The four speeches in this collection represent a key part of my effort over the past three years to reinvigorate the Republican Party and inspire the conservative movement to produce a positive policy reform agenda aimed at the greatest challenges of our generation.
The four speeches in this collection represent a key part of my effort over the past three years to reinvigorate the Republican Party and inspire the conservative movement to produce a positive policy reform agenda aimed at the greatest challenges of our generation.
The four speeches in this collection represent a key part of my effort over the past three years to reinvigorate the Republican Party and inspire the conservative movement to produce a positive policy reform agenda aimed at the greatest challenges of our generation.
LEE.SENATE.GOV AN AGENDA FOR OUR TIME 2 I N T R O D U C T I O N
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T I M E INTRODUCTION AN AGENDA FOR OUR TIME The four speeches in this collection represent a key part of my effort over the past three years to reinvigorate the Republican Party and inspire the conservative movement to produce a positive policy reform agenda aimed at the greatest challenges of our generation. When I arrived in Washington in 2011, I joined a Republican Party that had been put in the position of saying no a lot by a Democratic- controlled Congress intent on fullling President Obamas campaign promise of fundamentally transforming the United States of America. But while minority parties always have to oppose, they cannot grow into majorities unless they also propose. As I saw it, the Republican Party needed to do a better job articulating a positive conservative vision for society and connecting that vision to a concrete policy agenda. This conservative vision, as I explain in the rst speech, is one of social solidarity and mutual cooperation, buttressed by the twin pillars of American freedom: a free enterprise economy and a voluntary civil society. These institutions exist and operate in the vital space between the government and the individual where organic communities form and networks of economic opportunity and social cohesion are built. While not inherently hostile toward government, the conservative vision sees the role of government as protecting that space, rather than trying to control or replace it. Our vision recognizes that the more power government accumulates and consolidates, the more it tends to become unfair, inefcient, unaccountable, and harmful to the healthy functioning of the free market and civil society. Thus a true conservative reform agenda must do more than just cut big governmentit also has to x broken government. And with a government as broken as ours, the rst step in this effort is to thoughtfully diagnose the problem. In the remaining three speeches I lay out a conservative diagnosis of our current government dysfunction and offer some potential remediessome of my own and some from other reform-oriented conservatives. 3 I N T R O D U C T I O N
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T I M E In my view the greatest domestic challenge of our generation is Americas large and growing Opportunity Decit. This opportunity crisis presents itself in three principal ways: immobility among the poor, trapped in poverty; insecurity in the middle class, where families just cant seem to get ahead; and cronyist privilege at the top, where political and economic elites twist policy to unfairly prot at everyone elses expense. The Left assumes this inequality is a sign of market failure or insufcient government regulation. But the fact is that bad government policies are too often the cause of unequal opportunity. For the same kind of dysfunctional big government that unfairly excludes the poor and middle class from being able to earn their success on a level playing eld sometimes unfairly exempts the wealthy and well-connected from having to earn their success. These speeches are not the culmination of a conservative reform agenda, but merely the beginning. With much of the difcult work still ahead of us, they are meant to reorient the Republican Party and direct the creation of its agenda toward the goal that Abraham Lincoln set forth over 150 years ago: to lift articial weights from all shoulders clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all, [and] afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life. Mike Lee T A B L E
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C O N T E N T S TABLE OF CONTENTS WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING WHAT CONSERVATIVES ARE FOR WHATS NEXT FOR CONSERVATIVES BRING THEM IN OPPORTUNITY, CRONYISM, AND CONSERVATIVE REFORM 6 8 22 40 54 6 W H A T
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S A Y I N G WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING Lee might be called the GOPs renaissance man because he so obviously relishes ideas on an impressive variety of issues, and is constantly working to come up with innovative and new conservative solutions for modern times. World Net Daily Pro tip for all potential 2016 candidates looking for a tax cut that helps parents, boosts growth, and doesnt blow up the budget: Give a call to Senator Mike Lee. National Review Senator Mike Lee and others here are proposing incredibly sound policies to provide incentives for child rearing families to give them the kind of support that they need through our tax code. Former Governor Jeb Bush Lees view is that focusing on eliminating government favoritism, corporate welfare, and barriers to competition is the right answer to the inequality challenge. This agenda accepts as valid many populist economic critiques from the left but offers an alternative to regulation and mandates, rejecting technocratic tweaks that seek to mitigate the ramications of government policy in favor of restoring consumer power and dramatically limiting Washingtons ability to pick winners and losers. The Wall Street Journal Lee has been proselytizing for a comprehensive anti-poverty, upward-mobility agenda making him one of the few Republican politicians talking in any sustained way about stalled economic mobility, stagnant middle-class wages and economic inequality Mike Lees conception of the tea partys future is hardly predominant within the movement, but it is fully consistent with Republican success. And it might even help ensure it. The Washington Post [I am] encouraged by [Senator Lees] policy entrepreneurship to promote upward mobility and economic security Congressman Paul Ryan Lee is slowly changing the soul of the party. Townhall W H A T
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S A Y I N G 7 Credit where its due: Lee is out with a new tax plan thats much better and actually addresses the needs of the middle class. Business Insider I cant say enough good things about this speech on family-friendly tax reform by Utah Senator Mike Lee. It is a beautifully written argument for a Republican tax agenda that prioritizes the interests of middle-class and struggling working parents. Pete Spiliakos, First Things Senator Mike Lee of Utah has authored a family-friendly tax-reform proposal and delivered a biting speech opposing crony capitalism. National Review Online To see a prominent conservative politician take up the cause and offer the sort of vision of it that Lee did in his remarks today, is a cause for great encouragement and hope. Encouraging signs are few and far between these days, but this was a big one. Yuval Levin Republican leaders would be wise to listen Wall Street Journal Senator Mike Lee of Utah has authored a family-friendly tax-reform proposal and delivered a biting speech opposing crony capitalism. National Review Online Senator Lees proposal is only one step in the right direction. But whats particularly encouraging about his proposal is that it would lift the sagging economic fortunes of many working-class families by targeting their payroll taxes. Lets hope more Republicans (and Democrats) take a page from Lees playbook and seek policies that renew the agging economic fortunes of family life in all too many of our nations poor and working class communities. The Atlantic The open-ended nature of many federal subsidies for higher-ed borrowing is a big contributor to college costs in the rst place. Bringing down prices down will mean more competition and more alternatives, along the lines of what Republican senators Mike Lee (Utah) and Marco Rubio (Fla.) have proposed. National Review Online 8 W H A T
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F O R WHAT CONSERVATIVES ARE FOR In recent years, as the federal government has expanded its reach and consolidated its power more than any other time in our history, conservatives have tended to dene ourselves in terms of what we are against. While it is important to oppose the policies of an overreaching and unsustainable federal government, we must also make the positive case for conservatism and articulate to the American people what conservatives are for. Conservatism is ultimately not about the policies we support or oppose, but the kind of society those policies would allow the American people to create together. The conservative vision for society is one of social solidarity and interdependence between neighbors and friends, families and congregations, city councils and local associations, and business owners and customers, who are free to pursue their own happiness and choose to do so together. The institutions that facilitate this pursuitand help solve public problems that arise along the wayare not distant, bureaucratic agencies, but a free enterprise economy, voluntary civil society, and local and state governments. Central to this vision is a strong, but limited, federal government that protects the space for these institutions to thrive and helps all Americans gain access to them. For our federal government to maintain, without exceeding, this indispensible role it must reject policy privilege that bestows unfair advantages to the wealthy and well-connected, and it must embrace policy diversity among Americas 50 states and keep policy decisions as close as possible to the people affected by them. 10 W H A T
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F O R WHAT CONSERVATIVES ARE FOR What Conservatives Are For Remarks to the Heritage Foundation U.S. Senator Mike Lee April 22, 2013 I. Introduction In Washington, it is common for both parties to succumb to easy negativity. Republicans and Democrats stand opposed to each other, obviously, and outspoken partisanship gets the headlines. This negativity is unappealing on both sides. That helps explain why the federal government is increasingly held in such low regard by the American people. But for the Left, the defensive crouch at least makes sense. Liberalisms main purpose today is to defend its past gains from conservative reform. But negativity on the Right, to my mind, makes no sense at all. The Left has created this false narrative that liberals are for things, and conservatives are against things. When we concede this narrative, even just implicitly, we concede the debate before it even begins. And yet too many of us elected conservatives especially do it anyway. We take the bait. A liberal proposes an idea, we explain why it wont work, and we think weve won the debate. But even if we do, we reinforce that false narrative winning battles while losing the war. This must be frustrating to the scholars of the Heritage Foundation, who work every day producing new ideas for conservatives to be for. But it should be even more frustrating to the conservatives around the country that we elected conservatives all serve. After all, they know what theyre for: why dont we? 11 W H A T
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F O R II. Agenda and Vision Perhaps its because its so easy in Washington to forget. In Washington, we debate public policy so persistently that we can lose sight of the fact that policies are means, not ends. We say we are for lower taxes, or less regulation, or spending restraint. But those are just policies we advocate. Theyre not what were really for. What were really for are the good things those policies will yield to the American people. What were really for is the kind of society those policies would allow the American people to create, together. III The Vision Together. If there is one idea too often missing from our debate today thats it: together. In the last few years, we conservatives seem to have abandoned words like together, compassion, and community as if their only possible meanings were as a secret code for statism. This is a mistake. Collective action doesnt only or even usually - mean government action. Conservatives cannot surrender the idea of community to the Left, when it is the vitality of our communities upon which our entire philosophy depends. Nor can we allow one politicians occasional conation of compassion and bigger government to discourage us from emphasizing the moral core of our worldview. Conservatism is ultimately not about the bills we want to pass, but the nation we want to be. If conservatives want the American people to support our agenda for the government, we have to do a better job of showing them our vision for society. And re-connecting our agenda to it. 12 W H A T
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F O R We need to remind the American people and perhaps, too, the Republican Party itself that the true and proper end of political subsidiarity is social solidarity. Ours has never been a vision of isolated, atomized loners. It is a vision of husbands and wives; parents and children; neighbors and neighborhoods; volunteers and congregations; bosses and employees; businesses and customers; clubs, teams, groups, associations and friends. The essence of human freedom, of civilization itself, is cooperation. This is something conservatives should celebrate. Its what conservatism is all about. Freedom doesnt mean youre on your own. It means were all in this together. Our vision of American freedom is of two separate but mutually reinforcing institutions: a free enterprise economy and a voluntary civil society. History has shown both of these organic systems to be extremely efcient at delivering goods and services. But these two systems are not good because they work. They work because they are good. Together, they work for everyone because they impel everyone to work together. They harness individuals self-interest to the common good of the community, and ultimately the nation. They work because in a free market economy and voluntary civil society, whatever your career or your cause, your success depends on your service. The only way to look out for yourself is to look out for those around you. The only way to get ahead is to help other people do the same. What, exactly, are all those supposedly cut-throat, exploitive businessmen and women competing for? To gure out the best way to help the most people. Thats what the free market does. It rewards people for putting their God-given talents and their own exertions in the service of their neighbors. Whatever money they earn is the wealth they create, value they add to other peoples lives. 13 W H A T
