Who is Howard Dean?

Biography

Born in New York, Dean moved to Vermont to complete his medical residency requirements after graduating from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1978. In 1981, he opened up a private practice with his wife, and in 1982 he began his political career as a member of the state legislature. His career in politics moved along quickly, and he was elected lieutenant governor in 1986.

Governor of Vermont:
1991-2002

He was still serving in this capacity when Republican Governor Richard Snelling suddenly died in 1991, and he immediately became governor. He was re-elected five times over the course of his governorship. In three of the elections, he won by landslides. In 1992 he received 75 percent of the vote. He dipped below 70 percent in 1994, but in 1996 he received 71 percent. In 1998, he faced his biggest challenge from Republican legislator Ruth Dwyer. However, even in this election, Dean prevailed with 56 percent to 41 percent.

Dwyer returned in 2000, but so did a third candidate from the Progressive Party. Dean won this election 50.4 percent to 38 percent. Had Dean failed to get past the 50 percent mark, the governor would have been elected by the legislature, where the Republicans had made significant gains that year, and Dwyer could very well have assumed the governorship. In 2001, Dean resigned as governor to pursue the Democratic presidential nomination.

Issues

Although, originally a dark horse candidate, Dean has become the front runner for the nomination overnight thanks to an enormously successful Internet fundraising campaign.

Taxes

Despite his liberal stances on many social issues, Dean claims to be the most fiscally conservative governor Vermont has had in the last 40 years. This may have been true at the beginning of his career as governor, when the Cato Institute gave him B’s in 1994 and 1996 for his fiscal policy. However, his grades slipped to C’s in 1998 and 2000, and in 2002 Cato gave him a D.

Furthermore, his claims to be a fiscal conservative are dubious given his propensity to propose big government programs like universal health care, the centerpiece of his current campaign. Furthermore, Dean has said that he would repeal most of the recent tax cuts in order to fund this plan as well as other big government programs like more money for a failing public education monopoly.

His views on taxes are confused at best. He takes the stance that there are tax cuts that favor business at the cost of losing jobs. This is inconsistent. A tax cut that helps businesses should not cause these businesses to cut jobs. He is also opposed to most options for fundamentally reforming the tax code, especially a national sales tax.

As governor for 11 years, Dean only cut taxes once and refused to cut them even when the state had a large surplus. In 2002, Dean said he would even repeal the tax cuts for middle class and working class people based on the fact that “[no one] that I know noticed they got a tax cut” (CNN’s “Capitol Gang,” Oct 5). One of his biggest claims to fame is that he left Vermont with a balanced budget. Yet, in order to achieve this so-called balance, he raided other government funds (think Social Security on the federal level), forced local government to raise property taxes, and reduced payments to doctors, hospitals, and other caregivers to make up for Medicaid shortfalls, effectively increasing costs for those not eligible for the program.

Despite these tactics, the incoming governor, Jim Douglas, says that the state actually has a deficit of between $30 and $40 million. Furthermore, the budget Dean released contains no new spending increases even though state employees are due pre-negotiated pay raises. In order to correct for these problems, Governor Douglas has said that the state can expect program elimination and layoffs to hold down government spending.

Minimum Wage

In his tight campaign against Ruth Dwyer, Dean promised to raise the minimum wage if elected. In fact, during his 11 years in office, Dean raised the minimum wage twice. Now, in his presidential campaign he boasts this as one of his primary accomplishments as governor. However, raising the minimum wage creates unemployment for low wage workers who simply need work to develop their skills, but are priced out of the labor market.

Social Security

Dean is part of the “pain caucus” on Social Security—he acknowledges the crisis, but refuses to embrace commonsense reforms like Personal Retirement Accounts. On June 22, 2003, on NBC’s Meet the Press, Dean made some very telling remarks about his inability to adequately deal with the coming crisis. When Tim Russert pointed out that in 1995 Dean said, “The way to balance the budget is for Congress to cut Social Security, move the retirement age to 70, cut defense, Medicare and veterans pensions, while the states cut almost everything else. It would be tough but we could do it.”

