Strengthen Commerce by Helping Small and Medium Sized Businesses |
More than 95 percent of the businesses in Maine are small businesses, which employ about two-thirds of our workforce. It is important to give all Maine businesses equal access to tax breaks that a few large companies currently enjoy. By helping small and medium companies to grow and create jobs, we will help both our economy and our families grow and prosper.
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Develop an Environmentally Conscious Economy |
Maine is blessed with stunning natural beauty, due in part from the efforts of committed people over the years. Local communities play a critical role in protecting the environment and conserving its resources through land conservation, thoughtful legislation and community action. However, people struggling to make ends meet may find it difficult to make stewardship and conservation a priority. For that reason, there must be a sustainable economy in the region that you want to protect so that people can be stewards of their land. We must foster a relationship that honors both the environmental and economic well-being of the community.
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Bring Education Reform Home |
Schools alone do not educate most children. Every study on the factors that best predict a child’s success in school points to parental involvement. We need to involve parents and yet plans to improve schools often leave parents out of the equation.
There is a key difference between guaranteeing every student access to good education and guaranteeing particular outcomes. We know our children come to school on very unequal footing, with very unequal support systems at home. So how do we actually leave no children behind? It’s accomplished by a partnership of parents and teachers. Without that partnership, very few children excel in school.
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Reform Health Insurance
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We must provide value in health insurance for the healthy population of Maine while keeping the cost for health insurance manageable for the chronically ill. We also need to assist low-income Americans in buying an insurance plan of their choice. The approach is to (1) draw the uninsured (often the young, healthy recent graduates) into the market at an entry level, (2) prevent lapses in coverage for individuals who change jobs, and (3) contain the insurance cost of the chronically ill.
Maine needs Health Insurance reform that respects personal choice and encourages personal responsibility. We need to make it affordable by making all health care expenses deductible and offering tax incentives for insurance not provided by an employer. The more people in the system, the less expensive insurance becomes for everyone. Therefore, we need to open up the power of market forces to create affordable private options for all Mainers, especially small enterprises.
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Streamline State Government |
Maine’s government is currently like a big, rusty old clunker that can no longer pass on steep hills. It is vital to streamline processes to make government agencies responsive to Maine’s citizens and businesses. Better government will come by getting control of spending, by having a more modest state apparatus, and by reducing burdensome regulations (while preserving the intent of the regulation).
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Modernize Pensions |
Most Americans will work in at least four or five different fields before retirement. Yet Maine's pension plans for teachers and state employees are still cemented to the idea of lifetime employment. They penalize people who go into the private sector and return to public service. We need to move to a system that will give new hires portable pensions that supplement Social Security with defined benefits. This will also avoid the federal tax code's government-pension offset and "windfall elimination," which penalize many of Maine's public retirees.
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