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F O R No matter who you are or what youre after, the rst question anyone in a free market must ask him or herself is: how can I help? What problems need to be solved? What can I do to improve other peoples lives? The free market does not allow anyone to take; it impels everyone to give. The same process works in our voluntary civil society. Conservatives commitment to civil society begins, of course, with the family, and the paramount, indispensable institution of marriage. But it doesnt end there. Just as individuals depend on free enterprise to protect them from economic oppression, families depend on mediating institutions to protect them from social isolation. That is where the social entrepreneurs of our civil society come in. Just like for-prot businesses, non-prot religious, civic, cultural, and charitable institutions also succeed only to the extent that they serve the needs of the community around them. Forced to compete for voluntary donations, the most successful mediating institutions in a free civil society are at least as innovative and efcient as protable companies. If someone wants to make the world a better place, a free civil society requires that he or she do it well. Social entrepreneurs know that only the best soup kitchens, the best community theater companies, and the best youth soccer leagues and for that matter, the best conservative think tanks will survive. So they serve. They serve their donors by spending their resources wisely. They serve their communities by making them better places to live. And they serve their beneciaries, by meeting needs together better than they can meet them alone. Freedom doesnt divide us. Big government does. 14 W H A T
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F O R Its big government that turns citizens into supplicants, capitalists into cronies, and cooperative communities into competing special interests. Freedom, by contrast, unites us. It pulls us together, and aligns our interests. It draws us out of ourselves and into the lives of our friends, neighbors, and even perfect strangers. It draws us upward, toward the best version of ourselves. The free market and civil society are not things more Americans need protection from. Theyre things more Americans need access to. Liberals scoff at all this. They attack free enterprise as a failed theory that privileges the rich, exploits the poor, and threatens the middle class. But our own history proves the opposite. Free enterprise is the only economic system that does not privilege the rich. Instead it incentivizes them to put their wealth to productive use serving other people or eventually lose it all. Free enterprise is the greatest weapon against poverty ever conceived by man. If the free market exploits the poor, how do liberals explain how the richest nation in human history mostly descends from immigrants who originally came here with nothing? Nor does free enterprise threaten the middle class. Free enterprise is what created the middle class in the rst place. The free market created the wealth that liberated millions of American families from subsistence farming, opening up opportunities for the pursuit of happiness never known before or since in government-directed economies. Progressives are equally dismissive of our voluntary civil society. They simply do not trust free individuals and organic communities to look out for each other, or solve problems without supervision. They think only government only they possess the moral 15 W H A T
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F O R enlightenment to do that. To be blunt, elite progressives in Washington dont really believe in communities at all. No, they believe in community organizers. Self-anointed strangers, preferably ones with Ivy League degrees, fashionable ideological grievances, and a political agenda to redress those grievances. For progressives believe the only valid purpose of community is to accomplish the agenda of the state. But we know from our own lives that the true purpose of our communities is instead to accomplish everything else. To enliven our days. To ennoble our children. To strengthen our families. To unite our neighborhoods. To pursue our happiness, and protect our freedom to do so. This vision of America conservatives seek is not an Ayn Rand novel. Its a Norman Rockwell painting, or a Frank Capra movie: a society of plain, ordinary kindness, and a little looking out for the other fellow, too. IV. The Agenda The great obstacle to realizing this vision today is government dysfunction. This is where our vision must inform our agenda. What reforms will make it easier for entrepreneurs to start new businesses? For young couples to get married and start new families? And for individuals everywhere to come together to bring to life ourishing new partnerships and communities? What should government do and just as important, not do to allow the free market to create new economic opportunity and to allow civil society to create new social capital? We conservatives are not against government. The free market and civil society depend on a just, transparent, and accountable government to enforce the rule of law. What we are against are two pervasive problems that grow on government like mold on perfectly good bread: corruption and inefciency. 16 W H A T
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F O R It is government corruption and inefciency that today stand between the American people and the economy and society they deserve. To combat those pathologies, a new conservative reform agenda should center around three basic principles: equality, diversity, and sustainability. A. Equality/Corruption The rst and most important of these principles is equality. The only way for the free market and civil society to function to tie personal success to interpersonal service to align the interests of the strong and the weak is to have everyone play by the same rules. Defying this principle is how our government has always corrupted itself, our free market, and our civil society. In the past, the problem was political discrimination that held the disconnected down. Today, governments specialty is dispensing political privileges to prop the well-connected up. In either case, the corruption is the same: ofcial inequality twisting the law to deem some people more equal than others making it harder for some to succeed even when they serve, and harder for others to fail even when they dont. And so we have corporate welfare: big businesses receiving direct and indirect subsidies that smaller companies dont. We have un-civil society: politicians funding large, well-connected non-prot institutions based on political favoritism rather than merit. We have venture socialism: politicians funneling taxpayer money to politically correct businesses that cannot attract real investors. We have regulatory capture: industry leaders inuencing the rules governing their sectors to protect their interests and hamstringing innovative challengers. The rst step in a true conservative reform agenda must be to end this kind of preferential policymaking. Beyond simply being the 17 W H A T
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F O R right thing to do, it is a pre-requisite for earning the moral authority and political credibility to do anything else. Why should the American people trust our ideas about middle-class entitlements when were still propping up big banks? Why should they trust us to x the tax code while we use their tax dollars to create articial markets for uncompetitive industries? Why should they trust our vision of a free civil society when we give special privileges to supposed non-prots like Planned Parenthood, public broadcasting, agricultural check-off programs, and the Export-Import Bank? And perhaps most important, why should Americans trust us at all, when too often, we dont really trust them? When we vote for major legislation negotiated in secret without debating it without even reading it deliberately excluding the American people from their own government? To conservatives, equality needs to mean equality for everyone. B. Diversity/Federalism The second principle to guide our agenda is diversity. Or, as you might have heard it called elsewhere: federalism. The biggest reason the federal government makes too many mistakes is that it makes too many decisions. Most of these are decisions the federal government doesnt have to make and therefore shouldnt. Every state in the union has a functioning, constitutional government. And just as important, each state has a unique political and cultural history, with unique traditions, values, and priorities. Progressives today are fundamentally intolerant of this diversity. They insist on imposing their values on everyone. To them, the fty states are just another so-called community to be organized, brought to heel by their betters in Washington. This ies in the face of the Founders and the Constitution, of course. But it also ies in the face of common sense and experience. The usurpation of state authority is why our national politics is so 18 W H A T
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F O R dysfunctional and rancorous. We expect one institution the federal government to set policies that govern the lives of 300 million people, spread across a continent. Of course its going to get most of it wrong. Thats why successful organizations in the free market and civil society are moving in the opposite direction. While government consolidates, businesses delegate and decentralize. While Washington insists it knows everything, effective organizations increasingly rely on diffuse social networks and customizable problem solving. We should not be surprised that, as Washington has assumed greater control over transportation, education, labor, welfare, health care, home mortgage lending, and so much else, all of those increasingly centralized systems are failing. Conservatives should seize this opportunity not to impose our ideas on these systems, but to crowd-source the solutions to the states. Let the unique perspectives and values of each state craft its own policies, and see what works and what doesnt. If Vermonts pursuit of happiness leads it to want more government, and Utahs less, who are politicians from the other 48 states to tell them they cant have it? Would we tolerate this kind of ofcial intolerance in any other part of American life? A Pew study just last week found that Americans trust their state governments twice as much as the federal government, and their local governments even more. This shouldnt be a surprise it should be a hint. State and local governments are more responsive, representative, and accountable than Washington, D.C. Its time to make them more powerful, too. In the past, conservatives given federal power have been tempted to overuse it. We must resist this temptation. If we want to be a diverse movement, we must be a tolerant movement. The price of allowing conservative states to be conservative is 19 W H A T
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F O R allowing liberal states to be liberal. Call it subsidiarity. Call it federalism. Call it constitutionalism. But we must make this fundamental principle of pluralistic diversity a pillar of our agenda. C. Sustainability And that brings us to our third guiding principle. Once we eliminate policy privilege and restore policy diversity, we can start ensuring policy sustainability. Once the federal government stops doing things it shouldnt, it can start doing the things it should, better. That means national defense and intelligence, federal law enforcement and the courts, immigration, intellectual property, and even the senior entitlement programs whose scal outlook threatens our future solvency and very survival. Once we clear unessential policies from the books, federal politicians will no longer be able to hide: from the public, or their constitutional responsibilities. Congress will be forced to work together to reform the problems government has created in our health care system. We can fundamentally reform and modernize our regulatory system. We will be forced to rescue our senior entitlement programs from bankruptcy. And we can reform our tax system to eliminate the corporate codes bias in favor of big businesses over small businesses and the individual codes bias against saving, investing, and especially against parents, our ultimate investor class. That is how we turn the federal governments unsustainable liabilities into sustainable assets. V. Conclusion The bottom line of all of this is that conservatives in that (the capitol) building need to start doing what conservatives in this 20 W H A T
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F O R building already do: think long and hard about what we believe, why we believe it, and most of all, remember to put rst things rst. For conservatives, the rst thing is not our agenda of political subsidiarity its our vision of social solidarity. It is a vision of society as an interwoven and interdependent network of individuals, families, communities, businesses, churches, formal and informal groups working together to meet each others needs and enrich each others lives. It is of a free market economy that grants everyone a fair chance and an unfettered start in the race of life. It is of a voluntary civil society that strengthens our communities, protects the vulnerable, and minds the gaps to make sure no one gets left behind. And it is of a just, tolerant, and sustainable federal government that protects and complements free enterprise and civil society, rather than presuming to replace them. This vision will not realize itself. The Left, the inertia of the status quo, and the entire economy of this city stand arrayed against it. Realizing it will sometimes require conservatives to take on entrenched interests, pet policies, and political third-rails. Many of these will be interests traditionally aligned with and nancially generous to the establishments of both parties. And sometimes, it will require us to stand up for those no one else will: the unborn child in the womb, the poor student in the failing school, the reformed father languishing in prison, the single mom trapped in poverty, and the splintering neighborhoods that desperately need them all. But if we believe this vision is worth the American people being for, its worth elected conservatives ghting for. What we are ghting for is not just individual freedom, but the strong, vibrant communities free individuals form. The freedom to earn a good living, and build a good life: that is what conservatives are for. Thank you very much. 22 W H A T S
