Consistently, the political Left insists that conservatives have no solutions to offer. It's not true, of course. Still, liberals cling to this mantra.
Undeterred, The Heritage Foundation is weighing in with a 54-page outline of "Solutions for America," covering the gamut from job creation to economic stimulus, entitlement reform, national security and legal reform. Its 128 specific recommendations will be detailed further in forthcoming policy papers from Heritage.
Suggestions include:
Heritage's President, Dr. Edwin Feulner, noted a common goal of the proposals: They return power to the people rather than government. And, as reflected by the examples above, many of them call for bold steps rather than incremental change.
"While these policy prescriptions are bold," Feulner said, "they're also politically viable. Collectively, they will put America back on the track to prosperity and greatness."
The quickest economic boost might be from the two-pronged plan to encourage companies to use their $1.8-trillion cash reserves for expanding and creating jobs. The first prong is lowering America's corporate tax rate--now the second-highest in the developed world--to no more than the average rate of 26%. This reform would encourage U.S. companies to expand at home and international companies to expand in the USA. The second prong is to let businesses to deduct their tax-deductible investments right away, rather than using multi-year depreciation. (Heritage also opposes the scheduled January 1st tax increases.)
The plan also calls for less regulation--especially repealing the new regulatory costs embodied in President Obama's health care and financial regulation bills-- as another key to unlocking growth by the private sector. (House Republican Leader John Boehner (R, OH) recently wrote President Obama to complain that the government now has in the pipeline 191 new rules, each of them entailing more than $100-million in compliance costs.)
"Solutions for America" also proposes major change in public assistance. A Heritage study highlights how over $1-trillion annually (including the required state and local contributions) is spent on 71 means-tested federal welfare programs. Heritage recommends that these should be consolidated, plus have work and partial repayment obligations added for able-bodied adults.
Federal workers are over-compensated, the Heritage report notes. (USA Today reported their average total package is $123,000--twice the private sector average.) Heritage calculates that for comparable jobs and experience, the federal package is 30-40% too high, with a $47-billion annual savings to taxpayers if pay is brought into line with the private sector.
The collective package of proposals will be distributed by The Heritage Foundation to lawmakers and opinion leaders, and is publicly available at its website.
As Feulner noted, the ideas are not all new. But neither are Obama's big government proposals. The notion that only "new" ideas have merit is a myth; otherwise enduring standards such as honesty, civility, and freedom itself would be deemed "old" and therefore invalid.
Heritage has compiled comprehensive policy proposals for Presidents and Congress for over three decades. Its 1980 "Mandate for Leadership" became a policy bible for the incoming administration of Ronald Reagan. Reagan distributed copies at the initial meeting of his Cabinet and Heritage calculated that nearly two-thirds of its 2,000 recommendations were adopted by the Reagan Administration.
Liberal critics will doubtlessly assail Heritage's latest 128 recommendations. But nobody should pretend that conservatives are devoid of good ideas. And America would be better by listening to them.
Former Congressman Ernest Istook is a Distinguished Fellow at The Heritage Foundation.
Follow Ernest Istook on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Ernest_Istook
"Reducing the overly-generous compensation packages of federal employees,"
The President of the United States makes $400,000 a year, The CEO of Oracle made $56.8 million last year. Who has the more important job? Executive compensation in the US has become obscene, why is that not a concern of your organization?
"Requiring budget limits for entitlements such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security"
The total budget for Social Security in 2009 is projected at just under 696 Billion dollars. Social Security's budget is separate from the general Federal budget, since it is supposed to be self financed. The cost to the US of the wars in the middle east will eclipse 1.082 Trillion this year. (Not taking into account the "human" costs, death, dismemberment, lives destroyed and life time disabilities) A recent study put the total costs of the Middle East wars at 12 Trillion dollars worldwide. Which benefits the US more, taking care of it's elderly and disabled, or fighting 1/2 a world away to profit the oil industry?
These are just two examples. (The first two). "Solutions for America" should benefit the majority of Americans, not just the wealthiest. If the money spent on those wars had been invested in making America energy independent, the whole world would be better off.
I (for one) want rational "solutions", not political ones.
Could it be that they have the CEOs salary that high, too, so it will raise the average wage of private sector workers?
