Please review your general ideas about the economy and contrast these
with those of your opponent(s).
Response:
Federal economic policy must keep up with demographic and technological
changes in America's economy, as well as with America's role in the global
economy. I am proud to compare my record with the positions of my leading
opponent on economic issues.
The federal government's primary job is to help create a favorable national
economic climate through sound fiscal, monetary and trade policy so that a
healthy private sector can generate growth and jobs. I have voted for budgets
that have helped cut the deficit from $290 billion in 1992 to its current
$109 billion. If it weren't for the interest we pay on debt created during
the supply-side 1980s -- the period during which my opponent was voting for
huge, debt-creating budgets -- the federal government would currently be
collecting more than it is spending. The President's budgets, which I have
supported, have sent positive signals to financial markets and paved the way
for increased business investment, the easing of interest rates, lower
unemployment and rising stock prices. We currently have the lowest combined
rates of unemployment, inflation and home mortgages in 28 years. Since 1992,
nearly 10 million jobs have been created - half of them for good-paying
positions.
All of this has been accomplished while I was helping to defeat the extreme,
slash-and-burn approach of the Gingrich Congress, which attempted to target
cuts in programs benefitting the poor, the young and the elderly in order to
pay for giveaways to the wealthy. We even were able to pass an increase in
the minimum wage and the Family Medical Leave Act. My opponent not only has
been a cheerleader for the Gingrich agenda, he also favors the irresponsible
proposal of presidential candidate Bob Dole, promising an across-the-board,
15%, half- a-trillion-dollar tax cut. Such a scheme would only send the
deficit skyrocketing again, or else force even more drastic cuts to Medicare,
Medicaid, education and other crucial programs - cuts which have been
rejected by a majority of Americans.
The federal government can also directly stimulate job creation and economic
development in numerous cost-effective ways. As a Small Business Committee
member, I have helped make Small Business Administration loan-guarantee
programs a key capital tool for small businesses, reforming them to provide
more economic bang for fewer taxpayer bucks. The SBA has guaranteed more than
$1 billion in loans to Minnesota small businesses in the past five years -
loans which otherwise would not have been made. They've done this with with
reduced agency personnel and at lower taxpayer cost. The SBA has been a model
of government reinvention. My opponent actually favored eliminating the SBA.
Federal investment in training, education, research and technologies also
helps keep our economy vibrant and internationally competitive. The
University of Minnesota and Minnesota's high-technology business community
benefit tremendously from federal research and development efforts. I opposed
the attempt by the Gingrich Congress, presumably supported by my opponent, to
cut non-defense R&D spending by about 33 percent. I have supported funding
for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Upper Midwest
Manufacturing Technology Center, and I am a strong supporter of the federal
Small Business Innovation and Research (SBIR) program. Small technology firms
are key to the economic health of our state.