http://www.geogheganforcongress.com/
I’m running for Congress in the Fifth District of Illinois. As a Chicago lawyer for thirty years I have fought for working people in this District and throughout the city. I have represented unions as well as people with no unions to protect them. In plant closings I have helped them recover health and pension benefits. I obtained health care for the uninsured. I’ve been pressing the State of Illinois to crack down on payday lenders.
In my life as a lawyer I have lived out a commitment to one cause above all – to bring economic security to working Americans, in our District, in our country. That’s the same commitment I will bring to Congress. We’re deep in an economic crisis unlike any other we’ve known. It may last years. We need new and creative ways to protect working Americans, especially our older working people who have no real pensions to live on.
For years we’ve heard the doomsayers: “We can’t afford Social Security.” “We can’t afford ‘single payer’ national health.” One thing we all learned from the $700 billion bailout: We’ve got the money to do all of this and more. At the moment, the Federal Reserve is literally printing money, to give not billions but trillions to banks and financial firms. To the people of this District, the banks and others have gotten their money. Now it’s your turn. Here’s the bailout I will go to Congress to get:
First, I want to expand Social Security, our public pension system, to replace, not overnight but in stages, the private pension system which has collapsed. Social Security now pays about 38 to 39 percent of your working income. In other developed countries, it averages 65 percent. That’s where our fiscal stimulus should be: a commitment to reach this goal, a public pension that ordinary working people can live on.
Second we have to move to single payer health care program, at least in phases: we might begin with extending Medicare to children, but the government should ultimately be the single payer for all. That’s not because single payer is the only ethical and efficient way to protect us all. No, it’s also because it is crucial to making us competitive globally. Through single payer and expanded Social Security, the goal is to pick up the “non-wage” labor costs that employers now have to pay. That’s already how other countries out-compete us: they have the government and not the private employer pick up these non-wage health and pension costs.
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Jenny Brown