I've got a plan to restore opportunity in rural communities by ensuring access to health care, creating a public option for high-speed Internet, building a new farm economy...
No matter where you live in America, you should have the opportunity to thrive. But as giant corporations and Washington keep cutting off opportunities for huge parts of the country, the shot to succeed gets further out of reach for rural families.
Student loan debt is forcing young people to take jobs in big cities just to pay the bills. Big broadband companies are excluding entire communities — especially tribal communities and rural communities of color — from access to high-speed Internet. And more and more people are driving longer distances just to see a doctor.
Our failure to invest in rural areas is holding back millions of families, weakening our economy, and undermining our efforts to combat climate change. It’s time to fix this.
I’ve got a plan to restore opportunity in rural communities by ensuring access to health care, creating a public option for high-speed Internet, building a new farm economy that doesn’t just work for Big Ag, fighting climate change, creating and defending rural jobs, and more.
Here’s what I’ll do as president to invest in rural America:
Protect access to health care in rural communities.
Barriers to coverage, disappearing health facilities and a shortage of health professionals are denying people in rural America the care they deserve. In less than a decade, 112 rural hospitals have closed, with hundreds more teetering on the edge.
As president, I will make sure everyone is not only covered under Medicare for All but also has access to the care they need. That means investing in rural doctors, rural hospitals, and community health centers and it also means blocking hospital mergers that result in higher costs, worse care, and more closures.
Create a public option for broadband.
Today, Internet providers virtually ignore huge parts of the country. Not only that, they have deliberately restricted competition, kept prices high, and used their armies of lobbyists to convince state legislatures to ban local governments from building their own public networks. This ends in a Warren Administration.
I will create a public option for broadband because every home deserves affordable access to the internet in the 21st century. I’ll finally make it clear that towns and cities have the right to build their own broadband networks, and I’ll create a new Office of Broadband Access to manage the $85 billion we put towards making sure everyone has affordable fiber connections.
Build a new farm economy.
For decades, government policy has subsidized industrial agriculture at taxpayers' expense and lined the pockets of Big Ag. Meanwhile, giant corporations squeeze family farmers on both sides — forcing them to pay high prices for inputs like seeds and fertilizer, and driving commodity prices so low they don’t even cover farmers’ costs.
Farmers are stewards of the land, but agriculture has become one of the biggest polluters in our economy. They know this system is unsustainable — but without a change in incentives, they have no other choice but to overproduce just to try to break even.
Here’s my new approach: Guaranteeing farmers a fair price for their goods by paying farmers at cost of production for whatever they can’t sell on the market. This approach will raise farm incomes and still cost taxpayers billions less than we currently pay in subsidies.
We'll pay farmers for sustainable farming that protects our environment. My plan will make it economically feasible for farmers to be part of the climate change solution — and help achieve the goals of the Green New Deal.
Build economic security in rural America.
My Universal Child Care plan will make sure there are high-quality child care options available in every community — including home-based child care services, which rural families are more likely to use. My housing plan invests $523 million to create 380,000 affordable rental homes in rural areas. And my student loan debt cancelation plan will mean that recent graduates won’t need to flock to urban centers to find jobs that will help them pay down these loans.
We also need to do more to bring high-quality jobs back to rural areas and small towns and negotiate trade agreements that keep jobs in the U.S. — instead of shipping them overseas. That’s why I’ve committed to creating a National Jobs Strategy focused specifically on trends that disproportionately affect rural areas.
And, I will spend $2 trillion in green research, manufacturing, and exporting to create more than a million new jobs, reversing the manufacturing losses that many rural communities have experienced over the last two decades.
We can make sure that kids in every corner of our country have the opportunities they need to succeed — right there in their own hometowns.
Here’s the bottom line: A strong America requires a strong rural America.
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