Politics & Government

Delaney At NHTI: 'The Future Is About Skills, Not Degrees'

Presidential candidate, former congressman, and entrepreneur says America needs expanded trade, stronger safety net, and worker rights.

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CONCORD, NH — One of the first prominent Democrats to announce a run for president in 2020 continues to zigzag between Iowa and New Hampshire to talk about his race for the White House and the need for moderate change — while struggling to gain a foothold against an ever-increasing tide of frontrunners shifting the party lefty. John Delaney, a former Maryland Representative to Congress and business creator, attended a forum Friday on the health of the American economy co-sponsored by the Community College System of New Hampshire, the New Hampshire Union Leader, and Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses at NHTI, Concord's community college. At the talk, he called for a "forward-looking strategy" that will build "an economy of the future."

Delaney criticized President Donald Trump for taking credit for an economy that was better than it was in the past but that was too concentrated. Eighty percent of the venture capital, he said, was invested in a handful of counties. It was great that so many entrepreneurs were creating jobs, Delaney said, but the rest of the country was getting squeezed by the limited areas where the economy was booming.

"The real problem with the jobs market right now is not jobs but pay," he said. "There are actually a fair number of jobs but most of them don't pay enough … the statistics don't tell the story … most Americans are struggling; they haven't seen the benefits of economic growth — while seeing more friction in their lives with health care, housing, and other issues."

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As one of the youngest CEOs to ever have a company on the stock exchange, Delaney said he was equipped to not only take on the president but also create better opportunities for everyone in the country that needed help — instead of relying on propping up rural economies with coal, which was harming the climate.

Delaney said the president was correct to beat the drums against China but tackled the problem in the wrong way. The focus shouldn't just be on the trade deficit with China, although that was important. The bigger issues was intellectual property and outright theft.

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"China has acted like pirates," he said. "They steal everything."

Delaney said the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement would have fixed some of those problems and could have led to a new, better global trade agreement with China — which would have allowed all nations of the world to join together to force the country to stop stealing. Unfortunately, he said, TPP was killed. Delaney still supports it and was surprised there were so many Democrats balking at what was supposed to be a highlight — and success — of President Barack Obama's second term.

While in Congress, Delaney founded the artificial intelligence caucus so members could learn more about the future of work and what was coming with the economy while finding ways to create a domestic economic strategy that would dominant innovation in the sector. Whoever controls that part of the economy will rule it for the next 20 years, he said. The United States and China were in the best position to control the sector. But AI innovation, he said, could only really occur in a liberal democracy that obeys the rule of law, has free speech, and allows its people to have rights — which means it was up to the United States to dominate the marketplace.

China's advantage? The citizens have no privacy; citizens are a giant lab, he said. But the federal government could not allow China to steal its way to an equal footing with America, Delaney said. At the same time, the nation needed to prepare to embrace the technology.

"There has been this myth, for 100-years-plus, longer, ever since the Luddite movement, that innovation takes away jobs," Delaney said. "That's ridiculous. Innovation always creates more jobs."

Workers, he said, needed to benefit from the economic expansion and also be protected, too, with better negotiating rights. Technology, he admitted, allowed companies to access labor "on the margins."

Another part of expanding economic opportunity was to improve education. Instead of looking at education from the perspective of kindergarten through 12th grade, Delaney said it should be "pre-K to 14" — meaning pre-kindergarten, through high school, and then, two-year community college and trade schools, with the federal government subsidizing schools with grants, to close the gap, with states matching the grants. Delaney called pre-K "the best investment we can make, by far," not unlike early childhood education, because it changes the trajectory of the students.

"To me, the future is about skills, not degrees," he said. "And we have to stop thinking degrees. I have nothing against to degrees. But we really have to lead with skills and community colleges are the singular asset we have in this nation to ensure that we have skill-building programs for all of our kids."

Many students today, he said, were coming out of high school completely unprepared for the future, work, and society. The military, he noted, was rejecting about 70 percent of its new high school graduate recruits due to education, health, and social reasons.

To pay for the expanded education programs, Delaney would raise the capital gains tax rate to what earned income tax rates were. He called it "preposterous" that the rates weren't the same. Even President Ronald Reagan, the last president to have the same rates, thought they should be the same, noting, people who invest for a living should pay the same rate as people who work for a living. Delaney said the dual rates "still baffles me ... that we've bought this for decades."

The fight with Democrats, right now, he said, was "a stupid debate" about capitalism vs. socialism. The United States, he said, was a free market economy, driven by businesses and entrepreneurs, that should be allowed to "work its magic," while moderating it with "great societal infrastructure," like public education, infrastructure, a strong safety net, and workers' rights.

"Those things, kind of working together, have been the genius of our country," Delaney said.

Free markets though can be disruptive which is why Delaney said opportunity zone legislation, doubling the earned income tax credit, requiring federal contracts to private employers have 25 percent of those contracts in struggling communities, while also stabilizing rural communities.

On health care, Delaney called for the government to negotiate prescription drug prices on a global scale, ensuring a fair profit for companies and while the world's most destitute citizens gain access to drugs they need. He supported universal care not by creating a single-payer plan but a federal plan to allow every citizen to have coverage from birth to 65 while eliminating and rolling in Medicaid to that program and letting Medicare take care of retirees. Single-payer, he said, wasn't really a good idea because it offered the bare minimum to some people while those who were affluent could receive better care by paying for it out of pocket.

His plan would cost about $5 trillion and he would pay for it by eliminating the corporate deduction for health care, eliminating the Affordable Care Act subsidies, and matching grants from states.

"We have a universal care now," he quipped. "It's called an emergency room ... the dumbest form of universal health care that we could create."

A Shaker Road School student asked about increasing refugees to pre-Trump levels and he agreed with the proposal. Delaney called it "a humane policy" but it also needed to be coupled with a global effort to reduce the need for people filing for asylum. The root cause of asylum needed to be solved to curb future migration, while also making sure the borders were secure, he said. Climate change and pandemics were only going to make the problem worse which is why the United States needed to be proactive about its asylum policy while still having it reflect the nation's values, Delaney said.

On the federal debt, Delaney said he would like to get the debt down by stabilizing economic growth to at least 2 percent and lowering the amount of money being borrowed to 60 to 70 percent of the economy versus 100 percent of the economy — which is close to where it is now, he said. Two other issues needed to be solved: Fixing health care — "it's a doomsday machine" — and curing diseases, too, like cancer and Alzheimer's, as well as raising more tax revenue. Slowing health care costs to the inflation rate would also need to be done.

To make Social Security solvent for the next 75 years, he would raise the cap to a higher level but he wouldn't eliminate the cap entirely. Delaney also agreed wealthier Americans should pay higher taxes. Along with making the capital gains tax rates even with earned income tax rates, he would roll back the 2017 tax reform act, and raise the corporate tax rate to 27 or 28 percent.

Delaney was in the first two debates last summer but hasn't been able to make the criteria since then. After the forum, he said the race seemed to be picking up because voters were just now starting to paying attention.

"I think things are going well," he said. "I think my ideas are just fundamentally better and more responsive to what we need and I think they are reasonable. I see a lot of heads nod … so that, to me, makes me think things are going well."

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