Leading Iowa Forward:
Building on Our Strengths in Agriculture, Manufacturing & Education
Overview: Good Jobs with Good Benefits
I’m running for Governor of Iowa because I believe we can build on our traditional strengths in agriculture, manufacturing, and education to create good jobs, with good benefits, that reach into every corner of the state.
In the last seven years -- thanks to our first Democratic governor in thirty years, Tom Vilsack – Iowa has made important strides in meeting the new challenges of the 21st Century. But it is no time to slow down, stop and rest, or especially to turn back – we need a new Governor, with ideas and vision, who will lead Iowa forward.
I believe that the challenges Iowa faces are interconnected: I believe it’s not a luxury but a right for every citizen to have access to quality affordable health care. I believe our public schools are good, but can be better. Our colleges and community colleges are some of the best, but are becoming too expensive. Our seniors have a right to live in dignity on their life’s savings. But all of these issues ultimately come down to the ability of families to find and hold a job with good wages and good benefits, including affordable health care.
The single best thing we can do to make sure that all Iowans have the things I believe in – a high quality of life, the opportunity to earn a decent living, affordable health care coverage, the ability to make ends meet and still have time to spend with their kids, the promise of a dignified retirement – is to ensure a thriving economy here, with industries that pay good wages and provide good benefits, like they used to do.
I have four basic principles for how we’re going to do that:
- Create the jobs of the future here in Iowa.
- Ensure these are good jobs with good benefits.
- Lay the foundation by preparing our people.
- Share the progress with every Iowan.
I. Creating the Jobs of the Future Here in Iowa
We’re going to build on our traditional strengths – our agriculture and manufacturing industries, and our commitment to and excellence in education – but to create create and attract the jobs of the future to Iowa. Technology is changing the opportunities and the challenges in every field. We want to re-grow our manufacturing job base because manufacturing industries provide steady jobs with good pay, career ladders, and collective representation for workers – but we’re not going to do that in the 21st Century by trying to bring back jobs manufacturing lowmargin products. We want to revive our agricultural heritage – but it will take more to do that than simply continuing to grow the world’s best corn, beans and hogs.
What are the policies needed?
I will propose a range of policies to encourage the growth of these kinds of industries and jobs in Iowa:
A. Ensuring that tax incentives really reward companies that produce good jobs with benefits – instead of when they don’t. My plan will eliminate tax loopholes that don’t deliver good jobs and replace it with a real tax incentive for real job creation; ensure that the uses, costs and benefit of these public tax dollars for incentives are available for public review; and require companies that accept state or local tax breaks, or other subsidies, to sign a “jobs contract” with Iowa’s people – and if they pull out or lay off, they’ll also have to pay back, with penalties.
B. Building the 21st Century infrastructure our businesses need. Technology is the foundation of the New Economy. Ten years ago, a business without a telephone would have been inconceivable; today, various forms of information technology have become equally vital to business competitiveness – yet many in Iowa lack access to the basic infrastructure of the Information Age. We must expand on our existing technology-transfer initiatives and retain and target tax incentives for investments in technology infrastructure, plant and equipment, and R&D.
C. Promoting manufacturing. Manufacturing has been a mainstay of Iowa’s economy. We must make it that again – manufacturing jobs provide good incomes and opportunities for promotion, and manufacturing industries build off Iowa’s existing workforce and skills base. But we must seek out manufacturing jobs in the fields of the future– such as alternative energy and renewable fuels - and not look in vain to the industries of the past. My plan for Iowa’s economy will provide technical support on implementing best business practices, company assessments; strategic advice on management, production planning, quality control, environmental and safety issues, and workforce development; help with facility layout, planning, and design; process assessment and improvement; and other business services.
D. Encouraging entrepreneurship. Iowa is a state of small businesses – and that’s a strength. Small businesses create more jobs each year than the entire Fortune 500 put together. My plan will encourage entrepreneurship and start-ups in our state by promoting venture capital, start-up opportunities for dislocated workers, training for entrepreneurship, and expanded business incubator programs – and creating an Office of Small Business Development whose sole mission will be to help create, grow, and expand small businesses.
E. Attracting the capital new businesses need today. Start-ups can’t start up without capital – especially in the technology and manufacturing fields. My plan will focus tax incentives on small and family-run business growth, R&D investment, and venture capital funds, and expand state loan and loan-guarantee programs to encourage availability of capital for start-up enterprises and small businesses in strategic industries.
II. Ensuring that We Create Good Jobs With Good Benefits
We’re going to reward businesses that create good jobs with good benefits – and we’re going to penalize those businesses that try to cheat us. We’re not going to pay businesses to underpay workers – I want an Iowa filled with jobs that pay a wage that values the work our people do and allows them to support a family, provide their children with health care, and save for their own retirement.
A. Make Work Pay. My plan starts by making work pay: My main strategy – as outlined above – is very simple: We ought to attract the jobs that pay more. As I have also already mentioned, I will provide government assistance only for real job creation with good benefits. We will raise the minimum wage to at least $7.25 an hour.
B. Ensure Families Have Health Insurance. There is more to a good job than good wages: Families need good benefits, as well, and foremost among these is health care coverage. My plan will help small businesses to afford to offer such coverage to their employees through low-cost health insurance purchasing options. It will create portable health benefits for independent workers, to encourage entrepreneurship and start-ups. And my plan will reward companies that provide health coverage by providing state contracting preferences for those that do so.
C. Build for Retirement. A good job doesn’t just provide protection for a worker’s family today – it allows the worker to safeguard the family’s future, as well. My plan will make sure that, in Iowa, more jobs provide retirement security, by creating pension portability programs that make it easier for small businesses to offer pension programs to their workers, and that make it easier for workers to take pension savings with them from job to job within Iowa in today’s mobile economy.
