal standards, shifting the burden of proof for mega-mergers to the merging parties to show that their transactions do not reduce competition, clarifying that existing antitrust laws should take into account more than price and should consider vertical integration, harms to innovation, and monopsony, where a buyer has the power to reduce wages or the prices it pays for agricultural products. As President, Senator Klobuchar would also require the USDA to collect and publish concentration information in agricultural markets and allow the USDA to participate in the review of proposed mergers in the agricultural sector. As President, her Administration would thoroughly review our agriculture laws and assess their application in an environment with increased market concentration.
Support strong enforcement by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The CFTC budget has stagnated in recent years making it difficult for the commission to do its job. Senator Klobuchar will provide the CFTC with the resources to make sure our commodity markets work, encourage the commission to put the needs of farmers first in all of its decisions, and move aggressively to stop price manipulation in energy and other markets.
Restore staffing levels at the Department of Agriculture. Under the first two years of the Trump Administration, between December 2016 and March 2018, USDA had more staff departures than any other federal agency. This has severely impacted USDA’s ability to carry out its mission on behalf of rural communities and farmers. During her first 100 days as President, Senator Klobuchar will restore staffing levels to the appropriate levels. She will also stop politically-motivated relocations that result in the loss of critical agency expertise.
2. LIVING IN
RURAL AMERICA
Expanding rural
health care and saving our rural hospitals. As President,
Senator Klobuchar would revise our Medicare rules to help rural hospitals stay
open, provide expanded support to our critical access hospital and community
health centers, over half of which are located in rural areas, and dramatically
expand telehealth services. To address rural workforce shortages, she will
build on the Conrad 30 program that allows international doctors trained in the
United States to extend their stay in the country if they agree to practice in
underserved communities. To further bolster the health care workforce Senator
Klobuchar will expand student loan forgiveness programs for health care and
long term care workers practicing in underserved areas. She will also reform
Medicare telehealth rules that unfairly limit coverage and reimbursement.
Preserve and strengthen rural hospitals. Over 100 rural hospitals have closed since 2010 and more than more than a third of rural hospitals, providing care to almost 12 million Americans, are at risk of closing. As President, Senator Klobuchar will help hospitals in rural areas stay open by creating a new Rural Emergency Hospital classification under Medicare to give hospitals more support if they maintain an emergency room and provide outpatient services.
Provide sustainable reimbursements for rural health care providers. Today, inadequate reimbursement from federal health programs that do not take into account the additional costs of rural health providers puts significant pressure on the rural health care system. Senator Klobuchar will adjust Medicare’s geographic practice cost index to reflect the actual costs of providing health care in rural areas. She will also provide ongoing financial relief by ending the two percent Medicare automatic reimbursement cut for rural hospitals.
Tackle rural mental health and addiction. Mental health and addiction services are often lacking in rural areas where accessibility, availability, affordability and acceptability may be limited. For example, 65 percent of non-metropolitan counties do not have a psychiatrist and almost half of non-metropolitan counties do not have a psychologist. As President, Senator Klobuchar will strengthen mental health and addiction programs in rural America by investing in and expanding the Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network, tackling the opioid epidemic and increasing access to mental health and substance use care, including support for clinics and community-based services, as well as technical support and telehealth services. She will address the challenge of farmer suicide, while also focusing on recruitment, retention, training and workplace protections for the mental health and substance use health care workforce in rural areas and our hardest hit communities.
Support rural
education and public schools. On average, rural districts receive
just under 20 percent of state education funding and have smaller student
populations, so they’re often disadvantaged by funding formulas. And higher
transportation costs for students who live in rural areas can often mean even
less money for instruction. As part of her previously announced “Progress
Partnerships” Senator Klobuchar will help improve rural schools by encouraging
states to create funding formula commissions to improve equity and establish
equitable school infrastructure funding mechanism.
Empower community colleges to be community hubs for economic development and workforce training. In many rural areas, local community colleges provide key economic development and workforce training resources for the community. Senator Klobuchar will work to better integrate federal business and workforce development programs with local community colleges building on the Small Business Administration’s successful Small Business Development Centers.
Invest in land-grant universities agricultural research. Recognizing the long standing contributions of our land-grant universities to innovation and development in agriculture, as well as their central role in their communities, Senator Klobuchar will also expand resources available to these schools for capital projects, research and extension programs.
Address child
care and energy costs and expand access to affordable housing. Many Americans
want to live and work in rural communities but cannot find an affordable place
to live. More than 50 million Americans live in rural areas with a severe need
for more affordable rental housing. Senator Klobuchar will strengthen rural rental
assistance programs, increase investments in the rural housing supply. We also
need to cut red tape and improve communication among local, state, and federal
officials so renters, communities, and developers have access to information
about the programs available in rural America. Senator Klobuchar will also
strengthen protections for mobile home owners.
Directly address the challenge of rural child care: Rural communities experience unique challenges when it comes to child care, as nearly two-thirds of rural families live in a child care desert, or an area where there are at least three young children for every licensed child care slot — or no licensed child care providers at all. As President, Senator Klobuchar would expand assistance for child care, with a focus on rural areas by increasing funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant and increasing the subsidy rate so that rural child care providers can more easily meet their operating expenses and increase the quality of their programs. She would also work to pass a landmark childcare proposal limiting child care payments to 7 percent of a family’s income and making targeted investments to build the supply of licensed child care in rural child care deserts.
Make energy costs affordable. Recognizing that rural households pay a significantly higher share of their income on energy costs than the national rate, Senator Klobuchar will also will preserve and expand resources for LIHEAP and the Weatherization Assistance Program, which helps households in need reduce energy spending. Senator Klobuchar is a strong supporter of the Rural Energy for America program and Rural Energy Savings program so that farmers and rural communities can access renewable energy solutions that lower their costs.
3. PROTECTING OUR
FUTURE
Expand
conservation practices. Senator Klobuchar has been a champion of
supporting farmer conservation efforts and promoting farming practices that
reduce soil erosion and improve air and water quality, including by helping
pass the 2018 Farm Bill, which included several of her priorities. As
President, she will support significant new investments in conservation of
working and retired lands. Senator Klobuchar will support the continued
expansion of the Environmental Quality Incentives Program and increase
resources for the Conservation Stewardship Program to help provide farmers the
tools they need to protect and enhance natural resources on working
agricultural lands. And after successfully increasing the acreage cap of the
Conservation Reserve Program, Senator Klobuchar will work to attract more
enrollees and ensure payment rates are fair.
