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Gingrich, Steele Big Stars at CPAC

Newt Gingrich and Michael Steele emerged as the GOP stars at last weekend's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Steele was mobbed by supporters looking for pictures and autographs. Gingrich commented, "I got more bang for my buck than the other [2008 presidential hopefuls]," a smiling Mr. Gingrich told The Washington Times after he marched from the back of the Regency Ballroom at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, amid stirring music nearly drowned out by applause and cheers.(source)

Gingrich has yet to form an exploratory committee and did not purchase a table at CPAC for supporters, yet he polls high in straw polls, even beating out John McCain, who is considered the 2nd favorite right now behind Rudy Giuliani.

The former NYC governor has been winning over more and more conservatives as of late, but he has also avoided having to answer tough questions about his positions on gay marriage and abortion.

The Washington Times reports:
Mr. Gingrich was the only top-tier potential contender for the Republican nomination who hadn't formed a presidential exploratory committee or bought any CPAC banquet tables for supporters. Yet in the largest presidential preference straw poll in the conference's history, he placed fourth (14 percent) -- ahead of Arizona Sen. John McCain (12 percent), who rejected an invitation to address the event.

Mr. Giuliani made his decision to accept CPAC's speaking invitation four days before the conference, yet managed to place second (17 percent) in the straw poll behind former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (21 percent), who had invested heavily in pre-event organization.

Perhaps most importantly, the conference poll conducted by the Fabrizio-McLaughlin firm allowed attendees to indicate their second preferences. Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Giuliani each got 16 percent of the second-choice votes, so that when first- and second-place were combined, Mr. Giuliani was on top (at 33 percent), with Mr. Romney and Mr. Gingrich tied for second at 30 percent each.

Gingrich has done well with the conservative base by emphasizing individual freedom while stressing the incredible need to return to fiscally responsible government in Congress. He has also declared the need for a radical overhaul of government to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

"Newt showed he is the strongest spokesperson for today's conservatives," said Tom Edmonds, a veteran campaign strategist and chief executive officer of the Edmonds Hackney media-consulting firm.(source)

Gingrich still maintains that he will not announce a decision on possible candidacy for president until September 2007.

Cross posted at Newt Gingrich for President 2008http://gingrichforpres.blogspot.com

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Bush Approval Rating Higher than Congress'

Despite that President Bush is being hammered by the media for his unpopularity over the Iraq War, it appears he's slightly more popular than Congress is to the American people. Real Clear Politics averages a number of polls which shows that Bush's approval stands on average at 35.8% while Congress has the approval of 34%. Bush's disapproval is 58.3% and Congress' disapproval is 52.3%. Even worse, 65% of those polled think the country is headed in the wrong direction. That does not bode well for either Bush or the Democrats.

The problem may be that no Congressional leaders or the President are providing a long term vision for the future of the country. The Democrats lack any coherent strategy for winning in Iraq, strengthening America domestically, or making the homeland safer. Bush is also viewed by many as a lame duck and has become somewhat paralyzed domestically because of the difficulties in stabilizing Iraq.

However, the American people seem to be widely against abandoning Iraq despite that they are unhappy with the current situation there. A vast majority of Americans are against cutting off funding for the troops and a majority believe that we can do a great deal to help stabilize Iraq before pulling out most of the troops. The American people want to win, but the same can't be said for the Democratic Party.

So where does that leave us? Enter Newt Gingrich: the man who resembles a walking idea machine could be positioning himself perfectly for 2008 by avoiding a premature declaration to run for President. Gingrich has warned that the American people may tire of the "already declared" candidates by the summer since so much media attention has already focused on who will replace Bush in 2008. After all, the 2008 election is almost 2 years away!

Despite his insistence that he will not decide until September of 2007, Gingrich is polling around 10% support of Republicans. Giuliani leads with approximately 35% followed by McCain with around 20%. Mitt Romney trails behind Gingrich with only 7.5% despite a media blitz and attempts to capture the conservative base.

One of Gingrich's big advantages is that he already has a quasi-Presidential campaign organization in place. He has developed a number of organizations since leaving the office of Speaker of the House that will make him a highly effective organizer and fundraiser. He is one of the most sought after public speakers in the country and has written 9 books since leaving elected office.

The Democrats shouldn't expect that their plans for a "slow bleed" to force an exit to Iraq will benefit them politically. They are already trailing the President in job approval ratings and have virtually no concrete ideas or solutions for America's future. Gingrich and other GOP candidates seem to, at the very least, have a plan to succeed in Iraq and are committed to ensure America's national security interests are protected at home and abroad.

Apart from Iraq, the Democrats are an "issue-less" party that would easily fragment on taxes, anti-terrorism strategies, and social policy.

Cross posted at: Newt Gingrich for President 2008 and The Strong Conservative

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Gingrich Warns of Nuclear Iran

Newt Gingrich spoke at the 7th Herzliya Conference in Israel last week and made some honest and blunt statements on the threat that Iran and nuclear terrorism poses to the United States and Israel. Gingrich emphasized that American and Israel, and more broadly the West, lack "the language and goals to address the new environment along with the speed and intensity to counter the contemporary threats".(source)

More specifically Newt states:
The US should have as an explicit goal, regime change in Iran, as its constitution makes them a revolutionary regime. In 2006 even the Department of State which seeks to deny the nature of reality, noted that Iran is a leading sponsor of terror. What I need is something that will be similar to Reagan's Replacement strategy in Iran. The current unrest in Iran will facilitate this.

The only thing Mr. Gingrich does not address is how we can go about to facilitate regime change in Iran. I would suggest a similar program that Reagan used through William Casey during the Cold War to undermine Soviet regimes and encourage dissent among those seeking liberty. This would call for a dramatically increased information system akin to Radio Free Europe, but aimed at Iran, Syria, and other hostile regimes.

Cross Posted at Newt Gingrich for President 20008

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Newt Blasts "Routine Cowardice" of Media and Left

Speaking in Baltimore, Maryland to a free market interest group, Newt Gingrich criticized the "routine cowardice" of the elite media and left wing politicians (Democrats and RINOs) who are so quick to want to retreat from Iraq and the wider War on Terror.(source)

Mr. Gingrich also warned of a long, difficult struggle with Islam that could last 30 to 70 years, just as the Cold War struggle against communism did. Gingrich also appealed to Americans to recall the example set by President Reagan who guided America out of the malaise of the Carter years.

"There are people out there who hate you so much that they are willing to kill their own baby, so long as they can kill you too," he said, citing the foiled plot in Britain where a Muslim couple planned to smuggle a bomb disguised as baby food onto a transatlantic airliner.

"On the domestic policy front Gingrich said it was necessary to "move conservatism to a new plateau" where ideas were translated into tangible policy solutions."(News Max)

Cross Posted on Newt Gingrich for President 2008 and The Strong Conservative

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Newt Reasserts The Reagan Doctrine

In addressing key concerns over Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and various international terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda, Newt Gingrich has proposed the U.S. readopt the “Reagan Doctrine”. Newt has correctly surmised that the U.S. is facing multifaceted enemies and that the U.S. military is beginning to overextend itself. By following the Cold War strategies of President Reagan , Newt firmly believes the U.S. can achieve victory.
The Reagan Doctrine includes building and maintaining a strong U.S. military , supporting pro-Western democratic forces, organizations, and nations with arms, training, and financial resources, correctly and effectively using American covert and intelligence capabilities, and applying political and economic pressure on hostile regimes.
The Reagan Doctrine enabled the U.S. to win the Cold War, and as Newt has concluded, will help to bring about an American victory in our present confrontations against terrorism and belligerent nations.

Posted by David Doyle at 9:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Newt Gingrich on Future Endeavors in Space

In the past few weeks, space exploration and bold new undertakings in spaceflight, have been making headlines. Recently NASA completed another successful space shuttle mission, Anousheh Ansari became the first private civilian female to travel in space, and Virgin Galactic revealed plans and models for its private spaceflight corporation. These events motivated me to examine where Newt stands on aero-space issues. It should be noted that Newt Gingrich has always supported space exploration. As a member of the House of Representatives he co-founded the Congressional Space Caucus and enthusiastically backed American efforts in space exploration and technological advancement. In a recent interview with The Space Review Newt had this to say about new space undertakings:

“I am for a dramatic increase in our efforts to reach out into space, but I am for doing virtually all of it outside of NASA through prizes and tax incentives. NASA is an aging, unimaginative, bureaucracy committed to over-engineering and risk-avoidance which is actually diverting resources from the achievements we need and stifling the entrepreneurial and risk-taking spirit necessary to lead in space exploration.

We should have very large prizes for achievement. If you had priced the space station as a purely private achievement and paid for it only upon completion you could probably have had three or four companies building systems in one-third to one-fifth of the time for the same total amount of money or less. There ought to be tax credits for manufacturing in space and tax credits for developing commercial flights into near space for space tourism so we build a very robust launch program in the private sector. We need a lot of competitive players, not simply one or two cumbersome large bureaucratic government contractors.”

If Newt decides to run for President, it will be a blessing to have a candidate who is serious and enthusiastic about the new and vibrant endeavors in space.

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Newt's Ideas on Education Being Utilized

I was recently reviewing some of the new reforms and programs various educational task forces and groups are proposing for Ohio. Many of them seem to be adopting some of Newt Gingrich’s innovations to strengthen U.S. education. One overriding theme in these programs is the use of college instructors, professors, and classes for high school students. For several years now Newt has often spoke about using college professors (especially those who may be retired or semi-retired and still want to teach), to instruct in the high school setting. This would greatly benefit our students in the areas of math and science and even allow students to begin to earn college credits at earlier ages. It is nice to know that Newt’s ideas are beginning to be utilized.

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More On Border Control & Immigration

Newt just released a new white paper on immigration coupled with a recent op-ed in National Review.

