Richardson pledges to bring fiscal responsibility to White House

Las Cruces Sun-News, August 16, 2007

By The Associated Press

(2:05 p.m.) By The Associated Press Article Launched: 08/16/2007 02:09:48 PM MDT By The Associated Press CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Democratic presidential hopeful Bill Richardson on Thursday blamed President Bush for the nation's economic woes as he released his own economic plan, which he said is based on fiscal discipline and protecting working Americans.

It includes a constitutional amendment to balance the budget, eliminating congressional earmarks to reduce wasteful spending and reducing tax breaks and loopholes for corporations and the wealthiest Americans.

Richardson said all the steps were needed to overcome problems caused by the Bush administration.

"Frankly, the president is acting like a spoiled teenager who crashes the family car and then hopes no one will notice," Richardson told a crowd at a union hall in Cedar Rapids. "Well, Mr. President, America has noticed. And the American government needs to stop breaking what the American family has built."

He said the Bush administration's tax and spending priorities have put the middle class under siege. He pointed to a national debt that has reached $9 trillion, and said the president's $1.1 trillion in tax cuts help the wealthiest Americans while putting the country "deep in the red."

"This administration failed to protect the engine of our economy — the middle class," Richardson said. "Productivity is up, yet real wages are down. American workers are holding up their end of their deal, but their government is not." Richardson's economic plan includes:

— A balanced budget amendment to bring a stop to reckless spending. In the past, Bush also has said he would support a balanced budget amendment.

— An end to congressional earmarks, a move Richardson said would save at least $40 billion over five years.

— Cutting what he called corporate welfare, which he said cost taxpayers $92 billion in 2006.

— Replacing tax cuts for wealthy Americans with tax reductions for the middle class.

Part of getting the nation's economy back on track, he said, requires getting all U.S. troops out of Iraq.

"We spend over a hundred billion dollars a year hunkered down in a country that doesn't want us there, fighting a war that won't make us safer," he said. "We want that money back for our own needs."

The New Mexico governor — who has trailed Democratic front-runners Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama in polls in Iowa — touted his experience, saying he helped create more than 80,000 new jobs and pushed his state's unemployment rate to its lowest level in history.

Speaking with reporters after his speech, Richardson said that if elected, he would make his secretary of labor a union member.

"It's important because secretaries of labor generally have been CEO-types, executives, and what I want to see is a union member that has experiences, somebody that has worked in a union, somebody that is outside of Washington and New York, and I believe there are a lot of qualified people," he said.

Richardson also was asked about New Mexico's decision not to grow medical marijuana because of concern that the federal government could prosecute state employees. He supported legislation that required the state to oversee production and distribution of medical marijuana.

"The Bush administration, instead of going after cocaine dealers and big drug dealers has seen fit to go after sick people with cancer that deserve medical marijuana treatment," Richardson said. "It shows their misguided priorities, and so I'm evaluating the situation."