Protect native sod and improve soil health. Senator
Klobuchar pushed for provision in the 2018 Farm Bill that closed a
loophole allowing some non-insured crops to be planted four consecutive
years without a reduction in crop insurance assistance for succeeding
insured crops. As President, she will expand nationwide the sodsaver’s
prohibition to substitute crop insurance yields on native sod that is converted
to cropland. She will also expand the Soil
Health and Income Protection Pilot Program to
help provide farmers an alternative to cropping less productive cropland.
Invest in conservation innovation. Senator
Klobuchar will target research into soil carbon sequestration, which could
improve soil health as well as reduce carbon levels in the atmosphere. She
will also expand Conservation Innovation Grants to test emerging
conservation approaches, including practices that increase carbon
sequestration levels. And building on provisions she included in the 2018
farm bill, Senator Klobuchar will further improve agriculture data
research of conservation practices to help farmers reduce risk and
increase profitability.
Investing in and
providing incentives for homegrown energy. Senator Klobuchar believes that
homegrown biofuels are key to our rural economies, our nation’s energy
security, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In the Senate, she has been a
leader when it comes to standing up to the Administration’s misuse of small
refinery renewable fuel standard (RFS) waivers. She has also worked successfully
in the Senate to provide financing and grant support to biobased manufacturers.
She authored an amendment that was included in the Farm Bill that provides
mandatory funding to support biobased marketing, manufacturing.
Strengthen the RFS. As President, Senator
Klobuchar will work with the EPA to continue and strengthen the RFS.
Continuing to increase the required blend levels will add value to farm
products, reduce the use of fossil fuels, and contribute to better air
quality.
End the overuse of secret RFS small refinery waivers. In the
first 100 days of her presidency, Senator Klobuchar has pledged to end the
misguided overuse of secret RFS small refinery waivers that have been
granted to big oil companies at the expense of farmers. As President, she
will take action to increase transparency in the waiver application
process and to make sure that the market for Renewable Identification
Numbers accurately accounts for the overuse of small refinery
waivers.
Promote the use of blender pumps. In addition,
Senator Klobuchar will promote and invest in blender pump infrastructure
by restarting and building upon USDA’s Biofuel Infrastructure Partnership,
providing consumers more refueling choice and supporting the transition
away from fossil fuels.
Pass a statute to ensure year-round E15 sales. After
successfully pushing for the administration to allow for the year-round
sale of E15, Senator Klobuchar will also advance legislation that would
allow for year-round E15 sales to remove regulatory uncertainty and help
reduce the consumption of fossil fuels.
Extend biodiesel and second generation biofuels tax credits. Senator
Klobuchar has long championed tax credits for renewable energy and as
President she will push to extend biodiesel and second generation biofuels
tax credits.
Invest in wind
and solar and support rural energy development. Clean energy,
including wind and solar, is a major driver of job growth in rural areas. In
fact, 99 percent of operating wind capacity is located in rural areas. A part
of Senator Klobuchar’s plan to tackle climate change, she will prioritize rural
energy development, including expanding storage capacity and strengthening our
energy grid is critical for continuing to scale up renewable energy. Senator
Klobuchar will invest in interregional transmission lines and grid improvements
to support the development of renewable energy and establish a Clean Energy
bond program to expand clean energy tax incentives. And as President, Senator
Klobuchar will launch a grant program to help rural cooperatives develop energy
storage and microgrid projects for renewable energy for generation,
transmission and storage. She will also support increased investment in small,
distributed wind, solar and biogas projects.
Expand energy
efficiency programs. Energy costs can be a significant burden on farms,
small businesses and households in rural communities. Senator Klobuchar has
long worked to see that the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) has the
resources needed to provide grants to farms and rural businesses to install
energy efficient technologies, and she will continue to push for additional
resources.
Safeguard federal
lands. Federal lands are integral to many rural economies. Senator
Klobuchar is committed to preserving these lands for future generations
including by restoring environmental protections repealed by the Trump
Administration. She will also make sure that rural counties that host
tax-exempt federal lands will receive their payments in-lieu of taxes in a
predictable and uninterrupted manner.
4. LEAVING NO ONE BEHIND
Reducing child
poverty in rural areas. According to the Department of Agriculture, poverty
rates in rural America are still higher than in urban areas, and one in five
rural households with children face food insecurity. As part of her plan to cut
childhood poverty in half within ten years, Senator Klobuchar will expand the
earned income tax credit, the child care tax credit, and SNAP benefits and make
housing choice vouchers available to every qualifying household with a
child.
Meeting the nutrition needs of our most vulnerable citizens. As a
member of the Agriculture Committee, Senator Klobuchar has always pushed
for a strong nutrition title in the Farm Bill. As President, she will make
sure that nutrition programs are there for families when they need them,
while also strengthening employment and training programs that help get
people back into the workforce. She will oppose efforts to institute
draconian and ineffective work requirements and reverse the harmful
rulemakings that the Trump Administration has proposed that would force
millions of families, elderly, and veterans out of nutrition programs.
Overcoming persistent poverty. Senator
Klobuchar supports Congressman Jim Clyburn’s 10-20-30 proposal, which would
require that a minimum of 10% of federal funds of a particular program go
to persistent poverty communities, where the poverty level has been 20% or
higher over the past 30 years.
Rural Veterans. Roughly one in
four U.S. veterans live in rural areas, and many face challenges accessing
health care and affordable housing. Building on her strong track record of
supporting veterans, including our veterans in rural areas, Senator Klobuchar
will focus on ensuring our veterans receive the support they deserve. As
President, she will work to attract medical professionals to VA health care
facilities in rural areas, invest in VA telehealth services and expand
transportation options for our veterans. In addition, she will expand programs
to connect veterans in rural areas to affordable housing and invest in programs
that tackle veterans homelessness.
Helping farmers
in bankruptcy. In many regions, farm bankruptcy rates are reaching their
highest point in a decade due to persistently low commodity prices, economic
uncertainty and tight farm lending regulations. As President, Senator Klobuchar
will work to allow more family farmers to seek relief under Chapter 12
bankruptcy, which would allow family farmers to reorganize and keep the farm
after falling on hard times. This builds off of Senator Klobuchar’s bipartisan
legislation that recently passed the Senate and House. She will also promote
support programs and education for farmers so they are familiar with sound farm
management principles in an effort to reduce foreclosure rates.
