Back to Work - Bill Clinton [45]
That’s all nonsense. When I was governor of Arkansas, I raised taxes to fund education but supported tax cuts as incentives to get new jobs, eliminated the state income tax on 25 percent of our taxpayers (the bottom 25 percent), and kept our overall tax burden the second lowest in the country, just where it was when I took office. In the 1980s, Arkansas was one of the few states to gain manufacturing jobs and led our region in overall employment growth. By 1992, as I was running for president, Arkansas ranked first or second nationally in job growth all year long. When I left office as president, America’s overall tax burden was less than 20 percent of GDP, about our post–World War II average, and our federal spending was a little above 18 percent of GDP, both well below most other wealthy nations.
I do believe in American exceptionalism. My life has been graced by it. I just want it to be more than a hot-button campaign slogan. That’s why I want us to face facts, warts and all, and work together to give future generations the America they deserve.
Right now, in this fragile economy, I don’t favor raising taxes or reducing any government spending that can create or save jobs. But as the economy recovers, I want America to embrace a balanced approach that creates jobs, raises incomes across the board, and deals with our long-term investment and debt challenges.
The most important lesson you can take from this chapter is that in the twenty-first century, the American Dream requires progress we won’t achieve without effective government policies, including direct investments, incentives to speed business and job growth, and public-private partnerships to create an environment where these things can happen. Like it or not, there are a lot of things we have to do together. What are they, and what role should government play?
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1 China has now surpassed Germany in the production, though not in the deployment, of solar cells.
2 This is not an oxymoron. Though they profess a hatred of government, they spend lots of time and money to get control of it. In 2011, fourteen states in which Republicans held governorships and legislative majorities imposed new restrictions on voting rights, including photo ID requirements, restrictions on voter-registration drives, the elimination of election-day registration, and fewer days of early voting. According to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University these new laws and executive orders could “make it especially harder for more than five million eligible voters to cast ballots in 2012,” most of them young, minority, disabled, low income, and elderly. My favorite is Texas’ new law that accepts as proof of identity a concealed-weapons permit, but not a University of Texas student’s college ID card.
3 Dana Milbank, “How Rep. Austin Scott Betrayed His Tea Party Roots,” Washington Post, August 9, 2011.
4 See http://www.all4ed.org/files/Facts_For_Education_Adv_Jan2009.pdf.
5 One of the most interesting findings of the international student assessments is how well Finland is doing. Though it’s a small country, its students are a diverse lot. Forty-five languages are spoken in Helsinki schools. In the 1990s, Finland’s schools weren’t doing well. Instead of adopting a national testing program, Finland focused on defining excellence in teaching and learning. Every teacher has a master’s degree. Only one in ten applicants gets a teaching job. It’s the most respected, though not the highest-paid, profession. Though they don’t give any domestic tests, students do well on international tests. Only 4 percent of the schools are underperforming, and the country is rated among the very best in innovation and creativity, important twenty-first-century skills. In the United States, the approach most like Finland’s is that embraced by the KIPP charter schools. They have also defined excellence in teaching and learning.