|
|
In Washington, the president sells a tax cut as the fast solution to a cyclical economic downturn. He sells a supposedly weeks-long occupation of Iraq as an antidote to terrorism.
In Columbus, lawmakers quickly create vouchers and charter schools to side-step Ohio’s shamefully inadequate public schools, which could take decades to fix. Responding to skyrocketing malpractice insurance rates, they cap medical lawsuit awards — a quick and politically easy move that accomplished nothing in the short-term and has dubious effects in the long-term — without reigning in the oligarchic insurance market that’s the underlying cause of these predictable, periodic crises.
In direct contrast to such short-sighted patches, State Sen. Eric Fingerhut (D-Shaker Heights), a candidate for the U.S. Senate seat held by George Voinovich, promotes structuring and then following a long-term plan for Ohio and for the country.
“We must have a vision that says that we are going to be the best, we are going to have the most productive and technologically advanced manufacturing base, we are going to have the most skilled and well-trained workforce, we are going to have world-class centers and research universities,” Fingerhut says. “And then we have to work toward those goals.”
Ohio is far from realizing Fingerhut’s vision, according to a 2002 report by the Progressive Policy Institute, a nonprofit group that, among other things, promotes economic growth through increased utilization of technology. The study ranked all states based on the readiness to succeed in a technological and global economy. Ohio ranked 30th overall, achieving a score of 56.47.
The national average was 60.30, and top-ranked Massachusetts earned a score of 90.00.
The study indicates Ohio is a technological laggard in part because it stumbles on education, ranking 27th in the percentage of the workforce with post-secondary education, 30th in the education of its manufacturing workforce and 26th in the number of civilian scientists and engineers in the workforce.
Two visionary Ohio governors built an education infrastructure that could have readied the state to successfully compete in a technological economy, according to Fingerhut.
“Jim Rhodes understood that high school education wasn’t going to be enough and helped build a network of universities and community colleges and vocational schools to train our workers,” Fingerhut says. “Dick Celeste understood that those universities and research centers could be engines of technological innovation for our plants and factories and businesses, and so he started the Edison Centers and the Eminent Scholars Program.”
Ohio’s seven Edison Technology Centers link companies with research resources from the state’s universities and colleges. The Eminent Scholars Program funds faculty positions for innovative technology researchers.
Fingerhut squarely blames Voinovich for erasing the accomplishments of Rhodes and Celeste just as the economy they envisioned was becoming a reality.
“When George Voinovich became governor, he attacked higher education as wasteful and bloated and a drain on the taxpayers’ dollars, and he began the process of cutting away at higher educations dollars,” Fingerhut says.
In Voinovich’s first two years as governor, he cut spending three times in order to balance the budget. Higher education shouldered cuts of 39 percent, 29 percent and 54 percent, even though it comprised only 13 percent of Ohio’s budget at the time. The Taft administration, contrary to campaign promises, has crafted similarly disproportionate cuts to higher education, necessitating record tuition increases at state universities and colleges.
Fingerhut proposes reclaiming Ohio’s legacy as one of the most productive states by undoing Voinovich’s cuts and investing in the state’s economic future.
“The problem we face is that we are now a decade or more behind, and we have to advance the pace of the investments significantly if we want to compete,” Fingerhut says.
Such talk of increased government spending — even if it’s absolutely necessary and yields results that far exceed the initial investment — often precedes political death. After serving as a state senator from 1991 to 1992, Fingerhut was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. He served one term before being defeated in the Republican takeover of 1994, a defeat that he attributes, at least in part, to his support of raising income tax rates on the wealthiest Americans.
“We passed an economic plan that closed the deficits and invested in the education and technology infrastructures that built a growth economy,” he says. “It hurt us politically in the short run, and it’s obviously a major reason why I lost in 1994.”
But Fingerhut doesn’t regret his decision to vote for the tax increases.
“We made the investment so that the economic recovery that you saw in the 1990s was a growth period that was based on new industries, new products and innovation, and one that’s transformed the face of our economy for the long term,” he says.
As a U.S. Senator, Fingerhut would make permanent the research and development tax credit, which Voinovich hasn’t supported, and would broaden its applicability to encourage cooperation between businesses and universities. He’d also support incentives to make college more affordable, including making student loans tax deductible, and would offer tax incentives to investors who back new companies and technologies.
Fingerhut proposes accomplishing all of this not by increasing the deficit but by shifting spending and deductions to the areas in which they pack the most punch. For example, he’d shift tax advantages currently tailored to successful large companies to education and new businesses, which generally thirst for any drop of financial assistance.
With regard to national security, Fingerhut perceives in the current administration a “lack of a clear understanding of what the threat is and how to fight it.”
Due to the light, mobile nature of terrorist groups, he sees little advantage in focusing a preponderance of attention on one country but instead would direct significant investments to intelligence agencies and special forces and would work to establish a network of nations, each of whom would strive to make their own countries off-limits to terrorists, thereby constricting the mobility of these groups.
Additionally, Fingerhut would invest to protect the country’s infrastructure from attack.
“We have not even scratched the service in protecting our water systems, our electricity system, our ports, etc.,” he says.
Even though many voters will find Fingerhut’s proposed policies to be well reasoned and sound, his campaign will fight an uphill battle. Respected by those who follow Ohio politics and well known in Cleveland and northeastern Ohio, his statewide recognition nevertheless pales in comparison to that of two-term governor and incumbent Sen. Voinovich.
But those Ohioans seeking an intelligent politician who has operated effectively in the state’s Republican-dominated General Assembly, who favors results-oriented investments and long-term planning over nonproductive spending and who, unlike many in Washington, doesn’t believe in forcing future generations to fund the current overspending might want to take a closer look at Eric Fingerhut.
This article appears in Sep 17-23, 2003.