We have provided links to both above but here is an excerpt:

There has been a breakdown of will on the part of America’s leaders to control our borders and ensure that new immigrants learn to be American. The thousands of people we now see marching in the streets of U.S. cities over immigration policy is the product of two decades of a fundamentally dishonest immigration system. There are a number of steps we can take to protect the United States from would-be terrorists and criminals while simultaneously making it easier for legal work visa holders to enter the country legally and work here in dignity. These principles include...

1. The borders of the United States must be controlled at the earliest possible time.
2. Immigration policy should be based on the rule of law.
3. Those responsible for facilitating illegal immigration shall be sought, arrested and prosecuted to the full extent of the law, including drug smugglers, human traffickers, and those involved in the creation, distribution, or use of counterfeit documents.
4. A worker visa program should be established.
5. Those families who qualify and wish to become citizens should be helped to patriotically integrate themselves as Americans.
6. The problem of millions of people here in the United States illegally did not happen overnight and we will not correct it overnight.
7. There will be no criminalizing of those who provide humanitarian assistance to those who are living and working here illegally, such as provided by churches or charities.
8. The U.S. immigration bureaucracy must be thoroughly transformed so that it can discharge its duties effectively, quickly, courteously, and humanely.

Read the full white paper here.

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21st Century Medicare

from Newt's five Challenges

If you are a fiscal conservative who cares about balancing the federal budget, the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 has begun to move us away from the current model in which insurance companies dominate the health care transaction. The next balanced budgets will only be possible once there is a transformation of the health system.

Transformation in health care is also a moral imperative when poor quality-control systems, scarce information about expected outcomes, unacceptable error rates and lack of consumer choice combine to threaten the safety of patients and limit the opportunities for individuals to find appropriate and affordable treatment.

Medicare must be further strengthened to include a focus on outcomes-based healthcare with more choices, of greater quality, at lower costs. In essence, Medicare (and Medicaid) must continue to evolve into an individual-centered health system that emphasizes healthy living, early detection and the kind of patient self-knowledge based on the latest health information technology.

Medicare is a 40-year-old system created in 1965. The world has changed a lot in those 40 years, and an important first step to modernize it was taken in 2003 with the Medicare Modernization Act.

The historic 2003 Medicare and health savings account legislation was an extraordinarily important first step in the transformation of the American health and health care system that will save lives and money.

First and most significant, the legislation added for the first time an overdue prescription drug benefit for seniors and did so at a reasonable price. Had pharmaceuticals been as fundamental to staying healthy in 1965 -- when Medicare was created -- as they are today, there is little doubt that they would have been included in the original legislation. Over the years, as the drug industry developed more and more life-saving and life-enhancing drugs, the absence of affordable drug coverage for seniors became a glaring shortcoming of Medicare.

For example, it was increasingly nonsensical that Medicare would pay billions for kidney dialysis but not pay the pennies per day for the preventive-care drugs that let many people keep their kidneys healthy. Similarly, it made little sense for Medicare to pay billions to cover open-heart surgery but not cover the couple of dollars a day for statin drugs so that people could avoid surgery in the first place.

In this respect, the drug benefit not only will help keep our seniors healthy, but it will also save money in many cases by preventing health crises that require costly interventions for seniors.

However, the impact of this legislation extends far beyond the drug benefit. Through its creation of health savings accounts, the measure will begin to address the crisis in health care that affects all Americans, and also put Medicare on a surer footing in the future as it will promote healthier lifestyles.

These portable accounts allow individuals to deposit and grow money tax-free, and to withdraw that money tax-free to pay for qualified medical expenses, including prescription drugs and long-term care services (including long-term care insurance). As such, HSAs, which are owned by individuals, are the first completely tax-free account in American history.

If you are a fiscal conservative who cares about balancing the federal budget, this legislation has begun to move us away from the current model in which insurance companies dominate the health care transaction. Instead, the HSA will enable transactions between doctor and patient in which the patient controls how dollars are spent.

Health savings accounts will encourage individuals to shop for health plans that best fit their needs and to make cost-conscious decisions about how they spend their own health dollars as opposed to a third party's money. Individuals who control their own health dollars will be wise purchasers of health services.

With health costs accounting for nearly 14 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, the HSA represents the single most significant transformation that can be made in saving the country from skyrocketing health costs and steadily increasing calls for taxpayers to finance more and more of the health care system through higher taxes. Transformation of this nature is a practical need when so many Americans are without health insurance and when those with (or supplying) insurance coverage have experienced double-digit premium increases for three years in a row.

The next balanced budgets will only be possible once there is a transformation of the health system, and part of the key to this transformation will be the existence of health savings accounts. Without the first dollar interest in the payment of health expenses, there is little incentive on the part of the patient/consumer to scrutinize a doctor's bill.

And without transparency in costs, as well as cost comparison information, it is even more difficult for individuals to assess the true value of a health service and either challenge the bill or decide to take their health business to a different provider who offers better value.

Transformation in health care is also a moral imperative when poor quality-control systems, scarce information about expected outcomes, unacceptable error rates and lack of consumer choice combine to threaten the safety of patients and limit the opportunities for individuals to find appropriate and affordable treatment. The 2003 legislation began to tackle these problems by correcting the current practice in which quality outcomes have no bearing on the reimbursement structure. A provision in the bill will give hospitals incentives to invest in information technology and report on quality outcomes, so people will be able to compare quality outcomes among hospitals.

Medicare must be further strengthened to include a focus on outcomes-based healthcare. The current budgetary structure is clearly biased in favor of reactive care. Presently, there is a different budget for inpatient services and outpatient services. Even within these larger budgets, programs are compartmentalized.

A representative example of this illogical budgetary process is in durable medial equipment (DME). The DME department has to stay within its own budget, therefore purchasing decisions are made based on what the individual department can afford. No consideration is given to the fact that if DME purchases a $15,000 power wheelchair that reclines so that the user can shift his weight during the day, significantly reducing the risk of pressure sores that require hospitalization and surgery, it will save the acute care department a minimum of $30,000.

This type of compartmentalized budgeting is not compatible with the opportunities of the 21st century. It is illogical, irrational, and unethical. It should not matter if a patient is treated in a hospital, in a doctor's office, or in their home. The flow of resources should follow the patient and not driven by a series of bureaucratic structures. As medicine continues to develop new technology to help people avoid sickness, infection, and disease, it is illogical not to account for the money saved by the decrease in invasive and costly procedures and expensive hospitalization.

Budgetary officers should develop a single outcomes-based budget so doctors can focus on taking care of the whole person without modifying what is medically best for the patient to fit Medicare's reimbursement structure. Without a total overhaul of the budget practices of Medicare and the scoring procedures (i.e. the process of actuaries assessing how much a change in procedure being proposed in a bill will cost the government long-term) of Congress and the White House, there will never be an appropriate focus on prevention.

The natural order of the 21st century economy is continually to have more choices, of greater quality, at lower costs. It is what 70 million baby boomers have come to expect in most areas of their lives, with the health and health care system a glaring aberration.

Yet, much more needs to be done. America needs a 21st Century Intelligent Health System. Medicare must be a part of that more effective system.

In essence, Medicare (and Medicaid) must continue to evolve into an individual-centered health system that emphasizes healthy living, early detection and the kind of patient self-knowledge that will be a radical departure from current best practices. The latest health information technology will allow everyone to have a comprehensive, personal electronic health record that updates in real time in a paper-free environment. Patients will emerge the biggest winners.

The more important reason to transform Medicare is that the program shortchanges beneficiaries. It relies on outdated third-party payment and rigidly defined government benefits and prices that are biased in favor of reactive and episodic acute care. Medicare, for example, sets prices for more than 10,000 procedures in 3,000 counties. Such a system would have devastating effects on innovation and customer service if it were applied to supermarkets or car repair shops.

Beneficiaries do not realize that the information they get about their particular ailment tends to be limited to what is paid for by Medicare. It is impossible for a centrally planned bureaucracy to keep up with the most cutting-edge knowledge and treatments, especially when there are no financial incentives for it to do so. Provider withdrawal from both programs continues unabated.

This transformation will take place because good health is not only the right moral goal-it is cheaper. Fully one-quarter of the entire federal budget is being spent on health in 2005. Both Medicare and Medicaid have grown exponentially, beyond original fiscal projections, and their trajectories pose a serious threat to other budgetary priorities and to overall long-term economic growth. Our economic future is bleak if we as a nation do not get a handle on runaway health expenditures.

Transformed Medicare and Medicaid programs will maximize individual choice by providing clear and understandable information about quality, outcomes, best practices and prices. They will create the right incentives for individuals and health plans to achieve optimum health outcomes. This will require not only wise policy decisions by our elected officials but entrepreneurial management by committed public servants.

There are 40 years of accumulated bureaucracy, rules and regulations anchoring the current systems to the past that must be circumvented. The plan of the best chief executive officer is of no value if his or her lieutenants do not follow through on the vision.

The government should also incentivize people to purchase long-term care insurance. Many people are surprised that Medicare does not adequately cover home care or a stay in a nursing home longer than 100 days when either they or their loved ones are becoming less independent. Without long-term care insurance, the family's only option is to spend down their assets or their parent's assets to become eligible for Medicaid. The final years of life for a Medicaid recipient involve roommates and shared televisions, telephones, and bathrooms. This fate could be avoided if we purchased long-term care insurance for our loved ones and ourselves.

Currently, long-term care insurance, like health insurance, is not tax deductible in many states. Out-of-pocket costs and private long-term care insurance make up roughly one quarter of all long-term care funding. Over 75% comes from Medicare or Medicaid. A focused effort should be made to reverse that ratio. A first step would be to provide a tax credit for purchasing long-term care insurance so people will be reminded every year

Medicare must also shift to supporting long-term living that emphasizes capabilities instead of disabilities. Look for Medicare Advantage plans to offer heavy incentives for seniors to participate in fitness programs such as Silver Sneakers. Seniors who are active and social are considerably better off physically and emotionally.

