Let's compare plans: Reviving the Manufacturing Sector.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

JOHN KERRY’S PLAN TO REVIVE THE MANUFACTURING SECTOR

(1) TAX BREAKS TO ENCOURAGE MANUFACTURERS TO STAY IN THE U.S. AND TO CREATE NEW JOBS. The Bush Administration has done nothing to end incentives that encourage manufacturers to move their jobs overseas. John Kerry believes that we should not only get rid of these incentives, but that we should give new tax breaks to companies that stay in the U.S. and create new jobs. He would:

• Stop Incentives to Move American Jobs Abroad. John Kerry will save jobs by ending the unpatriotic practice of U.S. corporations moving jobs offshore (known as inversions) to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. He also believes that these inverters should not get government contracts or any other perks or incentives from the government.

• Give Tax Breaks to Manufacturers in America. John Kerry supports efforts to promote manufacturing and provide incentives to keep manufacturing in the U.S. That’s why he supports the Crane-Rangel-Hollings legislation, which provides a corporate rate reduction to manufacturers who produce goods in the U.S.

• A New Manufacturing Jobs Credit. John Kerry has proposed a new jobs tax credit to encourage manufacturing companies to stay and expand in America. When a manufacturing company creates jobs above their 12 month employment average, the payroll taxes of the new employees will be refunded for two years.


(2) STRONG ENFORCEABLE TRADE THAT WORKS FOR AMERICA. The Bush Administration has not cracked down on countries that are avoiding trade laws or manipulating currency. President Bush has supported cutting funds for trade enforcement, despite the fact that we need more enforcement of trade laws to stop the manufacturing job drain. Some Democrats pretend that we can close our doors to the global economy. John Kerry believes we need strong leadership to assure that the global economy works for America.

• Assure Trading Partners Play by the Rules. Some nations have consistently violated agreements by the World Trade Organization. They have taken unfair actions to block U.S auto companies from selling in their markets. Many products from China are counterfeit or don’t meet industry standards. While this Administration has not used the remedies available under the World Trade Organization to crack down on these violations and help U.S industries, John Kerry would.

• Stop Countries from Manipulating Currency. China, Japan and other nations have purposely kept their currency undervalued relative to the U.S. dollar to promote exports in the United States and undermine U.S. products abroad. John Kerry believes we must use the full force of the World Trade Organization to take on countries that are manipulating their currency to undermine U.S. exports.

• Enforce and Strengthen Intellectual Property Protections. In the 21st economy, the U.S. relies more heavily on international partnerships and joint ventures. Intellectual property protections are essential in this environment so that companies can share their technology without losing control of it.

• Break Down Barriers in Key Export Markets. This Administration has done little to open key export markets in places like Japan and Korea. Some countries use non-tariff barriers, such as making it difficult to access finance or have obscure investment requirements, to undermine U.S. exports. For example, auto exports to Japan are still essentially blocked by complicated rules. John Kerry would use all the available tools, including Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act, WTO remedies, and diplomatic measures to open these markets.

• Review Existing Trade Agreements. John Kerry will also order an immediate 120 day review of all existing trade agreements to ensure that our trade partners are living up to their labor and environment obligations and that trade agreements are enforceable and are balanced for America’s workers. He will consider necessary steps if they are not. And John Kerry will not sign any new trade agreements until the review is complete and its recommendations put in place. He believes all new trade agreements must have strong labor and environmental standards.

(3) ASSURE A STRONG MANUFACTURING SECTOR FOR THE FUTURE. John Kerry believes we must keep manufacturing strong, as it is one of our most productive sectors and it is critical to the U.S. economy. In fact, every $1.00 in final demand for manufacturing products creates $2.43 in output, including demand for intermediate goods and services in other sectors.

• Tax Incentives and Subsidies to Develop Energy Efficient Products: Kerry will create hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs by investing in the new energy opportunities of the future. Kerry has a plan to provide tax credits and subsidies to manufacturers to develop the next generation of automobiles and new energy efficient appliances for homes and businesses.

• Double the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP). We know that the MEP helps make American manufacturers competitive. Yet this Administration has proposed to cut it nearly 90 percent. John Kerry believes we should invest in things that work, and has proposed to double funding for the MEP. John Kerry would also create Manufacturing Development Centers to help improve manufacturing. Finally, he would make it easier for small manufacturers to get loans and encourage investment by getting rid of capital gains tax for equity investments in small businesses.


• Assure Better Training and Retraining Programs for Manufacturing Workers. To keep the manufacturing sector healthy and strong, America needs a workforce with cutting edge skills, training, and knowledge. Kerry would: (1) in order to assure that are sufficient numbers of highly skilled workers, Kerry supports providing assistance for workers in declining industries to upgrade or develop necessary skills, and providing community-based grants to help train or retrain workers; (2) assure adequate Trade Adjustment Assistance to help workers transition; (3) encourage students studying engineering, computers, and other high-tech fields to work in the manufacturing sector by repaying a portion of student loans if they do; and (4) encourage better math and science instruction in our schools to assure more students have the skills to help the manufacturing sector grow.