Fight
discrimination and empower communities of color. People of color
make up one in five Americans living in rural areas, but too often systemic
racism limits their contributions to rural economies. Senator Klobuchar will
instruct all federal agencies to aggressively enforce anti-discrimination rules
when it comes to housing, education, employment and wages. She will strengthen
USDA’s Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, increase diversity
in senior leadership positions at USDA, and develop better metrics to
accurately reflect the impact of USDA programs of people of color. She will
also increase rural outreach by the Minority Business Development
Administration to help minority businesses overcome social and economic
disadvantages.
Partner with Native American tribes. Senator Klobuchar is committed to partnering with Native American tribes in rural areas. As President, she will end the Trump Administration’s attacks on tribal sovereignty and increase meaningful tribal consultation. She will fully support the Indian Health Service and build on her work to provide resources for tribal schools. She will work to expand broadband deployment on tribal lands including working to restore the Tribal Lifeline program, which the Trump Administration has tried to eliminate. She will also direct the USDA to increase support for tribal agricultural needs.
Supporting rural seniors. Older Americans who live in rural areas can be isolated, with fewer transportation options and limited access to other important services like transportation, health care, and affordable housing. As President, Senator Klobuchar will make sure her USDA and other federal agencies are investing in housing, health care, transportation and nutrition programs for our country’s rural seniors. She will support generous tax-credits and programs that allow seniors to remain and age in their homes as long as possible, with a focus on promoting affordable housing and long-term care options.
The vigorous contest of Democrats seeking the 2020 presidential nomination has produced excellent policy proposals to address major issues. Senator Amy Klobuchar’s plan for Seniors tackles Alzheimer’s, enhances health care and retirement security and reduces prescription drug costs. This is a summary from the Klobuchar campaign:
MINNEAPOLIS, MN – Senator Amy Klobuchar released her policy priorities for seniors. Building on her leadership in the Senate when it comes
to lowering the cost of prescription drugs and addressing the challenges our
seniors face, Senator Klobuchar is proposing a bold plan to tackle Alzheimer’s
disease and other forms of dementia, enhance health care and retirement
security, reduce skyrocketing prescription drug costs and combat senior fraud
and abuse. As President, Senator Klobuchar will continue to stand up for our
seniors and the 10,000 Americans who turn 65 each day.
“Everywhere I go, I meet seniors who tell me about their struggles to afford
everyday costs like prescription drugs or health care,” said Senator
Amy Klobuchar. “I meet family members who face challenges
caring for loved ones with Alzheimer’s and urgent action is needed to take on
these problems. I believe we owe it to our seniors to make sure they have the
care and support they need as they get older, and as President I will
prioritize tackling Alzheimer’s, strengthening health care and retirement
security, and reducing prescription drug costs.”
Support
caregivers for those living with Alzheimer’s and other chronic conditions.
Senator Klobuchar has been a leader when it comes to supporting people affected
by Alzheimer’s and their families. As President, she will support expanding
resources for health care providers to expand training and support services for
families and caregivers of people living with Alzheimer’s disease or other
forms of dementia as well as other chronic conditions, improving caregiver
well-being and health, as well as allowing patients to stay in their homes
longer.
Make
it easier for people with Alzheimer’s and their families to get the medical
care they need. Medicare is an essential resource for people
affected by Alzheimer’s, but many patients and their families are unaware of
the resources and coverage available when it comes to Alzheimer’s. Senator
Klobuchar will take action to expand Medicare covered services for Alzheimer’s
and she will expand efforts to make patients and their families aware of the
care-planning and services that are covered. She will also support an ongoing
investment in public health infrastructure for Alzheimer’s that reduces risk,
improves early detection and diagnosis, and focuses on tribal, rural, minority,
and other underserved populations.
Strengthen
the National Institutes of Health and invest in research for chronic conditions.
While the current administration has proposed draconian cuts to lifesaving
research, Senator Klobuchar will bolster research at the National Institutes of
Health and increase investments in research into cancer, including breast
cancer, which the Senator has long supported, and other chronic conditions. And
Senator Klobuchar will also invest in research into health disparities.
Significant and persistent disparities exist in health outcomes for minority
populations in the United States. When it comes to healthy aging, research has
shown divides based on race, wealth, and education. Senator Klobuchar will
invest in research across the federal government into the causes of these
disparities and how they can be reduced.
Invest
in Alzheimer’s research.
Senator Klobuchar will commit to preventing, treating and facilitating a cure
for Alzheimer’s disease, with the goal of putting us on a path toward
developing a cure and treatment by 2025. To support researchers, she will make
sure that funding is reliable and consistent. Since African Americans and the
Latino community will represent nearly 40 percent of the 8.4 million American
families affected by Alzheimer’s disease by 2030, Senator Klobuchar will
increase federal research into disparities in the incidents and outcomes of
Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.
Improve mental health care for seniors. Senator Klobuchar is committed to making mental health a priority, including for our seniors. As part of her recently released mental health plan, she will expand access to mental health treatment for seniors and expand depression treatment and suicide prevention efforts that focus on seniors.
Implement and extend Kevin and Avonte’s law and expand dementia training. Senator Klobuchar introduced bipartisan legislation signed into law last year that helps families locate missing people with forms of dementia, such as Alzheimer’s, or developmental disabilities, such as autism. As President, Senator Klobuchar will make sure the program is fully implemented and she will also establish federal partnerships with state and local governments to provide dementia training for public sector workers who interact with seniors.
Ensure a Secure Retirement
Protect Social Security and make sure it is fair. Social Security has served as a stable and secure retirement guarantee for generations of Americans. Senator Klobuchar believes that this program must remain solvent for generations to come and she will fight against risky schemes to privatize it. As President, Senator Klobuchar will work to lift the Social Security payroll cap. Currently the payroll tax only applies to wages up to $133,000. Senator Klobuchar supports subjecting income above $250,000 to the payroll tax and extending the solvency of Social Security. And Senator Klobuchar will make sure people are treated fairly by the current Social Security system. As President, she will work to strengthen and improve Social Security benefits for widows and people who took significant time out of the paid workforce to care for their children, aging parents, or sick family members.
