Today, Alexi unveiled his plan to restore fiscal discipline in Washington, D.C.   You can read his detailed plan over in our Issues Section here.  Below are his remarks at the Rotary Club of Chicago:

I am very honored to be here. I am honored and humbled to be the Democratic nominee for the United States Senate for what will be one of the most important races in the country this year. And as all of us know – whether you are an entrepreneur, have your own small business, whether you work for a large corporation, whether you’re retired – we all care about this country’s fiscal future. I’m here today to talk about some of the challenges that we’re facing, some of the decision that have been made, and some common sense, core approaches towards dealing with our national budgetary issues in the future.

Again, I’m honored to be here with all of you at the Rotary Club, an organization with a very proud history of doing the right thing, and doing it very well. I also want to make sure to welcome all of our international guests and let you know that this how the weather of Chicago is all year-round. So come back in January and February – it’s really the exact same. Your motto here at the Rotary Club is one that I admire – “Service Above Self.”

It’s a noble and valuable concept. It recognizes that we achieve the best for all of society by putting aside what we think is in our own best interest and working instead for the types of policies and actions that improve the lives of all people, for generations to come.

You don’t need me to tell you that most politicians in Washington DC don’t live by this motto. All too often, especially recently, votes are cast on the House and Senate floor not with an eye towards what’s good for our country, but with an eye towards what’s good for the next election.

The problem, of course, is that when politicians in D.C. act out of their own self-interest, it affects us all. It affects our children and our grandchildren. Unfortunately, that’s why Washington, D.C. is broken. That’s why so many Americans have lost faith in their government and that’s why we need a new crop of fiscally responsible leaders in D.C. to deal with the long-term challenges that we are facing as a nation. And that’s what I’m here to talk about today.

For most of the last decade, Washington politicians have spent tax dollars like they were free chips at a casino. This is not Democrat or Republican – this is a Washington, D.C. problem. They gambled on risky and reckless giveaways to Wall Street and they bet on tax cuts for the rich. They took a $237 billion budget surplus in 2000 and turned it into record deficits. They ended oversight of the large Wall Street firms that led us to the brink of an international financial meltdown. And ironically, many of the DC architects of this recklessness ended the decade with a pay raise, while their policies led millions of Americans to the unemployment lines. Not only did these policies not work but they have had a devastating impact on economic growth in our nation and have exploded our national debt.

And now we find ourselves in the throws of an election season. This is the time when candidates should be talking about solutions and ideas. How do we get out of this devastating economic recession? How do we get Americans back to work? How do we prevent more “too big to fail” situations?

But instead of solutions, we get the same old Washington DC politics. Now, I know this is a non-partisan group, and my goal is not to be partisan, but the truth of the matter is that I am the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate and what I’ve heard over the last few weeks has been disconcerting, to say the least. You might have heard John Boehner, the Republican leader in the House, outline his party’s budget agenda just last week. He billed it as a, quote, major policy address – something that I was looking forward to. I was excited to hear his grand scheme for turning things around, making sure we start creating jobs, especially for middle class families. So what was his grand scheme, his plan to fundamentally change the system and turn this economy around? His solution? His solution was to fire Secretary Geithner, to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans even though it didn’t work the first time, and to repeal health care reform. That’s his plan.

I don’t care what party you belong too – that is not a plan. That is not a substantive solution to moving this country forward. But, unfortunately, it’s what my opponent and folks on the other side of the aisle, many of his colleagues, continue to tout as a solution. Think about it – extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest two percent of Americans will add 750 billion dollars to our already dangerous national debt. This is money that we don’t have and money that will not jumpstart this economy in any tangible manner. Economists almost across the board have universally said that this is the least efficient way of getting capital back into the system and to increase economic growth. Repealing the health care bill will add another trillion dollars to our debt and take us off a path toward future savings. And unless Secretary Geithner is pulling in a two trillion dollar salary that can be used to offset these ideas, their plan is just more of the same Bush economics, unfortunately, that have helped get us into this terrible mess.

It is a simple truth that under the previous administration, even when times were good and we were experiencing strong business growth, the national debt more than doubled. More was added to the national debt under those eight years than in all the previous administrations in the history of the United States – that’s from President George Washington to Bill Clinton – combined. And my opponent voted for every one of those debt-doubling budgets. He even managed to vote himself a pay raise six times over the last decade. So when my opponent tells you that, because he is a Republican and he is a fiscal conservative, it’s misleading, it’s not true, and it’s not based on his votes in the past.

Today, I want to move beyond the political grandstanding of my opponent and talk about some serious solutions with regards to dealing with our dangerously-high national debt. My plan is based on four common-sense pillars of reform that will rein in America’s dangerously-escalating debt and grow our economy. Number 1 – we need to pass pay as you go budgeting, number 2 – tax code reforms, number 3 – health insurance reform, and number 4 – defense spending reforms. In more simple terms: we need to change the way Washington spends money, cut fat out of the budget, and ensure the wealthy and large corporations are paying their fare share. It’s a simple and balanced solution.

First, I firmly believe we need to fundamentally change the way we budget our tax dollars. The budget policies of the last decade have added $8 trillion to the national debt. No American family could survive if it budgeted like the United States government. We’re not surprised when teenagers borrow a credit card and think they never have to pay it back but we should expect more from our federal government.