On June 22 of this year, he offered more pain: tax increases. Dean believes that Social Security can be saved by allowing the payroll tax to apply to more of a workers income and increasing the retirement age by another year to 68. Dean should embrace Personal Retirement Accounts as the long-term solution for Social Security, not another tax bailout.

School Choice

Dean, at one point in his career, supported a limited school choice bill, but in general, he is a strong supporter of the public school system. He favors, “greater parental choice, but oppose measures that weaken public schools diverting taxpayer dollars to private schools with no accountability for results.” This misses the point that private schools are accountable for results to the parents who choose to send their children there. Public schools, as a monopoly, are accountable to everyone and no one at the same time.

While his position on school choice is flawed, as a Governor, Dean also recognizes the role of federalism in our society and has opposed attempts by the federal government to control state educational systems. He is harshly critical of the recent bipartisan education bill, the No Child Left Behind Act, enacted by the Bush administration. He even went as far as to consider rejecting the $26 million in federal education money so as to avoid the accountability requirements contained in the bill. He calls the act, the Every School Board Left Behind act.

Welfare Reform

In Vermont’s welfare system, Dean supported a 20 hour work week and the caseload dropped 40 percent. Federal law now mandates a 30 hour work week to be eligible for the program. Considering his liberal tag in the media, Dean is surprisingly open to some welfare reform. For example, Dean supports administering welfare at the state level through federal block grants. However, he thinks that funding should be increased and is adamantly opposed to any more funding cuts. He also supports the flexibility granted to the program by Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) grants. However, like with the other block grants, he would provide these programs with even more money despite the reduction in case loads. He argues that the services now being provided are more expensive than simple cash grants. He would also like to see food stamps, child support, child welfare, housing, the Workforce Investment Act, and Medicaid all connected to the current trends in welfare reform.

Tort Reform

While tort reform has not been a signature campaign issue for Dean, as a doctor, he understands the need to avoid frivolous lawsuits to keep costs down. As the governor of Vermont, he asked the legislature not to pass legislation that would have made it easier to bring suit against people in the health care industry because this would only drive insurance prices higher. Dean could really stand out from the other Democrat candidates by taking a strong stand on this issue and taking on his pro-trial lawyer opponents like John Edwards.

Free Trade

Although, as governor, Dean attempted to create a North American Free Trade arena in the Energy market and supported Fast Track for President Clinton, he has said that he would not have supported Trade Promotion Authority for President Bush without stricter environmental and labor safeguards saying:

“Free trade is good; jobs that create exports pay Americans 16% higher wages than jobs that don’t create exports. We can help other countries, even those that are not now democracies, become more democratic through trade.

“Unfortunately, our free trade policies have also had the effect of hollowing out our industrial capacity, and most worrisome, undermining our own middle class. All through this country, including in Vermont, I’ve seen factories move to China and Mexico, leaving American workers to learn new skills & earn lower wages.

“Free trade must equal fair trade. We are subsidizing the sometimes awful environmental practices of our trading partners, and we are subsidizing the profits of multinational corporations by not having international labor standards. If free trade allows General Motors to set up a plant in Mexico, free trade should allow the UAW to organize that plant under conditions similar to those in the US. This isn’t wage parity; I am asking for shared ground rules” (DeanforAmerica.com).

This sounds pretty good, but there are a lot of anti-trade code words coming from Dean. Like many who oppose free trade for political purposes, Dean recognizes the economic benefits that come from trade, while at the same time undermining his commitment with arguments about environmental and labor concerns that would essentially block any free trade agreements. He fails to see that labor and environmental improvements are consequences of free trade, not precursors. Trade deals should deal only with economic matters and economic freedom– environmental and labor issues should be addressed specifically in separate agreements independent of trade questions.