Expand retirement savings. Senator Klobuchar believes all Americans deserve a secure retirement. As she has previously announced, Senator Klobuchar will work to create innovative, portable personal savings accounts called Up Accounts that can be used for retirement and emergencies by establishing a minimum employer contribution to a savings plan. [ This proposal is modeled after the Saving for the Future Act, which was introduced by Senators Coons and Klobuchar.] Under her plan, employers will set aside at least 50 cents per hour worked, helping a worker build more than $600,000 in wealth over the course of a career. And Senator Klobuchar will work to reduce disparities when it comes to retirement savings. According to a recent study, the median wealth for white families was more than $134,000, but for African American families it was just $11,000.
Defend pensions. Senator Klobuchar has been a leader in the Senate when it comes to keeping our pension promises. As President, she will support legislation to ensure retirees can keep the pensions they have earned and, in her first 100 days, she will recommend that Treasury heighten the scrutiny of any applications to reduce retiree benefits under the Kline-Miller Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014.
Improve Health Care for Seniors and Lower Prescription Drug Costs
Unleash the power of 43 million seniors in Medicare Part D to negotiate better drug prices. Seniors should have access to their medicines at the lowest possible prices. As President, Senator Klobuchar will push to allow the government to directly negotiate lower drug prices for Medicare Part D, building on legislation she has led in the Senate.
Take immediate and aggressive action to lower prescription drug prices, including allowing personal importation from countries like Canada and crack down on “Pay-for-Delay” agreements. Senator Klobuchar has been a leading advocate for reducing the price of prescription drugs for seniors, including by helping close the Medicare Part D donut hole and introducing legislation to increase competition and require Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices. As President, during her first 100 days she will allow for the personal importation of prescription drugs from safe countries like Canada and crack down on “Pay-for-Delay” agreements that increase the cost of prescription drugs.
Strengthen Medicare and provide incentives for getting the best quality health care at the best price. Senator Klobuchar opposes cuts and risky schemes to privatize Medicare and will take action to strengthen Medicare and find solutions so it remains solvent. She will improve Medicare for current beneficiaries by reforming payment policies through measures like site neutral payments and providing incentives for getting the best quality health care at the best price, including bundled payments and telehealth.
Expand coverage for dental, vision and hearing under Medicare. Dental, vision, and hearing care should be covered as part of Medicare. Senator Klobuchar will support new Medicare coverage for these services that makes them affordable for all seniors.
Expand telehealth and rural health services and maintain rural hospitals. In the Senate, Senator Klobuchar has championed policies that ensure seniors who want to stay in their homes and communities can do so. As President, she will promote remote monitoring technology and telehealth services in Medicare and other programs that improve the quality of life and expand access to quality home care and emergency hospital services in rural areas. As President, she would work to create a new Rural Emergency Hospital classification under Medicare to help rural hospitals stay open and provide expanded support to our critical access hospitals.
Invest in Long-Term Care
Create a refundable tax credit to offset long-term care costs. Senator Klobuchar will work with Congress to establish a new refundable tax credit to help offset the costs of long-term care. The credit will be available for qualifying long-term care costs including both nursing facility care and home- and community-based services, and additional expenses like assistive technologies, respite care, and necessary home modifications. The credit will be targeted towards those who are most in need of support. Senator Klobuchar will also stand up to efforts to cap Medicaid spending, which would put services like mental health care, transportation costs, and long-term care at risk for millions of Americans.
Reduce the costs of long-term care insurance and increase access. Senator Klobuchar believes seniors and their adult children must have the resources they need to prepare for long-term care, including education about the types of services available. To reduce the costs of long-term care, Senator Klobuchar will propose a new targeted tax credit equal to 20 percent of the premium costs of qualified long-term care insurance. Senator Klobuchar will also establish incentives and make it easier for employers to offer their employees long-term care insurance on an opt-out basis. In addition, she will explore updating federal policies to combine long-term care policies with life insurance.
Provide financial relief to caregivers and ensure paid family leave for all Americans, including those who care for elderly or disabled relatives. Senator Klobuchar is proposing a tax credit of up to $6,000 a year to provide financial relief to those caring for an aging relative or a relative with a disability to help offset expenses, including the cost of medical care, counseling and training, lodging away from home, adult day care, assistive technologies, and necessary home modifications. As President, Senator Klobuchar will also support legislation to provide paid family leave to all Americans so no one has to sacrifice a paycheck to care for someone they love, including an elderly parent.
Support a world class long-term care workforce, increase long-term care options, and tackle disparities in long-term care. Senator Klobuchar believes we must invest in and address shortages in our long-term care workforce. She is committed to increasing wages, improving job conditions and promoting other recruitment and retention policies, especially in rural communities facing workforce challenges. She will also support training for long-term care workers and new loan forgiveness programs for in-demand occupations that includes our long-term care workers. In addition, she will expand long-term care facilities and beds as well as home care and telehealth services. Research also suggests that there are significant racial and ethnic disparities in the quality of long-term care as well as disparities in coverage for long-term care. Senator Klobuchar is committed to tackling disparities in care through expanding access to long-term care with a focus on reducing inequities as well as addressing the costs of long-term care services for people in the greatest need of assistance.
Reduce Costs and Prevent Fraud
Fight senior fraud and elder abuse. As a prosecutor, Senator Klobuchar created a senior protection unit at the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office. And she has always believed that we need strong safeguards to prevent and address fraud, abuse and exploitation of our seniors, and has led and passed multiple bills in the Senate that would strengthen these safeguards. Within her first 100 days as President, she will establish a new senior fraud prevention office to educate consumers, expedite the handling of complaints, and coordinate prevention efforts across the federal government. Senator Klobuchar will stregthen enforcement of age discrimination laws, and she will also take action to tackle elder abuse, strengthen oversight and accountability for court-appointed guardians, support training for employees at long-term care facilities, and increase tracking of incidents and investigations to help prevent and better respond to elder abuse.
Improve access to affordable housing, transit, and nutrition for seniors and expand workforce opportunities. In the first 100 days of her Administration, Senator Klobuchar will reverse the Trump Administration’s proposed changes to federal housing subsidies that could triple rent for some households and would be particularly harmful for seniors. In addition, she will update regulations for reverse mortgages to make sure seniors have access to safe products that make it easier to stay in their homes, as well as expand support for affordable senior housing. Senator Klobuchar is also committed to expanding transportation programs and services for older adults, particularly in rural and underserved populations. She also supports expanding resources for Meals on Wheels, helping the food bank system serve seniors in need, and launching a national effort to increase enrollment among seniors in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Senator Klobuchar will also work to expand workforce and training opportunities for older Americans who are looking to remain in and return to the workforce.
