Fred Clark's Plan for Prosperity for Northern Wisconsin

The New Northwoods

Northern Wisconsin is rich in culture and traditions, rich in hard work and know-how and rich in resources like our farms, forests and waters. With our clean lakes, healthy forests and small towns, northern Wisconsin has all the fundamentals for a stable, vibrant economy where everyone can prosper.

But it's clear that for far too many people in northern Wisconsin the American dream just isn't working anymore.

Buying a home, affording child care, getting ahead with a decent job, enrolling in higher education, retiring with dignity, or just staying healthy are dreams that can never become reality for some people no matter how hard they work. And there are so many communities throughout northern Wisconsin today where the prosperity from farms, forests and businesses is just a memory - something you find in the town museum but not on main street.

The empty Main Streets, the closed mills and closed schools, and the families leaving are all signs that the American dream is out of reach for far too many of us.

It's because of this decline that more and more people rely on our public safety nets. Programs like Medicaid, SNAP, housing assistance and childcare assistance are vital for people who want to succeed but who have fallen through the cracks. But the safety net should be a floor and not a ceiling and the growing dependence on these programs by so many more people means that something larger is failing.

And what has failed is that while our lives have changed and businesses have changed and technology has changed and even our culture has changed, the rules never changed to rein in the excesses of billionaires and mega-corporations.

Both Democrats and Republicans have failed to update those rules in a way that ensures ordinary folks willing to work hard can live their American dream. Because of that failure we are now stuck in a system where the wealthiest people are making money hand over fist, avoiding accountability and dodging taxes while the rest of us struggle to make ends meet. The result is apparent to all of us – the gap between rich and poor has never been wider.

It's long past time for a new set of rules that works for everybody.

It's time to make the American Dream something every American can work toward again. We are ready to earn it back by finally changing those outdated rules based on three principles that have built this country.

One of the single biggest reasons why so many people are struggling today is because the largest corporations and the wealthiest people in our society aren't sharing their record profits with the very people who make those companies successful and they're not paying into the tax base that helps support our communities. That model is not working for you and it's not working for your neighbors.

Leveling the economic playing field and making it fair is essential - because if we don't tackle economic fairness then we can't tackle affordability for working people.

We know what we need to do. We need a fair tax code that ensures everybody pays their share, including the wealthiest individuals and corporations. And we need to take the power back from big banks, big pharma, big oil, big media, big tech and the other mega-corporations that have been allowed to prosper while working people have taken hit after hit.

It's time to break the chokehold that corporations and special interests have on our wallets, our politics, our elections and on our lives.

We must end the corruption that has prevented Congress from solving problems for actual working people because they are too busy worrying about where their next corporate campaign contribution is coming from.

The American Dream was supposed to mean that if you worked hard and followed the rules you'd have an opportunity to get ahead. And for a prosperous Northwoods we need everybody to work hard and do their best.

Most one-time government bailouts mean somewhere there's been a policy failure. And when more and more people rely on safety net programs just to stay afloat, that's a sign that the rules governing our economy have failed to keep up with a new reality.

A responsible government fixes system failures and needs fewer bailouts.

If you're a worker and you work hard, there should be a way for you and your family to get ahead. And if you're a producer – a farmer, forester, or business owner - a responsible government should ensure a stable, level playing field, and you in turn have a commitment to care for your people and care for the resources you're using.

We need a responsible government willing to make the kind of public investments in private enterprise that only government can make. Investments that make civic life meaningful: in infrastructure, rural broadband, public lands, small businesses, schools, and making healthcare affordable to everyone, for example. That kind of investment has the power to generate an enormous amount of private growth and entrepreneurship.

Innovation is in our DNA. If we want to get back to the prosperity we've enjoyed in years past, we have to adapt to a new future with new risks and new opportunities. We can do that through innovation.

Throughout the 20th Century, smart enterprising people in farming, business and in government worked together to help establish the dairy industry, the pulp and paper and forest products industry and the manufacturing industries that have been the pillars of Wisconsin's economy for over 100 years.

As those industries and the jobs they support change, we need to re-imagine our economy and the products that sustain it. We've re-imagined our economy before, and it's past time to do it again.

Here in the heart of the Northwoods, we can re-engineer the ways we use wood such as by making engineered wood beams and structural lumber from our locally grown forests, producing fuel from our small trees and wood waste and supporting more secondary wood manufacturers.

With some of the Midwest's best farmland, we can support our dairies while also incentivizing a wider range of farm products. We can help producers add more value to their crops and supply more people at home with healthy, locally grown food.

In a state known for our know-how in manufacturing, we can continue to support manufacturing businesses in embracing new technology while providing skilled employment opportunities for emerging markets. And we can end the economic chaos of the last two years by creating a stable trade policy that allows businesses the predictability they need to make new investments

That kind of innovation requires investments in research, development and commercialization of new products.

It takes the kind of all-hands public-private partnerships that bring together businesses, trade groups and organizations, workers and their unions, community leaders, and governments at the local, state and federal levels.

In this country we know-how to take an opportunity and do big things. We are no strangers to boldness and innovation and when that spirit meets the unity of purpose and work ethic of the Northwoods we have the tools we need to bring about a new economic renaissance to northern Wisconsin