We need to restore the principle that all of us use, or should be using, in our own family budgeting – you spend only what you can afford. That’s why I strongly support pay-as-you-go budget legislation.

Pay-as-you-go is exactly what it sounds like – every bill Congress passes should be paid for right then and there. This is a crucial first step towards stabilizing our economy and preventing our children from being saddled with epic debt. Now, my opponent likes to say he’s a fiscal conservative, and if you hear him on the trail he gives lip service to reining in spending – but when he had the chance to vote and implement pay-as-you-go budgeting, he voted against this common-sense provision. This is not a personal attack, that’s a fundamental difference. I believe in pay-as-you-go budgeting, he doesn’t.

Ensuring that Congress only doles out funds that are offset goes hand-in-hand with transparency and fairness. Transparency and fairness that unfortunately has been lacking on the federal level for far too long. We need to shed a light on government spending and empower taxpayers to see where their tax dollars are going. That’s why I pledge, as a U.S. Senator, to post all non-emergency legislation online 72 hours prior to its consideration on the floor, accessible to any member of the public, any citizen.

Second, we need to take a cold, hard look at the current tax code. On balance, it’s irrefutable that our tax code benefits the biggest corporations and the wealthiest Americans at the expense of the middle class. A middle class that’s been devastated by this recession, a middle class that has always been the cornerstone of our nation’s economy.

I believe tax cuts should go to those who need them most and those who are most likely to consume that income, most likely to put it back into our economy. Here in Illinois, that means the start-up business owner, the ambitions entrepreneur on the South Side of Chicago, or the farmer struggling to make it through a tough season. We need to give them a fighting chance again.

My opponent disagrees. When it came time to stand with the middle class, he voted against the largest middle class tax cut in history. It was a slap in the face to families and small business owners that are already dealing with enormous challenges across Illinois.

I don’t think corporate America needs bigger tax breaks or more tax incentives while the middle class is struggling to stay afloat. That’s why I’ve called for closing corporate tax loopholes that ship jobs overseas. This is an issue that I feel strongly about. Why should we reward American companies that don’t look out for the American worker?

We also need to make sure that the Treasury Department has the resources they need to stop corporate abuses of tax shelters and offshore tax havens if we’re going to begin recouping $350 billion in owed taxes.

Next, if we’re going to restore sanity to our nation’s finances, we need to take another look at the health insurance industry. Every year, the federal government spends a whopping 21% of its budget - $753 billion – on health insurance through Medicare, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. The landmark reforms passed in March by Congress were a good first start, but we need to do more. We can do more. And we can do it smarter.

For far too long, consumers haven’t had all the information they need to make informed decisions. We need to empower you to make an informed decision by requiring health insurance companies to provide more information about what’s covered and what isn’t. We need to add pre-existing conditions and, most importantly, I am proposing that we strip insurers of their exemption from antitrust laws to allow for more competition in the market. The result would be more market value for a more informed consumer. This is common sense.

We also need to cut programs that aren’t working and expand those that are to eliminate waste and whittle the system down to the most efficient, effective programs that will keep our families healthy and our checkbooks happy as well.

Finally, the last pillar of my plan to get us on the road to fiscal responsibility is to heed Secretary Gates’ call to rein in non-essential defense spending. About 1 out of every 5 dollars of our budget goes to defense and security related activities. That’s over $700 billion this year alone. We spend more on defense than all the other countries in the world, combined. Even when you exclude the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, regular defense spending has grown at an average annual rate of 4.8 percent per year over inflation since 2001. That’s more than twice the rate of what we spend on Medicare and Social Security.

Defense Secretary Gates has the right idea when he says that we need to eliminate unnecessary weapons programs that cost taxpayers billions of dollars. We should also work towards streamlining the Pentagon by cutting down some of the wasteful bureaucracy that Secretary Gates has already mentioned. For example, did you know that if the military wants to request a military dog-handling team, it needs to be processed through five different four-star headquarters? It’s bloated bureaucracy like that that Defense Secretary Gates cited when he called for common-sense reforms. We can still have the best security in the world without wasting money and breaking our budgets, and I hope that Congress listens to Defense Secretary Gates and heeds his call.

This is just part of my plan to get our nation’s finances back on track, and it’s what I will fight for in the Senate if I’m so privileged to serve.

I know it will be an uphill battle. There are a lot of entrenched interests who have gotten their way for the past few decades. And there are plenty of politicians that are used to spending money to benefit their contributors instead of America as a whole.

But I believe in my plan, I believe in this common sense approach and more importantly, I believe in the principle it represents. That the role of our elected officials when it comes to spending tax dollars isn’t to serve themselves, but to serve us all – rich or poor, black or white, young or old.

If we can get the right leaders elected to Congress who will put service above self, who will fight for common-sense, equitable solutions to our budget crisis – then we can truly move our country forward for generations to come.

As the famous saying goes, “Politicians worry about the next election, leaders and statesman worry about the next generation.” Let’s start having a vision for where we want this country to be in 50 years, in 75 years, in 100 years. What kind of economy do we want to leave for the next generation?

I know that the Rotary Club abides by these standards and I look forward to working with all of you and hearing your ideas, and your thoughts, and working together for a very long time to come.

Thank you all very, very much and I look forward to a long-lasting partnership with all of you.

Thank you.