Given that 30 years of reduction of real income and benefits to the middle and working class by conservative economic policies has NOT benefitted these folks continuation of polices ensuring they will have even less money and benefits in the future so the rich will have more simply doesn't play outside the echo chamber. Conservatives have had 30 years of changing the tax codes so where is this great stimulus already - please pardon my skepticism about your future efforts. As to more control of education and transportation to the state levels. Given a global economy, having 50 weaker fiefdoms determining education and transportation policies without co-ordination of common objectives for a national strategy doesn't treally make that much sense either - unless the real conservative objective is to perpetuate a race to the bottom in giveaways to rapacious corporations by playing the states off against eachother.
Epic fail.
Second of all, I don't categorize myself as a Liberal and there are many who categorize themselves as Liberals who are eager to agree.
The argument that Liberals should be familiar with the heritage foundations' suggestions as a matter of discourse is presumptuous.
I believe it is the heritage foundation that should be understanding of non-heritage originated ideas that is a more pressing topic of concern.
This may sound extreme for an analogy, but, I suppose there could be debate as to whether serial killers have not been given enough praise for their contributions to the science of forensics.
If the heritage foundation discovered a cure for cancer, I would be more inclined to second guess whether this foundation would use the cure to further the election of partisan officials into government offices and neglect using the cure to heal those who are actually suffering from the disease.
The heritage foundation's foundation, as far as my research is concerned, is as unstable and suspect as a pool of quicksand.
It's members and reputation is politically biased and the attempt to convince "Liberals" to offer a benefit of the doubt for it's updated commandments only suggests that their ideas do not have strong enough knees to stand on their own.
With all do respect, sound ideas prove themselves by themselves and are hardly dependent on a plea for objectivity from an opposing ideological demographic.
Flat 26% no write offs and no subsidies deal. 2 consecutive years with losses CEO, CBO, CFO are forever banned from running a public corporation again(Yes licensure for executives just like lawyers engineers doctors etc...). Likewise the median senior management salary can be no more than 15 times higher than the median employee salary. We all know they don't pay the existing rate. Also end the offshoring tax games. Most companies don't pay under the corporate tax code we do know this but I'll sock it to wall street.
Likewise any corporation accepting government subsidies taxed at a flat 36% along with any company where 60% of their business was from government contracts or didn't want to live under above salary strucure. Still under 2 years of losses managment loses right to manage. Live of the small business and individual income tax pay more corporate tax. I'll be happy to push defense contractors to diversify their technologies into the private sector creating jobs etc...
Simplified the tax code as well.
Then they have to defend by talking about all the kickbacks in the corporate code and even their low income base will realize hey they don't pay taxes.
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/03/11/tpc%E2%80%99s-hits-and-misses-on-ryan%E2%80%99s-roadmap/
"Republican Tea Party Contract on America" a.k.a. "Solutions for America"
http://my.democrats.org/page/content/tpgop
http://www.roadmap.republicans.budget.house.gov/
Funny… the U.S, Chamber of Commerce recently demanded our surrender in its "Open Letter to the President of the United States, the United States Congress, and the American People"
http://rncnyc2004.blogspot.com/2010/07/us-chamber-of-commerce-open-letter-to.html
...which happens to sound suspiciously like the fiscal plan touted by the Heritage Foundation... which, in turn sounds exactly like Ryan's "Roadmap.”
It's almost incestuous.
But let's be clear, GOP lawmakers say they don't embrace the plan [publically]
Tax cuts or incentives for the Rich.
Cuts to anything that help regular people.
Less federal government.
Government workers are overpaid.
Why yes those are great ideas. But I don't know where I have heard them before?
Sorry, cons, changing the pitch doesn't change the melody.
Shut down all US military bases outside our borders. Let those nations defend themselves.
End the Iraq and Afghanistan war now, bring ALL US troops home NOW.
End the war on drugs - haven't we learned that alcohol prohibition made criminals out of ordinary citizens, created a black market which created a violent criminal class.
Prosecute Bush and Cheney for crimes against the US Constitution.
Set up an independent prosecutor to investigate Wall Street Fraud.
#4.... well unless we do the same for all POTUS's and their VP's, if not , then no.
#5 is also a good idea.
Allow me to add an investigation into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and any and all former Goldman Sacs employees who now work in the administration. If I remember right Rahm was on the board of Fannie Mae and made a lot of money there.
Part of the problem is the 'Gentleman's Agreement' that the next admin will not go after the previous one. That being said I don't think the Repubs will honor that agreement the next time they get into power.
Perhaps every admin needs to know that once out of power they will be held accountable for their actions, and no one is above the law.