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C O N S E R V A T I V E S WHATS NEXT FOR CONSERVATIVES In order for the Republican Party to put forward a unifying conservative candidate for president in 2016, we must rst develop a unifying conservative agenda todayone that bridges the gap between the partys grassroots and establishment leaders and addresses the great challenge of our generation: Americas large and growing Opportunity Decit. The shortage of opportunities in this country aficts every level of our society. At the bottom of the economy there is a crisis of immobility, where families and communities are trapped in poverty, sometimes for generations, and are disconnected from the networks of opportunity that more afuent Americans take for granted. At the same time, this opportunity decit exists at the top of the economy in the form of crony capitalism and special-interest privilege, where political and economic elites collude to make it easier for preferred Washington insiders to succeed, and harder for their competitors to get a fair shot. Finally, our nations shortage of opportunities affects the middle class, where the hallmarks of the American Dreamfrom family stability and work-life balance to affordable education and health carehave grown too elusive for too many. A conservative reform agenda must address all three levels of this Opportunity Decit, beginning rst with the middle class, Americas engine of economic growth and the source of our exceptionalism. After decades of poorly designed federal policies that have inated the cost of, and restricted access to, the staples of middle-class security and opportunity, we must develop innovative policy reforms for health care, education, home ownership, work-life balance, and the cost of raising children. 24 W H A T S
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C O N S E R V A T I V E S WHATS NEXT FOR CONSERVATIVES Whats Next for Conservatives Remarks to the Heritage Foundation U.S. Senator Mike Lee October 29, 2013 Thank you very much. Its wonderful to be back at the Heritage Foundation. It has been quite a month in Washington. It began with our effort to stop Obamacare a goal that all Republicans share even if we have not always agreed about just how to pursue it. And it is ending with powerful practical proof of just why stopping Obamacare is so essential. This law is unaffordable and unfair and its getting worse all the time. As of today, President Obamas policy is to ne any American who does not buy a product that his bungled website will not sell them. And they call us unreasonable. Every week, thousands of Americans get letters from their insurance companies, announcing their suspension of coverage, or shocking price increases. Because of Obamacare, Americans are losing their jobs, wages, and hours. And when in July the president exempted big businesses from the hardships of this law, but not ordinary Americans, I felt I had to take a stand. I am proud of my friend Ted Cruz and the dozens of others including Speaker John Boehner and the House Republicans who fought Obamacare, continue to ght it, and will not stop ghting it. But a month like the one we have been through should lead us not only to re-commit to this essential, ongoing struggle, but also to step back and ask ourselves where we should be headed more generally. What do we do next, not only to stop Obamacare but to advance a larger, positive vision of America, and craft a practical plan to get us there? Whats next for conservatives? That is the question I would like to try to answer today. 25 W H A T S
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C O N S E R V A T I V E S One of conservatives dening virtues is our insistence on learning from history. And to help answer the question, whats next?, I think the most instructive history that conservatives can learn from today is our own. In particular, I refer to the history of the conservative movement and the Republican Party in the late 1970s. There are many things conservatives today should take from that era, including hope and encouragement but also an urgent challenge. Allow me to begin at the beginning. By 1977, the Republican Party was in disarray. The party establishment had been discredited by political failure and policy debacles, foreign and domestic. A new generation of grassroots conservatives was rising up to challenge the establishment. The culmination of that challenge was Ronald Reagans 1976 primary campaign against a far-less conservative, establishment incumbent. That campaign failed, of course, and was derided by Washington insiders as a foolish civil war that ultimately served only to elect Democrats. In other words, we have been here before. And of course, we know now that Reagan and the conservative movement were vindicated in 1980. So it is tempting for conservatives today to believe that history is on the verge of repeating itself, that our struggles with the Republican establishment are only a prelude to pre-ordained victory and that our own vindication our generations 1980 - is just around the corner. But there is still a piece missing, a glaring difference between the successful conservative challenge to the Washington establishment in the late 1970s, and our challenge to the establishment today. Much of the difference can be found in what happened between 1976 and 1980 the hard, heroic work of translating conservatisms bedrock principles into new and innovative policy reforms. In The Conservative Mind, Russell Kirk observed that conservatives inherit from [Edmund] Burke a talent for re-expressing their convictions to t the time. 26 W H A T S
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C O N S E R V A T I V E S That is precisely what the conservatives of the late 1970s did. The ideas that dened and propelled the Reagan Revolution did not come down from a mountain etched in stone tablets. They were forged in an open, roiling, diverse debate about how conservatism could truly meet the challenges of that day. That debate invited all conservatives and as we know, elevated the best. There was Jack Kemp, advancing supply-side economics to combat economic stagnancy. There were James Buckley and Henry Hyde, taking up the cause of the unborn after Roe v. Wade. There was Milton Friedman, promoting the practical and moral superiority of free enterprise. There were Cold Warriors like Irving Kristol and Jeane Kirkpartrick, challenging the premise of peaceful coexistence and moral equivalence with the Soviets. There were Peter Berger and Richard John Neuhaus, arguing that the mediating institutions of civil society protected and promoted human happiness more effectively than big government programs. There were Professors Robert Bork and Antonin Scalia, challenging the received wisdom of constitutional interpretation laid down by the Warren Court. There were think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute and the new Cato Institute, and a owering of grassroots organizations around the country. And of course, in the middle of it all, there were Paul Weyrich, Ed Fuelner, Joseph Coors and The Heritage Foundation, specically founded to chart a new, conservative direction for public policy in America. Together, that generation of conservatives transformed a movement that was anti-statist, anti-communist, and anti-establishment and made it pro-reform. Contrary to the establishments complaints, conservatives in the late 1970s did not start a civil war. They started a (mostly) civil debate. 27 W H A T S
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C O N S E R V A T I V E S Because of that condent and deeply conservative choice to argue rather than quarrel, to persuade rather than simply purge - the vanguards of the establishment never knew what hit them. The bottom line was that in 1976, the conservative movement found a leader for the ages yet it still failed. By 1980, the movement had forged an agenda for its time and only then did it succeed. That, my fellow conservatives, is the lesson our generation must take from our movements revolutionary era and the enormous and exhilarating challenge it presents to us today. What that generation did comprehensively re-expressing conservative convictions to t the time has not been done since. Conservative activists and intellectuals are still providing new energy and producing new ideas. But on the whole, elected Republicans and candidates have not held up our end. Instead of emulating those earlier conservatives, too many Republicans today mimic them still advocating policies from a bygone age. Its hard to believe, but by the time we reach November 2016, we will be about as far chronologically speaking from Reagans election as Reagans election was from D-Day! Yet as the decades pass and a new generation of Americans faces a new generation of problems, the party establishment clings to its 1970s agenda like a security blanket. The result is that to many Americans today, especially to the underprivileged and middle class, or those who have come of age or immigrated since Reagan left ofce the Republican Party may not seem to have much of a relevant reform message at all. This is the reason the G.O.P. can seem so out of touch. And it is also the reason we nd ourselves in such internal disarray. The gaping hole in the middle of the Republican Party today the one that separates the grassroots from establishment leaders - is precisely the size and shape of a new, unifying conservative reform agenda. For years, we have tried to bridge that gulf with tactics and 28 W H A T S
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C O N S E R V A T I V E S personalities and spin. But it doesnt work. To revive and reunify our movement, we must ll the void with new and innovative policy ideas. Today, as it was a generation ago, the establishment will not produce that agenda. And so, once again, conservatives must. We must. And three recent efforts show that we still can. Jim DeMint, Tom Coburn, and Jeff Flakes crusade against earmarks, Paul Ryans heroic work on Medicare reform, and Rand Pauls stand against domestic drone-strike authority all demonstrate that thoughtful, idea-driven conservatism is as powerful today as it has ever been. Its time for another Great Debate, and we should welcome all input. Grassroots and establishment. Conservatives and moderates. Libertarians and traditionalists. Interventionists and non- interventionists. Economic conservatives and social conservatives. All are part of our movement, and all are vital to our success so all should be welcome in this debate. There are still nearly three years before Republicans will have a chance to select a new, unifying conservative leader. But together we can start debating and developing a new, unifying conservative agenda right now. Where do we begin? A generation ago, conservatives forged an agenda to meet the great challenges facing Americans in the late 1970s: ination, poor growth, and Soviet aggression along with a dispiriting pessimism about the future of the nation and their own families. I submit that the great challenge of our generation is Americas growing crisis of stagnation and sclerosis - a crisis that comes down to a shortage of opportunities. This opportunity crisis presents itself in three principal ways: 1. immobility among the poor, trapped in poverty; 2. insecurity in the middle class, where families just cant seem to get ahead; 29 W H A T S
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C O N S E R V A T I V E S 3. and cronyist privilege at the top, where political and economic elites unfairly prot at everyone elses expense. The Republican Party should tackle these three crises head on. First, we need a new, comprehensive anti-poverty, upward-mobility agenda designed not simply help people in poverty, but to help and empower them to get out. Here, my home state of Utah can be a guide. A recent study found the Salt Lake City metropolitan area to be the most upwardly mobile region in the United States. In a addition to a well-managed, limited government where jobs and opportunity abound, Utah is home to an enormously successful private welfare system led by churches, businesses, and community groups and volunteers. We understand that, as it is lived in America, freedom doesnt mean youre on your own. Freedom means were all in this together. This agenda must include but also transcend welfare reform. Additionally, we need to reform education, housing, immigration, health care, and our criminal justice and prison systems. This new agenda must recognize that work for able-bodied adults is not a necessary evil, but an essential pathway to personal happiness and prosperity. And it should also force Republicans and Democrats to acknowledge that there is another marriage debate in this country one concerning fatherless children, economic inequality, and broken communities - that deserves as much public attention as the other. Second, we need a new, comprehensive anti-cronyism agenda, to break up the corrupt nexus of big government, big business, and big special interests. We need a new corporate tax code and regulatory system to eliminate lobbyists loopholes and giveaways, level the playing eld between businesses, big and small, and foster a dynamic, globally competitive private sector. We need to end subsidies that unfairly favor some businesses and 30 W H A T S