Help seniors afford their energy costs: Senator Klobuchar strongly opposes efforts by the Trump Administration to eliminate funding for programs like the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which helps seniors afford heating and cooling. As President, Senator Klobuchar’s budget will preserve and expand resources for LIHEAP and the Weatherization Assistance Program, which helps households in need reduce energy spending, and she will support new efforts to help seniors with their energy costs.
To pay for these policies, Senator Klobuchar will close the trust fund loopholes that allow the wealthy to avoid paying taxes on inherited wealth.
As Donald Trump prepares to unleash raids
on undocumented migrants in cities across the country, while thousands of men, women
and children seeking asylum are crammed into unliveable detention camps for
weeks and months without end – a humanitarian crisis created through a
combination of cruelty and ineptitude – US Senator Elizabeth Warren, running
for Democratic nomination for president, announced a plan to create an immigration
system that is fair, humane, and reflects American values.
“Donald
Trump wants to divide us — to pit worker against worker, neighbor against
neighbor. He wants Americans to blame their troubles on those who are new to
our country, or who don’t look the same, even as his administration robs us
dry. He has tried his best to make it appear that immigrants are not welcome on
our shores.
“We
can be better than this. Americans know that immigrants helped weave the very
fabric of our country in the past — and they know that immigrants belong here
today.
“I’ll
work with Congress to pass broad-reaching reform, but I’m also prepared to move
forward with executive action if Congress refuses to act. We cannot continue to
ignore our immigration challenges, nor can we close our borders and isolate the
United States from the outside world. Instead we need big, structural change: a
fair immigration system that preserves our security, grows our economy, and
reflects our values. That’s good for immigrants, good for workers, and
ultimately good for the United States.”
Immigrants have always been a vital source of American strength. They grow our
economy and make our communities richer and more diverse. They are our
neighbors, our colleagues, and our friends — and every bit as much a part of
America as those who were born in the United States.
President
Trump sees things differently. He’s advanced a policy of cruelty and division
that demonizes immigrants. He’s axed programs that protect young Dreamers and
asylum seekers fleeing violence and upheaval. He’s championed dramatic cuts to legal
immigration, and imposed a bigoted ban on travelers
from Muslim-majority countries. He’s threatened to close our ports of
entry to lawful transit and commerce, and exploited a crisis
of his own making at the border to score cheap political points. But while
Trump may have taken the system to its most punitive extreme, his racist
policies build on a broken immigration system and an enforcement infrastructure
already primed for abuse.
I
saw that in McAllen, Texas, in the eyes of mothers who fled violence only to be
ripped apart from their babies at the U.S. border. I saw it in the tears of
families as they waited for their loved ones at Logan Airport in Boston on the
night Trump announced his Muslim Ban. I saw it in the tired faces of little
children made to march in formation between makeshift tents in the hot summer
sun at the Homestead detention facility in Florida.
I
also see it when I talk with our Dreamers about their aspirations and their
fears. When I meet with business owners who watch their competition exploit
undocumented workers for a competitive advantage, and with farmers who cannot
access the labor they need. When I sit with families who have been waiting
decades for a visa to reunite with their loved ones, and with mixed-status
families who worry that a parent, brother or sister could be ripped away at any
time.
We
must address the humanitarian mess at the border and reverse this president’s
discriminatory policies. But that won’t be nearly enough to fix our immigration
system. We need expanded legal immigration that will grow our economy, reunite
families, and meet our labor market demands. We need real reform that provides
cost-effective security at our borders, addresses the root causes of migration,
and provides a path to status and citizenship so that our neighbors don’t have
to live in fear. That’s why today I’m announcing my plan for immigration reform
— to create a rules-based system that is fair, humane, and that reflects our
values.
Eliminating
Abusive Enforcement
President
Trump has weaponized deportation in ways that are costly, ineffective, and
designed to maximize pain. It’s time to end this cruelty — and refocus on true
threats to public safety and national security instead. As president, I
will:
Decriminalize migration and refocus enforcement on
serious criminal activity. Entering the country without authorization has
always been a violation of civil immigration law, but thanks to a former segregationist Senator,
it’s also a criminal violation. This additional criminal provision is totally
unnecessary for border security, and for a century, it was rarely enforced. But
since the early 2000s, it has been used to build and sustain a massive
immigration detention complex. In 2016, over half of all
federal criminal prosecutions were for immigration violations — more than
prosecutions for terrorism, organized crime, hate crimes, or financial fraud.
This obsessive focus ties up federal prosecutors and overwhelms federal
courts. It’s costly and unnecessary. And under Trump, it has become
increasingly abusive. We should repeal this criminal prohibition to prevent
future abuse. As president, I will immediately issue guidance to end criminal
prosecutions for simple administrative immigration violations; end Operation
Streamline, which subjects migrants to mass prosecutions; and refocus our
limited resources on actual criminals and real threats to the United States. I
will also issue prosecutorial guidance to prioritize immigration cases with
security concerns, and make sure government attorneys are properly exercising
their discretion for individuals who pose no public safety risk.
Separate law enforcement from immigration
enforcement to strengthen our communities. There are good reasons to
keep immigration enforcement and law enforcement separate. When law enforcement
is forced to also handle immigration violations, people are less willing
to report crimes for
fear of revealing their immigration status. Combining these functions sows
distrust and harms public safety. As President, I’ll put in place strict
guidelines to protect sensitive locations like schools, medical facilities, and
courthouses from enforcement actions. I’ll expand programs that grant
protections to immigrant victims of serious crimes who come forward and assist
law enforcement. And I’ll end programs like 287(g) and “Secure
Communities” that force local cops to enforce federal immigration laws so they
can focus on effectively serving their communities.
Remake CPB and ICE in a way that reflects our
values. Our
immigration agencies should protect Americans and uphold the rule of law, not
pursue punitive anti-immigrant policies that target communities of color. I’ll
hold immigration enforcement to the same due process standards as other law
enforcement agencies — no more warrantless arrests or stops deep in the
interior of our country. I’ll reshape CBP and ICE from top to bottom, focusing
their efforts on homeland security efforts like screening cargo, identifying
counterfeit goods, and preventing smuggling and trafficking. And to change the
culture, I’ll insist on transparency and strengthen the authorities of
independent internal watchdogs to prevent future abuses.
