Gov. O’Malley on NPR

National Public Radio’s Steve Inskeep interviewed former Maryland Governor and Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley. It was a very revealing interview, because Inskeep asked and allowed O’Malley to flesh out the most important issue of our time.

Inskeep asked O’Malley about economic policy. His answer could have been taken from my first book with Dr. Richard Levins.

Here’s O’Malley:

“Well it’s the question that’s on the center of our table of democracy here as a country really. It’s how do we make our economy work again for all of us. We’ve, our country’s doing better. We’re creating jobs again. But we can’t say that our economy’s working well for all of us when Americans are earning less now than they did 12 years ago. So there’s a number of things we need to do differently than we’ve been doing for the last 30 years… we have to raise the minimum wage. We have to raise the threshold for overtime pay. We should make it easier, not harder, for people to join labor unions and bargain collectively. We should pass immigration reform… and we should also expand Social Security benefits. These are all of the things, and there are others that we must do to restore some consumer demand in our economy. And that’s what we suffer from right now. We have concentrated wealth and capital to such a degree that the vast majority of us don’t have the discretionary dollars to make our economy go and grow.”

That is exactly, precisely right! No inside Beltway bullshit here. These our fundamental ideas that can at least slow down the ever widening income and wealth gap if not reverse it. And these ideas can BUILD WORKER POWER!!!

Inskeep then asked O’Malley how to pay for expanded Social Security.

O’Malley said:

“One is that when you actually adopt wage policies again, that allow people to earn more as they work harder, that will help with the solvency of social security. The second thing is to raise the cap on payroll taxes. Right now, once you reach I think $118,000, you no longer pay into Social Security. And then the third way is immigration reform, bringing the 11 million people who are right now denied a path to citizenship into the full light of our society so that they can pay into Social Security fully will also help expand and extend the solvency of Social Security.”

Now that is a progressive and pragmatic Democrat who deserves us all taking a hard look at him. He’s also been a two term governor with the experience in the executive branch.

More later…..

Image source: @CTDems