(4) RELIEF FOR MANUFACTURERS THAT PROVIDE QUALITY HEALTH CARE AND RETIREMENT. Simply having employers absorb rising health care costs puts U.S. manufacturers at an impossible competitive disadvantage with overseas producers. General Motors estimated that as much as $1200 of each car sold goes towards health care costs and often labor negotiations are consumed by just maintaining health care coverage. John Kerry’s health care plan takes on the cost of health care by:

• Supporting a Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit That Rewards Retiree Coverage. Prescription drugs coverage consumes about 40% to 60% of the cost of retiree coverage. But under the drug benefit plan before Congress, employer coverage would not count towards the expenditures needed to reach the catastrophic cap. CBO has estimated that will cause about one-third of beneficiaries who would otherwise have coverage to lose it. John Kerry believes we need a quality affordable prescription drug benefit to relieve employers and employees from high drug costs by counting retiree coverage toward any cost-sharing.

• Controlling the Cost of Health Care - Saving Workers Up to $1,000 on Health Care. John Kerry believes that we need to stop the spiraling cost of health care to assure our employers can stay competitive in the global economy and so our families can afford health care. Four-tenths of one percent of claims accounted for nearly 20 percent of expenses private insurers. John Kerry has proposed a new 'premium rebate' pool that will give companies and insurers that guarantee a pass-through of the savings to their workers through reduced premiums, a reimbursement for 75 percent of catastrophic costs above $50,000. This would save up to $1000 for a family premium.

• Cutting Greed to Bring Down Rx Prices. Pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) process hundreds of millions of pharmaceutical claims per year, giving them a great deal of leverage in the market. They often get financial rebates or other savings they do not pass on to consumers. John Kerry’s plan would require transparency rules for PBMs that do business with the Federal government to clearly show what savings they are receiving from the industry and from bulk purchasing.

• Don’t Penalize Manufacturers With Pension Laws. Many manufacturers provide their employees with defined benefit pension plans – which assures workers dependable predictable income at retirement. However, under current law, manufacturers are required to set aside unrealistically high reserves to meet future obligations to their workers. These are resources that manufacturers could use to invest in new technologies, new plants, and hiring or advanced training for workers. John Kerry supports basing the law on a realistic long-term rate.
http://www.johnkerry.com/news/releases/pr_2003_0922b.html

What are the other candidate's plans for this?

[Lefty48197]

1. Here's Bush's plan:

Cut taxes for the ultra-wealthy so that the money will trickle down to those that will start a small business, and "create jobs" so that the rest of can be fortunate enough to have someone creating jobs for us.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

2. Screw Bush, he's outta there.

What are the other Democratic candidates' plans?

[Feanorcurufinwe]

7. Unless our candidate can't present a reason to vote Democratic.

Is Kerry really the only candidate addressing this issue?

Manufacturing means jobs. And some of the big industrial states that have been hit hardest in the decline of American manufacturing are 'swing states'.

[TrumanLover]

23. The "Ultra Wealthy"

The "Ultra Wealthy" are the people that run the corporations that Kerry wants to give the tax breaks to. The "Ultra Wealthy" are the people that due to tax breaks can afford to keep manufacturing jobs in the US. The "Ultra Wealthy" then go out and hire people who pay taxes that enable us to implement the social programs that benefit the less fortunate.

That's called Capitalism. It's only when you decide to tax the corporations and the "Ultra Wealthy" that they decide to do stupid things like move production off-shore, have mass layoffs and create poverty.

If there is no money in the pipeline there are no jobs or progams. Bottom line.

[Maple]

3. "The best laid plans

of mice and men......"

[LuminousX]

4. But you at least need to start with one

It is better to start with a plan so you know where you want to end up than have none.

[Maple]

5. A plan is useless

if it doesn't take the whole picture into account.

One man, in one country, making plans in a globalized world...has no plan.

It's nothing against the candidate, and plans are nice things to have...but the world is changing rapidly whether people like it or not...and 'plans' have to reflect that or they are a waste of time.

[DrFunkenstein]

22. Uh...What?

Do you think that economics was never brought up during his 18 years in the Foreign Relations Committee?

[TrumanLover]

24. Loss of Jobs

I was in a union once. In three years working for the company, we went on strike three times. The first over wage hikes. The second time over paying part of our medical and dental. Then wage hikes again. I went from making 3.65 and hour to better than 10 an hour. So figure a 260% increase in three years. Not too shabby.

Year four the plant closed down, because oversees the same product was being produced for less. The union blamed the owners for putting 2000 people out of work. The owners told the union exactly what was going to happen if our demands weren't modified.

Manufacturing is a delicate business. Many factors have to be taken into account to succesfully produce a product. What I learned from this experience is that a 3.65 per hour worker with little experience in the manufacturing world other than to swing a hammer every 25 seconds has no business in dictating policy to people who made this their lifes dream.