Medicare beneficiaries will become more Internet-savvy every year. They will demand quality information about physicians, hospitals, drugs, treatments and devices.

The Medicare.gov Web site has a new section, Hospital Compare, that allows users to see how their hospital of choice stacks up against the national average. The sophistication of this site will grow every year. There are dozens of similar sites, such as HealthGrades.com, that do the same thing. Information on drug interactions, prices and recalls will become ubiquitous, as well.

Medicare could also allow beneficiaries to opt into a private health-insurance plan of their choice partially subsidized by Medicare dollars. A voucher in the amount of $2,500 annually (roughly one-third of what Medicare spends for the average beneficiary per year) would stimulate a tidal wave of innovative plan arrangements and therefore promote consumer choice. For many Americans, especially those arriving at age 65 with significant balances in their health savings accounts, or HSAs, this option might be very attractive.

A 25-year-old who contributes $2,000 annually to an HSA beginning in 2005 will have $127,000 accumulated in 40 years, provided he or she earns 5% interest and withdraws an average of $1,000 per year for medical expenses. Even adjusting for inflation, that is a tidy sum. Lawmakers also should consider repealing Section 4507 of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 that bans private contracting between doctors and Medicare beneficiaries. This provision has a considerable chilling effect on patient choice.

Tomorrow's Medicare and Medicaid programs will emphasize health, diet and exercise as much as they will emphasize acute care. Both programs will do so because it makes the most economic sense. Unlike during the managed-care era, this kind of economic sense will be in the patient's best interest. Saving lives and saving money need not be mutually exclusive.

Posted by David at 4:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

21st Century Social Security

from Newt's five Challenges

We Need a Good Deal for Workers

In the 2005 Social Security reform debate, Washington politicians decided that it was better to make workers change than to have to change themselves. They thought that raising taxes and cutting benefits was the only Social Security solution. If they actually set out to implement a solution that was a good deal for workers - especially young workers -- they would enjoyed far more success, even it had required to make some tough choices.

If Washington had been serious about Social Security reform, politicians would have put an immediate stop to the continuing raid on the Social Security surplus. Not allowing politicians to spend the Social Security surpluses would force them to be honest about how much money they are already spending and the deficit would have to be reported as much larger than it already is.

The truth is that not only have all Social Security surpluses to date been spent on other things, the politicians in Washington want to go right along spending all future surpluses.

Raising taxes, as even some Republicans proposed during the Social Security debate of 2005, will provide Washington only more money to spend. Since not one dime to date has been set aside to protect Social Security, why would anyone think that would ever happen in the future? Raising taxes would only mask the problem, allowing Washington to continue to raid the surpluses and leave Social Security even worse off.

Personal social security savings accounts owned by workers with higher benefits is the only way to ensure that money meant for retirement will not be spent. With large personal social security savings accounts, even low- and moderate-income workers will accumulate hundreds of thousands of dollars by retirement and will be able to leave a financial legacy to their children or other heirs. Personal social security savings accounts offer workers far greater personal choice, ownership and control than the current system.

Personal social security savings accounts that are large enough (around 6%) will also eliminate the long-term deficits of Social Security by shifting so much of those program's promised future benefit obligations to the accounts that the program will be left in permanent surplus. Despite what has been said, personal social security savings accounts do solve the problem as confirmed by the chief actuary of Social Security, who has scored four personal social security savings account proposals as saving the program from bankruptcy without tax increases or cuts in future promised Social Security benefits.

The Basic Structure of Social Security

Social Security is the single largest federal program and bigger than the entire budget of most countries. For fiscal year 2005, the Social Security payroll tax is projected to raise $575 billion, or 28 percent of total federal taxes for the year. Social Security expenditures are projected to be $515 billion, or 21.5 percent of total federal spending.
We spend more on Social Security than on national defense, even in a time of war. National defense spending in 2005 is projected to be $451 billion, 12 percent less than Social Security expenditures. For fiscal 2006, defense expenditures are projected to be 18 percent less than Social Security spending.

Social Security was enacted in 1935 as a central component of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. It was financed by a new payroll tax of 1 percent on both employer and employee, assessed on the first $3,000 of wage income each year. This resulted in a maximum annual tax of $60 for each worker, which stayed at that level until 1950, when it was raised to $90. In return for the tax, the program paid benefits to retirees after they reached age sixty-five.
As early as the mid-1970s, actuaries began predicting that tax revenues would eventually be insufficient to pay promised benefits. Congress responded in 1977 by passing amendments designed to "fix" the problem. President Jimmy Carter proclaimed that they would ensure the solvency of Social Security "for the rest of this century and well into the next one." But just a few years later, in 1981, the program's actuaries were back again projecting that the program would run short of funds within a few years.

President Reagan's budget director David Stockman developed a plan to close the gap for a while by reducing the rate of growth of Social Security benefits. Before the administration could even formally propose the plan, the Senate voted 96-0 on a resolution asking the president not to even send the proposals to Capitol Hill. This led to the formation of a bipartisan commission chaired by Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan.

Through the commission, the administration negotiated a final package that for the first time relied more on restraining benefits than on raising taxes. The 1983 amendments kept Social Security paying the bills, but the actuaries continued to project an enormous, never-ending financial gap. The latest annual report of the Social Security Board of Trustees projects that Social Security will run short of funds to pay promised benefits in 2042.6 Workers born in 1975 can expect to be retiring that year.

There is one basic feature in the structure of Social Security that is central to all of its problems and key to understanding the real solution: Social Security operates on a pay-as-you-go basis. This means the taxes of today's workers are not saved and invested to finance their future benefits but are paid out to finance the benefits of today's retirees. The future benefits of today's workers will be paid out of the future taxes of those who are working at the time. Social Security as structured today is a redistribution system, not a savings and investment system.

Even the current short-term annual surpluses are not saved and invested. Those funds are lent to the federal government in return for IOUs held in the Social Security Trust Fund. The government then spends that money on everything from welfare to State Department embassies. For example, about 90 percent of the current Social Security tax revenues of $575 billion will be spent this year on Social Security benefits of $515 billion. This means $60 billion will be lent to the federal government for more Social Security Trust Fund IOUs and spent on the rest of the federal government's $2.4 trillion budget.

Social Security's Long-Term Financing Crisis

A poll in the early 1990s found that more than twice as many young adults believed in UFOs as believed Social Security would still exist by the time they retire. Those young adults were on to something. Continuing to pay all promised benefits would require a massive rise in the total payroll tax rate from 12.4 percent today to about 18 percent-a 50 percent increase. Moreover, the tax would have to be raised every year thereafter as the cost of full benefits as a percent of taxable payroll continues on a permanent climb. The projection stops in 2080 when the payroll tax rate would have to be close to 20 percent to pay all promised benefits. Then the increase would have to continue indefinitely after this as well.

In fact, the true financial crisis starts much sooner than 2042. In year 2018, the system will begin to run a deficit. In order to keep paying benefits, the trust fund will have to start turning in the IOUs it has been accumulating to get extra cash from the federal government. To get that cash, the government will have to raise taxes, cut other spending, or increase its deficits and borrow. From 2018 until the trust funds run out in 2042, the federal government will have to come up with an additional $8 trillion in today's dollars for Social Security in order to keep paying all promised benefits during that period. That is a huge financial crisis, starting just thirteen years from now.
If Social Security were a fully funded savings and investment system, then enough reserve assets would be on hand to pay all the future benefits that had been earned at any point. By contrast, in the current pay-as-you-go system, we must continue to bring new workers into the economy and tax them at higher and higher levels in order to fund the growing number of retirees.

Most people know that the large baby boom population is one reason for the potential crisis. Birth rates soared soon after the soldiers returned home from World War II and remained at a high level until the early 1960s. Those born during this period will begin retiring in hordes less than ten years from now, causing Social Security benefit obligations to soar.

But that's only half the story. The baby boom was followed by a baby bust. The development of the birth control pill, the legalization of abortion, and changing social attitudes led to a sharp decline of birth rates starting in the early 1960s. This occurred not only in the United States, but in all Western countries, much more so, in fact, in Western Europe.

The U.S. fertility rate declined from 3.8 in 1957, to 2.43 in 1970, to 1.77 in 1975.9 The fertility rate needs to be at least 2.1 to maintain a stable indigenous population. But the U.S. rate stayed well below this level until 1990, when it climbed back up, around 2.1, where it has stayed since that time.

What this means is that just as the baby boom generation retires, the generation of workers behind them will be experiencing much slower growth. This is a disaster for a pay-as-you-go system like Social Security. Just when benefit obligations will be soaring due to the retirement of the baby boom generation, the growth of taxes paid by the baby bust generation of workers behind them will be slowing down.

Population increases due to immigration make America better off than Europe or Japan, but nonetheless there will be considerable financial pressure on the children and grandchildren of the baby boomers if we stay with the current static model of income transfers between generations.

Another major factor causing the long term Social Security financing crisis is increasing life expectancy. The baby boom generation is not only large, but it is expected to live much longer than previous generations, resulting in greater benefit obligations for Social Security.

In 1940, when Social Security was starting, life expectancy was 61.4 years for men and 65.7 for women.10 Social Security's promise to pay full benefits, starting at age 65, was actually a promise to pay those benefits to less than half the population.

But today, life expectancy is about 74.4 for men and 79.5 for women. By the time those entering the work force today start retiring, Social Security's actuaries project that life expectancy will have increased to 79.2 for men and 83.3 for women. And that projection is based on a decline in the rate of increase in life expectancy we have experienced since 1940. More likely, with the high-tech medicines of the twenty-first century, life expectancy will increase faster, not slower, than in the last half of the twentieth century.

