Memo: To House Speaker Dennis Hastert. Mr. Speaker, you need to demonstrate to the country that the slim Republican majority is concerned with more than the scandals of the Clinton administration and that the House Republicans’ focus on the Lewinsky matter was based on more than a desire to embarrass a president who has consistently outmaneuvered them.
A strong policy-based offensive will show the country that the Republican majority has the resolve to govern. What I like to call "progressive conservatives" made the Republicans a majority party in 1994. The new congressional leadership needs to articulate the principles we hold dear. The disappointment many of us have felt, evidenced in the failure of the Republican base to vote in large numbers in the most recent election, is not so much that our goals-limiting abortion and encouraging local community renewal-were not fulfilled. What really disappointed us was that a seemingly sympathetic Congress did so little to implement those goals.
No effort, for example, has been made to pursue an effective program to protect fetal life. The ban on partial-birth abortion was a significant first step. Still, Clinton’s veto continues to make such legislation unlikely to become law. Efforts to label Clinton a prochoice extremist have also failed. More imaginative strategies are needed. For example, many prochoice advocates offered legislation that would prohibit all postviability abortions, with the only exception made for a threat of grievous physical injury or death to the mother. Prolifers rejected this, noting that all pregnancies pose a risk to the mother’s health. They have a point. Still, the prohibition on postviability abortions could be redrafted to address such concerns. If that were done, a bipartisan prolife coalition might emerge. The passage of such a law might also influence the Supreme Court to accept some meaningful restrictions on abortion.
Equally important, Republicans should push a broad initiative to build stronger communities and local institutions. Such an initiative would provide a positive alternative vision to the Democratic party’s Washington-centered programs while complementing Republican efforts to devolve government. Passage of the American Community Renewal Act, which has not yet been brought before the full House for consideration, is the way to start.
Since taking control of the House in 1994, Republican congressional majorities have vigorously sought to downsize government and move decision making to the local level. The moral argument for such devolution is that it would unshackle the creative power of the private sector, encouraging individual action and building stronger community institutions. To skeptics, such efforts are an abandonment of established governmental social concerns, particularly for the less fortunate. The absence of a strong progressive conservative agenda for the poor has seemed to validate the skeptics’ views.
To address this issue, Republicans should push education vouchers (or refundable tuition tax credits), expand the use of housing vouchers (in lieu of assignments to specified housing units), and end or ease the marriage tax penalty. Energy should also be put behind providing larger tax credits for charitable giving and implementing a new tax credit to encourage commercial development in economically depressed areas.
Such community-based policies contributed to the recent electoral success of Republican governors and were critical to the success of progressive conservatives in the 1980s. Although opposed to increases in the minimum wage and determined to reduce direct housing assistance, conservatives did put forward alternative programs to achieve similar goals, such as expanding the earned-income tax credit and developing the now highly successful low-income housing tax credit to encourage private-sector housing. It was the positive aspects of that agenda that inspired confidence among voters. That confidence has evaporated in the last four years. By addressing these issues the Republican House majority can restore vigor to their party and to their country.