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C O N S E R V A T I V E S industries over others. And the Republican Party must make a fundamental commitment to end its support for corporate welfare in any form including for the Big Banks. The Left today no longer represents the little guy, but the crony clients of the ever-expanding special-interest state. Progressives have become the Party of Wall Street, K Street, and Pennsylvania Avenue. We must become the party of Main Street, everywhere. Which brings me to the third essential piece of our new agenda: a new conservatism of the working and middle class. Today, working families take-home pay is at. But the staples of middle-class security and opportunity health care, education, home ownership, work-life balance, and children are becoming harder to afford all the time. Progressives say we just need more programs to give working families more government money. But as we have seen once again over the last ve years, big government creates opportunity for the middle men at the expense of the middle class. And it only masks the broken policies that articially raise costs and restrict access in the rst place. Instead, conservatives need new ideas to address the root causes of those problems. The rst and most important policy goal Republicans must adopt to improve the lives of middle-class families is, and will remain, the full repeal of Obamacare. Its important to understand why. Health care is one of the main reasons why the cost of living in the middle class is increasing too quickly for many Americans to keep up. At the same time, it is the main reason why government spending and debt are out of control. The law the Democrats enacted on a party-line vote in 2010 is going to make both of those problems worse - accelerating healthcare costs both for families and the government. At the same time, Obamacare poses very serious threats to our constitutional system, to the relationship between Washington and the states, to individual liberty and conscience rights, to the 31 W H A T S
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C O N S E R V A T I V E S strength of our economy, and to the quality of our healthcare system. That puts healthcare right at the center of what conservatives need to be thinking about. And it means our movement has to be intensely engaged not only in the ght to repeal, but in the debate to replace Obamacare. That debate is not over. Its only just beginning. It took Obamacare to get Republican healthcare policy innovation off the sidelines, but were nally in the game. And today, conservative ideas are not only superior to Obamacare they are superior to the old status-quo before Obamacare. The House Republican Study Committee has introduced a comprehensive health reform plan led by Representatives Steve Scalise and Phil Roe. The Heritage Foundation proposed its own healthcare reform package as part of the Saving the American Dream plan, which I introduced in the Senate last year. It included, among other things, a universal tax credit to buy health insurance, with extra help for those with lower incomes. I know my friend Paul Ryan and others are working on their own healthcare plans that will continue to improve the debate. And this is as it should be. Too many in Washington seem to believe that on any issue, Republicans should either have one plan one that everyone supports in lockstep or no plans. But unity cannot come at the expense of creativity. The day will come when Republicans need a healthcare plan today we need ten! Conservatives are supposed to believe in the wisdom of markets. So lets trust the marketplace of ideas. If we want policy innovation, we need to innovate policy! On healthcare, we have been. And we need more of that kind of innovation - especially to meet the broader range of problems confronting the middle class. To do my part, today I want to talk about four pieces of legislation specically designed to address four leading challenges facing middle-class families today: 32 W H A T S
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C O N S E R V A T I V E S 1. the cost of raising children; 2. the difculties of work-life balance; 3. the time Americans lose away from work and home, stuck in trafc; 4. and the rising costs of and restricted access to quality higher education. These bills wont solve every problem under the sun. Raising a family isnt supposed to be easy. But each would restore to working families more of the freedom they deserve to pursue their happiness: to earn a good living and build a good life. Perhaps the most basic challenge facing middle-class families is how expensive it has become for couples to simply start and grow their families: the exploding costs of raising children. According to the Department of Agriculture, the cost of raising a child to maturity in the United States today is about $300,000. Even adjusting for ination, thats 15% higher than in our parents generation. But even that number doesnt count foregone wages, or child care and college, both of which have seen rampant ination in recent decades as well. All told, according to demography writer Jonathan Last, youre talking $1.1 million to raise a single child. As Last puts it, for a family making the median income: Having a baby is like buying six houses, all at once. Except that you cant (legally) sell themand after 13 years theyll tell you they hate you. Here again, Democrats say the solution is new programs to give parents more of other peoples money. I say we let middle-class parents keep more of their own money! And so tomorrow, I will be introducing in the Senate the Family 33 W H A T S
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C O N S E R V A T I V E S Fairness and Opportunity Tax Reform Act. My plan calls for a 15% tax rate on all income up to $87,850 or $175,700 for married couples. Income above that threshold would be taxed at 35%. Like any good conservative tax-reform plan, my bill also simplies the code, eliminating or reforming most deductions. But the heart of the plan is a new, additional $2,500 per-child tax credit that can offset parents income and payroll-tax liability. This last point is crucial. Many middle-class parents may pay no income taxes but they do pay taxes. Working parents are not free riders. Actually, when it comes to Social Security and Medicare, parents pay twice: rst when they pay their payroll taxes, just like everyone else, and then again, by bearing the enormous costs of raising their kids, who will grow up to not only pay taxes, but cure diseases, and invent the next iPhone, and most importantly, provide their parents with grandkids! So my plan eliminates this anti-family bias in the tax code, while improving pro-growth incentives for the economy. Under my plan, a married couple with two children making the national median income of $51,000 would see a tax cut of roughly $5,000 per year. For middle-class families, thats money their own money, right away to get out of debt, move into a new neighborhood with better schools, afford child care, help a mom or dad scale back from full time to part time, or even to stay at home with young children. That is pro-family, pro-growth conservative reform. Another struggle facing working families is the constant challenge of work-life balance. Parents today need to juggle work, home, kids, and community. For many families, especially with young children, their most precious commodity is time. But today, federal labor laws restrict the way moms and dads and everyone else can use their time. Thats because many of those laws were written decades ago, when most women didnt work outside the home. 34 W H A T S
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C O N S E R V A T I V E S Because of these laws, an hourly employee who works overtime is not allowed to take comp-time or ex time. Even if she prefers it, her boss cant even offer it. Today, if a working mom or dad stays late at the ofce on Monday and Tuesday, and instead of receiving extra pay wants to get compensated by leaving early on Friday to spend the afternoon with the kids that could be violating federal law. That sounds unfair, especially to parents. But how do we know for sure? Because Congress gave a special exemption from that law for government employees. This is unacceptable. The same work-life options available to government bureaucrats should be available to the citizens they serve. In May, the House of Representatives passed the Working Families Flexibility Act of 2013, sponsored by Representative Martha Roby of Alabama, to equalize ex-time rules for all workers. And this week I am introducing companion legislation in the Senate. There are real problems in this world, some of which must be addressed by government action. The fact that most working parents would prefer to spend more time with their families is not one of those problems. And Congress needs to stop punishing them for trying to do so. The federal government also needs to open up Americas transportation system to diversity and experimentation, so that Americans can spend more time with their families in more affordable homes, and less time stuck in maddening trafc. House-hunting middle class families today often face a Catch-22. They can stretch their nances to near bankruptcy to afford a home close to work. Or they can choose a home in a more affordable neighborhood so far away from work that they miss soccer games, piano recitals, and family dinner while stuck in gridlocked trafc. The solution is not more government-subsidized mortgages or housing programs. A real solution involves building more roads. 35 W H A T S
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C O N S E R V A T I V E S More roads, bridges, lanes, and mass-transit systems. Properly planned and located, these projects would help create new jobs, new communities, more affordable homes, shorter commuting times, and greater opportunity for businesses and families. Transportation infrastructure is one of the things government is supposed to do and conservatives should make sure it is done exceptionally well. Unfortunately, since completing the Interstate Highway System decades ago, the federal government has gotten pretty bad at maintaining and improving our nations transportation infrastructure. Today, the federal highway program is funded by a gasoline tax of 18.4 cents on every gallon sold at the pump. That money is supposed to be going into steel, concrete, and asphalt in the ground. Instead, too much of it is being siphoned off by bureaucrats and special interests in Washington. And so Congressman Tom Graves and I are going to introduce the Transportation Empowerment Act. Under our bill, the federal gas tax would be phased down over ve years from 18.4 cents per gallon, to 3.7 cents. And highway authority would be transferred proportionately from the federal government to the states. Under our new system, Americans would no longer have to send signicant gas-tax revenue to Washington, where sticky-ngered politicians, bureaucrats, and lobbyists take their cut before sending it back with strings attached. Instead, states and cities could plan, nance, and build better-designed and more affordable projects. Some communities could choose to build more roads, while others might prefer to repair old ones. Some might build highways, others light-rail. And all would be free to experiment with innovative green technologies, and new ways to nance their projects, like congestion pricing and smart tolls. But the point is that all states and localities should nally have the exibility to develop the kind of transportation system they want, for less money, without politicians and special interests from other parts of the country telling them how, when, what, and where they 36 W H A T S
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C O N S E R V A T I V E S should build. For the country as a whole, our plan would mean a better infrastructure system, new jobs and opportunities, diverse localism, and innovative environmental protection. And for working families, it could mean more access to quality, affordable homes, less time on the road and making it home in time for dinner with the kids. And nally, there is perhaps no barrier to middle-class security and opportunity more frustrating than those surrounding higher education. While its true that college has never been for everyone as we transition from an industrial economy to an information and service-based economy, post-secondary education cannot be a luxury available only to a select few. Some combination of higher education and vocational training should at least be an option for just about everyone who graduates from high school. Yet today, the federal government restricts access to higher education and inates its cost, inuring unfairly to the advantage of special interests at the expense of students, teachers, and taxpayers. The federal government does this though its control over college accreditation. Because eligibility for federal student loans is tied to the federal accreditation regime, we shut out students who want to learn, teachers who want to teach, transformative technologies, and cost-saving innovations. And so, in the coming days, I will be introducing the Higher Education Reform and Opportunity Act. Under this legislation, the existing accreditation system would remain unchanged. Current colleges and universities could continue to use the system they know. But my plan would give states a new option to enter into agreements with the Department of Education to create their own, alternative accreditation systems to open up new options for students qualifying for federal aid. Today, only degree-issuing academic institutions are even allowed to be accredited. Under the new, optional state systems that my bill would authorize, accreditation could also be available to specialized 37 W H A T S
