An Agenda Worthy of Pursuit

An article today in Right Wing News drew my attention to another article, from The Weekly Standard. As John Hawkins (RWN) says in his article, "a terrific concept is worth stealing", and I'm doing him the compliment of stealing his, as well as that of the original authors, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, on The Weekly Standard.

On Deficit and Taxes, the agenda offered includes:

• Change the rules so it takes the support of a supermajority in Congress to raise taxes.
• Attempt to flatten and simplify the tax code.
• Support a Balanced-Budget Amendment or some other sort of legislated spending limits.
• Support Social Security reform including private accounts, raising the age limit in 2030, permanently tying the age limit to the average lifespan of Americans, & index Social Security payments to prices, instead of wages.
• Set the baseline budget to the rate of inflation when we're running a deficit and the rate of inflation + 1% when we're in the black.
• Oppose taxes on the internet.

I'd like to see something in the way of a flat tax, and The Fair Tax, although I dislike the intrinsic rebate concept in it, makes a good starting point. But the Fair Tax doesn't attempt to address spending controls, or spending reduction, so the notion of a balanced budget amendment, or other limit, is an essential goal.

I disagree with Social Security reform; the Fair Tax gets it right, as did Harry Browne: kill Social Security, and all related programs. With the monies that will no longer need to be extorted from us, we can all take care of ourselves. And for those who really need help, it's far better achieved at a more local level, with much less overhead.

Taxes on the Internet would simply destroy it. And too much in our present society depends on this medium to which few of us had access as recently as a decade ago. For all its problems, it is an essential part of the lives of most Americans.


On Energy issues:

• Drill ANWR ASAP.
• Permanently get rid of the Clean Air Act Amendments that lead to different gasoline blends going to different states (which raises the cost of gas about 15 cents per gallon)
• Low interest loans and tax credits for companies that agree to build new refineries or nuclear power plants.

As I said in my previous article, drill ANWR, but also develop the resources in Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming. We need to be independent of other countries for our basic energy requirements.

On Health Care:

• Tort reform, which will reduce not only costs paid out in lawsuits, but the cost of "defensive medicine."
• Streamlining the regulations that make bringing a new drug to market so slow and expensive.
• Health care savings accounts.
• Allowing health insurance companies from anywhere in America to compete for business in any state.

The FDA needs to be returned to the function it served prior to the Thalidomide scare. The additional authority it was given in the wake of that panic would not have prevented the damage done by that drug, and has served only to dramatically increase the cost of medications, delay the introduction of new medications, and prevent sick people from making an informed decision to take a risky medication that might save their lives.

A free market approach to health insurance business is such obvious good policy that it should not even have been necessary to propose it.

On Illegal Aliens:

• Significantly increase spending and resources for border control.
• Put an end to "catch and release" programs (i.e. if we catch an illegal immigrant, they stay in our hands until they're deported).
• Crack down on businesses that hire illegal aliens.

RWN gave this section the heading "illegal immigration". Ain't no such thing, folks. "Illegal immigration" is an oxymoron, concocted by liberals to distract from the reality that these people are criminals. Immigration is a legal process, and if you're not a citizen, you're either an immigrant, or an illegal alien.

On other issues:

• Pledge to continue to appoint textualist judges.
• Oppose Affirmative Action as unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment.
• Support a "loser pays" principle that will cut down on frivolous lawsuits.
• Continue to push for school vouchers, particularly in areas where schools are failing.
• Support the presentation of a Photo ID in order to vote.
• Push for stricter control of legal immigration. Cut back the number of immigrants being allowed to enter the US and be more selective with the people we allow into the country.
• Support Three-Strikes and You're Out laws that get criminals off the street permanently.
• Oppose new regulations on the internet.
• Support free trade at every opportunity.
• Oppose any and all government spending on abortion.
• Support a Constitutional Amendment that defines marriage as being between a man and a woman.
• Oppose minimum wage hikes.

School vouchers are a Good Thing. But we need to go further. The teachers' unions have for too long had a strangle hold on the education process in this country, and the effect has been disastrous. As performance has fallen, they've fudged the tests, and the number continued to decline. We need to free teachers from any requirement to join these unions, in any state, whether the state is a right to work state or not. And frankly, it's a scandal that so few states (currently 22, I think) are right to work states. If I could do it, I would ban teachers from joining unions in the first place.

We do need to do something to ensure that only registered voters are allowed to vote, and that only U. S. citizens are allowed to register. This will be hugely difficult to legislate, as the politicians are generally opposed to any such changes, but we must find a way. I think that the right path may be to require a voter registration card, perhaps issued by the DMV (to avoid creating yet another bureaucracy), and for which the registrant is required to establish proof of citizenship. Then at the polls, the card would have to be shown, even though the registration list is still used. Belt and suspenders, both, I say, as this is key to protecting our country.

Just as "illegal immigration" is an oxymoron, "legal immigration" is redundant. But the point is well made. We need to drastically change our handling of immigration, beginning by working to physically deport all illegal aliens. Doesn't matter how long they've been here -- longevity only establishes how long they've flaunted our laws. Send them home -- now.

I would add:

• Establish by Constitutional Amendment that English is our national language, and then banish the foreign language classes in our public schools, for any purpose other than bridging the students into English.
• Get the Federal government out of education. Public schools need to be controlled locally -- as locally as possible -- and even state control is questionable. Better to have them controlled at the county or community level, where the politicians can receive very direct retribution for their failings.
• Oppose minimum wage laws. Opposing hikes is well and good, but the reality is that all experience shows that minimum wage laws increase unemployment. Some minimal level of unemployment will always exist -- how else could we change jobs -- but minimum wages increase unemployment, and higher minimum wages make it worse, as has been seen in Europe, where double-digit unemployment is the rule.
• Legislate against kitchen-sink legislation. Many of our governmental ills have been achieved through the bargaining process where bills receive the attachment of riders that have nothing to do with the apparent purpose of the bill. This is rationalized as essential to the process. That's nonsense, and at worst, we should tolerate only riders that are entirely consistent with the subject of the bill.
  

These are tall orders to achieve, but worthy of the attention of every citizen. Can we do less for our children, in all good conscience?