These are the reasons why the number of workers paying taxes to Social Security has declined from 4.2 in 1945 to 3.3 today per retiree.13 It is projected to fall to 2.0 workers per retiree by 2040.14 The prospect of longer lives for Americans would turn from a great joy to a great burden and could even lead to intergenerational bitterness.
Consider Europe's present pension crisis. Virtually every European government will continue to face huge budget deficits as the number of people receiving retirement pensions increases while the number of people still working and paying taxes stagnates and declines. Reforming Social Security with personal social security savings accounts would save us from a similar fate.

We Can Do Better

But there is an even bigger problem for Social Security than its long-term financing crisis. The program is no longer a good deal for working people today. Even if the program could pay all its promised benefits, the benefits would still represent a low, below-market return on the huge taxes workers and their employers now pay into the program. If today's workers could save and invest instead in their own personal social security savings accounts, they would likely receive far higher returns and benefits than Social Security now promises them, let alone what it can pay. With a long investment time frame, the risk of investing in the financial markets is significantly reduced.
The long-term real rate of return on corporate stocks is at least 7.0 to 7.5 percent.15 In fact, going all the way back to 1926, when the most reliable data starts, the real rate of return on large company stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange has been 7.5 percent.16 The real return on smaller company stocks on the Exchange has been even higher, at 9.2 percent. This period covers the Great Depression, World War II, more intermediate-size wars, the turbulent inflation/recession years of the 1970s, and the recent high-tech bubble collapse. The long term real return on corporate bonds has been around 3.5 percent. At these rates, a portfolio of half stocks and half bonds over a worker's career would earn a net annual real return of 5 percent. A portfolio of two-thirds stocks and one-third bonds over a working career would earn a net real return of 5.75 percent.

By contrast, Peter Ferrara and Michael Tanner, in a Cato Institute study, calculated that for most workers-middle aged and younger-the real rate of return on the taxes they and their employers pay into Social Security would be 1 to 1.5 percent or less. For many it would be zero or negative.

One example in the Ferrara and Tanner study calculated the real rate of return promised by Social Security for a two-earner average income couple. The husband earned the average income for males each year and the wife earned the average income for females. Again, assume Social Security somehow is able to pay all of its promised benefits. The real rate of return this couple would receive on the taxes paid by them and their employers would be less than 1 percent-0.78 percent. For an average-income single worker, the real return would be even less, 0.31 percent. A widely noted Heritage Foundation study21 found quite similar results, as have others.

But the outlook is even worse, since we know that Social Security will not be able to magically pay all of its promised benefits. Under the current system, either taxes will have to be increased by more than 50 percent, or benefits will have to be cut by 40 percent or more, or some combination of the two. This would dramatically lower the returns discussed above. Most workers would then expect a zero or even negative real rate of return. In other words, instead of getting a return on your savings, you are currently transferring your savings as taxes for a payout that may be less in benefits than what you and your employers paid in over your career-a negative rate of return. No one would find that acceptable when investing in the stock or bond market.

This large difference in returns adds up to an enormous difference in accumulated assets and benefits over a lifetime of work, investment, and retirement. Take the case of an average two-income couple noted at the outset. Suppose they could invest in a personal social security savings account over their entire careers equivalent to the account proposed in the Ryan-Sununu bill discussed later in this chapter. With two-thirds invested in stocks and one-third invested in bonds, and earning standard market returns, they would reach retirement with almost $1 million in today's dollars. That would be enough to pay them twice what Social Security promises but cannot pay.
Why this enormous gulf between the payouts of personal social security savings accounts and Social Security? Unlike Social Security, the personal social security savings accounts operate as a fully funded savings and investment system. The money paid in is saved and invested in America's companies through the financial markets. These capital investments increase production, which provides more resources to pay workers higher benefits.
African Americans Get the Worst Deal in Social Security.

The poor deal offered by Social Security applies with a vengeance to African Americans because they have much shorter life expectancies than the general population. Consequently, they have fewer retirement years to collect benefits. A black male born today has a life expectancy of 65.8 years, while the Social Security retirement age by the time he retires is age sixty-seven. This means African Americans on average receive even lower returns on the taxes they pay into the system. The Heritage Foundation study calculated that a single black male born in 1970 could expect a real return from Social Security of -1.5 percent, even if all promised Social Security benefits were somehow paid. The return for an average-income two-earner family with children is effectively 0 percent.
With personal social security savings accounts, workers who die before retirement or just after retirement would be able to leave the funds to their children or other heirs. Moreover, social organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) could offer annuities promising a monthly benefit for life focused exclusively on their African American membership. Those annuities could then take into account the lower life expectancies of African Americans and pay higher retirement benefits. If one group has the most to gain from personal social security accounts, it is African Americans.

Hispanics and Social Security

Hispanics also suffer from a special problem under Social Security. The Hispanic population is much younger than the general population, and since the return paid by Social Security is falling over time, younger populations get lower returns on average than others. Only 5 percent of Hispanic Americans are over sixty-five, compared to 12 percent of the general population.26 Moreover, only about 30 percent of Hispanic Americans over sixty-five receive any retirement income from assets, compared to 68 percent of the general population. Clearly, Hispanic Americans are among those who would also have a lot to gain from a personal social security savings account option for Social Security.

Married Working Women and Social Security

Working women would get a much better deal with personal social security savings accounts. A working woman is entitled to retirement and survivor benefits under Social Security based on the taxes her husband and his employers paid. If she works, she gets the benefits only if they are higher than her own projected Social Security benefits. She gets no additional benefits for all her years working and paying into the system. If, however, her own Social Security retirement benefits are higher than her husband's record, then she gets those benefits but loses the benefits she would otherwise be entitled to from her husband. With personal social security savings accounts, by contrast, both husband and wife retain control over all the investments and savings they have paid.

Social Security and the Economy

About thirty years ago, Harvard economics professor Martin Feldstein, chairman of the National Bureau of Economic Research, began writing about the effects of the rapidly growing Social Security system on the economy. His conclusion was that Social Security was becoming a major drag on the economy.

Feldstein found that because workers assume Social Security will pay for their retirement, they don't save for it, or sharply reduce what they would otherwise save. Since Social Security operates as a pay-as-you-go system, with no real savings, the result is a net loss of actual savings and investment. With the Social Security taxes that finance retirement benefits currently running at about $575 billion a year, or about one-fourth of total annual private savings, the net loss is huge.

Feldstein buttressed his analysis with substantial econometric work concluding that Social Security reduces national saving by 40 percent or more. Studies by others have varied from finding similar results to results only about half as large. But even at the lower estimates, the loss of savings and investment would reduce America's gross domestic product (GDP) by about 5 percent each year. At Feldstein's original estimates the loss of GDP would be about 10 percent a year. With GDP currently running about $11 trillion a year, we are talking about losses in the range of $500 billion to a trillion dollars a year.

But there is still more. The payroll tax sharply reduces the net wages workers receive for working. The loss of savings and investment means lower productivity and so less wages as well. This reduces the labor supply and causes other distortions in the labor markets. Feldstein estimates that the result is another loss of GDP of 1 percent a year.

Modernizing Social Security through personal social security savings accounts would raise take-home pay and free workers to put hundreds of billions and ultimately trillions of dollars in savings and investment; that would be a huge benefit to our economy. The accounts indeed represent a new, very large tax-free shelter for saving and investment. It would be the equal of a capital gains tax cut to further stimulate the economy. All of this adds up to a dramatic increase in savings and investment-and an economic boom.

The Ryan-Sununu Bill

Is all this a pipe dream? Something that can never happen politically? No.

Last summer, Representative Paul Ryan and Senator John Sununu introduced a bill in the House and the Senate that provides for a personal social security savings account option for Social Security and solves the long-term problems of the program. The bill offers one of the most sweeping, fundamental reforms in our nation's history.
The bill has been officially scored by the chief actuary of Social Security to determine its impact on Social Security and federal finances. The chief actuary reported that under the reform plan, "the Social Security program would be expected to be solvent and to meet its benefit obligations throughout the long-range period 2003 through 2077 and beyond." The reform eliminates completely the unfunded liability of Social Security, currently officially estimated at $11 trillion. This is effectively the largest reduction in government debt in world history. Moreover, the Ryan-Sununu reform plan would actually cut taxes and increase benefits over time.

The reform plan starts producing surpluses by 2030. Those surpluses are first devoted to paying off the debt issued in the earlier years of the reform. After that is completed by about 2045, the surpluses go to reducing payroll taxes under an automatic payroll tax cut trigger specifically included in the bill. Under the chief actuary's score, the surpluses would be sufficient to reduce the total payroll tax eventually to about 4 percent, 2 percent each for employer and employee. Workers and employers would still contribute a total of 6.4 percent in addition for the accounts. But this is money that belongs to the workers in their own individual accounts, so it is not a tax that goes to the government. And remember that this is an alternative to raising the current 12.4 percent total payroll tax to 20 percent, as would be required to pay all benefits promised under the current law. The Ryan-Sununu plan would be effectively the largest tax cut in world history.

The reform would also greatly broaden the ownership of wealth and capital through the accounts. Under the chief actuary's score, workers would accumulate $7 trillion in today's dollars within the first fifteen years, by 2020. This huge, breakthrough gain in the prosperity of working people would have broad implications throughout our society.
Many more people would have an ownership stake in America's businesses. Support for free market policies would be shared more generally throughout our society. That would translate into more rapid economic growth and more prosperity for everyone, with no tax on the returns to the accounts, no tax on the benefits paid from the accounts, and no estate tax when account funds are left to children or other heirs.

The full potential economic gain from such reform has not been fully appreciated. All of the high-tech advances that beckon in the twenty-first century will require huge amounts of capital to achieve full practical application. The Ryan-Sununu reform will help provide the capital for a sweeping technology revolution that in turn will make returns on personal social security savings accounts potentially higher than we can predict using older models of economic growth.