Create accountability for the abuse perpetrated
during the Trump Era. President Trump and his Administration are
comfortable looking the other way while criminal abuses of immigrants pile up.
When I am President, I will not. I’ll designate a Justice Department task force
to investigate accusations of serious violations — including medical neglect and physical and sexualassaults of
detained immigrants — and give it independent authority pursue any substantiated
criminal allegations. Let there be no ambiguity on this: if you are violating
the basic rights of immigrants, now or in the future, a Warren Administration
will hold you accountable.
Significantly
Reduce Immigration Detention
Americans
are rightfully horrified by scenes of chaos and abuse at our
border. Separating parents and children and detaining families and other
vulnerable populations is not only staggeringly expensive and inhumane, it has
no proven deterrent effect. To end
unnecessary detention and rebuild a more humane system, a Warren administration
will:
End unnecessary detention. We already
have the tools to effectively track and monitor individuals without shoving
them into cages and camps along the border. As President, I’ll issue guidance
ensuring that detention is only used where it is actually necessary because an
individual poses a flight or safety risk. I will put additional layers of
protection in place for certain groups, including asylum seekers, families
and pregnant women, and LGBTQ+ people who are more vulnerable in a general
detention facility. And I’ll enforce strict standards for remaining detention
facilities, including for medical care and to end the use of solitary
confinement.
Eliminate private detention facilities. There is
no place in this country for profiting off cruelty. I’ll end the contracts ICE
has with private detention providers, and push for legislation to
permanently ban for-profit
detention.
Expand the executive use of parole and invest in
alternatives-to-detention. DHS has broad authority to parole individuals
who are detained prior to their cases being heard in immigration court.
Community-based alternatives to
detention are safer, save money, and can be more effective at ensuring
compliance. I’ll significantly expand successful programs, which include case
management, referrals to legal and social services, and periodic check-ins and
surveillance. These programs provide a measure of dignity for those in the
system, and their expanded use would save over a billion dollars each year in
unnecessary detention costs.
Provide
Rights and Due Process in our Immigration Courts
It’s
not enough to merely correct the excesses of the Trump administration’s
immigration policies. To prevent future abuses, we need to treat migrants
moving through the system in a manner that reflects our Constitution and our
values. A Warren administration will:
Establish professional, independent Article I
immigration courts. DOJ
both oversees the immigration court system and enjoys massive authority to
manipulate those courts to implement the president’s immigration policy agenda.
Immigration court rulings can even be overturned by the Attorney General — a
fundamental conflict of interest exploited by Jeff
Sessions. I’ll work to create a credible, independent system by passing
legislation establishing Article I judicial review for immigration cases
modeled on our federal courts. I’ll deploy smart efficiency measures, beginning
by restoring judges’ ability to prioritize and manage their own dockets. And my
administration will recruit highly qualified immigration judges with a diverse
set of legal experiences so that everyone receives appropriate justice.
Eliminate expedited removal and provide due
process. Due
process ensures basic fairness for individuals attempting to navigate complex
laws and prevents law enforcement and Presidents from abusing authority.
But mostimmigrants facing
deportation do not have attorneys — and in the Trump administration, that even
includes toddlers. In fact,
one-third of deported immigrants never even see a judge: instead, the
immigration officer serves as both prosecutor and jury. I’ll eliminate the use
of expedited removal proceedings and guarantee hearings. I’ll call for creating
a national-scale immigration public defender corps,
and a Warren administration will provide access to counsel in immigration
court.
Welcome
Those In Need
Our
laws and our values compel us to help those fleeing violence and oppression,
but Trump’s racism has contributed to a climate of fear for those seeking
refuge in our country. As president, I will:
Reject exclusionary policies based on race,
religion and nationality. I’ll reverse Trump’s bigoted Muslim Ban on my
first day in office. I’ll withdraw the Trump policy that forces
immigrant families to choose between staying together and ensuring their
children — many of whom are American citizens — have access to critical
services. And I’ll reinstate Temporary Protected Status designations and
Deferred Enforced Departure to protect individuals at risk in their home
countries, including migrants from the Caribbean and Africa that have built
lives and businesses in our country.
Raise the refugee cap. At a time
when 70 million are
displaced around the world, President Trump has abused his authority to lower
the refugee cap for the United States, admitting just over 22,000 refugees in
total last year. I’ll welcome 125,000 refugees in my first year, and ramping up
to at least 175,000 refugees per year by the end of my first term.
Affirm asylum protections. We should
welcome those fleeing violence, not imprison them in cages. As president, I
will reverse Trump’s efforts to stack the deck against asylum applicants. I’ll
ensure that asylum seekers can safely present themselves at ports of entry for
humane, efficient processing, including by ending the metering and “Remain in
Mexico” policies. I’ll restore President Obama’s promise to extend asylum for
those fleeing domestic or gang violence and affirm asylum protections for gender
identity and sexual orientation-based asylum claims. I’ll streamline processes
to eliminate the backlog of individuals waiting for an asylum adjudication. And
I’ll pardon those convicted of providing food and water to migrants — because
no one should go to jail simply providing humanitarian aid to another person in
need.
Grow
Legal Immigration and Establish a Fair and Achievable Path to Status
As
president, I’ll work to expand legal immigration. I’ll also take executive
action to provide a measure of protection for those who are undocumented, while
pursuing a legislative solution that provides a path to citizenship.
Expand legal immigration. America
should welcome more legal immigration — done in the right way and consistent
with our principles. We should use targeted immigration as a tool to create
jobs and businesses and grow our economy. We should reflect our values, which
means expanding family reunification and making it easier for relatives of
citizens and green card holders to come to the United States. We should put
American workers first by ensuring that workers already here get the first
opportunity to fill any available positions. We should empower workers, not
employers, by coupling any expansion of legal immigration with real
accountability on employers who break the rules, exploit workers, or don’t
adhere to basic labor standards. And we should be transparent and data-driven
in our immigration policies, using the best available information to identify
true needs in the labor force and to address those needs in a way that
incorporates the input of both workers and companies.
Make it easier for those eligible for citizenship
to naturalize. Today
over 9 million green card holders are eligible to apply for citizenship but
many have not chosen to naturalize due to unnecessary barriers, including the
cost of applications, the complexity of the process, and administrative issues
and backlogs. I’ll work to make it possible for everyone who is eligible to
naturalize to do so.
