Clark Criticizes Dean's Business Proposal

[Feanorcurufinwe]

Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark criticized rival Howard Dean on Wednesday, arguing that the front-runner's business proposal is a throwback to failed Republican policies and abandons the success of former President Clinton.

The retired Army general, in the harshest assessment of a rival to date, said Dean's plan to re-regulate U.S. businesses is a major departure from Clinton, who strongly backed deregulation of energy and telecommunications markets.

"The results in the '90s spoke for themselves," Clark said at a brief news conference in which he referred to Clinton by name six times. The 1980s style "regulation is not going to get our economy moving again. It failed in the past, it will fail again."

<snip>

Clark, who has enlisted several of Clinton's economic advisers for his campaign, said the Democratic Party's hopes of toppling President Bush next year are doomed if they support more regulations.

"I don't think our party can win a general election if we abandon proven policies that have worked, that were the cornerstone of our success," he said, citing job growth and balanced budgets of the Clinton years as opposed to the deficits of the Reagan-Bush years.
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20031119_1781.html

[kalashnikov]

1. hmmm

iam so suprised that someone with a masters degree from Oxford in economics would know so much more about regulation than an M.D.

[sandnsea]

2. SEC Deregulation

There was alot of deregulation on the rules for corporations and banking and all of that in the 90's. That contributed to the economic scandals more than the deregulation of specific industries.

And on energy deregulation. The main reason Clinton wanted to deregulate energy is so new clean, renewable energy could provide the power instead of the local dirty, coal power plant. As long as the local company has a completely monopoly on the power, they have no incentive to improve their plants or invest in cleaner energy.

Unless we make them through environmental regulation and provide real R&D investment and tax incentives. Which is part of Kerry's Energy Independence Plan.

[Skwmom]

3. Email from Clark Campaign

In today's Washington Post, Governor Howard Dean said he plans to make a major departure from the proven economic strategy that our party adopted in the 1990s under Bill Clinton, the same economic strategy that brought us more than 22 million new jobs and the strongest economy in American history.

This is an area where the differences between the choices Howard Dean and Wes Clark would make for the country are clear.

The Clinton economic approach was to create jobs, wealth and growth by bringing labor and business together - not pitting them against each other. That's the only way to create real, long-term growth for both business and workers. And the results spoke for themselves: 22 million new jobs. 1970s-style regulation is not going to get our economy going again. It failed in the past. And it will fail again.

Clark agrees that we need to dramatically ramp up our efforts to hold corporate America responsible for their misconduct. He agrees that we need to limit media ownership. He agrees that we need far stronger protections for workers, consumers and our environment - going beyond where the Clinton administration went in several respects, as times and circumstances have changed, too.

Clark's jobs plan is based on the core Clinton formula of creating jobs by investing in urgent needs and investing in our people, especially in the hard-hit manufacturing sector.

Clark proposed a $2.35 trillion Savings for America's Future plan to restore our fiscal discipline. He supports unleashing high growth job-creation sectors like high technology and why he supports a strong science and technology program.

Clark will make unprecedented investments in our human capital: in health care, in education, in job training. He will promote smart, fair, market-based incentives regulatory reforms, rather than red tape, and volumes of outdated regulations.

[helleborient]

4. Clinton did have a little thing called the Internet to help out the

Economy in the 1990's.

Does Wesley Clark have something like that up his sleeves?

[KittyWampus]

7. Understanding Clark's Comments

From what I remember... Clark would recind tax cuts AND cut Pentagon Funding by 25% and create jobs by spending on First Responders (Homeland Security) & Green Technology etc.

Krugman points out that jobs and wealth are NOT finite resource like gold or land (see his Editorial about Lumps of Labor).

Common wisdom would be to pass legislation preventing U.S. jobs from moving over seas... this is the traditional Republican view of the past and Krugman recommends that Democrats not take up this tactic at the present moment.

The best idea is to create MORE JOBS... by investing in infrastructure, first responders and new technologies.

Actually, allowing Dell to move its Technical support jobs to India is good because it creates higher wage (relatively speaking) jobs in India so they will have a stronger middle class to buy our exports.

The problem right now is Junior & Co. has done NOTHING to create jobs.

Clark spoke at the Iowa Townhall a while back and spoke about how we are now in a global economy and that older models aren't really working any more.

His solution was to require Industry to notify the Government IN ADVANCE when they move jobs overseas so that the Government can relocate & retrain workers.

Clark, in this context, made it clear that workers will have to be more flexible and mobile. If he closes a MIlitary base somewheres then the people who lose jobs may have to relocate to somewheres where a solar oven plant is opening.

[sandnsea]

9. The Telecommunications 'Deregulation' Act

Which spurred investment in fiber optics, wireless and satellite technologies; funded rural internet development, allowed small local business access to corporate lines, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Not to mention tax credits for business investment and grants for schools, governments and other non-profits to wire their buildings. It didn't happen accidentally.

We need to do the same thing with the next generation of technologies, which Kerry proposes to be renewable and sustainable energy. He worked with the Democrats to do it with the internet bill so he already knows what worked well and what didn't.

[eileen_d]

5. His next step should be to criticize Dean's Iraq plan

Since Clark obviously has more credibility on that issue. And Dean's Iraq plan was last updated on April 9th.

[poskonig]

6. I'm not thrilled with this.

In fact, this is what put me back in the Dean camp.

Democrats should be speaking out about the media concentration and energy deregulation, not promoting it.

[KittyWampus]

8. The Article Cited Here Gives No Accurate Information Whatsoever

It doesn't give us a transcript to Dean's entire speech... only a select quote from Dean.

It doesn't give us Clark's whole comment.

It doesn't give us the specifics regarding WHAT PART of Dean's plan he is critiquing.


What this article DOES give us is its writer's OWN PERSONAL characterization of what Dean said.


There is no question in my mind that the media is now trying to smear Clark by making him appear incapable of dealing with Domestic issues.

The notion of Dean as a Populist is absurd given his record as Governor in Vermont.

[sandnsea]

10. It's not that simple

We can't just follow a candidate because he spouts off something that creates an emotional response. The answers to media concentration and energy deregulation are completely different. The media is easy, put the fairness act back in place or change the number of stations a corporation can own again. Energy isn't that simple because if you want to use wind farms in North Dakota to power Los Angeles, you have to have a different grid system. We've got to start looking deeper at these things to see what each candidate is going to do.

And Dean was all for Energy Deregulation in Vermont in 1998, totally behind a Senate bill that the Legislature killed. Why did he change his mind? Lots of states are deregulated and having no problem at all. California's problems were unique to their deregulation plan. What specifically does Dean see that works and doesn't work? If WE have the power, WE need to make these candidates give us the details, be consistent and answer the tough questions.