Democrats argue against personal social security savings accounts by saying that workers should not be fooled into trading a guaranteed benefit (by which they mean the current Social Security benefits, which, in fact, are not guaranteed), for a speculative one (by which they mean personal social security savings account benefits). But the Ryan-Sununu plan does not involve any such tradeoff. The legislation includes a federal guarantee that those with personal social security savings accounts would get at least as much as promised by Social Security today (which, again, the current system cannot pay, according to official government projections).

The cost of this guarantee was scored by the chief actuary of Social Security and is fully paid for under the reform plan. The guarantee works because capital market investment returns are so much higher than what Social Security promises; let alone what it can pay. Indeed, with workers choosing investments only from a list of fully diversified portfolios managed by top professional companies approved and regulated by the government, Peter Ferrara argues that even the chief actuary's estimated cost is surely excessive.

The Challenge of Historic Reform

For conservatives, such personal social security savings account reform could not be a bigger or more urgent issue. By shifting fundamentally all Social Security retirement benefits to the personal social security savings accounts over the long run, and financing part of the transition by reducing the rate of growth of federal spending, the Ryan-Sununu bill will ultimately reduce federal spending by roughly 6.5 percent of GDP. That, in fact, is a must if we are to avoid an explosion of federal spending relative to GDP that will result under current federal policies.
Personal social security savings accounts will in fact fulfill the promise that the Social Security system cannot deliver: a guaranteed retirement account. President Franklin Roosevelt and President Ronald Reagan would both be pleased.

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Energy

from Newt's five Challenges

A sound American energy policy would focus on four areas: basic research to create a new energy system that has few environmental side effects, incentives for conservation, more renewable resources, and environmentally sound development of fossil fuels.

To its credit, the Bush administration has approached energy environmentalism the right way, including using public-private partnerships that balance economic costs and environmental gain.

The Bush administration's investment in developing hydrogen energy resources may be the biggest breakthrough of the next half-century. Hydrogen has the potential to provide energy that has no environmental downside. In one stroke a hydrogen economy would eliminate both air pollution and global warming concerns. Since hydrogen is abundant in the air and water around us, it eliminates both the national security and foreign exchange problems associated with petroleum. Suddenly oil would become a source of petrochemicals and cease to be a source of energy. The relative requirements for oil would shift to making plastics and away from providing fuel. The result would be a lot less reliance on the Middle East and a lot less concern over balance of payments.

A hydrogen economy is probably twenty years away but there seems to be no scientific reason the hydrogen engine cannot be mass-ªproduced. General Motors and virtually every other major automobile manufacturer have major programs underway to develop hydrogen energy designs and production. The potential is real that many of the pollution problems of our lifetime will begin to disappear after 2020 or 2025.

Conservation is the second great opportunity in energy. Already the United States has adjusted to earlier oil price increases by becoming a dramatically more efficient user of energy. But companies like Honeywell and Johnson Controls believe we could achieve 30 to 60 percent improvements in energy conservation if our tax policy better encouraged it and if we set the standard by optimizing energy use in government buildings. A tax credit to subsidize energy efficient cars (including a tax credit for turning in old and heavily polluting cars) is another idea we should support.

Renewable resources are gradually evolving to meet their potential: from wind generator farms to solar power to biomass conversion. Continued tax credits and other advantages for renewable resources are a must.

Finally, it is time for an honest debate about drilling and producing in places like Alaska, our national forests, and off the coast of scenic areas. The Left uses scare tactics from a different era to block environmentally sound production of raw materials. Three standards should break through this deadlock. First, scientists of impeccable background should help set the standards for sustaining the environment in sensitive areas, and any company entering the areas should be bonded to meet those standards. Second, the public should be informed about new methods of production that can meet the environmental standards, and any development should be only with those new methods. Third, a percentage of the revenues from resources generated in environmentally sensitive areas should be dedicated to environmental activities including biodiversity sustainment, land acquisition, and environmental cleanups in places where there are no private resources that can be used to clean up past problems.

With these kinds of investments we can have an energy strategy that meets our economic and environmental needs, and a generation from now we can be a healthier and wealthier country that is less reliant on foreign sources of energy.

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Environment and Energy Policy

from Newt's five Challenges

America will be stronger if it develops coherent technology and market-oriented solutions to environmental conservation and energy consumption. Consider how much better we can do in each field.

It is possible to have a healthy environment and a healthy economy. It is possible to build incentives for a cleaner future. It is possible to have biodiversity and wealthy human beings on the same planet. And it is possible to have free markets, scientific and technological advances, and an even more positive environmental outcome. There is every reason to be optimistic that if we develop smart environmental and biodiversity policies our children and grandchildren will experience an even more pleasant world.

It is clearly possible to combine human progress with biodiversity.

There are more trees in Georgia today than there were in 1900 or 1940. The very increase in wealth in America made it possible in 1895 to found the New York Zoological Society (now the Wildlife Conservation Society) and save the American bison from extinction. The application of new technology and new science has cleaned up the air of most American cities (it is far cleaner now than it was twenty years ago even though people are driving more cars more miles).

The greatest dangers to biodiversity on the planet today are poor people cutting down tropical forests for money and killing endangered species for meat. Wealthy people can afford to protect the forests and protect endangered species.

The greatest areas of pollution and toxic wastes on the planet today are the byproducts of the Soviet Empire and a centralized command bureaucracy that was willing to kill the environment to reach production quotas.

Here are a few examples of the kind of science-based, technologically-oriented environmentalism that could improve our quality of life, increase our options, and enhance the natural world.

We have made significant progress in cleaning up places like San Francisco Bay and the Chesapeake but there is much more to be done. Some of it can be accomplished by government's tapping innovative private clean-up companies.

We must insist that cities meet their obligations in waste cleanup. Atlanta has been a far larger polluter of the Chattahoochee than any private business, yet the federal government has maintained a double standard between what cities and industries are allowed or required to do. Government should be as responsible for running its waste treatment centers professionally and competently as the private sector. The rivers will be cleaner as a result.

We should encourage the kind of public-private partnerships that have enabled the Trust for Public Land, the state of Georgia, the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation, and the federal government to create environmentally sound land use along the Chattahoochee. It is important for cities, counties, and states to buy parkland when it is cheap and easily available and before population growth overwhelms open space.

The world biodiversity hot spots have been identified. These are places where biologists and botanists have discovered unusually rich concentrations of animals and plants. If the United States challenged Europe and Japan to join it in financing a world biodiversity refuge system and tied foreign aid into the process of maintaining biodiversity, we could probably save a very high percentage of the earth's biological richness for our children and grandchildren to enjoy, study, and learn from at a surprisingly small cost (trivial compared to what the Left would spend through the Kyoto Treaty).

Kyoto is a bad treaty. It is bad for the environment and it is bad for America. It sets standards that will require massive investments by the United States but virtually no investments by other countries. The Senate was right when it voted unanimously against the treaty. We should insist on revisiting the entire Kyoto process and resolutely reject efforts to force us into an anti-American, environmentally failed treaty.

The United States should support substantial research into climate science, managing the response to climate change, and in developing new non-carbon energy systems. It is astounding to watch people blithely propose trillions of dollars in spending on a topic on which we have failed to spend modest amounts to better understand. To its credit the Bush administration has begun to increase funding on climate research but much more needs to be done. Furthermore, it is astounding to have people focus myopically on carbon as the sole source of climate change. The world's climate has changed in the past with sudden speed and dramatic impact. Global warming may happen. On the other hand it is possible Europe will experience another ice age. The Norwegian politicians who worry much about global warming (the politically correct thing to do even in a cold country that would demonstrably benefit from a warmer climate) may suddenly find themselves migrating south if a new interim ice age were to happen. This point is politically incorrect but the history and science of climate change is far more complex and uncertain than the politically driven mass hysteria of scientists who sign on to ads about a topic for which they have no scientific proof.

The federal government should establish measurable standards for a healthy environment but allow widespread experimentation in achieving those goals. Too much of the conflict between landowners and federal employees and between cities and states and the federal government are a function of a heavy handed bureaucracy. The lengthy process of environmental planning is made adversarial and expensive beyond reason and should be redesigned to have a collaborative style with the goal of having both development and a healthy environment.

Brownfields (abandoned former industrial sites often with toxic and other wastes that need to be cleaned up) need a new federal law to encourage cities to get them cleaned up. The current system favors litigation over cleanup and has kept thousands of sites in our cities from being cleaned up. The trial lawyers have been winning but the people of the cities have been losing. We need litigation reform and financial encouragement for citizens to clean up the sites. This will help create economic opportunity in our cities, and replace blighted, abandoned areas with new development opportunities.

The Bush initiative on healthy forest management is an important step in the right direction. Forests in particular and national lands in general should be run on sound science and conservation principles rather than on emotional rhetoric designed for political effect. The refusal to manage the forests intelligently led to huge beetle infestations in the southwest that produced sicker and poorer forests. The refusal to clear out dead timber across the west led to fires that were hotter, more intense, and therefore more destructive. The left wing of the environmental movement represents a repudiation of eighty years of sound conservation practice that stemmed from the principles laid down by Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot. The new healthy forest policies are sound steps in the right direction and should be expanded.

These are just a few examples of how a positive, activist, problem-solving environmentalism could give our children and grandchildren a better world. That goal will be even more rapidly achieved if we make dramatic progress on the energy front.

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Reform of Math and Science Learning

from Newt's five Challenges

For over a century, the pace of progress in America has been driven by the discoveries of scientists and technologists, brought to the marketplace by entrepreneurs in the form of products and services. We have flourished and lead the world because we have adapted to the opportunities created by science and technology. Countries that have ignored these opportunities have fallen behind in standards of living and quality of life.
In April 1983, the Reagan administration warned America that our failure in education was becoming a major national security concern. In A Nation at Risk, we were told that America was literally at risk because of the failings of its education system. The report noted that "[o]ur once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world." It went on to soberly conclude that "what was unimaginable a generation ago has begun to occur - others are matching and surpassing our educational attainments."