Reduce the family reunification backlog. As many as 4
million immigrants who are otherwise eligible to come to the United States
legally are prohibited because of by-country visa caps. My administration will
redistribute unused visas to reduce this backlog and reunite more families with
their loved ones. I’ll also urge Congress to repeal laws that make family
reunification more difficult to achieve.
Repeal the 3- and 10-year bars. The law
currently requires a person unlawfully in the United States to depart the
country for three or ten years before they can apply for legal status. I’ll
petition Congress to repeal that requirement. In the meantime, I’ll reinterpret
“extreme hardship” to include family separation, making it easier to obtain a
waiver allowing people to apply for legal status without having to leave the
country for an extended period of time.
Provide a fair and achievable pathway to
citizenship. For
the good of our economy and our communities, it’s long past time to provide a
path forward for the approximately 11 million undocumented individuals
currently living and working in the Unites States. We should immediately
reinstate the DACA program and protections for our Dreamers and their families.
I’ll expand the program to cover more young people by extending the cut-off
date, eliminating the arbitrary application age requirement, and extending the
“minor” designation to anyone who was brought to the U.S. under the age of 18.
But Dreamers have families and communities that are productive, longtime
members of our American family and need protection too. The same is true of the
Temporary Protected Status and Deferred Enforced Departure holders. I’ll extend
the individual exercise of discretion to offer deferred action protections to
hardworking immigrants who have contributed to our country for years and have
built careers and families here. And I’ll push for a far-reaching legislative
fix that provides a fair but achievable path to citizenship for them.
Limit the penalties considered for status
determinations. Part
of focusing on real threats means distinguishing between actual criminals and
law-abiding immigrants. We shouldn’t penalize people for prior convictions
under statutes that criminalize border crossing for the purpose of status
determinations. And we should establish a statute of limitations for how long a
misdemeanor will be considered as part of an individual’s immigration
adjudication. Citizens with minor, non-violent criminal records should not be
permanently excluded from being a part of American society — and immigrants
shouldn’t be, either.
Create an Office of New Americans. I’ll establish
an Office of New Americans dedicated to supporting new immigrants as they
transition into our society and economy, and task that office to draft a
national strategy for integration. We should provide English, civics, and
employment- focused classes and training for immigrants who want to enroll, and
work with faith groups and other community organizations to provide support
services for refugees and asylees, providing the tools to make it easier for
newcomers to integrate into their communities.
Address
the Forces Displacing Migrants from Their Home Countries
Migration
has spiked around the world, the result of poverty, climate change, violence
and injustice. Migrants have come to our country fleeing naturaldisasters or conflicts that forced them from
their homes.
In
recent years, many have fled north from the Northern Triangle. But the solution
to Central American migration isn’t placing children in cages, it’s stabilizing
the countries that families are risking their lives to escape. Rather than
addressing rampant corruption,
criminal gangs, and some of the
world’s highest rates of
gender-based violence, President Trump has cut off hundreds of millions of
dollars in aid for programs that provide vital support.
We
cannot fully address migration until we address its root causes. Now more than
ever, the United States must reclaim its role as the world’s beacon of hope —
and that means proposing bold and nuanced solutions to these complex
challenges. As president, I will:
Restore and increase aid. I’ll commit at
least $1.5 billion annually in aid to fully fund programs that target crime,
disrupt trafficking, address poverty, reduce sexual violence, and enhance
programs for at-risk youth in Central America and throughout our hemisphere —
and I’ll rally the international community to match those funds.
Step up efforts to address transnational crime. A Warren
administration will expand efforts to reduce corruption and improve the rule of
law, investigate and prosecute human trafficking, employ targeted financial
sanctions against drug kingpins and money launderers, and provide robust
funding for efforts to counter gangs.
Inform and protect those seeking refuge. My
administration will provide information about the right to seek asylum,
reinstate the Central American Minors program, and coordinate with the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to help resettle children and families
who need protection. We’ll also do more to spread awareness about the dangers
of attempting migration across borders to help prevent vulnerable people from
being exploited along the way.
Vice President Joe Biden campaigning for the Democratic nomination for President in Iowa.
Celebrating the Fourth of July with Iowans in Marshalltown, Vice President Joe Biden, campaigning for the Democratic nomination for President, expressed what the holiday is really about and how Donald Trump doesn’t get it. Here is his speech, as prepared for delivery, with segments highlighted:
Ladies and gentlemen, it’s great to be back in Iowa celebrating the independence of our country and the incredible promise of the American future.
243 years ago, a group of rebels in Philadelphia pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to a revolutionary idea—to the self-evident truth that all men—and women—are created equal.
And ever since then presidents and patriots have gathered together on the 4th, as we are gathered today, to reflect on the greater meaning of our American experiment.
In 1821, just decades after revolution, John Quincy Adams proclaimed: “[America’s] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind.”
In 1861, Abraham Lincoln invoked the Declaration to make the case for the Civil War, reminding Congress that it would be: “a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men; to lift artificial weights from all shoulders; to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all.”
In 1962, deep in the grip of the Cold War, Kennedy made the pilgrimage to Independence Hall to declare that: “this Nation—conceived in revolution, nurtured in liberty, maturing in independence—has no intention of abdicating its leadership in that worldwide movement for independence to any nation or society committed to systematic human oppression.”
Three different presidents, of three vastly different eras, united by their faith in the power of the idea that is America. Constant in their dedication to the pursuit of humankind’s highest ideal—liberty.
What, I wonder, will Donald Trump say this evening when he speaks to the nation at an event designed more to stroke his ego than celebrate American ideals?
Will he speak to the example America must set to inspire the world? Will he offer a robust defense of the democratic values that have always been our strength in times of crisis?
We all know the answer to that. Donald Trump is incapable of celebrating what makes America great—because he doesn’t get it.
He cannot distinguish between our Allies and our adversaries—because he does not grasp that America is the “march of the mind” toward greater openness, greater understanding, greater human freedom to pursue lives of meaning and fulfillment.
And if we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation. We can’t let that happen.
Trump’s embrace of dictators and strongmen is a fundamental rejection of everything our founders wrote into their Declaration.