III. Laying the Foundation by Preparing Our People
It isn’t enough to say that we’re going to encourage business to create good, high-paying jobs with good benefits: We’re going to prepare our people to hold the jobs the industries-of-the-future will generate, and to excel at them. In fact, that is government’s most important role in promoting economic development and opportunity – ensuring that all residents have access to education and skill development to be productive and contributing members of the community. Investing in our human capital – Iowa’s great people, our traditionally high-quality educational system, a 21st-Century workforce development system – is the single best thing we can do to attract the kinds of jobs and industries we want.
My plan recognizes that Higher-Earning Opportunities must start with Higher-Learning Opportunities. That’s why it will make two guarantees to all Iowans and their families:
- Guarantee Number One: If you graduate from high school, we will guarantee you’re educated well enough for higher ed or a good job. In fact, we will ensure that every Iowan who graduates from 12th grade really has received the opportunity for the equivalent of 13 years of education.
- Guarantee Number Two: If you can get into college, we will guarantee that you can afford to go – and to complete it.
That’s what we need to do as a state in the 21st Century, in order to compete with the rest of the world, sell our products across the country and the world, attract business from around the globe to employ our workers, and retain our young people and rebuild our communities right here in Iowa. That’s why, as Governor, I will guarantee it. And here’s how we’ll do it.
A. Start Our Kids Off on the Right Foot. All the evidence shows that children learn better and attain higher if we make sure they all start off with early childhood education and health care. We need to ensure that every Iowa child arrives at the first day of school ready to learn. My plan will provide effective outreach programs to encourage reading and early childhood development for every Iowa child, improve child care quality and affordability for working Iowa families, and make child care a profession that itself pays a decent wage.
B. Lay a Firm Foundation. I know something about K-12 education – I would be the only Governor in the nation who has been in the classroom in the last twenty years. I’m committed to our schools and our students, and I know that for Iowa to compete we must expect the highest-quality standards in both. My plan will build off Governor Tom Vilsack’s success in promoting higher teacher standards and attracting better-qualified teachers with new initiatives to improve teacher pay and creating expanded enrichment opportunities for all kids.
C. Prepare Students for Careers. School must be the start of a lifelong process of learning – and our schools need to be better connected to that entire process. My plan will implement the acclaimed “High Schools That Work” model in schools and districts with particularly challenging student demographics and achievement levels. We will restructure career & technical education to promote both occupational and academic skills acquisition, and prepare the way for post-secondary education and career success. And we’ll create cutting-edge technical schools within institutions of higher education.
D. Make College More Affordable. The vast majority of jobs in the New Economy will require at least some amount of college education. The steps I’ve touched on to this point will ensure that every Iowan with the ability to do so is ready to enter college. But that’s not enough – it’s increasingly difficult to go to college, or stay there, because of costs. My plan will direct more state investment into higher ed; expand scholarship opportunities; create Targeted Loan Forgiveness programs for those who remain in Iowa after graduation in fields of critical need, such as nursing; and make it easier, faster and cheaper to earn college credits through increased access to college credits in high school.
E. Make Iowa a Center of “The Education Economy.” Most people don’t realize it, or think about it in these terms, but higher education is already one of Iowa’s leading “export” industries: Our world-class universities attract more out-of-state students than those of any other state, bringing in capital from out-of-state in return for our providing world-class services to non-Iowans. Even though most of our graduates leave at the end of college, our state economy profits enormously from the student dollars we bring into Iowa from elsewhere. We can do even better by building on, rather than disinvesting in, our higher ed institutions, so that more students stay in Iowa after graduation and, along with their faculties, help to build the research and manufacturing spin-offs that higher ed has generated for economies elsewhere. My plan will expand investments in colleges across Iowa, including creating Centers of Excellence at each of our public colleges and universities so that each can become a generator of world-class new businesses and economic activity, and better integrate all facets of higher ed with business.
IV. Sharing the Progress with Every Iowan
And, finally, we’re going to make sure that the benefits of a vibrant society and economy flow to every Iowan. We don’t want to create jobs, economic growth, and opportunity just in one corner – or even in four corners – of Iowa, but across the state, in every community, for every family. My plan will:
A. Provide A Helping Hand for Those Who Need It. Not every family or community will make it on their own, even with the policies for growth and opportunity I’ve outlined above. Sometimes, everyone needs a little help. My plan will make sure we provide that by reviving rural areas through programs to boost value-added agriculture; attacking poverty by building equity, through efforts like Individual Development Accounts, assistance for first-time home buyers, access to reasonable credit and banking, and financial literacy programs; protecting working and retired families from predatory financial practices that exploit them through deceptive practices and exorbitant interest rates in mortgage lending and payday lending areas.
B. Produce Healthier Families & Children. Health care costs increasingly burden not just poor Iowans but virtually everyone. I believe it’s not just a luxury but a right for every citizen to have access to high-quality, affordable health care, rather than tiered medical care based on who has the wealth to pay. My plan will expand Hawk-I to cover parents as well as children up to 200% of the federal poverty level, to make sure that more families have access to basic care. And we will also make health insurance more affordable & accessible for all Iowans by providing incentives for all business to provide health insurance for their workers, creating low-cost insurance alternatives for those without employer-provided coverage, extending low-cost benefits to lower-cost young people, and providing a program specifically for the temporarily unemployed.
C. Honor the Greatest Generation. Iowa is blessed with one of the largest senior populations in the country. We need to ensure that those who need help have it, and those among the “New Elderly” have the expanded opportunities they seek. My plan will make prescription drugs more affordable through bulk-purchasing plans, promotion of generics, a senior discount program; develop Iowa as a center of telemedicine and elderly assistive technologies; place greater emphasis on home- and communitybased care; and address the nursing shortage through targeted scholarships.
