A 21 Item 2008 Platform

On Friday, Bill Bennett suggested a short and to the point Proposed 2008 Platform. That was a great idea and since imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I thought I’d ape his idea.

So….

A 21 Item Proposed 2008 Platform.

The Core Items

1) Aggressively fight the war on terrorism which includes stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons by any means necessary.

2) A Balanced Budget Amendment with an out for national security spending if need-be. Set the baseline budget to the rate of inflation when we’re running a deficit and the rate of inflation + 1% when we’re in the black. Yearly appropriation of entitlement programs (no more autopiliot spending). A sunshine rule for earmarks.

3) Get Tough On Illegal Immigration: Secure the border, ban all illegal immigrants from becoming citizens or guest workers, impose gargantuan fines on businesses that knowingly hire illegal aliens.

4) Taxes: Make the tax cuts permanent, flatten the tax cut, oppose taxes on the internet, work to end the death tax. Require a 2/3 majority to raise taxes.

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

The Rest

6) Judges: Pledge to continue to appoint textualist judges.

7) Support Social Security reform including private accounts, raising the age limit to 70 in 2030, permanently tying the age limit to the average lifespan of Americans, & index Social Security payments to prices, instead of wages.

8) Education: Abolish the Department of Education and send all federal money set aside for education in block grants to the states, to be used as they wish to fund their school systems.

9) An Energy Policy: Drill ANWR, permanently get rid of the Clean Air Act Amendments that lead to different gasoline blends going to different states (which raises the cost of gas about 15 cents per gallon), low interest loans and tax credits for companies that agree to build new refineries or nuclear power plants.

10) Election Reform: All machines should be required to produce a paper ballot, Voter ID should be required at every polling place, and provisions should be put in place that preclude voting machines from being hooked up to the internet.

11) Ethics reform that prevents members of Congress convicted of a crime from getting a pension, no trips paid for by lobbyists, a 5 year ban on working for anyone a Congressman has been lobbied by, etc., etc.

12) A Constitutional Amendment defining marriage as being between one man and one woman.

13) Stricter Control Of Legal Immigration. We need to cut down the number of legal immigrants we’re allowing into the country significantly, perhaps into the 250k-400k range.

14) Non-Retroactive Term Limits: Propose term limits for senators and congressmen. The term limits would only apply to members of Congress who are elected for the first time in the 111th session of Congress. It’s an imperfect solution, but it moves us in the right direction.

15) Moving responsibility for airport security back to the airlines.

16) A Constitutional Amendment banning the desecration of the American flag.

17) Move ahead faster on the Missile Defense Shield.

18) Putting an end to Affirmative Action that goes beyond specifically recruiting minorities to apply for a particular position.

19) A loser pays legal system.

20) Moving ahead with a Democratic United Nations that will be intended as an eventual replacement for the current organization.

21) Pledge to aggressively investigate and prosecute national security leaks.

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