Vladimir Putin in Russia, Kim Jong Un in North Korea, Mohamad bin Salman in Saudi Arabia—their drive to concentrate greater and greater power in their own hands and to silence their opposition, including through brutal assassinations—that is the death of liberty.
Last week, Putin gave an interview where he crowed: “the liberal idea has become obsolete.”
Trump thought he was talking about Democrats in California. Not a joke.
Our president does not understand the difference between liberal as opposed to conservative politics, and liberal as opposed to autocratic systems of government.
Well, I’m here to tell Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump, and anyone who needs to hear it:the liberal idea is the American idea. And it will never be obsolete—not as long as there remain patriots committed to the higher ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The liberal idea is what drives innovation and entrepreneurship. The liberal idea is what inspires art and exploration and human curiosity. And—critically—the liberal idea is what built the Free World.
The Free World is an American design. We created it, together with our democratic allies in Europe and in Asia after World War II, to hold in check the abuse of power by any one nation, and to affirm a collective defense, open economies, and human rights.
The Free World drove the march of democracy, prevented a third great war, protected the territorial integrity and sovereignty of small states, allowed unprecedented economic growth and development, and advanced basic human rights and fundamental freedoms in every corner of the world.
Ours is a community of values that stands in opposition to all who seek to profit by the oppression of others.
That’s why Putin wants to see it destroyed. That’s why he’s actively working to tear apart our democracy.
Ladies and gentlemen – America is the heart of the Free World—and we must defend it.
That is how the Fourth of July is best honored – by remembering that our Declaration is first and foremost a call to arms, in defense of liberty.
But we must also remember, as JFK put it, that ours is: “not the individual liberty of one but the indivisible liberty of all.”
Donald Trump doesn’t get that either.
My liberty, depends on yours. Our liberty as a nation rests on our ability to ensure equal access, equal opportunity – not just for our own children, but all our children.
We have to take on the inequalities in our system that are causing too many today— in America and around the world—to question their faith in the ability of democracy to deliver for them.
It’s not enough to be for political equality—we have to be for economic fairness as well.
It’s not enough to be against the way Donald Trump conducts himself—the way he assaults the dignity of women, people of color, immigrants, LGBTQ individuals—we have to be against his policies that are further entrenching economic inequality in this nation.
That are rigging the system against the middle class.
That too is an attack on our democracy—on our liberty.
That’s the message I’ve been taking all across this nation.
And it’s all the more clear today – on the day we celebrate our independence—this country wasn’t built by Wall Street bankers and CEOs and hedge fund managers.
It was built by you. By ordinary Americans – given half a chance – doing extraordinary things. That’s the history of the journey of America.
My dad used to have an expression. He’d say a job is about a lot more than a paycheck. It’s about dignity. It’s about respect. It’s about one’s place in the community. It’s about being able to look your child in the eye and say everything is going to be ok. And mean it.
But today so many people can’t do that. That’s what we have to change. That is my north star.
The moral obligation of our time is to rebuild the middle class. And this time, everybody comes along – no matter their race, gender, ethnicity, religion,who they love or where they live or whether they have a disability.
For me, it’s all about restoring the dignity of work – being able to provide security and joy for your family.
But how can a person’s dignity be maintained if they can’t afford to care for a sick child or a family member because of a pre-existing condition – or because they’ve reached a point where their health insurer says “no more?”
I can’t imagine what Jill and I would have done with Beau if we couldn’t get the best care to ease his pain and suffering while dealing with an incurable disease.
How can a parent maintain their dignity if their talented and qualified child wants to go beyond high school to trade school or community college or college, but they can’t afford to get them there?
I remember how my father felt when he told me the bank wouldn’t give him a loan to help me go to college. He said, “I’m so ashamed.” I got there – but I’ll never forget that look on his face.
Today’s corporate culture and this Administration don’t care about your dignity. They don’t care about economic fairness.
They’re squeezing the life out of workers. They’re making it harder for you to bargain for your personal worth as well.
40% of workers have to sign non-compete clauses at some point in their careers.
These non-compete agreements have one purpose: to hold down the ability of workers to bargain for themselves and to keep their wages low.
And why do companies classify so many low-wage workers as managers?
So they can get out of paying overtime and take more in profits for themselves. That cost more than 4 million hourly workers $1.2 billion in lost wages last year.
And speaking of overtime – it’s long past time we make a $15 minimum wage at the federal level.
It’s time we started to reward work over wealth in this country.
Let me ask you something.
The stock market is roaring. Do you feel it?
Or how about that big tax cut passed by Trump and the Republicans? Did you feel it?
That tax cut exploded the deficit by some $2 trillion – and now the Republicans are using it as an excuse to go after the social safety net.
Let’s not kid one another. If Trump and the Republicans win in 2020 – they’re coming after Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security.
They’ve already said it. And we can’t let that happen.
So, we need to reverse the Trump tax cuts on the super wealthy. And then we need to get rid of the capital gains loophole.
A just economy—an economy that advances liberty for all—isn’t one where the super wealthy pay lower tax rates than teachers and firefighters.
The Fourth is also a reminder of an important lesson we learned early in this county.
As Benjamin Franklin supposedly said at the signing: “We must all hang together, or most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”
Folks, we need to unify this country. We have to overcome this status quo of division—that’s the only way we’ll be able to get anything done.
And we can do it without compromising our principles. Marshalltown knows that better than anyone—what do you do when disaster strikes? You come together.
Mr. Mayor, how did you begin rebuilding after that God-awful tornado? By working together with the city council and the local businesses.
It didn’t matter whether folks were Democrats or Republicans then—all that mattered was getting Marshalltown back up and running.
You made that happen—you’re still making that happen.
It goes to show that all that stands in our way is a broken political system.
Folks, for all our problems, I’m more optimistic today than when I got elected to the United States Senate as a 29-year old kid.
And here’s why: We’re better positioned than any nation in the world to lead the 21st Century.
We have the strongest military in the world. We have led not by the example of our power, but by the power of our example. The most productive workers among major world economies. North America is energy independent. We have the world’s greatest research universities.
No other nation in the world can match us. The only thing that can tear America apart is America itself.
The only thing that would make the liberal idea obsolete is if Americans walked away from liberty itself.
Everybody knows who Donald Trump is.
This July 4th, let’s remind the world who we are.
This is the United States of America.
This is the nation that willed ourselves into existence with nothing but faith in ourselves and in the power of an idea.
There’s not a single thing we can’t do – together.
