An Agenda For The Next Two Years

08 Nov, 2002 by John Hawkins

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An Agenda For The Next Two Years: Undoubtably there will be a lot of issues that are going to come up in the next two years. But here the ones I’d to see us focus on…

– We’ve got to keep fighting and winning the war on terrorism. Hussein has got to go and then we have to turn up the heat on Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Libya, and the other random assorted trouble spots around the world. This may mean war or it may simply mean diplomatic and economic pressure depending on the situation. But winning the war on terrorism and protecting our country from terrorist attacks should be our #1 priority.

– Make the Bush tax cuts permanent and look for new tax cuts to push. This will help the economy significantly and it’s our signature issue. It also puts the Democrats in the position of opposing tax cuts which will help us in 2004.

– Cracking down on illegal immigration is another major issue that we should tackle over the next two years. I’d even support putting the military on the border…as would Trent Lott apparently. This would be a very popular issue with everyone except left-wingers who aren’t going to vote for us anyway, Libertarians, and possibly the Latino population.

But if we do it right, I don’t see why we even have to alienate Latinos. While we push to force the illegals out of the US and keep our borders secure, we can try to set-up a work pass program to get people from Mexico who follow the rules into America to work. Moreover, this will give us an opportunity to come down hard on businessmen who are deliberately hiring illegals. This will help offset the stereotype that the Dems try to put out there about us being in the pocket of “big business.” This is not only a law and order issue, it’s a national security issue and I believe it will genuinely hurt the Dems to fight us on this.

– The Bush administration has been entirely too cavalier about controlling spending. With a Republican Congress and a Republican President there is absolutely no reason why we can’t get the budget under control and actually cut some wasteful spending. Cutting pork is something the American people appreciate. Also, if I were the Democrats, I would HAMMER us on that very issue in 2004 if we don’t get the job done.

– While President Bush did an excellent job of promoting candidates this year, he didn’t spend nearly enough time using the bully pulpit to promote his ideas.

I’d really like to see GWB use his influence with the American people to push for school vouchers in areas with failing public schools. This is something we need to improve our schools, it will help us get a larger percentage of the black vote in 2002 (vouchers poll at 60%+ in the black community), and it would help us offset the advantage that the Dems tend to have over us on the education issue at election time.

The other issue I’d really like to see W. explain and promote to the American people is his idea about allowing younger workers to invest part of their Social Security. The average person DOES NOT understand that the Social Security trust fund is really an IOU. Explaining that to seniors and giving them a real way to extend the life of Social Security is not only good policy, it will help us in 2004 when the Dems inevitably try to scare old people into believing that we’re going to take their Social Security so they’ll have to live in cardboard boxes and eat Alpo to survive.

– There are lots of empty slots in the judiciary just waiting for Conservative judges who will strictly interpret the constitution. The sooner we fill all those slots the better.

If we focus on these issues for the next two years, I think can achieve a lot and we’ll be in excellent shape for the 2004 elections.