The Issues

America is now facing more than the usual number of serious issues—one might even say, crises.  Our economy is struggling, and millions of Americans can’t find jobs.  Our government’s financial condition has deteriorated.  The earth’s climate seems to be destabilized.  The American middle class is being hollowed out, and the programs providing security to our older citizens are in jeopardy.

In the following statements, I offer my best judgments about how these issues should be dealt with.

But there’s a crisis more fundamental than any of these individual issues:  it’s a moral crisis involving what’s happening in our political system.  Can you think of a single issue on which –over the past decade– our elected officials have been able to conduct an honest and constructive discussion in search of a genuine solution to a real problem?  I can think of none.

America is a country full of intelligence and creativity and common sense, and so there are plenty of good ideas for how to solve our problems—just as America, for more than two centuries, perhaps more than any nation in history, has successfully met its challenges.  But in our times, because of the dysfunction in our political system, we can no longer get our good ideas enacted.

So, while I gladly endeavor here to put forward useful ideas for how to deal with the various specific issues we face, I believe that we as a nation will be able to solve our problems effectively only when we first succeed in turning around our current dangerous political dynamic.  Indeed, it is precisely because of that destructive dynamic –prevailing in our political system now for more than a decade—that we now find ourselves beset by so many crises.

It is to address THAT fundamental issue –the issue of what has gone awry in the American power system, and how it can be set right—that I am running for Congress.  For it is regarding the nature and remedy of this deeper crisis that I feel I have the most to contribute.   - Andy Schmookler

The Issues:
Jobs Creation
Economy & Debt
Taxes & Revenue
Spending Cuts
Health & Medicare
Social Security
Climate Change