Center for American Progress
March 3, 2004
Keep America Working: Restoring Jobs to Ensure American Prosperity
An Address by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton
American companies that continue to try to keep up with health care and pension costs find it increasingly difficult to do so. We are seeing now double-digit increases in health care, and we’re seeing the collapse of many of our pension systems that are basically being held aloft by a lot of accounting and prayers.
So how do we deal with this? Well, we can deal with it in a patchwork, incremental fashion, but eventually we’re going to have to decide. We’re
going to have to decide, are we going to provide a more level playing field
for our manufacturers by figuring out a way to deal with those legacy costs
which were, remember, built up because they thought they were doing the right thing for American workers and their families? Are we going to figure out a more sensible way to deal with health care and pension costs? Or are we going to continue to try to shift those burdens so that more and more is put on the employee and the employer and we have no end in sight of the increase in cost.
It’s also clear that this set of issues is politically volatile, as I can attest from my efforts ten years ago. And perhaps, though, the time is slowly coming. We weren’t ready ten years ago, we didn’t really understand the full cost of what we were up against, but it’s becoming more and more difficult to ignore the implications of these policies for the economy, and there have to be some attempts to reach a consensus that begins to solve these problems…
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=35989
Comment: “… patchwork, incremental fashion…”? “… eventually we’re going to have to decide.” “… the time is slowly coming.” The time has come. The question is no longer whether we need changes but what those changes will be.
Although Sen. Clinton will not be able to lead the charge since she spent most of her political capital on her prior attempt at reform, at least she is venturing out with guarded rhetoric revealing that she does understand that incremental patches simply will not do it.
