Governor Harris Visits Brown.
Brown Daily Herald
2000
Gov. Howard Dean (D-Vt.) discussed healthcare, welfare reform, school funding and President Bush’s fiscal policies Thursday at the A. Alfred Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions. Dean outlined the three goals of his possible run for Presidency in 2004, calling for an end to Bush’s tax cuts, universal healthcare coverage, and an effectively balanced budget.
In Dean’s presentation to a group of students, including several members of the Brown College Democrats, faculty and a few local residents, he spoke of the importance of an effectively balanced budget and deficit.
Dean also called for a halt on Bush’s tax cuts and an investment in long-term programs instead of more immediate solutions.
“You have to start at the beginning” in order to have effective education and healthcare programs, especially those geared towards children, Dean said.
“It’s cheap and the most impact on kids happens before the age of ten,” he said.
The governor advocated for universal health insurance for all Americans within the existing healthcare system.
Dean said he aims to lower income taxes and to do away with “Republican ‘borrow and spend’ financial politics.”
Dean pointed New York City’s enormous debt in recent years as an example of “borrow and spend, borrow now, pay later,” politics.
In New York’s case, Dean said, huge debt was incurred after so many years of borrowing during the Reagan administration in order to cut taxpayer’s income tax, and now the city is paying for those Republican policies.
President Bush’s tax plan provides most tax cuts go to the rich while middle class workers like those in Rhode Island will pay the price, he said.
“(Bush’s) budget is a political document aimed at the 2002-2003 elections — it is not a visionary document,” Dean said.
Dean said his main theme on budget issues was one of fiscal conservatism. “Social justice comes from a balanced budget,” he said.
Dean cited his own terms as Vermont’s governor as an example of this conservatism. “People knew I wasn’t going to waste their money. We can’t start programs we can’t afford,” he said.
Prison reform, healthcare and education are some of the governor’s pervasive concerns, Dean said.
“Prisons are necessary but lousy investments. They’re crime schools. Most people come out worse than when they went in,” he said.
Starting early on in the first weeks of a child’s life and providing services through such venues as Vermont’s Success At Six intervention program, Dean said, would be more effective for reaching unemployed, discouraged, single or young mothers. Early programs like this one, he said, are more cost effective for the taxpayer and ultimately, better the youth immeasurably.
Success At Six offers services to mothers when they first give birth in Vermont hospitals. According to Dean’s summations, child abuse in Vermont has decreased 73 percent, child neglect has decreased 50 percent, and far fewer children under the age of 10 are now in foster care. Such avenues for young mothers and other forms of early prevention, Dean said, are better investments than reforming or building new prisons.
The governor discussed the need to control costs of health insurance while providing a baseline, standard, universal level of healthcare for all Americans.
Cost control must stem from the consumer assuming more share of the cost for prescription medications and health insurance, and patients can educate doctors better about being informed consumers, Dean said.
Cost-conscious patients can be educated simply by mentioning to their physicians what treatments they cannot afford and whether they have current health coverage, he said.
“It has to be a little painful to pay for healthcare, or else there’s no limit to the cost increases,” Dean said.
Reminiscent of former President Clinton’s “Mend it, don’t end it” welfare reform policy, Dean said our current healthcare system makes most people reasonably happy, and so we should keep it. However, he said we should extend insurance to all citizens, and allow small businesses and their workers to buy into government benefit packages.
As governor of Vermont since 1991, Dean allowed once ineligible single men and women to receive Medicaid benefits.
A physician himself, Dean said that “it is a fundamental right that everyone should have healthcare in an industrialized nation. We’re the only industrialized nation in the world who doesn’t (provide this). It is dirt-cheap. It saves money to cover kids medically.”
Dean renounced Bush’s education plan as well as school vouchers for use in sending students to private sector institutions. Calling it an “enormous unfounded mandate,” Dean claimed Bush’s plan forces states to test students’ scholastic achievement while giving them no money to do so. States like Rhode Island, New Hampshire and those in the Midwest, where education is already a priority, won’t be helped, Dean said.
“Congress has much more power than [people] think… the President needs to say, ‘We’ve got to stick to a budget.’ You can’t borrow your way into prosperity, you have to build it,” he said.