Today I am on the other side of the fence and now understand what happened those four years.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

6. This is a key component in getting our economy on track

AND in increasing tax revenues without raising taxes on the middle-class. The importance of the manufacturing sector can't be overstated.

For instance, in my part of Montana, the single largest employer, Smurfit-Stone, is considering closing their mill. Why? A shortage of lumber due to environmental lawsuits? No. Because of the decline of America's manufacturing sector:

In an interview Wednesday, Boschee said demand for corrugated packaging is down about 5 percent, primarily because so many American manufacturers have moved their plants - and, therefore, their demand for packaging - overseas.

Because the Frenchtown mill produces Kraft linerboard, which is used to make corrugated containers and linerboard boxes, it is affected by the shift in manufacturing overseas, he said.

"The manufacturing sector of our economy produces goods which need to be packaged and transported," Boschee said. "If those goods are not produced in the United States, then they are not being packaged in the United States."
http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2003/10/23/news/local/news03.txt

The service economy, the information economy -- matter a lot -- but our country also needs to produce things -- we can't all be waitresses or computer programmers.

[sandnsea]

8. Stone Container, closing?

Wow, that is shocking. Think that'll wake anybody up?

[Feanorcurufinwe]

9. Well they are only talking about it.

But they already shut down one of the machines.

If that happens next summer it's gonna be hard for Bush to convince folks here things are getting better.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

10. Ohio with 20 electoral votes, lost 15% of its manufacturing jobs this year

Surely Kerry isn't the only candidate with a plan for this.

[Name removed]

11. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

12. Am I wrong? Has manufacturing not declined in Ohio?

[Kolesar]

13. Like the rest of America

You cut and pasted and emboldened a bunch of text from Kerry's campaign, very nice. I don't think you understand the manufacturing situation. I read this plan and I don't see anything that would make a difference in the minds of any voters next year, nor make a difference in manufacturing employment in Ohio.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

14. Can you be more specific? Which candidate has better ideas? What are they?

[Kolesar]

15. You just posted thousands of kilobytes of Kerry policy to this forum

What do you expect the other board users to do? Jump into action and do comprehensive analyses of nine candidates' policies on five different issues (that you started and keep kicking).

Why don't you go to the other candidate's forums and compare and contrast their manufacturing policy to your candidate's manufacturing policy and get back to us. It is not my responsibility to develop that arguement for you.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

16. Why don't you post to one of the flame threads?

If you don't want to talk policy there are plenty of threads in which to trade insults.

Do you have anything to say about manufacturing policy, or is your point just that you don't like me?

[Mairead]

17. Dennis's plan might seem more sketchy than Kerry's

Or perhaps not.

Dennis's policy is that it's a matter of national security to have a manufacturing capability that goes all the way from raw materials such as steel up through finished goods.

So he would kickstart the rebuilding by dedicating $500G to infrastructure repair, which would also give work to about 2M people--a sort of 'WPA v2'.

What's not clear to me right now about his policy is the money flow. Where would that 500G come from and go to? I have the ugly suspicion that a G or so might subsidise building modern materials fabs, and that in general the money would come from our pockets.

Kerry takes a conventional approach, certainly: tax credits for the wealthy business owners, which would naturally come out of our pockets.

----------------------------------------

Dennis's position on healthcare, of course, is now well known: medicare for all, funded in part by a 7.7% payroll tax and part by aggregating all the current general-revenue monies that are making their way into healthcare by some pathway.

I think the payroll-tax idea is actually rather clever, though perhaps I'm giving Dennis more credit than he deserves. Once it's established that businesses will pay half, then it seems to me that they have an incentive to keep people employed, as otherwise the percentage of payroll tax they'll pay will have to rise with unemployment.

[blm]

18. Actually, they look pretty compatible.

I think their goals are similar, and they are both environmentally aware.

[Mairead]

19. I agree, they do...with one unknown

And that's the source of Dennis's funding. Kerry's program is clear about that--he's not going to break new ground by, e.g., having a slice off the war hog; he's going to get it from general taxation. Maybe he'd change his mind, but that's as speculative as trying to identify where Dennis plans to get the money. Me, I hope Dennis is planning to fund it by another slice from the hog, plus the money from the drugs war, but who knows if that would happen.

I wish you and Funk could get Kerry to turn left again...I bet his numbers would go up.

[sandnsea]

20. Turn left again?

In what way.

[Mairead]

21. Yes

Well, as BLM has often pointed out, up til recently Kerry has had as strong a conventionally-liberal record as Kennedy. He could be counted on to Do The Right Thing. Always!

But evidently when he decided to stand for Prez, he also made the mistake of schlucking the DLC koolaid. First he voted for the invasion--and thereby outraged a longtime supporter so badly that she stood against him for his Senate seat, picking up 25K votes in the 2 weeks she had with a campaign that must have cost her all of a dollar ninety-eight. My perception is that, since then, he's been trying to play DLCer without his heart being in it, and the contradictions are causing him to wobble, woffle, and get the hell beaten out of him.