America's high schools are obsolete and cannot teach kids what they need to know to succeed today. Bill Gates recently spoke of his fears for the future in an address to the National Governors Association (NGA). He noted: "In math and science, our 4th graders are among the top students in the world. By 8th grade, they're in the middle of the pack. By 12th grade, U.S. students are scoring near the bottom of all industrialized nations." He concluded that "In the international competition to have the biggest and best supply of knowledge workers, America is falling behind."

Winning the challenge of China and India will require profound domestic transformations, especially in math and science education, for America to continue to be the most successful economy in the world and the best source of high paying jobs and enough economic growth to sustain the Baby Boomers and their children when they retire.
The collapse of math and science education in the United States and the relative decline of investment in basic research is an enormous strategic threat to American national security. This is a strategically disappearing advantage. There is a grave danger that the United States will find itself collapsing in scientific and technological capabilities in our lifetime. In fact, the 14 bipartisan members of the Hart-Rudman Commission on national security unanimously agreed that the failure of math and science education is a greater threat than any conceivable conventional war in the next 25 years. The Commission went on to assert that only a nuclear or biological weapon going off in an American city was a greater threat.

Improving math and science education is the single greatest challenge to our continued economic and national security leadership. Without a profound improvement in math and science learning, America will simply not be able to sustain its national security nor compete for high value jobs in the world market.

This is among the most important decisions our generation will make about our country's future and our children's future. For the last twenty years, we have tried to improve education while accepting the fundamental principles of a failed system, guarded by the education bureaucrats and teachers unions. We must now transform math and science education or fall behind. It really is that simple.

One Solution Idea - A Pilot Project to Pay Kids to Learn Math and Science

Keeping America competitive in the twenty-first century is dependent upon having increasing number of students studying math and science. This will be an enormous challenge. Getting students to study math and science may be done through incentives. We should experiment with paying students for taking difficult subjects in math and science. In this world of immediate gratification, many young people in poorer neighborhoods look to athletes and musicians as their future and drugs and violence become their reality when their hopes inevitably most often fail. The long and difficult road to becoming a PhD. in math or chemistry has virtually no support in these neighborhoods nor is it presented as an attractive way out. But, if as early as seventh grade there were some economic reward for learning math and science, which competes head to head with McDonalds, the signal sent would be immediate and dramatic. If the rewards went up as the classes grew more difficult we would have students pouring into math and science instead of fleeing it.

We should therefore conduct a pilot project to see if this approach can be successful. And we should begin by targeting a poor inner city district where the potential for sending a strong signal is perhaps strongest.

Other Solution Ideas

The earning by learning approach to math and science outlined here is only one idea we should pursue in dramatically transforming math and science learning. Set forth below is a set of other ideas:

One, we should set a goal of eliminating fifty percent of the education bureaucracy outside the classroom and the laboratory and dedicate the savings to financing the improvements in math and science education.

There has been a steady growth in the amount of money spent on red tape, bureaucracy, and supervision. We now have curriculum specialists who consult with curriculum consultants, who work with curriculum supervisors, who manage curriculum department heads, who occasionally meet with teachers. The more we seem to spend on education, the smaller the share we spend on inspiring and rewarding those actually doing the educating.

Two, the students must have informed, enthusiastic, and confident teachers guiding them in difficult subjects. We therefore need to foster and encourage teacher specialists who have mastered a subject matter, such as engineers and mathematicians. They should be allowed to teach after taking only one course on the fundamentals of teaching. They should be allowed to teach part-time so that more professionals can have the opportunity to share their knowledge and experience in the classroom. Moreover, every state should pass a law establishing an absolute preference for part-time specialists with real knowledge over full-time teachers who do not know the subject. Finally, by the 2008 school year, no one should be allowed to teach math and science that is not competent in the subject matter.

Three, we should apply the free enterprise system to our education system by introducing competition among schools, administrators, and teachers. Our educators should be paid based on their performance and held accountable based on clear standards with real consequences.

Four, graduates willing to stay in math and science fields should pay zero interest on their student loans until their incomes reach four times the national average income. This would encourage students to stay in these needed fields and continue to pursue knowledge.

Five, we should reward the best and brightest high school graduates and fully fund their further education. Norman Augustine, the former Chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin and former Undersecretary of the Army, recently testified before the Hose Committee on Education and the Workforce. He recommended an America's Scholars Program to fully find the undergraduate and graduate education on the physical sciences, math, biosciences, or engineering of the top 1,000 high school seniors each year. These scholarships would be based on academic success and ability to maintain the highest degree of excellence throughout the remainder of their education.

Six, we should reward and encourage private sector participation in math and science education. We should provide a tax credit to corporations that fund basic research in science and technology at our nation's universities.

Seven, Congressman Frank Wolf was exactly right in a letter he sent to President Bush in May that cited the urgent national security need to triple the federal budget allocation for innovation - basic science research and development -- over the next decade. America must act to rebuild our core strength in basic science research and development so that America can maintain its global position long into the 21st Century.

Our past achievements in science, technology, and economic growth will disappear if we fail to transform our system of math and science education and make more investments in basic research. The ability to provide jobs and the American way of life in the 21st century depends on our competitiveness with China and India, which in turn, depends on our success in leading the world in math and science education and continuing to be the world leader in innovation.

These ideas are designed to stimulate thinking beyond the timid "let's do more of the same" that has greeted every call for rethinking math and science education. If the future and safety of our country really are at stake in the areas of math, science, and engineering, then we can do no less than respond with an appropriate intensity and scale.

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Tax Reform

from Newt's five Challenges

We need to change our tax policies to make American companies more competitive around the world. One example is the tax incentives for corporate headquarters location. There was a significant tax advantage for Daimler to acquire Chrysler but there was a significant disadvantage for Chrysler to acquire Daimler. By remaining blind to the consequences of our tax code, we are favoring market forces that will gradually lead to more takeovers of American companies by foreign firms (e.g. Siemens taking over Westinghouse). The European Union now blocks American mergers even between American companies (e.g., Honeywell and General Electric). If we want the United States to be the multinational headquarters of the world, we are going to have to rewrite our tax laws so that there are no tax disadvantages to an American firm acquiring an overseas competitor. Moreover, we might want to consider creating an incentive for American firms to make acquisitions so the United States becomes the center of executive talent in the world.

The United States is creating millions of jobs while the job market in Europe continues to stagnate. Moreover, the United States has a rising productivity rate that is beginning to pull away from the European Union. America's new jobs have been to a large degree higher paying, cleaner, healthier, and more desirable than the jobs they replaced. The insourcing of new jobs is far greater than the outsourcing we hear so much about in political and news media rhetoric.

Taxes make a big impact on innovation and adaptation. The United States needs a tax code that favors work, savings, investment, productivity, and creative entrepreneurs. We should abolish the death tax permanently so that entrepreneurs, family farmers, and business owners no longer have to fear losing their life's work to the tax collector.

Furthermore, we must eliminate the capital gains tax to encourage investing. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan testified that the most economical rate for taxing capital gains is zero because tax-free capital gains will encourage much greater risk-taking and lead to more entrepreneurial behavior. This leads to more prosperity, a bigger economy, and better jobs.

We should create tax incentives that encourage research and development. The 50 percent research and development tax credit should be made permanent and be applied to companies that are willing to take on government's "grand challenges" (for example, the first inhabitable moon base). Investments in new technology and machinery should also be expensed 100 percent in the first year. The present complex code of depreciation makes no sense in a time of rapid change. It is better to encourage overinvestment in new technology and new machinery to keep American workers at the cutting edge of opportunity. Our goal should be to ensure that American workers have newer, better, and more productive equipment than their foreign counterparts.

Investment in new knowledge to expand the human capital available should be 100 percent deductible as long as it is job or profession related. The deduction could be taken by either the company or the individual depending on who made the investment.

These changes would dramatically accelerate America's competitive development, help us lead the world in productivity, and create high-value jobs.

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Health Reform

from Newt's five Challenges

Today, health costs are the largest sector of the economy and it will get bigger as new and expensive breakthroughs in medicine come on-line and the numbers of aging baby boomers explode. Some studies show health care growing from almost 14 percent of our economy today to 21 percent (or one out of every five dollars) in a few decades. Without dramatic change, the current system will gradually crowd out more and more spending on other items. Already governors are seeing their Medicaid and state employee health costs eat into education, highways, law enforcement, and other budget priorities. Many businesses now rank health care as their fastest-growing expense and believe that it is a serious burden in competing internationally.

If our country takes the right approach, baby boomers will live longer and better, cost their children less, and create an economic boom for America.

Yet there is also the possibility that we will take the wrong approach. Indeed, the approach favored by much of the news media, many politicians, and liberal government and corporate bureaucracies is the wrong approach.

Virtually every political story about health focuses on "reforms" for our problems: the rising cost of health care, the challenge of the uninsured, the state and federal budget crises, the high cost of drugs, litigation, nursing shortages, doctor unhappiness. The list goes on and on. The truth is that the current health system cannot be reformed because its approach is profoundly wrong in three specific areas. First, it emphasizes acute care rather than wellness, early detection, and prevention. Second, it focuses on third-party payments, an area in which the individual has little responsibility, little knowledge, and no control. And third, it relies on paper (i.e. paper medical records and paper prescriptions) rather than information technology. This has contributed to as many as 98,000 deaths in hospitals due to preventable medical errors.

We need to transform our health care system based on an entirely new set of principles. Our new 21st Century Intelligent Health System will be built around three big changes:

Move knowledge from the doctor's office and scientific laboratory to the individual as rapidly as possible;

Help the health care system adopt top quality information technology systems to increase productivity, accuracy, and cut costs; and

Center the process of health on the informed individual so he or she can have the knowledge, desire, responsibility, and opportunity to live the longest life, with the best health, at the lowest cost.

