Joe’s Big Ideas
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The Problem
Climate change is real and significantly driven by human action. As NASA observes, “The effects of human-caused global warming are happening now, are irreversible for people alive today, and will worsen as long as humans add greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere.”
Climate change is resulting in rising sea levels, increased frequency and intensity of hurricanes, increases in droughts and heatwaves, longer wildfire seasons, and by the middle of the next century, NASA predicts that the polar ice caps will be completely melted. The World Economic Forum estimates that climate change costs the world $16 million per hour, while the latest U.S. National Climate Assessment found that the United States experiences an extreme weather event once every three weeks, each producing a minimum of $1 billion worth of damage. The annual cost of these events to American taxpayers is roughly $150 billion per year, which does not account for costs associated with the “loss of life, healthcare-related costs, or damages to ecosystem services.” Climate change is already contributing to natural disasters that are pushing species to the brink of extinction, destroying lives and crippling economies. The devastation to people and wildlife is hard to understate.
The truth is we cannot afford to let the problem go unaddressed. We must take a comprehensive approach to addressing the problem. Transitioning to a diverse array of renewable, clean energy sources is necessary. Joe’s plan offers one important part of the solution.
Joe’s Big Idea
Joe’s legislation would require every federal agency to evaluate every building and every parking lot they own for their suitability to have solar panels installed on available surfaces. Once all feasible surfaces are identified, the federal government would fund the purchase of the solar panels and materials necessary for their installation and offer local power companies 5% of the energy produced in exchange for those companies performing the installation of the panels and taking on the responsibility for their maintenance.
Any energy produced beyond the power companies’ 5% allotment and that which the agency consumes would be transferred to the power companies to cover the costs of grants to families at or below poverty lines who are struggling to pay for their energy needs.
Next, Joe’s legislation would offer grants to states and municipalities to perform a similar evaluation of their properties and follow up grants to purchase the solar panels for any government entity that enters into a similar arrangement with local power companies.
Joe’s plan would use the physical plants of government buildings and parking lots to produce clean, renewable energy, reduce our reliance on fossil fuels (especially those we get from foreign sources), lower the operating costs of our government agencies to save taxpayers money over the long run, create good paying installation and maintenance jobs, and help reduce poverty in the process.
Joe’s plan would also call for the United States to offer grants to nursing homes and assisted living facilities to install solar panels to produce cleaner energy while lowering senior’s utility costs.
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The Problem
Joe knows the burden of student loans. His dedication to a career in public service has meant that he’s still paying off his law school loans.
Oppressive student debt is a common story. Americans carry $1.75 trillion in total, with the average student debt load at approximately $29,000. In New Jersey, it’s even higher, at around $35,000.
Too many can’t afford the price of going to school. One in four default within five years of starting to repay their debt. One in ten default within the first year.
And the cost of higher education only continues to rise. The total cost of four-year public and private college has nearly tripled since 1980, even after accounting for inflation.
At the same time, colleges are decreasing the ratio of funds dedicated to instruction. Instead, they spend more and more on administration. For every three full-time faculty members in New Jersey, there’s nearly four administrators. At the top fifty schools in the nation, there are triple the number of administrators as faculty.
Joe’s Big IdeaJoe’s legislation will put money back in students’ pockets, empower faculty, and stop the rising costs of administration.
1. No student will have to repay their federal student loans until they are five years out of college, and no interest will accrue during that period.
2. Students will be eligible to deduct the amount they repay in principal on their federal student loans from their federal taxes.
3. Students who make timely payments on their federal student loans will be eligible to claim a tax credit on their federal taxes for the full amount they repay in interest. Students who fall behind on their payments and have not been granted forbearance will be eligible to claim a deduction on their federal taxes for the amount they repay in interest on their federal student loans.
4. Instead of the deduction described above, those who are employed in public service careers in the non-profit sector, government, or fields like nursing where America faces severe shortages will be eligible to claim a tax credit on their federal taxes for half the amount they repaid in principal on their federal student loans during the tax year.
5. Those who are employed full-time for at least nine months during the tax year and whose incomes place them at or below 125% of the poverty rate will be eligible to claim a tax credit on their federal taxes for the full amount they repay in principal and interest on their federal student loans.
6. Carpenters, mechanics, electricians, and plumbers are every bit as important as other workers, so graduates of trade schools will receive the same tax benefits and small businesses that offer apprenticeships will receive tax incentives.
7. In order to have their students qualify for federal student aid, institutions will be required to publicly track their students’ careers and incomes for five years after the student leaves the educational program.
8. Within 5 years of enactment, in order to have their students qualify for federal student aid, institutions will be required to have a ratio of administrators to full-time faculty no greater than 1 administrator for every 3 full-time faculty members. This figure will be calculated using a 3 year average.
9. Within 5 years of enactment, in order to have their students qualify for federal student aid, institutions must have a ratio of administrators to enrolled full-time students no greater than 1 administrator for every 10 enrolled full-time students. This figure will be calculated using a 3 year average.
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The Problem
With wages stagnating and debts rising, Americans are struggling to save for retirement. The U.S government is, too. Estimates indicate that by 2035 the government will only be able to pay 75% of the benefits it has promised due to the aging population and slowing birth rate.
