Our Progressive Vision.

• Author: Kucinich, Dennis J.
• Position: Speech given by Representative Dennis Kucinich - Speech

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We need to carry the tradition of American progressivism forward for the next 100 years, and we also need to focus on the next 100 days. To do so, we need to be clear about what a progressive vision would look like.

I know what it doesn't look like. Last year George Bush brought in the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Now we know what tarps do, right? They cover stuff up. What it covered up was a theft, just a plain out-and-out theft from the American people. We don't have to mince words about it. Oh, they can tell us that they're saving our economic system while we continue to see people lose homes. But don't believe them.

Why weren't loan modifications put in there? We talked about it. We fought for it.

They said, you know, we have to give money to the banks so people can have credit again.

Congress was taken for a ride, and the American people's wealth went with it.

So now you have a system of checks and balances.

The Treasury writes all the checks, and Congress doesn't know what the balance is.

Trillions of dollars are being taken both from the Treasury and the Federal Reserve, which is printing money that you, the American taxpayer, will have to back up.

I look at this and I ask: What is the progressive vision? We can't just keep looking backwards. We can look in the rearview mirror and be excited about the distance traveled, but we've got to keep looking ahead if we're going to move forward.

And if we're going to move forward, we need to begin to have a serious discussion of monetary reform because what's been allowed to happen is that banks have been permitted to create money out of nothing, and they have not held sufficient reserves against their investments that could go sour. This caused the collapse of a financial system that's being shored up with U.S. tax dollars and with trillions of dollars printed by the Fed as backup.

This is a moment in American history that should not escape us. This is a massive theft that goes far beyond anything that's ever occurred in the history of this country. What's happening is they're using government to accelerate the wealth upward and they're using the Treasury to grab the resources of the public and to enable the banks to get extraordinary amounts of resources, and they're still not loaning money to let people save their homes.

We desperately need monetary reform.

They don't teach this in school. Article I, Section 9, gives our government the ability to create...