If these three big changes occur, we will live longer, healthier lives and spend less on health care than we do now.

Productivity has continued to explode in many of America's industries. But health care has been wrongly insulated from the competition that brings about higher productivity and lower cost. The issue is not that health care is different. In fact, when there is a commercial market in health care, prices behave much as they do in any industry. Everyone has watched the cost of laser eye surgery decline as it has grown more common, more convenient, and safer. Studies have shown that the cost of cosmetic surgery, where people research quality and price, and pay out of their own pockets, has risen slower than the cost of living and in some cases has even decreased. When people are involved and quality and price information are available, people do in fact behave rationally in health care just as they do in purchasing other products and services.

The lesson of nearly four hundred years of entrepreneurial, technology and science-based free market capitalism is very clear. You should expect to get more choices of higher quality at falling prices. This is the opposite of the rationing mentality of some left-wing politicians and the scarcity mentality of too many bureaucrats.

We need to bring these concepts into health and health care. We must insist that doctors, hospitals, medical technologies, and drugs have both quality and cost information available on-line so people can make informed decisions. We can then shift the purchasing decision to the patient and his family so they can make their own cost and quality trade-off decisions.

There should also be an on-line drug purchasing system where patients, doctors, and pharmacists can choose the best product at the best prices, and it should be an after-pay system. Financial incentives could potentially bring down drug prices by 30 to 50 percent from the current marketplace. We should insist that every hospital have computerized order-entry for medication; bar-coding for drugs, technologies, and supplies; and automated medication dispensing.

Indeed, the health system must become paperless. Health information should be made available on-line and in real-time to both providers and patients so they can easily, conveniently, and inexpensively understand their options and their costs. This "right to know" about cost, quality, and outcome should be established in every state. And we should set a standard that doctors who become paperless get electronic funds transferred every night so they no longer lose money waiting to be paid.

If we insist on modernizing the health system and turning it into an entrepreneurial system with honest reporting of costs and quality, we will rapidly see dramatic changes. Hospitals will start billing based on real costs rather than on stunningly complex cross-subsidies no one understands.

We will also have to develop new models of compensation. A fee-for-transaction model is a bad model because it encourages the doctor to do just enough to bring you back for another transaction to earn another fee. Today we pay for visits and we get billed for visits. With new information systems, we can measure outcomes. When we pay for better outcomes, we will start getting more providers focused on wellness rather than acute care.

The wide-scale availability of information on the best practices and outcomes creates an opportunity to develop a new system of health justice. Malpractice insurance is driving doctors out of their practices. If we do not do something decisive to replace the predatory, personal injury lawyer-enrichment system with a more responsible system of health justice, we will end up as a country with richer and richer lawyers while the rest of us get poorer and poorer health care.

Posted by David at 4:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Competing in a Global Economy

from Newt's five Challenges

The challenge of economic competition from China and India will require transformations in litigation, education, taxation, regulation, environmental and health policies for America to continue to be the most successful economy in the world and the best source of high paying jobs and enough economic growth to sustain the Baby Boomers and their children when they retire, especially the transformation of math and science education in America. This is the single greatest challenge to our continued economic and national security leadership. Without a profound improvement in math and science learning, America will simply not be able to sustain its national security nor compete for high value jobs in the world market.

For the last two decades, the Europeans have looked with scorn upon the American model of free enterprise. Their response to innovation and challenge has been economic isolationism, rule-ªrigging, and graceful decay. While they know that a welfare state and unionized work rules are expensive and inefficient, they've decided to live with them.
In the United States, there exists a coalition of union leaders who prefer protection over competition; environmental extremists who value nature over the well-being and prosperity of their fellow citizens; and liberal intellectuals who distrust the fluidity and uncertainty of the market and prefer the orderliness of command bureaucracies. This liberal coalition complains about companies' outsourcing jobs while insisting on corporate taxes that encourage companies to go overseas. They prefer that government impose on business obsolete, absurd work rules, even though these raise costs, lower productivity, and make America less competitive in the world market. These liberals believe in expanding regulation even when it fails to meet any cost-benefit test and clearly drives jobs out of the United States. The Left refuses to reform litigation or create a better system of civil ªjustice even though it knows the explosion of lawsuits makes it less desirable to create jobs and invest in the United States.

The challenge to American economic supremacy from 1.3 billion Chinese and more than 1.1 billion Indians is vastly greater than anything we have previously seen. India's embrace of capitalism and China's bizarre combination of Marxist-Leninist government and free market initiatives will create a future where one-fourth of the world's markets will be controlled by these countries. Those who advocate economic isolationism and protectionism are advocating a policy that could help China and India surpass the United States in economic power in our children's or grandchildren's lifetime.

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Patriotic Education

from Newt's five Challenges

Our own children-not just immigrants-need a patriotic education which today is denied them by an entrenched education bureaucracy. We cannot win this fight within the education establishment; we need to break out of the establishment so that we can bring pride and patriotism back to our schools.

The very concept of America is under assault. The traditional notion of our country as a union of one people, American peoples, has been assaulted with multicultural, situation ethics, and values neutral model where Western values and American civilization are ignored, minimized or ridiculed. Unless we act to change things, our next generation will grow up with no understanding of core American values. This will destroy America, as we know it, as surely as if a foreign conqueror had overwhelmed us.

It is absolutely necessary to establish a firm foundation of patriotic education upon which further knowledge can be built; otherwise, Americans will lack understanding of American values and how important and great it is to be American. Thomas Jefferson wrote that the chief value of studying the past is "rendering the people the safe, as they are the ultimate, guardians of their own liberty.... [h]istory by apprising them of the past will enable them to [be a] judge of the future."

It is important to understand what makes America so unique that generations upon generations of diverse peoples immigrated to this great land for freedom and opportunity. If Americans do not appreciate America, and for what she stands, then how could Americans be ready and willing to defend her? As Jefferson noted, Americans need to know where this country came from in order to know where it should go.

It is a sad fact that American students are entering and even graduating college without a proficient understanding of U.S. history. For example, a 2003 survey of seniors of the top 50 colleges and universities conducted by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni found that more than half of the participants did not know George Washington was the commanding general of the Continental Army during the American Revolution and accepted Brig. Gen. George Cornwallis' surrender at Yorktown (32% said Washington, 36% thought it was Ulysses S. Grant, 6% said it was Douglas MacArthur). Historian and Pulitzer price winning author David McCullough draws the logical conclusion to this state of affairs: "If you don't know what Yorktown was all about, and that Washington was the commander, you don't know...a lot about American history that you ought to know."

We must adjust the lens through which we view our nation's priorities, focusing especially on education. Patriotic education, like a vastly improved math and science education, is a key step we must take to win the future. The House and Senate education committees (as well as the education committees of each state legislature) should establish standing subcommittees on patriotic education that define standards by which patriotic education should be taught. We need new curricula and textbooks that accurately tell the story of how people of all backgrounds struggled to make this country great to be used in schools. The Library of Congress should provide a resource system for American history so as to universally provide access to a world-class information system.

We will work to re-establish patriotic education in the classrooms to reinforce American values in our children. Schools should be required to teach American history; state universities should demand an understanding of American history before students can earn their degrees.
We must challenge the entrenched education bureaucracy that seeks to rewrite and secularize American history.

We must challenge teachers and professors who are radically anti-American.
We must review school textbooks to ensure that students are being taught factually and not through some radical reinterpretation or bias that distorts America and defames our society.
We must rebuild the cultural bond of historic memory that has made America the most exceptional nation in history.

But in all of this, we must not be na‹ve. Insisting that public schools actually teach American history and American values will provoke a bitter fight with the left, no matter how popular those values are with the American people.

If we lose this struggle in the classrooms we will lose the America that was proclaimed in our Declaration of Independence and defined in our Constitution.

If we do not teach America's patriotic history to our children then how are they going to learn it? We must make sure that our young people understand America and what it means to be an American. This is a unique country, the Founders were unique people, and the Constitution is a remarkable document. We live in a very magical place called America and we need to reassert this truth again and again.

Posted by David at 4:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Patriotic Citizenship

from Newt's five Challenges

Before we declare immigrants citizens, we need to go back and remember how to turn immigrants into citizens. For much of American history, states ran Americanization programs designed to help immigrants assimilate into American culture. In the last two generations the liberal establishment has undermined and ridiculed American values, American history, and even the idea of American citizenship. Today, the Left wants voting opened to non-citizens, including illegal aliens. The Left regards national identity as irrelevant and patriotic commitment to America as irrelevant. The Left could not be further removed from the thinking of our Founding Fathers.

Dr. John Fonte, America's leading expert on civic education, explains the Founding Fathers' thoughts on how to make good citizens:

First, as noted, they had to think about the young. After all, children were not born republican citizens, but would have to be taught how to become citizens. Second, they had to think about immigrants, how best should these newcomers become American citizens? Their answer was clear and unequivocal: immigrants should be assimilated into American ideas and American common culture. Hence, the Founders regularly used words associated with ideas ("principles," "beliefs") and words associated with the common civic culture ("habits," "customs," "manners," "language," "laws," "our society").

Fonte noted that George Washington worried about large numbers of immigrants not assimilating. In a letter to John Adams he wrote that "...the policy or advantage of [immigration] taking place in a body (I mean the settling of them in a body) may be much questioned; for, by so doing, they retain the language, habits, and principles (good or bad) which they bring with them. Whereas by an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, measures, laws: in a word, soon become one people."

Alexander Hamilton insisted that "The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common national sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits; on the exemption of citizens from foreign bias and prejudice; and on the love of country..."

