New Democrat Update

BOOSTING COLORADO’S RURAL ECONOMY

Economically, Colorado has effectively become “two states.” One part is prosperous, dynamic, and growing metro areas while the other is poorer, stagnant rural areas. Even during the go-go 1990s, almost half of the nation's 2,305 rural counties lost both population and employment. While urban poverty declined between 1997 and 2000, rural poverty did not. Rural Americans now make $10,900 less annually than their urban counterparts, up from $5,893 less in 1978.

Unfortunately, rural America rarely hears any useful ideas from either political party. The Republican message is “you’re on your own” while Democrats too often write-off these voters. Not surprisingly, the combined Democratic votes for statewide offices in 2002 often hovered around only 30 percent in some rural Colorado counties.

Democrats can become more politically competitive by paying closer attention. Activist government has had a long and important role in helping rural economies, from the Homestead Act, to the New Deal efforts to bring vast swaths of the South and West into the modern economy, to the efforts by President John F. Kennedy to revitalize Appalachia. The time is very ripe for a similar effort today.

Our party should advocate helping with infrastructure, workers’ skills, entrepreneurial energy, access to capital for small businesses, and quality of life issues needed to succeed in today’s economy. Policymakers can also promote widespread deployment of high-speed telecommunication services and funding for research that increases the demand for products and services likely to be produced in rural areas.

Democrats should also push private-public partnerships that catalyze and support innovative development efforts, support research on rural economic growth and evaluation of best practices in rural economic development, and fund research in technologies - such as wind energy - that are most likely to generate jobs in rural areas.

For example, state Democratic leaders should aggressively support a ballot initiative that will require major power providers to generate more energy from wind, solar and other renewable sources. Ironically, the proposal has been defeated in the state legislature for four straight years, due to opposition from rural power providers.

In addition to being economically good for rural Colorado, wind power reduces our dependence on foreign oil, creates new jobs, improves environmental quality (each cent spent on wind power keeps a pound of carbon dioxide out of the air) and boosts the state’s technological leadership, given the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s presence in Golden.

Wind power - the fastest growing source of worldwide electricity generation over the last decade - potentially can supply up to 10 percent of the world's energy by 2017. In 2003, 26 states supplied 6,374 megawatts of wind power - enough energy to serve nearly 3 million homes. Better yet, it costs less than natural gas and coal.

According to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), a 250-acre farm can generate up to $14,000 a year in extra income from wind power leases and royalties while idling fewer than three acres from crop production. In addition to benefitting farmers and ranchers directly, the AWEA notes that wind power can create construction and maintenance jobs, expand local tax bases, and save public and private dollars that would otherwise be spent on fossil fuels from faraway sources.

As detailed in a recent Progressive Policy Report, much more can be done to revitalize rural economies. For a hard copy of Robert A. Atkinson’s “Reversing Rural America’s Economic Decline,” contact Jim Gibson at 303-860-7183 or info@coloradodlc.org.

Advocating sensible 21st century policies will help rural economies grow, reduce congestion and costs to businesses and residents in large metropolitan areas, and increase the standard of living for people in both places. Democrats should take the lead in bridging the growing gap between Colorado’s two economies.

HEALTH CARE FOR ALL

It is a moral imperative that America make universal access to health coverage a top priority. Almost as important, universal coverage serves the interests of those who are currently insured and paying their rightful share - often more than their rightful share - for our nation’s fiscal and physical health.

According to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, about 43 million people are uninsured because health insurance is just too expensive for too many people. Premiums continue to skyrocket - 11 percent in 2001, 13 percent in 2002 and 14 percent in 2003. The American Association of Retired Persons reports that brand-name prescription drug prices rose almost three times the rate of inflation last year.

We can and must expand access to health care - without expanding bureaucracies. Some in our party are calling for a Canadian-style single-payer system, effectively a government takeover. This flawed approach relies on a federally centralized, top-down and sure-to-be unresponsive public monopoly.

Rather than importing foreign models, we should leapfrog the health systems of other advanced countries and create a distinctively American system that combines the best of U.S. medicine and free enterprise. Market-based reforms will preserve America's status as the world leader in medical technology and enliven the health-care market place with real, competition that helps improve quality while holding down costs, and dramatically moves toward universal access.

Covering the uninsured must be a shared responsibility, with the federal government providing help, states organizing new group purchasing options, employers handling enrollment and payroll deduction of premiums, and individuals taking responsibility to acquire coverage. We should use public funding and government oversight to ensure affordability and access, but rely on private markets and competition to spark innovation and restrain costs.

Under the New Democrat plan, all Americans would get help to purchase private health insurance through the use of tax credits, federally funded grants to states and voluntary purchasing groups. Unlike other proposals, this plan enhances, not weakens, employment-based coverage, ensuring that fair choices of health plans are available to all, young or old, healthy or sick.

In addition, an information clearinghouse would report on health quality and outcomes, not just health plans, but also among individual health providers, including hospitals and physician groups. Comparative information will spur quality improvements, help individuals make good choices and allow consumer advocates to make sound recommendations. Credible and understandable report cards on health plans and providers are an important place to start.

Individual responsibility is an essential ingredient. People without coverage become a burden on the system and an extra cost to taxpayers, as soon as they need the health care they cannot pay for.

With this plan in place, coverage for children would be universally affordable and available. As a result, those insured would have a right to expect that, at the very least, all children would be covered. Consequently, it is only fair to require parents to get their children insured. Otherwise, parents should forfeit the personal exemption - a small tax benefit - for any of their children who remained uninsured. Those who avoid getting coverage should pay the price when they impose their bills for costly care on the rest of us.

That ties the opportunity of being able to obtain insurance with the responsibility of having to get it. Universal coverage, coupled with consumer empowerment, is the strong medicine we need to make our health care system healthy.