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C O N S E R V A T I V E S programs, individual courses, apprenticeships, professional credentialing, and even competency-based tests. States could accredit online courses, or hybrid models with elements on and offcampus. These systems would open up opportunities for non-traditional students like single parents working double shifts - whose life responsibilities might make it impossible to take more than one class at a time. They would also enable traditional students to tailor a degree that better reects the knowledge and skills valued by employers. Innovations in vocational education and training would open new opportunities in growing elds that are hiring right now. Qualied unions, businesses, and trade groups could start to accredit courses and programs tailored to their evolving needs. Churches and charities could enlist qualied volunteers to offer accredited classes and training for next to nothing. States could use innovative systems to attract new opportunities and businesses, investing in their own future by investing in the human capital of their citizens. Imagine having access to credit and student aid for: a program in computer science accredited by Apple or in music accredited by the New York Philharmonic; college-level history classes on-site at Mount Vernon or Gettysburg; medical-technician training developed by the Mayo Clinic; taking massive, open, online courses offered by the best teachers in the world, from your living room or the public library. Brick-and-ivy institutions will always be the backbone of our higher- education system, but they shouldnt be the only option. If these new models were to succeed, they would create a virtuous cycle. Traditional colleges would be impelled to cut waste, refocus on their students, and embrace innovation and experimentation as part of their campus cultures. 38 W H A T S
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C O N S E R V A T I V E S This reform could allow a student to completely customize her transcript and college experience while allowing federal aid to follow her through all of these different options. Students could mix and match courses, programs, tests, on-line and on-campus credits a la carte, pursuing their degree or certication at their own pace while bringing down costs to themselves, their families, and the taxpayers. This is what conservative reform should be trying to create: an open, affordable, innovative higher education system to better serve and secure all Americans in a global information economy. Taken together, some more take-home pay, more time with the kids, a shorter commute, and more access to college wont necessarily revolutionize our society, or cause the oceans to recede, or make everyone rich. What they and other conservative reforms could and should do is make our economy a little stronger, our society a little fairer, and life a little better for Americas moms, and dads, and children. And thats a mandate for leadership in any generation. There is obviously much more to be done. But the point Ive tried to make and the lesson I hope we take is that the Republican Party, at its best, is a Party of Ideas. It is ideas that unite and inspire conservatives. The leaders of Reagans generation understood that. And we must, too. Especially in the wake of recent controversies, many conservatives are more frustrated with the establishment than ever before. And we have every reason to be. But however justied, frustration is not a platform. Anger is not an agenda. And outrage, as a habit, is not even conservative. Outrage, resentment, and intolerance are gargoyles of the Left. For us, optimism is not just a message its a principle. American conservatism, at its core, is about gratitude, and cooperation, and trust, and above all hope. It is also about inclusion. Successful political movements are about 39 W H A T S
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C O N S E R V A T I V E S identifying converts, not heretics. This, too, is part of the challenge before us. In his 1977 CPAC speech effectively kicking off that eras great conservative debate, Ronald Reagan said: If we truly believe in our principles, we should sit down and talk. Talk with anyone, anywhere, at any time if it means talking about the principles for the Republican Party. Conservatism is not a narrow ideology, nor is it the exclusive property of conservative activists. Do we have the same spirit of charity and condence in our ideas today? If we do not, this moment and opportunity will pass us by. We will lose, and we will deserve to lose. And rest assured, in that unfortunate event, it will not be the indifferent Republican establishment that prots from our failure. It will be a parade of progressives who will continue to lead our country, unabated, further away from our hopes, and our values, and our ability to do anything about it. If our generation of conservatives wants to enjoy our own dening triumph, our own 1980 we are going to have to deserve it. That means sharpening more pencils than knives. The kind of work it will require is neither glamorous nor fun and sometimes it isnt even noticed. But it is necessary. To deserve victory, conservatives have to do more than pick a ght. We have to win a debate. And to do that, we need more than just guts. We need an agenda. Our generation of conservatives has big shoes to ll, and a lot of lost time to make up. So, lets get to work. Thank you very much. 40 B R I N G
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I N BRING THEM IN It has been more than 50 years since President Johnson declared the federal governments war on poverty, yet for all the trillions of dollars spent to create a dizzying array of national programs, the poverty rate has hardly budged. Standards of living have improved, and government transfers have made poverty more tolerable, but far too many families, neighborhoods, and communities remain stuck at the bottom of our economy, often for generations. While the Left clings to the same big government, top-down policies that have failed since the 1960s, conservatives are in a position to offer a new, comprehensive anti-poverty and upward-mobility agenda designed not simply to help people in poverty, but to help and empower them to get out. Because true poverty is not so much an absence of money as it is an absence of opportunity, an effective anti-poverty agenda must focus on helping the most vulnerable and underprivileged Americans access those social and economic networks where human opportunities are createdour free enterprise economy and voluntary civil society. This means reforming the poverty traps put in place by misguided government policies, including those that penalize marriage, discourage work, shut-out families from affordable housing, trap low-income children in failing schools, and leave reformed offenders languishing in prison rather than helping them transition back into their homes, their communities, and the economy. 42 B R I N G
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I N BRING THEM IN Bring Them In Remarks to the Heritage Foundations Anti-Poverty Forum U.S. Senator Mike Lee November 13, 2013 Thank you very much. Its always great to join with the Heritage Foundation in any context. But being a part of this Anti-Poverty Forum is a true privilege. Members of my staff have been here all day, taking copious notes, and hopefully collecting all the business cards and white papers they can get their hands on. It is of course a tragedy that we have to be here at all. Though the Bible says the poor will always be with us, its still hard to accept why, in a nation with a $15 trillion economy, the poor are still with us. And yet, as we approach the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnsons famous War on Poverty speech, we all know the statistics. Despite trillions of taxpayer dollars spent to eradicate poverty since the late 1960s, the poverty rate has hardly budged. And just last week, the Census Bureau reported that today, more than 49 million Americans still live below the poverty line. Today, a boy born in the bottom 20% of our income scale has a 42% chance of staying there as an adult. According to the O.E.C.D., the United States is third from the bottom of advanced countries in terms of upward economic mobility. A recent study in Oregon found that the Medicaid program which provides health insurance to the poor produces basically no health improvements for its beneciaries. A study last December on the Head Start program, issued by the Obama Administration itself, found that what few academic benets three- and four-year olds do gain from the program all but disappear by end of the rst grade. We know that poor men and women are less likely to get married 43 B R I N G
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I N and stay married, that 30% of single mothers are living in poverty, and that their children are less likely to rise out of poverty themselves when they grow up. We know that participation in civil society, volunteering, and religion are deteriorating in poor neighborhoods compounding economic hardship with social isolation. And we know these trends cut across boundaries of race, ethnicity, and geography. All of this might lead some to the depressing conclusion that 50 years after Johnsons speech - Americas war on poverty has failed. But the evidence proves nothing of the sort. On the contrary, I believe the American people are poised to launch a new, bold, and heroic offensive in the war on poverty if a renewed conservative movement has the courage to lead it. First, lets be clear about one thing. The United States did not formally launch our War on Poverty in 1964, but in 1776: when we declared our independence, and the self-evident and equal rights of all men to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. For more than two hundred years, the United States through trial and error, through good times and bad has waged the most successful war on poverty in the history of the world. The United States has become so wealthy that it is easy to forget that, as Michael Novak once noted, most afuent Americans can actually remember when their own families were poor. Upward mobility has never been easy. It has always and everywhere required backbreaking work, personal discipline, and at least a little luck. But if upward mobility was not universal in America, it was the norm. From our very Founding, we not only fought a war on poverty we were winning. The tools Americans relied on to overcome poverty were what became the twin pillars of American exceptionalism: our free enterprise economy and voluntary civil society. We usually refer to the free market and civil society as institutions. But really, they are networks of people and 44 B R I N G
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I N information and opportunity. What makes these networks uniquely powerful is that they impel everyone regardless of race, religion, or wealth - to depend not simply on themselves or the government, but on each other. For all Americas reputation for individualism and competition, our nation has from the beginning been built on a foundation of community and cooperation. In a free market economy and voluntary civil society, no matter your career or your cause, your success depends on your service. The only way to get ahead is to help others do the same. The only way to look out for yourself is to look out for your neighbors. Together, these twin networks of service-based success enabled millions of ordinary Americans to make our economy very wealthy and our society truly rich long before Lyndon Johnson tried to do better by growing and centralizing government authority. These human and humane networks empowered Americans, unlike any people on earth or in history, to protect not just themselves but each other from both material want and social isolation. Now, progressive ideologues reject all this. They do not trust individuals to join together voluntarily and organically to improve each others lives and meet common challenges. As President Obama said in his second inaugural: No single person can train all the math and science teachers well need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation and one people. But by together, of course, he meant only government. This discredited mindset which insists collective action can only mean state action - is itself a kind of poverty. It rejects social solidarity in favor of political coercion, and voluntary communities for professional community organizers. It distrusts and denies the bonds of cooperation and service that represent the highest expression of our dignity. 45 B R I N G
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I N Look at any thriving marriage, friendship, church, charity, Little League, historical society, theater company, PTA, neighborhood or business. What makes America exceptional and life worth living - is not simply individual freedom, but the heroic, empowering communities that free individuals form. Free enterprise and civil society operate in the natural human space - between the isolated individual and the impersonal state - where we live, and love, and ourish where everyone can earn a good living and build a good life where the strong and the vulnerable alike can pursue their happiness, and nd it together. In America, government did not invade or replace that space. Government protected and expanded it. That is how we proved to the world that freedom doesnt mean youre on your own. Freedom means were all in this together. The conservative vision for America is not an Ayn Rand novel. Its a Norman Rockwell painting, or a Frank Capra movie: a nation of plain, ordinary kindness, and a little looking out for the other fellow, too. Organic communities formed within the free market and civil societys networks of opportunity are not threats that poor families need more protection from. They are blessings that poor families need more access to. And thats what America was all about. Since the dawn of time, rich and powerful men, and friends of the king, always had access to opportunity. What made America different is that here, everyone did, and governments job was to make sure of it. This is an important point, for progressives to learn and conservatives to remember: the constitutionally limited but indispensable role that government played in Americas original war on poverty. That role was best expressed by a president who understood poverty better than most. In 1861, Abraham Lincoln told Congress that the leading object of American government was: to elevate the condition of men - to lift articial weights from all shoulders, to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all, to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance, in the race of life. 46 B R I N G