It is clear what the Founding Fathers had in mind. To become an American citizen meant becoming an American in values, culture, and historic understanding. Citizenship was something to be studied and acquired, not merely a piece of paper to be granted. Furthermore, citizenship was exclusive and required renouncing any other allegiance.

Posted by David at 4:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Controlling the Border

from Newt's five Challenges

No serious nation in the age of terror can afford to have wide-open borders with millions of illegal aliens crossing at will.

But along with making it much harder to sneak in, we need to make it easier for guest workers to enter the country legally and to work here as long as they obey the law. Millions of illegal immigrants are here because Americans are hiring them. They have jobs in your neighborhood and you know it. They may be serving you lunch at a restaurant, washing your car, and mowing your lawn. They are probably working on the construction projects you drive past each day. Keeping these hard-working people illegal makes them vulnerable to criminals and keeps them from playing responsible roles in our communities.

We need a guest worker program to ensure that guest workers pay taxes, get driver's licenses, buy auto insurance, abide by the law, and that filters out criminals and potential terrorists. The program should not be an automatic qualification for citizenship, though eventual citizenship should be held out as an opportunity.

Posted by David at 4:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Protecting American Civilization

from Newt's five Challenges

We should not worry about people who want to come to the United States to work hard, pay taxes, obey the law, and become Americans. In fact, we should be delighted to have new Americans join our country because historically they have been the source of enormous talent, energy, and courage. From Alexander Hamilton to Andrew Carnegie to Albert Einstein to Henry Kissinger to Arnold Schwarzenegger, people who wanted to improve their lives, and in the process improve the country, have enriched America.

Nor should we be concerned that a substantial number of new Americans are Hispanic. America has a long history of absorbing and blending people of many languages and backgrounds. There have always been non-English newspapers in America and now we have non-English radio and television. I am also not worried that some immigrants come here only to earn money and then go home (Italian immigrants, in particular, did that in the past).

What should worry us is the breakdown of will on the part of America to control the borders and to ensure that new immigrants learn to be American. What should worry us is a breakdown of will to protect America's unique civilization.

Posted by David at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Defending God in the Public Square

from Newt's five Challenges

There is no attack on American culture more deadly and more historically dishonest than the secular Left's unending war against God in America's public life. The decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to rule unconstitutional the phrase "one nation under God" was the final straw. A court that would destroy a Pledge of Allegiance adopted by the Congress, signed by the president (Eisenhower), and supported by 91 percent of the American people is a court that is clearly out of step with an America that understands that our rights come from God, which is why no government-or court-can justly take them away from us.

While the Supreme Court overruled the Ninth Circuit on procedural grounds, it did not affirm that saying "one nation under God" was constitutional. Only three of the justices took that position. Five of the justices hid behind procedural excuses, ruling that the atheist plaintiff did not have legal standing to file the suit. The ninth justice, Antonin Scalia, had recused himself because he had made a public speech supporting the Pledge.

Amazingly, in 2004, the Supreme Court likely had a five to four majority for declaring "one nation under God" unconstitutional. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor defended the Pledge only by denying it any meaning: "even if taken literally, the phrase is merely descriptive; it purports only to identify the United States as a Nation subject to divine authority. That cannot be seen as a serious invocation of God or as an expression of individual submission to divine authority....Any religious freight the words may have been meant to carry has long since been lost." The Pledge, she deemed, merely invoked "civic deism." Yet if pledging allegiance to one nation under God does not mean we believe the nation (and therefore ourselves as citizens) is under God, what could it possibly mean?
When a handful of judges decide they can overrule the culture of 91 percent of America, how can the Court maintain its moral authority? It ªcan't. The Court itself begins each day with the proclamation, "God save the United States and this honorable Court." This phrase has been used for almost two hundred years. It was not adopted as a ceremonial phrase of no meaning; it was adopted because justices in the 1820s actually wanted to call on God to save the United States and the Court.

Similarly, the Pledge of Allegiance does not contain a "ceremonial" reference to God. The term under God was inserted deliberately by Congress to draw the distinction between atheistic tyranny (the Soviet Union) and a free society whose freedoms were based on the God-given rights of each person. As the report from the House of Representatives accompanying the law asserted: "From the time of our earliest history, our peoples and our institutions have reflected the traditional concept that our Nation was founded on a fundamental belief in God."
"Fundamental belief" is not "civic deism."

For most Americans, the blessings of God have been the basis of our liberty, prosperity, and survival as a unique country.

For most Americans, prayer is real and we subordinate ourselves to a God on whom we call for wisdom, salvation, and guidance.

For most Americans, an atheistic society that forbids public reference to God and removes religious symbols is a horrifyingly bad society.

Yet the voice of the overwhelming majority of Americans is repressed by an elite media that finds religious expression frightening and threatening, or old-fashioned and unsophisticated. The results of their opposition are everywhere.

Our schools have been steadily driving God out of American history (look at your children's textbooks or at the curriculum guide for your local school).

Our courts have been literally outlawing references to God, symbols of God, and stated public appeals to God (prayer).

For two generations we have passively accepted this assault on the values of the overwhelming majority of Americans. It is time to insist on judges who understand the history and meaning of America as a country endowed by God.

The secular Left has been inventing law and grotesquely distorting the Constitution to achieve a goal that none of the Founding Fathers would have thought reasonable. History is vividly clear about the importance of God in the founding of our nation. To prove that our Creator is so central to understanding America, there is a walking tour of Washington, D.C. that shows how often the Founding Fathers and other great Americans, and the institutions they created, refer to God and call upon Him. Indeed, to study American history is to encounter God again and again. A tour like this should be part of every school class's visit to Washington, D.C.

Religion is the fulcrum of American history. People came to America's shores to be free to practice their religious beliefs. It brought the Pilgrims with their desire to create a "city on a hill" that would be a beacon of religious belief and piety. The Pilgrims were but one group that poured into the new colonies. Quakers in Pennsylvania were another, Catholics in Maryland yet a third. A religious revival, the Great Awakening in the 1730s, inspired many Americans to fight the Revolutionary War to secure their God-given freedoms. Another great religious revival in the nineteenth century inspired the abolitionists' campaign against slavery.

It was no accident that the marching song of the Union Army during the Civil War included the line "as Christ died to make men holy let us die to make men free." That phrase was later changed to "let us live to make men free." But for the men in uniform who were literally placing their lives on the line to end slavery, they knew that the original line was the right one.

First Principles

For the colonists the argument with the British government was an argument about first principles. Where did power come from? What defined loyalty? Who defined rights between king and subject?

It was in this historic context that America proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence that all people "are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." This turned on its head the notion that power came from God through the monarch to the people.
Beginning with King John in 1215, the English had gradually been restricting and confining the power of their monarchs. But Americans went further, asserting that God granted rights directly to everyone. Moreover, these rights were "inalienable." The government could not deny man's God-given rights.

Those who came aboard the Mayflower in 1620 in search of religious freedom wrote a compact expressing that,
We whose names are underwritten...by the grace of God...having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith...a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.

At America's Founding, religion was central. The very first Continental Congress in 1774 had invited the Reverend Jacob Duch‚ to begin each session with a prayer. When the war against Britain began, the Continental Congress provided for chaplains to serve with the military and be paid at the same rate as majors in the Army.

During the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin (often considered one of the least religious of the Founding Fathers) proposed that the Convention begin each day with a prayer. As the oldest delegate, at age eighty-one, Franklin insisted that "the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth-that God governs in the Affairs of Men."

Because of their belief that power had come from God to the individual, they began the Constitution "we the people." Note that the Founding Fathers did not write "we the states." Nor did they write "we the government." Nor did they write "we the lawyers and judges."

These historic facts pose an enormous problem for secular liberals. How can they explain America without getting into the area of religion? If they dislike and in many cases fear religion, how then can they communicate the core nature of the people in America?

The answer is that modern secular liberalism cannot accurately teach or deal with religion as a central reality of American history, so it simply ignores the topic. If you ªdon't teach about the Founding Fathers, you do not have to teach about our Creator. If you ªdon't teach about Abraham Lincoln, you ªdon't have to deal with fourteen references to God and two Bible verses in a 732-word second inaugural address. That speech is actually carved into the wall of the Lincoln Memorial in a permanent affront to every atheist who visits this public building. You have to wonder how soon there will be a lawsuit to scrape the references to God and the Bible off the monument so as not to offend those who hate or despise religion. This is no idle threat. Dr. Michael Newdow, the atheist who brought suit to outlaw the motto "one nation under God," told the New York Times he intended to "ferret out all insidious uses of religion in daily life."

Unlike Dr. Newdow, the Founding Fathers, from the very birth of the United States, saw God as central to defining America.

Our first President, George Washington, at his first inauguration on April 30, 1789, "put his right hand on the Bible...[after taking the oath] adding 'So help me God.' He then bent forward and kissed the Bible before him." In his inaugural address, Washington remarked that

...it would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States a Government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes, and may enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to his charge....No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States....You will join with me, I trust, in thinking that there are none under the influence of which the proceedings of a new and free government can more auspiciously commence.

Then in the Thanksgiving Proclamation of October 3, 1789, Washington declared "it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the Providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor." Note that Washington was not just imploring that individuals have an obligation to God, but nations do as well. The United States government was not yet a year old.

That most astute observer of early America, Alexis de Tocqueville, in Democracy in America (1835), observed "I do not know whether all Americans have a sincere faith in their religion, for who can read the human heart? But I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or to a party, but it belongs to the whole nation and to every rank of society."

The secular Left and the Left-liberal elite media would argue that even if de Tocqueville were right, he is irrelevant because he is writing about an earlier America. They argue that America has changed profoundly and is now a very different country. Justice O'Connor herself wrote that the phrase "one nation under God" was adopted in 1954 when "our national religious diversity was neither as robust nor as well recognized as it is now."

Yet this is a profound misinterpretation of modern America. As Mi