Editor’s note: Following are excerpts from the Democratic response to Gov. Nathan Deal’s State of the State speech:
I stood before you at this same time one year ago — and proposed a vision for Georgia that provided real opportunity for middle- and working-class families.
Opportunities for a good job with rising wages, opportunity for a good and affordable education, and the fundamental right of every Georgian to have access to quality health care.
What have we achieved one year later? Sadly, too little.
Look around Georgia today — you will see our people working harder just to get by, our schools under assault from reckless ideas, and a health care system shortchanged by morally bankrupt partisanship.
And the distressing fact is the next generation of Georgians — our children — face a future with less opportunity than their parents.
A child born today to a poor mother at Grady Hospital, just a few blocks from here, or in many rural hospitals, has less of a chance to work her way into the middle class than almost anywhere else in America.
That is wrong. Democrats will not accept it. I know you will not accept it. Together, we must change it.
Today, Gov. Deal offered you one direction for Georgia. It is an old roadmap — well worn with the agenda of moneyed special interests and narrow ideologues. It’s an agenda that bestows favors and advantages on the wealthy — while leaving behind our children, our workers and older citizens.
We can do better.
Democrats in the legislature offer you a different direction.
First, through better schools.
Georgians spoke clearly last year when they rejected Gov. Deal’s effort to strip parents and communities of local control of their schools.
It was an ill-conceived idea. State bureaucrats cannot and should not run local schools. Parents and their school boards should run local schools.
Democrats have a better plan — create a community schools program — managed by local schools and parents, ensuring every child after-school supervision and help with homework, providing medical care and nutrition where necessary.
We know that hungry and sick children don’t learn, and that those who lack structure after school are at a disadvantage. If every school offers those programs, we’ll see kids perform better and they’ll graduate with the skills they need to succeed.
Next, we’re offering a plan for better jobs. Democrats propose raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
Georgia needs to make our minimum wage a living wage. Our current minimum wage of $5.15 has not been increased in over a decade. It is quite simply a starvation wage.
In addition to earning a decent wage, everyone in Georgia deserves access to quality healthcare. That is why Georgia Democrats will continue the fight to expand Medicaid.
The Affordable Care Act provides states with funds to expand Medicaid to cover working-class citizens who make too little to afford private health insurance. It’s really a no-brainer — Georgians pay our federal taxes and deserve our share of the benefits of federal programs.
The refusal of Georgia Republicans to expand Medicaid has contributed to the closing of rural hospitals, and cost the state billions in jobs and economic expansion. Beyond the money, refusal to expand Medicaid is morally wrong, causing several hundred preventable deaths every year and untold suffering and heartache for those in need of medical care.
Democrats’ ideas are not controversial ideas — they are solid pro-family ideas that give every citizen an opportunity to make the most of their lives.
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