Joe’s Big Idea: the America’s Future Bond
Joe would give every American parent, legal guardian, and grandparent of a child under six years old the opportunity to purchase an “America’s Future Bond.” This bond would be a U.S. government bond purchased on behalf of a child that would earn 6% interest compounded semi-annually and mature after 67 years, the current age of retirement. Each year, any eligible purchaser could spend up to $1,000 on a bond for any eligible child; however, a parent or legal guardian raising a child in a single parent household could spend up to $2,000 on a bond for any eligible child. The bond would come with a full tax credit, an exemption from the IRS gifting limit, and eligibility for an employer match.
This program would provide significant retirement savings for participants. For example, a child with one parent participating in the program year would receive approximately $234,000 at retirement age. If both parents participated, the child would receive approximately $468,000 upon maturity. A child with two parents, four grandparents, and two employers participating in the program for all five years of eligibility would have approximately $3.7 million in retirement savings when they turn 67 — at no cost to them.
During the first five years of the program’s existence, Joe would allow the purchase of America’s Future Bonds for any person under 18 to ensure that the current generation also benefits from saving early. Moreover, because a bond purchase is equivalent to what an individual would have paid in taxes and employers receive a deduction rather than a credit, the plan could actually have a net positive effect on U.S. government funds.
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With the war in Gaza waging, tensions in the Middle East at a feverish level, and now Ireland, Norway, and Spain prematurely stating that they will recognize a Palestinian State, it’s hard to imagine a future of peace and prosperity for Israelis and Palestinians alike. As America’s political leaders—President Biden and his team—wrestle with the immediate problem of getting all the hostages home and bringing the fighting in the Gaza Strip to a permanent end, we must look beyond today’s crisis and try to imagine the contours of a permanent peace. Otherwise, we run the risk of seeing October 7th and its aftermath as just the latest episode of Arab-Israeli violence; the latest, instead of the last.
To forge a better future, we must start by committing ourselves to the goal of ensuring Israelis have peace and security. And we must also find a way for Palestinians to have self-determination and real economic opportunities to prosper. Making these goals mutually compatible is the diplomatic challenge of our lifetimes.
For Israelis, the nature of a future Palestinian state is seen—especially after October 7th—as a matter of life or death. It matters to Israelis whether an independent Palestine will be more like South Korea than North Korea. Indeed, it should matter to Palestinians also, because their state will inevitably rely on Israel as a market for exports and for jobs for many of its citizens, plus they too will benefit from breaking the endless cycle of violence. Squaring this circle— Palestinian independence and Israeli security—will not be easy. Nor is it possible until the violent jihadists are out of power. For there to be peace in the Middle East, a future Palestinian state must be peaceful. It must abandon the goal of eliminating the state of Israel.
But the task of rebuilding a ruined Gaza presents a unique opportunity to set the conditions necessary for Israelis and those Palestinians who reject terrorism, to get what they want, what they deserve, and what is necessary to bring this generations-long conflict to an end.
Joe’s Big Idea
I’m proposing that when the immediate war subsides, the international community make a historic investment in Gaza. Many billions of dollars will be needed for the physical reconstruction of densely populated urban areas. But the investment I have in mind involves much more than money. It involves presence. Ideally, the city would be where future peace negotiations between warring nations are conducted with senior diplomats from every country in the world calling it their home—a Camp David, of sorts in the Middle East.A skin-in-the-game commitment of this nature would do two things: it would focus the entire world on the reconstruction needs of a shattered jurisdiction containing over two-million human beings; and because the entire world would want to protect their diplomats, it would provide Israel a measure of assurance that the future Palestinian state—and the Gaza component specifically— will not be presenting a military or terror threat to Israel.
Before foreign nations will send their diplomats to live in Gaza City, world leaders would have to satisfy themselves that terrorism arising in the Gaza Strip is a thing of the past. They would have to be confident that international civil servants living and working in Gaza City would be as safe as they would be in Paris, New York, or Geneva. Obviously, it will take time and an all hands on deck effort to establish these conditions.
Perhaps there would need to be a period where an international body governed over the territory, until certain conditions—like demilitarization, having a constitution consistent with the UN Declaration of Human Rights, and holding free, fair elections where Jihadists are ineligible to seek office—were met to trigger granting Palestinians full independence. Setting these conditions is an important step towards realizing them.
But if a broad coalition of nations were to announce now their intention to headquarter an entity whose central aim is to be the center for world peace in Gaza City, they would be providing something noticeably absent from today’s political landscape: a beacon of hope for Palestinian-Israeli reconciliation and coexistence under conditions of peace and security—conditions that the entire world would have an interest in enforcing.
We can see the impact this war is having not only on Israelis and Palestinians, but on America as well. To many, the goal of peace in the Middle East seems impossible. But as hard as it is to imagine, it can be done if leaders are more interested in solutions than performance. This is one problem among many we can solve if we are willing to think outside the box and committed to the hard work it will take to get the job done.
This was originally published on Time of Israel .
What is Your Big Idea?
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