FDR signs the G.I. Bill in the Oval Office, with (l to r) Bennett “Champ” Clark, J. Hardin Peterson, John Rankin, Paul Cunningham, Edith N. Rogers, J.M. Sullivan, Walter George, John Stelle, Robert Wagner, (unknown), and Alben Barkley; June 22, 1944.

In the 2017-2018 biennium, we promote federal investment in education and research.

The G.I. Bill of 1944 enabled an entire generation of first-in-their-family Americans to get higher education in the 1950's and make America prosperous. That program subsequently benefited Americans who served in Korea, Viet Nam, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq, and other conflicts around the world. Without taking any well-deserved compensation from our veterans, we propose that America would benefit if similar opportunities for education were available to more Americans, whether or not they served in the Armed Forces.

We support tuition-free public university uundergraduate education for working-class students, so that Americans who want to learn, are not prevented by financial need. Americans decided in the 1800's that elementary education should be free for all. Americans decided in the 1900's that kindergarten through twelfth grade education should be free for all. In this century, it is clear that additional education, beyond twelfth grade and, in some cases, before kindergarten, benefits the individual Americans who receive the education, and the communities in which those educated Americans will live and work.

From World War II to the 1990's, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Institutes of Health invested federal funds in basic research for the long-term increase of knowledge, while private investors pick projects based on that research, that might be commercialized for profit. Those long-term federal investments into the basic sciences of physics, energy, biology, and medicine, transformed America's communications, transportation, health, and food production. For the past 20 years, that federal investment in research has been reduced and is now down to near nothing. There are interest groups presently influencing government who do not want improved technologies to replace the products from which those interests currently make their profits.

We support bringing back direct federal investment in research into the basic sciences of energy, medicine, and food. We support tax incentives for private development of technology to apply this basic scientific research to improve America's housing, transportation, health, and agriculture. And we support tax penalties to discourage the persistent use of wasteful, destructive technologies that damage the health and well-being of Americans to profit private investors.