Our health care system is broken, and H.R. 676, the Conyers-Kucinich bill, is the only comprehensive solution to the problem. It is also the system endorsed by more than 14,000 physicians from Physicians for a National Health Program. Nearly 46 million Americans have no health care and over 40 million more have only minimal coverage. In 2005 some 41% of moderate and middle income Americans went without health care for part of the year. Even more shocking is that 53% of those earning less than $20,000 went without insurance for all of 2005. In fact, the National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine estimates that 18,000 Americans die each year because they have no health insurance.
It is time to recognize that all the civilized countries have a solution that we must adapt to this country. American businesses can no longer be competitive shouldering the entire cost of health care. Health care is a right that all Americans deserve.
In the past three years, the U.S. has subjected the world community to a doctrine of preventive, unilateral, and illegal first strikes against "forces of evil" that have not attacked us. America has maintained into perpetuity an obsession with overwhelming U.S. military superiority. We have insisted that everyone else adhere to rules of international order that we have no intention of following ourselves. We have demonstrated a contempt for international organizations and any multilateral constraints whatsoever on the employment of American power.
Millions of citizens of the world have taken to their streets this past year to bravely protest our country's launching a foolish and dangerous war whose consequences we can still only dimly foresee. But the Department of Peace idea aspires to do more than just prevent particular wars. With a Department of Peace, we can articulate a vision of the future where humanity has abolished war itself.
Our country is facing twin crises: high unemployment and a decrepit infrastructure. At the same time, millions of manufacturing and high-tech jobs are being shipped overseas. I have a plan that will turn our problems around and put Americans back to work in America.
By pulling out of NAFTA, we can return jobs that have been lost, including high-wage jobs in the information technology field. By initiating a WPA-style jobs program that puts Americans back to work rebuilding America, we can create millions of jobs and simultaneously improve our quality of life.
The right of every American child to a high-quality free public education is one of America's most treasured principles. We must improve the quality of public education in those schools that are struggling and expand public education to include pre-kindergarten beginning at age 3 for any families that want it, as well as tuition-free college for millions of students.
I believe we can take our children and society in a new direction by challenging this notion that education should be so limited. We ought to be encouraging art, music, and creative writing in our schools. In doing so, we recognize and fuel the wide range of talents our children possess. Also See: Vouchers Floor Statements, 109th Congress: Reporting of School Bus RR Crossings Funded H.R. 609 Will Not Help Students Don't Let the War on Drugs Become a War on Children Students Pay for Tax Cuts for the Rich.
I see a new vision for American seniors. I see a country where all citizens can retire with full benefits at age 65, where social security will never become privatized, and where retirement years won't land in the hands of the stock market. I see an America where equal access and equal rights are obtained by all; where health care is regarded as a human right; and where the people who have lived to see this country grow can continue to grow old with it in peace.
By establishing a universal single-payer health plan, we can ensure that seniors never again resort to splitting pills or skipping medication to save costs, because they will already be covered. This plan, "Enhanced Medicare for All," provides comprehensive health coverage including prescription drugs, dental care, and complementary or alternative medicine. By removing the profit from health care coverage, patients and doctors will be put in charge of health care, instead of HMOs. My plan will cost employers, on average, less than they now pay -- those that provide coverage at all. Corporations don't heal people; people do.
The "Patriot Act" is not what American patriots have fought and died for. To allow our Bill of Rights to be nullified without judicial supervision invites tyranny. The Attorney General has been handed unfettered power to wiretap, search, jail, and invade our most sacred right to privacy. The government must not be allowed, without probable cause or warrant, to snoop on our communications, medical records, library records, and student records.
The time to stop the erosion of our rights is now. All elected officials want terrorists to be listened to and caught. Does anyone seriously believe that terrorists feel they can talk freely on the phone? The misleading and duplicitous response that the government can't talk about its secret programs even in secret sessions of Congress is, frankly, ludicrous.
In the summer of 2002, I was one of the few U.S. officials at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. To repair the earth, America must lead. We must reverse course on most Bush Administration policies and support the Kyoto Treaty that Bush rejected. We must strengthen environmental laws and increase penalties on polluters. We should provide tax and other incentives to businesses that conserve energy, retrofit pollution prevention technologies, and redesign toxins out of their manufacturing processes. Nontoxic, safe substitutes for hazardous chemicals must become permanent.
I would initiate a "Global Green Deal" to use our country's leadership in sustainable energy production to provide jobs at home, increase our independence from foreign oil, and aid developing nations with cheap, dependable, renewable energy technologies like wind and solar. A clean environment, a sustainable economy, and an intact ozone layer are not luxuries, but necessities for our planet's future.
The hopes and dreams of the men and women who sent me to Congress are the stars by which I journey. Whenever there is an organizing campaign, a picket line to walk, jobs to save, working conditions to improve, laws to champion, I'm there. This is my purpose: To stand up and to speak out on behalf of those who have built this country and who want to rebuild this country. This is my passion: To raise up the rights of working people. Workers' rights are the key to protecting our democracy.
It is the restoration of the rights of workers that will put us at the dawn of a new political age. The rights of workers are core principles of an American Restoration. These aren't mere political principles. These are timeless moral principles, about fairness, about equality, about justice.
