Invest in Iowa's Future
Overview
Invest in Iowa’s Future is uniquely Iowan. It embraces the entrepreneurial and industrious spirit of Iowans while at the same time works to include all populations and create equality. It will provide health, education, and employment security for everyone while increasing overall productivity that will allow the entire state to prosper. A strong majority of Iowans support an agenda that, along with plans to roll back tax breaks for corporate interests, bring down the deficit and make government more accountable, would ensure:- Guaranteeing quality, affordable health care for everyone,
- Granting all children access to high quality education from early childhood through college,
- Developing a clean energy economy and independence from oil.
Invest in our Most Precious Resource—Our People
ICAN is promoting a sensible new plan to encourage investment in America’s most precious resource – our people. We must make responsible investments in health care, education, and clean energy to ensure real security for everyone and long-term, sustainable economic growth for our nation. We must also ensure that public initiatives benefit everyone, with an aim to reduce economic disparity in our state and the disabling consequences associated with it.
IIF Helps to Turn Critical Dilemmas into Positive Rewards for Iowans
A faltering economy and sudden spike in basic cost of living expenses, skyrocketing health care costs, too many Iowans uninsured, inequality in the education system with soaring fees for college education, a costly and misguided war, increased economic pressure due to global competition, an unhealthy environment, and energy dependence – these are the most urgent and pressing problems of our time. Invest in Iowa’s Future effectively tackles these issues, turning critical dilemmas into positive rewards for Iowans. Our current economic system relies on “bubble” markets that eventually “burst,” causing recession and fueling further insecurity. The IIF plan will provide durable, lasting economic gains for families, businesses and the nation as a whole by making health care and education more affordable, creating a new clean energy economy, and ultimately strengthening our work force.
The public investments proposed in the IIF plan will pay off. Support for health care will ease the financial burden on employers, providing greater capacity for businesses to generate new jobs and provide better benefits for existing workers. Investing in preventive health care will result in a healthier, more productive workforce, expanding Iowa’s human capital. Public investments in education will enable all of Iowa’s young people to become formidable global competitors. Greater outlays in education will also cut crime rates, reduce the public burden of an exhausted prison system, and generate new revenue from higher salaries, resulting in lasting economic benefits. Investments in clean, renewable energy sources will not only effectively address the climate change crisis, but they will also give American businesses the chance to once again lead the world in fresh and innovative technologies and spawn millions of new jobs. Investing in clean energy will also increase our exports, stabilize growth and energy costs, and reduce our dependency on oil and natural resources.
Address Short Term Problems While Building for a Sustainable Future
Rather than spending billions of dollars on a war overseas or on tax cuts for millionaires and big corporations, this plan invests in our own families and in our own children. The plan addresses the budget deficit – which makes public investments seem unfeasible – by rooting out waste from private contracting, eliminating unfair tax cuts for millionaires, closing corporate tax loopholes and saving billions of dollars by ending the war in Iraq. These policy changes address our budget crisis and revitalize our economy in the short term while the public investments create a robust and sustainable economy that ensures a healthy, competitive, and clean America for decades to come.
Updates
Tax Day: We Paid Our Fair Share!
We pay our fair share. On this day, April 15, it is time that Wall Street and the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share as well. Government is vital to promoting individual opportunity and shared prosperity, and paying for our national priorities. But it doesn't come free.
The country is in crisis. Officially, the unemployment rate is 9.7 percent but the real number of Americans out of work, under-employed or who have given up looking for work is 16.9 percent, or almost one of every six adult Americans. These people are our friends, our neighbors, our family members.
Meanwhile, the wealthiest one percent of Americans - and Wall Street, whose shenanigans created our economic crisis to begin with, aren't paying their fair share. We did. Why won't they?
Coalition for a Better Iowa Rallies for Revenue Repair in the State Budget
Amy Logsdon and Sue Dinsdale attended the rally and press conference organized by the Coaltion for a Better Iowa of which Amy is an original steering committee member, in the rotunda of the State Capitol.
We had about 50 people attend. Speakers included Don Rowen of the Iowa ARA and Nicole, a mom and service provider who recently was laid off due to the budget cuts in the school system. The event was covered by many reporters.
We called on legislators to use a Revenue Repair Kit to address the state budget, instead of cutting and shredding the budget dangerously.
ICAN Testimony at Tax Revew Panel Hearing
Amy Logsdon, ICAN's Political Director presented ICAN's statement to the Tax Review Panel Hearing this morning.
Advocating for the federal jobs and economic recovery plan
We have split our efforts between prodding Sen. Grassley on his wrong stances on these issues and encouraging Rep. Boswell to continue to stand with the Obama administration and the people of Iowa at this time of crisis. Sen. Grassley has not shown himself to be open to persuasion, but Rep. Boswell has continued to do the right things, even when they have been at odds with the position of the Democratic caucus.
Letting people know the importance of the economic recovery package's passage to Iowans
We continue our efforts to educate the public -- and Senator Grassley -- about the importance of the economic recovery package's passage to Iowans. With help from the Iowa Fiscal Partnership, we released statements through the radio news service and at press conferences in Des Moines and Waterloo that laid out our the overwhelming support this plan had from economists, including Mark Zandi (a former McCain advisor.) We also joined our friends Working Families Win at a media event at Sen. Grassley's Waterloo office -- delivering a Valentine's cake decorated to say "Have a heart for Iowa." All of these public events garnered good press.
We are part of the massive national effort launched to support the Obama budget
Rebuild and Renew America Now (RRAN) and ICAN took a lead role in Iowa reflecting to organize support for the Obama budget. We also continued building on the loose collaboration we had been working in the state since the economic recovery efforts began, we are collaborating with Every Child Matters, SEIU, AFSC, AFL-CIO, AFSCME, RESULTS, ISEA, NASW Iowa, WILPF, and Working Families Win.
Actions we have taken to support the passage of the Obama budget include a rally and report release supporting tightening tax loopholes for corporations in the Obama budget on tax day in Ames, delivery of an organizational sign on letter opposing weakening the estate tax through budget amendments, and a press conference timed to coincide with the first 100 days of the Obama administration in Des Moines - celebrating victories in children's health and women's pay and highlighting the need to pass the budget with Obama's priorities intact.