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I N In a single sentence, Lincoln explains precisely what poverty is, and what government ought to do about it. As Lincoln knew rst hand, true poverty was not for most people an absence of money, but an absence of opportunity a lack of access to those social and economic networks where human opportunities are created. Then, as now, people were not isolated because they were poor they were poor mostly because they were isolated. And so, in Americas original war on poverty, government did not give the poor other peoples money. It gave them access to other people. In Lincolns era even during a cataclysmic war that was itself a struggle for human freedom and opportunity that meant dredging rivers, building canals and cutting roads. It meant the Homestead Act and land-grant universities. These public goods werent designed to make poverty more tolerable but to make it more temporary. They reduced the time it took to get products to market, increased access to banks and land, and increased the speed at which knowledge could be developed and shared. Poor farmers and trappers in Lincolns Mid-West were no worse at their trades than their more afuent counterparts back east. They just didnt enjoy the same access to networks of human, social, and economic capital. In the same way, poor children today do not lack the ability to acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to ourish in our market economy and civil society. But they absolutely lack the same access to the networks of human opportunity where that knowledge and those skills are acquired. Properly considered, then, the war on poverty is not so much about lifting people up. Its about bringing people in. And so the challenge to conservatives today is to rethink the war on poverty along these lines, to bring into our economy and society the individuals, families, and communities that have for ve decades been unfairly locked out. 47 B R I N G
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I N Nineteen-sixty-four wasnt the year Americans started ghting poverty; it was the year we started losing that ght. To start winning again, conservatives are going to have to lead the way - not simply by offering criticism, but alternatives. Our job is to identify the obstructions that impede Americans access to our market economy and civil society and clear them. And if were looking for impediments to mobility and opportunity, weve certainly come to the right place! Today, many of those obstructions are themselves government policies. These policies unintentionally discourage almost every positive step underprivileged families can take toward social mobility and economic security. Todays government-centric system penalizes marriage, which a mountain of evidence now shows is the single most empowering social and economic opportunity there is. It also penalizes low- income workers for making more money by drastically reducing benets at arbitrary points along the income-scale. Because of these poverty traps, single mothers near the poverty line, for instance, can face effective marginal tax rates of 80 or even 90 percent. Thus, in poor communities, government dependence often atrophies community interdependence, fraying the bonds between moms and dads and neighbors and friends and pastors and teachers, old and young, native and immigrant. Meanwhile, education policies leave low-income parents and children trapped in failing schools. Policies ranging from welfare to health care to criminal justice are only exacerbating the explosion of fatherlessness plaguing lower-income communities. And so conservatives need a new, comprehensive anti-poverty agenda that not only corrects but transcends existing policies. Anyone looking for ideas would do well to visit my home state of Utah, where a combination of smart, efcient government, a growing, prosperous economy, an active and faithful civil society, and perhaps the most successful private welfare system in the world, have made Salt Lake the most upwardly mobile region in the entire country. But rst and foremost, we should at least pledge to do no more harm. 48 B R I N G
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I N There is no good reason the federal government should maintain 79 separate means-tested programs. There is no good reason why almost none of these programs feature the kind of work- requirements that helped transition millions of Americans into jobs after the 1996 reform. And there is no good reason federal policy should reward states for higher spending rather than improved results. And so one of our rst priorities should be to simply get existing federal programs under control. And I am working with the Heritage Foundation and several colleagues on legislation to do just that. Second, just as we cannot spend our way out of poverty, we cannot really cut our way out, either. We need to fundamentally x the system so that every dollar we do spend actually connects underprivileged families to new opportunities in the free market and civil society. One way to do this would be to block-grant Medicaid funds to the states, eliminating the federal bureaucracy that today stands between underprivileged families and their doctors. We could do the same thing with the Head Start program, which spends $8.1 billion every year through a federal bureaucracy without yielding any lasting educational benets. The data doesnt tell us that pre-K education and health insurance for poor families are bad just that the federal government does a lousy job of providing them. So instead, lets allow states to implement real reforms that give low-income families access to educational and health opportunities somewhere besides the federal bureaucracy. In Utah, for instance, our legislature has created a special task force to study the prospects of charity care affordable medical services for poor families provided not by government but by individuals, businesses, non-prot groups, and local communities. That model might not work in every state, but every state should have the freedom to solve problems their own way, according to their own values and priorities. We need similar reforms to open up our elementary and secondary schools, giving underprivileged parents and children access to the same opportunities that wealthy Americans take for granted. 49 B R I N G
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I N We need to expand access to higher education, to reform our accreditation system to allow federal aid to follow students to new and diverse options: customized courses, programs, tests, on-line and on-campus, even professional training and apprenticeships. Another area ripe for reform is the federal governments criminal justice and prison system. The simple fact is that in America today, we put too many people in prison for too long, with too little benet to our society. If inmates are violent and threats to our communities, then we have a moral responsibility to keep them locked up. If they are not violent and pose no threat, however, if they have reformed and are ready to return to their families and communities, we have just as much moral duty to get them re-integrated into our nations networks of social and economic mobility. Im working on bipartisan legislation to reform federal sentencing and incarceration policies, following the transformative example of innovative states. If we are serious about access to opportunity for all, then we have to put rehabilitation back into the vocabulary of the federal prison system. There is so much more to do on issues ranging from housing to adoption to labor to mental health. And of course, the best thing we can do to help the unemployed nd jobs, and low-income workers nd higher-income work is to nally get our economy growing again. Reforms to our tax, regulatory, energy, and transportation systems that spur private investment and job creation can do more for upward mobility than anything else in governments power. And certainly more than any of the divisive, special-interest pandering that the Washington establishments of both parties cynically substitute for serious debate and reform. Though many Republicans in Congress are building a serious anti- poverty agenda the right way youll hear from my friends Paul Ryan and Jim Jordan and others today others are tempted by what they see as an easier way. Too many in our party today seem to have convinced themselves that electoral success depends on adopting the Lefts strategy of dividing the American people. 50 B R I N G
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I N Slice them up into supercial identity groups, and assume that struggling African-Americans, struggling Latinos, struggling Asian- Americans, struggling whites, struggling single parents, struggling unskilled workers, struggling young people, struggling immigrants, and struggling blue collar workers all want different things. But dont they all really want the same thing? To not be struggling? Special-interest policymaking that pits Americans against each other, is the problem, not the solution. The things that truly ght poverty economic growth, education, innovation, voluntary exchange create opportunities for everyone. I have no idea if empowering poor families regardless of what they look like to overcome poverty through the cooperative communities of the market economy and civil society will help the Republican Party. But I do know it will help the American people which is what the Republican Party is supposed to be for. And nally, we simply must begin to address what we might call Americas other marriage debate. It is uncomfortable to talk about, and almost impossible to legislate. But the fact is, the problem of poverty in America is directly linked to family breakdown and the erosion of marriage among low-income families and communities. Implicit marriage penalties in our tax code and welfare programs surely need legislative remedies. But what were really talking about is a question of culture, not policy incentives. For years, politicians on both sides of the aisle have employed terms like family values and marriage primarily as partisan wedges, cudgels to attack ideological opponents. This fact did not create Americas marriage crisis but it hasnt helped, either. And now, seemingly every week, scholars are producing more evidence about the social and economic consequences of this essentially moral question. We now have scientic consensus supporting what were once thought to be merely traditions and intuitions. According to one study, the taxpayer costs of family fragmentation are more than $100 billion per year a staggering sum that nonetheless pales in comparison to the social and human 51 B R I N G
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I N costs, borne disproportionately by innocent children. Yet, this data has arrived at a moment when the controversies about same-sex marriage tend to overwhelm any political discussion of the institution. It could be said that the political sensitivity of marriage today might be a good reason not to bring it up at all. But I think the data makes this the perfect time to begin this debate precisely because it will require such sensitivity on all sides. In an earlier era, our assumptions and vocabulary might have expressed judgment instead of compassion, and closed doors instead of opening them. Though the foundational importance of family has not changed times and attitudes have. Today, no serious secularist thinks the institution of marriage is intrinsically oppressive. And no serious traditionalist thinks of the children of single mothers as illegitimate. Even if we remove morality and religion from the question entirely, a stable, intact family remains the greatest incubator of economic opportunity and multiplier of human and social capital in this world. To say that children tend to do best when raised by their married mom and dad is not a political opinion it is a demonstrable fact. Saying so does not demean or degrade other family structures. And fear of facts does not make us sensitive it leaves us ignorant. Public policy need not incentivize people to get married for most people, life already does. What public policy and even more importantly, the people who make and inuence public policy must do is to nally accept and embrace and celebrate that fact. And then see what we can do together to help. Sincerely doing so could do more to win the war on poverty than anything else discussed at this conference today. I want to close with a story from the history of my church and my state. In October 1856, two groups of handcart pioneers on their way to Utah were stuck on the plains of Wyoming: short of provisions, with winter coming, the ground so hard they could not dig graves for 52 B R I N G
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I N those who expired in the cold. In what is now Salt Lake City, Brigham Young stood to open a general conference of the church, where the citizens anxiously waited to hear the inspiring speeches and powerful sermons common to such gatherings.
Instead, he began by reading the report sent to Salt Lake by the leaders of the handcart groups. It told of:
between ve and six hundred men, women, and children, worn by drawing handcarts through the snow and mud; fainting by the wayside; falling, chilled by the cold; children crying, their limbs stiffened by cold; their feet bleeding and some of them bare to snow and frost.
Brigham Young then called the people to action, with this simple message: Many of our brethren and sisters are on the plains with handcarts and they must be brought here, we must send assistance to them.
He said he would not wait until tomorrow or the next day. He called for forty young men, sixty-ve teams of mules or horses, and wagons loaded with twenty-four thousand pounds of our to leave immediately to rescue those pioneers in the wilderness. I will tell you all, Young said, that your faith and profession of religion, will never save one soul of you unless you carry out just such principles as I am now teaching.... Go and bring in those people now on the plains.
The rescue party quickly assembled and headed East. Days later, they reached the pioneers with food and blankets and hope. The survivors were then carried, some literally on the backs 53 B R I N G
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I N of their rescuers, to Salt Lake home at last, where they belonged. Today, millions more of our neighbors are still out on the plains. They are not some governments brothers and sisters they are ours.
And the time has come to do something about it. As conservatives, as Americans, and as human beings, we have it in our power individually, together, and where necessary through government to bring them into our free enterprise economy to earn a good living; to bring them into our voluntary civil society to build a good life; and to welcome them and their children home to an America that leaves no one behind.
