Stabenow sounds theme for re-election campaigns

senses unease among voters

August 16, 2005|BY FRED GRAY, NEWS-REVIEW STAFF WRITER

Debbie Stabenow, Michigan's junior U.S. Senator, says she senses that next year's state and national elections will reflect the unease that American families now feel about the future and their fear that their standard of living is declining for the benefit multi-national companies.

Stabenow, who is nearing the end of her first term as Senator, told the News-Review that her travels through the state make it clear to her that over the last year, voters are increasingly worried not only about their jobs, health care, pensions, the cost of cars and gas, but in a broader sense, their entire way of life.

"I come home almost every weekend, and I really do get what families are going through," she said. "I think there is an unease about losing our standard of living and our quality of life, and people instinctively understand it's connected to the fact that in a global marketplace we're not fighting for American businesses and American jobs.

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"They sense that there's this laissez-faire attitude and that the multi-national companies are really running the show, based on what's best for them, which is low-cost labor, someplace else.

"Who would have ever thought in America that people would have to worry about whether or not the pension they paid in to their whole life would be there? Pretty fundamental things."

The attitude, she said, will not change without a change of administration in Washington.

Asked if Michigan's inability to solve its economic woes could doom Gov. Jennifer Granholm's re-election campaign and impact her own, Stabenow said she believed voters understood that Granholm had walked into "a mess" left by former Gov. John Engler and has been doing "a great job in difficult circumstances."

Stabenow said she and Granholm were working together in the same direction, each at their own levels.

"I think when the governor identified the Tri-Corridor of looking at the future in terms of high-tech manufacturing, life sciences and homeland security, that's exactly what we ought to do. I've done a lot of work in all three of those areas. And we have the potential to do well in all of them," Stabenow said.

"But we have to focus on education, research and innovation as well in order to be able to capitalize on those things."

Asked to comment on Republican gubernatorial hopeful Dick DeVos' statement that he will focus his campaign on what he sees as the need to improve the state's "unfriendly" attitude toward business, Stabenow said:

"How does he answer we had 12 years of John Engler, who said that?

"Twelve years of a Republican governor and a Republican state House and state Senate? Twelve years. And we saw us go into debt, we saw us not being able to pay the bills.

"And that means that this governor, Jennifer Granholm, walked into a mess, actually, but they focus and they use this strategy he's talking about and we ended up with a situation where we had our unemployment higher, and investments and keeping our people here were down, and it seems to me that if that strategy alone had worked, that Gov. Granholm would have walked into a booming economy."

But she agreed with both Granholm and DeVos that the state must remove the bureaucratic shackles on business.

For her part, she said she has introduced a bill in the Senate to drastically reduce the administrative costs in health care, from 31 cents on the dollar to 5 to 10 cents, through information technology, over four years.

"We're talking about savings of $300 billion by ending the duplication of tasks and paperwork," she said. "And you'd cut down on medical errors.

"But there's one other thing, and that's prescription drugs. The fastest-growing piece of health insurance is prescription drugs, and the brand-name companies. And we've got to hold them accountable on the price. They spend 2 1/2 times more on advertising than on research now."

Stabenow characterized the $284.6 billion transportation bill that President Bush signed into law last week as a victory for Michigan, especially after she and Sen. Carl Levin, Michigan's senior U.S. senator, pushed to add $100 million for the state on top of the formula that brings back 92 cents on ever dollar of federal gasoline tax sent to Washington, up from 90 cents in the previous bill.

"It means 61,500 jobs for Michigan over four years. Overall this is a good bill for us. I feel good. It is big for roads, big for jobs, big for trails," she said.

"In the positive sense of actually creating jobs, it's absolutely the biggest thing that's happened during my term of office," she said.

On other issues, Stabenow said:

- Concern over a housing bubble in prices is real and will be affected by how the federal deficit is managed. "The federal deficit is putting great pressure on interest rates, and we have the largest budget deficit in the history of the country."

- Climate change is also real, and Michigan needs to do its part in addressing the problems that arise from it responsibly. "We have to do it in a way that doesn't cost us jobs."

- India and China are now economic competitors, not only for low-wage jobs, but they are heavily investing in education and putting out engineers.

"We have to make sure they follow the rules while they're doing this. China manipulates their currency and steals our patents. We've got to be tough with them. I've put in a bill to create an international trade prosecutor."

Political career: Elected to the Ingham County Board of Commissioners in 1974, where she became the youngest and first woman chair (1977-78). She was elected to the state House in 1979, where she served for 12 years before being elected to the state Senate. She was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2000.