I was privileged to be presidential candidate John Edwards' Senior Economic Policy Advisor, but today I am just as honored to endorse Senator Barack Obama. And I do so for precisely the same reasons I long and enthusiastically supported and helped John Edwards.
At Senator's Obama's very core, and at the core of his Campaign and its economic policies, are his abiding commitments to working men and women and to economic fairness. And the critically important policy issues associated with his core values, and how he proposes to specifically address them, are what are now defining the national election.
Like John Edwards, Barack Obama seeks effective public policy aimed at sustained growth, full employment, an end to poverty, and progress toward solving the major social and environmental problems associated with health care, education, trade, taxation and climate change.
Barack Obama believes in change, but not change for change's sake or change, as some are proposing, in the guise of tried but failed policies. His belief in change is all about the American Dream being once again every American's dream.
Barack Obama believes in vigorously enforcing our existing domestic labor laws and standards. He believes in all workers having an easy and unrestricted ability to join a union, including part-time and contract workers. And he believes in affording low-wage workers the "mobility" they need in order to earn something more than low wages.
Barack Obama believes in fairer and more progressive individual income taxation, taxation which will see every American once again paying his or her fair share. How can anyone but the wealthiest of Americans be satisfied with an economy which has seen forty percent of all economic growth over the past 20 years go to only the top one percent of American families? Where half of the nation's individual income now goes to just 2% of the taxpayers?
Barack Obama believes in incentivizing American companies to create and retain high-quality jobs here in America, instead of unnecessarily and often unfairly shipping millions of them overseas.
And Barack Obama believes that U.S. trade agreements must provide clear and measurable benefits for American workers. He believes that in order for free trade to also be fair trade, trade agreements must incorporate reasonable labor and environmental standards and prohibit illegal subsidies and currency manipulation. He believes that in negotiating trade agreements, "one size does not fit all" - it never has - and that trade agreements which are not vigorously enforced are not agreements at all, they are just so much paper.
It was inspiring for me to be John Edwards' Senior Economic Policy Advisor. But the issues and the solutions that were important to us in the Edwards Campaign, and which have been embraced by millions of working Americans and taxpayers, are also Senator Obama's. And so I invite every worker, labor and business leader, voter and economist who wanted John Edwards to be president to now help Barack Obama in his Campaign.
Barack Obama will be a president of the ages and for all ages.