Thank you, and God bless. 54 O P P O R T U N I T Y ,
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R E F O R M OPPORTUNITY, CRONYISM, AND CONSERVATIVE REFORM Compounding the shortage of opportunities among the poor and middle class is the third part of Americas Opportunity Decit: our crisis of crony capitalism, corporate welfare, and political privilege, in which government twists public policy to unfairly benet favored special interests at the expense of everyone else. Whereas the free enterprise system is based on the fundamental equality of opportunity for all to succeed and to fail on a level playing eld, cronyism cements the status of the politically well-connected, making it easier for favored special-interests to succeed, and harder for their competitors to get a fair shot. As a result, honest small business owners, would-be employees, and investors are unfairly kept on the sidelines of a rigged game. Given the consequences and scope of cronyist policiesfrom subsidies and loan guarantees to tax loopholes and protective regulationsthe only option for conservatives today is a clear and simple zero-tolerance policy toward special-interest privilege of any kind. An anti-cronyist agenda would begin with comprehensive tax reform to get rid of unfair carve-outs and level the playing eld for small and large businesses, as well as regulatory reform to reorient the system around transparency and accountability. It would eliminate special policy privileges wherever they exist, whether its the health-insurer bailouts in Obamacare, special tax treatment for politically favored energy producers, the cronyist Export-Import Bank, or the federally created accreditation cartels that restrict access to higher education opportunities. Taken together, these reforms would restore fair competition at the top of our economy, expand opportunity for the poor and middle class, and drive down working families inated housing, education, health care, and childcare costs. Anti-cronyist reform is an issue that can unify the conservative movement. It is at once pro-growth, principled, and popularunclaimed political high ground. 56 O P P O R T U N I T Y ,
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R E F O R M Opportunity, Cronyism, and Conservative Reform Of, By and For the people Remarks to the Heritage Foundation April 30, 2014 Thank you very much. It is always a privilege to be back at the Heritage Foundation, the heart of Americas conservative movement. And it is to that broad, diverse movement that I have come to speak today about an issue with the potential to unify and revive our coalition. As I see it, there are two great domestic challenges facing our country today. Problem number one is Americas large and growing Opportunity Decit. Up and down our society - which used to be dened by unmatched economic growth and social ourishing - a new and unnatural sclerosis is taking hold. For millions of working families of or aspiring to our middle class, the American Dream is slipping out of reach. Problem number two is that, for the moment, the United States still lacks a political party ready to solve problem number one. I am here today because I believe conservatives are in a unique position to begin to solve both. Americas Opportunity Decit presents itself in three principal ways: 1. First, in the growing crisis of immobility among the poor, where families and communities are trapped in poverty, sometimes for generations, and are increasingly disconnected from the networks of opportunity that more afuent Americans take for granted. 2. Second, in the crisis of insecurity within our middle class, where the hallmarks of the American Dream from family stability and work-life balance to affordable education and health care - have grown too elusive for too many. 3. Third is Americas crisis of crony capitalism, corporate welfare, and political privilege: in which government twists public policy to unfairly benet favored special interests at the expense of everyone else. 57 O P P O R T U N I T Y ,
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R E F O R M On these rst two fronts there is some good news to report. A new generation of conservative leaders is emerging to meet these growing challenges with principled, positive reforms, including repairs to our welfare, prison, job-training, tax, energy, and education systems. Running through each is a recognition that for many Americans today, especially for the poor and middle class, the greatest obstacles to the pursuit of happiness are actually misguided government policies. These conservative reformers understand that to restore equal opportunity to all Americans, its not enough to just cut big government. We also have to x broken government to restore and expand access to Americas exceptional free-enterprise economy and voluntary civil society. These reforms aim, in the words of Abraham Lincoln: to lift articial weights from all shoulders clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all, [and] afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life. The emergence of this new Conservative Reform Agenda while it is still a work in progress - is an exciting development for our cause. It harkens back to an earlier era when Ronald Reagans generation of conservatives turned a moribund G.O.P. into Americas party of ideas, and built a national majority that changed history. But as crucial as this work is, it remains incomplete. As I mentioned earlier, there is a third part of Americas Opportunity Decit that compounds the other two. For the same kind of dysfunctional big government that unfairly excludes the poor and middle class from earning their success on a level playing eld sometimes unfairly exempts the wealthy and well-connected from having to earn their success. This is Americas crisis of crony capitalism, corporate welfare, and political privilege: in which government twists public policy to unfairly benet favored special interests at the expense of everyone else. Cronyism simultaneously corrupts our economy and our government, turning both against the American people. It forces American families who work hard and play by the rules to 58 O P P O R T U N I T Y ,
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R E F O R M prop up, bail out, and subsidize elite special interests that dont. It therefore represents a uniquely malignant threat to American exceptionalism. And so, the third part of a new, Conservative Reform Agenda must restore equal opportunity to the top of our society, too to root out cronyist privilege from the law, and from our party to re-empower the American people and restore fairness, dynamism, and growth to our economy. Free enterprise works morally and materially - because it aligns the interests of the individual and society. Its a system governed by an invisible hand that rewards the creation of value, and by an invisible foot that punishes complacency, especially at the top. In the marketplace, personal success depends on interpersonal service. So even the most fortunate and successful have to earn their bread working for everyone else. Steve Jobs didnt succeed by rigging the computer industry he gured out how to make technology accessible and helpful to ordinary people. Oprah Winfrey didnt try to bury other talk-show hosts in red tape she spent decades perfecting her own show, informing and inspiring millions of viewers. Michael Jordan never mandated us to watch him play basketball he just played so well that we wanted to. On the other hand, the American people didnt want to buy Edsels, New Coke, or Zunes - so those much-ballyhooed products failed. In America, even giant corporations like Ford, Coca-Cola, and Microsoft were powerless over an un-impressed public. In a properly functioning free-enterprise economy in which success can be earned, and has to be successful CEOs stay up nights either obsessing about innovating to better serve their customers, or panicking about competitors who are. Thus free enterprise simultaneously yields economic growth and cultivates social solidarity. The system is not perfect, but it is fair - because its power resides in the people. And so rewards ow to those who add real value to the lives of their neighbors and their nation. Cronyism turns all of this upside-down. 59 O P P O R T U N I T Y ,
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R E F O R M It empowers and enriches the few by disenfranchising the many. Like a black hole, cronyism bends the economy toward the state, inexorably shifting wealth and opportunity from the public to policymakers. The more power government amasses, the more privileges are bestowed on the governments friends, the more businesses invest in inuence instead of innovation, the more advantages accrue to the biggest special interests with the most to spend on politics and the most to lose from fair competition. Once prots depend on serving congressmen instead of customers, the interests of the elite diverge from those of the nation. Innovation slows, and true inequality inequality of opportunity - emerges. The American people are forced to work for big businesses instead of the other way around. The middle class falls and the middle-men rise. Far from the rivals of popular mythology, the elite leaders of Big Government, Big Business, and Big Special Interests are more often than not partners, in collusion to help each other climb to the highest rungs of success, and then pull up the ladder behind them. To be clear, the problem Im describing is not that there is too much money in politics. Its that theres too much politics in the economy: three-and-a-half trillion dollars in direct federal spending, and almost $2 trillion more redirected through regulations. Exposing even a signicant fraction of that amount to political inuence would distort enough enterprise to pull the economy off its moorings. And thats precisely what has happened. What were left with today is a warped economy increasingly built on connections instead of competitiveness. Record corporate prots and jaw-dropping gains among elites but slow growth, stagnant wages and limited opportunities for everyone else. Except, of course, in the Washington, D.C. area, home to six of the ten wealthiest counties in the United States. There is a reason opinion surveys show that Americas largest political and economic institutions have lost the publics trust. Those institutions have ceased to be trustworthy. Americans across the ideological spectrum - from the Occupy Left to the Tea Party Right - are guring out that Americas Opportunity Decit is not a mystery. Its a government program. 60 O P P O R T U N I T Y ,
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R E F O R M Or rather, its thousands of government programs. Special-interest privilege has become so prevalent, its a wonder anyone can make an honest buck anymore. Cronyist policies come in many shapes and sizes, but the upshot is always the same: making it easier for favored special interests to succeed, and harder for their competitors to get a fair shot. There are direct subsidies, like those that are supposedly necessary to protect family farmers. Except every year, 75 percent of the $24 billion we spend on agriculture handouts goes to the top 10 percent of recipients. The bulk of these subsidies arent going to the Little House on the Prairie; theyre going to The Wolf of Wall Street. (Which I have not seen, by the way. I heard theres dancing.) Cronyism also entails indirect subsidies, like the loan guarantees issued by the Export-Import Bank. Here again, more than three- quarters of ExIms billions of dollars in loan guarantees go to just three corporations that are perfectly capable of securing private nancing anywhere in the world. We all know about the booming proliferation of tax carve-outs and loopholes. Today, the internal revenue code is about four million words long. Depending on your brand of right-of-center politics, that works out to about ve copies of the King James Bible or six copies of Atlas Shrugged. But the tax code is just one of many cases in which the sheer size and complexity of the law operates as a cronyist subsidy all by itself.
Complicated regulations however imposed - always increase the costs of doing business. Those higher costs in turn advantage the largest rms because they can always afford to hire more lawyers and lobbyists, while smaller, younger competitors cant. For this reason, very often the most onerous regulations governing an industry are endorsed by the largest players in that sector. The largest light-bulb manufacturers supported the 2007 ban on incandescent bulbs. The largest toy manufacturers supported onerous new testing standards in 2008. The largest tobacco company supported 2009 legislation to give the FDA regulatory oversight over its product. And lest we forget, the largest 61 O P P O R T U N I T Y ,
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R E F O R M pharmaceutical companies supported Obamacare. In every case, the resulting regulations helped cement the incumbents dominant market positions as intended. This process what economists call regulatory capture - is also the stock-in-trade of state and local cronyism. You may have heard about local restaurants lobbying for regulations to drive off food trucks, or taxi companies trying to bar Uber and ride-sharing start- ups from city streets. But the problem is much deeper. Today, one in three Americans works in a profession that requires special government permission to earn a living. Im not talking about district attorneys and anesthesiologists, but hair-braiders, eye-brow threaders, massage therapists, and fortune tellers. The true purpose of occupational licensing especially in lower-skilled trades that have always been avenues of opportunity for lower- income Americans is to exclude as many newcomers as possible while keeping customer prices articially high. But a recent study by the Kaufmann Foundation found that fully 100 percent of net American job creation between 1977 and 2005 came from start-up rms. Thus regulations that favor established incumbents over younger competitors specically hamstring the very businesses we need to create jobs. Sometimes cronyist schemes go so badly, so quickly, that the corruption actually causes a scandal, as was the case with politically connected solar-panel manufacturer Solyndra, which went bankrupt and lost every dime of a $535 million federal loan guarantee. But more often, special-interest privilege burrows so deep into the policymaking process that the parasite starts to overwhelm its host. Consider federal nancial regulation. Prior to 2008, the ination of the housing bubble was a bipartisan initiative. Under presidents and Congresses of both parties, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Housing Authority collaborated with Wall Street to conceal the risks associated with subprime mortgages. Then, when the inevitable collapse came, the $700 billion TARP program bailed out the big banks, when the market was ready to discipline them and reward their smaller, more prudent competitors. And now, the Dodd-Frank nancial reform law that was supposed to end too big to fail has instead codied Wall Streets implicit 62 O P P O R T U N I T Y ,
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R E F O R M taxpayer guarantee which according to one study may account for those rms entire prot margins. Under this so-called reform, the biggest banks have grown bigger than ever, while community banks are disappearing, regional banks are being unfairly squeezed, and lower-income Americans are being locked out of the banking system altogether. Or look at the federal sugar program, where an array of taxes, mandates, and subsidies conspire to jack up the prices Americans pay on sugar by as much as $3 billion every year. The program hurts economic growth, and redistributes wealth from the American people to a handful of corporations who effectively control regulation over their industry. Though these partnerships between big government and big business are especially offensive, big non-prots play the same game. The myriad federal laws that advantage big labor unions can be just as pernicious as those that privilege corporations. The auto bailouts and the Davis-Bacon Act are merely two prominent examples of this pathology. Another is the Mad-Men era exclusion of private-sector employees from popular comp-time benets. Even our education system is distorted by special-interest privilege, breeding inequality within the very institution thats supposed to be our societys great equalizer. Across the country, lower- and middle-income families are priced out of the best elementary and secondary schools, and denied affordable alternatives. Meanwhile, our higher-education policies entitle existing universities to inate prices while denying access to non-traditional students and more affordable schools. And of course, there is the epic cronyist disaster movie, Obamacare, which: privileges certain corporations by penalizing Americans who dont buy health insurance from them; subsidizes the purchase of those products; protects those corporations from true price competition and market innovation; 63 O P P O R T U N I T Y ,
