GOP Platform 7: Government For the People

July 31 -- The following is unedited text from the 2000 Republican party platform.

Government for the People

Trust, pride, and respect: we pledge to restore these qualities to the way Americans view their government. It is the most important of tasks and reflects the overwhelming desire of our citizens for fundamental change in official Washington.

The templates to make this happen are readily available in the 30 states led by Republican governors. These visionary leaders have opened a new era of creative federalism, making government citizen-centered, results-oriented, and, where possible, market-based. Their sound management of public dollars has led to unprecedented surpluses. Services have improved. Waste has been reduced. Taxes have been cut.

State and local governments are also far ahead of official Washington in the creation of e-government: providing information and services to the public via the Internet. Citizens can conduct business with government by going on-line instead of wasting hours in-line. We will e-power citizens at all levels of government. And we will require federal agencies to use savvy, on-line practices to buy smart — and save enormous amounts of money in procurement.

The leadership our governors have shown in these matters only strengthens our commitment to restore the force of the Tenth Amendment, the best protection the American people have against federal intrusion and bullying. We have limited the ability of Congress to impose unfunded mandates on states and on local and tribal governments. The next logical step is to address the unfunded mandates of the past in areas like education and social services. The dramatic success of welfare reform — once the States were allowed to manage their programs — is a stellar example of what happens when we give power back to the people.

Therefore, in our effort to shift power from Washington back to the states, we must acknowledge as a general matter of course that the federal government’s role should be to set high standards and expectations in policies, then get out of the way and let the states implement and operate those policies as they best know how. Washington must respect that one size does not fit all states and must not overburden states with unnecessary strings and red tape attached to its policies.

In the Congress, a Republican majority has modernized our national legislature. They have set term limits for committee chairs and leadership positions, and they have, by law, required Congress to live by the same rules it imposes on others. And, at a time when the nation felt betrayed by misconduct in high office, the Republican Congress responded with gravity and high purpose. We applaud those Members who did their duty to conscience and the Constitution.

There is much to be done, but it can be done only when a Republican president works in tandem with a Republican Congress. We will work to pass legislation to make it clear that public officials who commit crimes will subsequently forfeit their pension rights. We will ensure that IRS audits are never used as a political weapon, so innocent Americans will never again fear the snooping, harassment, and intimidation of recent years. And because an accurate census is essential for representative government, we will respect the Supreme Court’s judgment that an actual headcount of persons is the proper way to determine the apportionment of congressional districts.

A Republican president will take the lead in proposing, and fighting for, the structural changes that are long overdue in the federal government. For starters, the twenty-five year old congressional budget process, though it has helped to make possible today’s budget surpluses, has become almost unintelligible to legislators, let alone the average citizen. It has been inadequate to enforce legislated spending caps and cannot stop the phony “emergency” bills that cause the spending caps to be exceeded. It cannot control runaway spending on entitlements and “mandatory” spending; it does not even prevent our government spending $120 billion on programs whose statutory authority has expired.

Our goal is to replace the status quo with clarity, simplicity, and accountability to the budget process. We will have a biennial budget that has the force of law. To end pork barrel abuses on Capitol Hill, we will:

Eliminate the “baseline budgeting” that artificially boosts spending.

Create a constitutionally sound line item veto for the president, and direct the savings from items vetoed to paying down the national debt.

Prevent government shutdowns by enacting a “Permanent Continuing Resolution” so the spending lobbies can never again extort billions from the taxpayers by blocking the regular order of appropriation bills.

Define legislatively the conditions for “emergency” spending.

Like Congress, the Executive Branch must adapt to the challenges of the new century. There are too many departments and agencies with competing programs that waste resources and fail to deliver the goods: 342 economic development programs, 788 education programs in 40 different agencies at a cost of over $100 billion a year, 163 job training programs in 15 different agencies. Twelve agencies administer over 35 food safety laws. One agency regulates pizzas with meat; another regulates vegetarian pizzas. (Still another regulates the people who deliver them. Enough said.)