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R E F O R M exempts special interests like labor unions, government employees, and large corporations from various mandates under the law; and, may even guarantee those corporations survival - even if they lose money - through an open-ended taxpayer bailout. The lesson for conservatives in all this is that big government is worse than inefcient its unfair. Now the Left, they see Big Governments consolidation and redistribution of economic opportunity as a feature, not a bug. Liberals have no problem privileging special interests, so long as theyre liberal special interests. And if and when it all blows up in their faces, they can always advocate even bigger government. This kind of corporatism, by which large, established players in government, industry, labor, and special interests work together to manage the economy, has always been part of progressive ideology. Herbert Croly, one of the intellectual founders of progressivism, put it bluntly over a century ago, when he wrote: In economic warfare, the ghting can never be fair for long, and it is the business of the state to see that its own friends are victorious. Thats how liberals today still think. But for conservatives, this thinking is a trap. Because properly considered, there is no such thing as a conservative special interest. Its progressives who slice the country into politically assigned subgroups, manipulating cooperative citizens into selsh special interests. Its big government that divides us picking friends and enemies. Freedom unites us. And freedom depends on equal opportunity for all. To conservatives, there should be no such thing as our people. There is just the American people, all in this together, in a free-enterprise economy and voluntary civil society, working hard and playing by the rules, helping each other and especially those who cant help themselves. That ideal is part of what has always made America exceptional. After all, cronyism has been the norm throughout human history. Friends of the king have always prospered. What makes free enterprise special is that it allows everybody else to prosper, too. And so, just as a new Conservative Reform Agenda should seek to once again allow the poor and middle class to compete on a 64 O P P O R T U N I T Y ,
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R E F O R M level playing eld, it must once again force the wealthy and well- connected to do so as well. The level playing eld works only when it works for everyone. And I mean everyone, including the rich. Make no mistake: conservative, anti-cronyist reform should never be confused with or descend into - the cheap, ugly populism of class warfare. We want successful Americans to succeed. All we ask is that they earn their success on a level playing eld, subject to the judgment of the market as truly successful Americans always have. Just as the real victim of the baseball steroids scandal was the marginal player who never got a fair chance because he didnt cheat, the true victims of crony capitalism are the true capitalists: honest entrepreneurs, employees, consumers, and investors who are today unfairly forced to play uphill in a rigged game. So it seems to me, given the scope and consequences of Americas Opportunity Decit and of the benets of reform - the only option for conservatives today is a clear and simple zero-tolerance policy toward cronyist privilege of any kind. That means rst and foremost tax reform, to simplify the code and rid it of special treatment for special interests. One of the best aspects of the tax reform proposed by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp was its simplication, cutting unfair and unnecessary special-interest carve-outs. Last year, I introduced legislation to eliminate most credits and deductions from the individual tax code, while lowering the mortgage-interest deduction to $300,000 worth of principal. My plan also increased the child tax credit to help equalize treatment for working parents, who today face an unintended policy inequity of their own. I have also begun working with Senator Marco Rubio on a broader pro-family, pro-growth tax reform proposal to eliminate special interest privilege from the corporate code and level the playing eld for small and large businesses. We also need a broad regulatory-reform agenda, to make sure big government and big special interests are not rigging the rules for each other and against the public. Here, Senator Rand Pauls REINS Act is an excellent start. The REINS Act would introduce transparency and accountability to the system by requiring 65 O P P O R T U N I T Y ,
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R E F O R M congressional approval of any major new executive-branch regulations. While REINS provides an excellent solution to new regulations, we need complementary reforms to deal with cronyist manipulation already in place. Toward that end, Senator Rubio has proposed a Regulatory Budgeting mechanism to bring more accountability into the system. And Im working on my own plan to create a new, annual Regulatory Authorization process. This process would require Congress to prioritize and approve the cost and content of all regulations Washington imposes on the economy every year. On the other side of the Capitol, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan has been a longtime champion of anti-cronyist reform, and made the elimination of special-interest privilege a point of emphasis in this years Budget Resolution. But beyond broad tax, regulatory, and budget reform, conservatives need to start identifying and eliminating specic policy privileges as well. Some already have. For instance, Congressman Mike Pompeo has introduced a bill to end special tax treatment in the energy sector: to level the playing eld for green energy and fossil fuels. Senator Rubio has proposed legislation to protect taxpayers from the implicit health-insurer bailouts in Obamacare. A Senate vote on his proposal could help clarify the law and the politics, and further the cause of full repeal. House Banking Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling is leading the ght in the House against the reauthorization of the cronyist Export- Import Bank this year to level the playing eld for all American exporters, not just the well-connected few. The ght against reauthorizing the Ex-Im Bank is probably the most important and winnable anti-cronyist effort conservatives can take up this year. We also need to break up federally created cartels that protect insiders and disadvantage taxpayers and consumers. Last fall, I proposed legislation to introduce competition and 66 O P P O R T U N I T Y ,
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R E F O R M innovation in higher education accreditation to lower prices and increase access to college. And Congressman Tom Graves has proposed a bill to let state and local governments build their own roads and infrastructure without having Beltway bureaucrats, labor bosses, and federal eco-cronies inate the costs and skim off the top. We need to modernize federal labor law, to give independent and union workers equal access to comp-time and the right-to-work. And were also going to have to do something about Too Big To Fail, which still appears to be providing an implicit subsidy from taxpayers to Wall Streets biggest banks. How we go about xing the perverse incentives in our nancial system is still an open question. But its one conservatives must answer before the next crisis comes. Perhaps the solution is a new bankruptcy process - like the one proposed by Senators John Cornyn and Pat Toomey that would transfer authority over failed banks from political regulators to more impartial courts. If we cant be sure there will never be another bailout request, perhaps changes to capital-reserve requirements an approach supported by Senators David Vitter and Sherrod Brown could force big banks to operate more responsibly, preventing the next crisis from ever emerging. But whatever we decide, the purpose of reform should not be to protect the rich and powerful in ways that encourage them to take foolish risks with other peoples money but to protect the taxpayer in ways that encourage both entrepreneurial dynamism and corporate responsibility. Taken together, these reforms would begin to eliminate cronyist privilege, create opportunity, and drive down the inated costs of the staples of middle class aspiration and security, including housing, education, health care, and child-rearing. Anti-cronyist reform is more than good policy. Its an issue that can unify conservatives, at a time when we need more of them. Thats why, for the moment, the policy specics in many ways matter less than the larger political commitment of the conservative movement to make this cause our own. 67 O P P O R T U N I T Y ,
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R E F O R M Just like the crises of lower-income immobility and middle class insecurity, the crisis of special-interest privilege is not Barack Obamas fault. It predates his presidency. And though his policies have made it worse, past Republican presidents and Congresses share some of the blame. The policies that contribute to Americas Opportunity Decit have deep roots and powerful friends. Reforming them wont be easy or pleasant. It will require closing the G.O.P.s lucrative branch of the Beltway Favor Bank, and learning a hundred ways to say no to former staffers and colleagues with large accounts in that bank. This may sound like a heavy lift, a fundamental transformation of how our party and this city function. But thats what they used to say about earmarks. And much more to the point, this is stuff we are already supposed to believe. Every Republican candidate in the country campaigns on free enterprise, equality of opportunity, and the rule of law. Crony capitalism is even singled out for condemnation in the party platform. And yet, Republican votes have helped pass many of the unfair, cynical policies mentioned above. Too many in Washington have convinced themselves that special-interest privilege is wrong only when the other side does it. But not surprisingly, they have not convinced the public. Americans intuitively understand that crony capitalism is not a form of private enterprise; its a form of public corruption. To the hundreds of millions of Americans who believe in a level economic playing eld most especially to the working families of the poor and middle class whose aspirations and opportunities utterly depend on it self-dealing among political and economic elites is not compromise. Its a monstrous betrayal. And from the party that advocates the moral and material superiority of free enterprise, its rank hypocrisy. Whether we realize it or not, we are the ones whose ideals cronyism corrupts, and whose arguments cronyism discredits. The Left openly supports special-interest favoritism, while the Right claims to reject it. So the fact that both parties engage in it is a much more powerful indictment of Republicans than Democrats. As long as our economic agenda can plausibly be mocked as low tax rates and protected prots for the One Percent, the American people have good reason not to trust us. 68 O P P O R T U N I T Y ,
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R E F O R M To win back their trust and we must - its not going to be enough to merely atone for past transgressions. We will have to go and sin no more. To the conservatives who hope to lead congressional majorities in 2015, or seek the presidency in 2016, this is more than a matter of talking points and tactics. Its about rst principles: the fundamental morality of our cause, and the purpose of our coalition. It seems to me that a principled, positive agenda to remove government-created barriers to upward mobility and middle-class opportunity - to level our economic playing eld and put economic elites back to work creating jobs and growth for everyone else represents everything conservatism should stand for. It further seems to me that in the twenty-ve years since Ronald Reagan left ofce, we have tried it the establishments way. We have tried being a party of corporate connections and special-interest deal-making. And weve lost ve of the six presidential popular votes since. And so it is reasonable for conservatives to put the onus on the establishment to explain why we dont need fundamental course correction, starting with a commitment to basic fairness, equal opportunity, and a zero-tolerance policy toward special-interest privilege consistent with our own stated principles. To the professional consultants and pundits who habitually cast a skeptical eye on anti-establishment ideas: this is not some quixotic purity test or fund-raising gimmick. Anti-cronyist reform is at once pro-growth, principled, and popular unclaimed political high ground. Substantively, its necessary to get the economy growing again, creating jobs and opportunities for working families and communities too short on both. Morally, a wary American public has ever right to expect that conservative welfare reform ought to start with corporate welfare. And as always, good policy makes for good politics. Re-aligning our agenda with our values will realign it with middle-American aspirations. It would expose the Lefts addiction to government-driven inequality, and force progressives to nally choose between their populist rhetoric and their corporatist agenda. For every well-heeled ally a new, anti-cronyist G.O.P. might lose 69 O P P O R T U N I T Y ,
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R E F O R M on K Street, it stands to make a thousand new friends on Main Streets, all over the country. It would signal to the forgotten families of Americas middle class that someone in Washington is nally standing up for them again. That Republican Party could not only unify and inspire the Right from libertarian populists to compassionate conservatives - but also appeal to hardworking families in the purple and blue communities that President Obamas cronyist economy is leaving behind. For three years now, since my rambunctious class of legislators arrived in Washington, establishment leaders have challenged anti- establishment conservatives to accept political reality engage the politics of addition and produce a viable plan to make principled conservatism appealing and inclusive to grow our movement into a majority. Well, here it is: a commitment to economic fairness and competition at the top of our economy to help restore jobs, growth, mobility, and opportunity to the poor and middle class. Though what I propose is a change, its not unfamiliar. People sometimes forget that the British policies that lit the fuse of the American Revolution did not merely oppress the colonists. Indeed, the Tea Act of 1773 actually lowered taxes. The problem was, it only lowered taxes for one corporation, the politically connected East India Company, giving it an unfair, articial advantage over smaller, local American competitors. That is why the tea went into the Harbor. In many ways, it was a ght for equal opportunity against special- interest privilege that made our nation. A renewed conservative commitment to that same ght today can help re-make our nation revive our movement, and rebuild a fair and prosperous American economy of, by, and for the people. FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT:
LEE.SENATE.GOV MIKE LEE UNITED STATES SENATOR, UTAH LEE.SENATE.GOV AN AGENDA FOR OUR TIME
The Danger of Progressive Liberalism: How America Is Threatened by Excessive Government, Multiculturalism, Political Correctness, Entitlement, and the Failures of Both Political Parties
Bridget Wingert, "Happy To Be Here: Washington Crossed The Delaware in 1778, The Only Time With The Bulk of The Army," Bucks County Herald, 26 June 2014, Page 11.