Ryan Streeter
Judd Gregg was mentioned by some on our "nominating committee" as an ideal policy activist for our list, were he still in Congress.
In a good column today in The Hill, he has 7 ideas he thinks Republicans and Democrats can - must - work on together. He urges the political courage necessary for bipartisanship, no small task these days because what he calls the "shouters" will always try to take you down.
Glenn Beck, Rachel Maddow, Sean Hannity, Chris Matthews, they are good shouters. It certainly gets great ratings and reflects a good capitalist spirit by driving advertising...There is no desire for results [among the shouters]. The cause is the language, not the outcomes. There are no outcomes, only exaggerated egos. As a result, America gets shortchanged.
For those strong enough to work together in the 112th Congress, Gregg offers these 7 policy objectives.
- Have an energy policy that has as its main purpose to stop exporting $300 billion of capital overseas to people who do not like us and which we need here to make us a stronger nation;
- Reform the tax laws by making them simpler, fairer, more progressive and with dramatically lower rates and a bias toward keeping companies in the United States and creating incentives to create jobs;
- Fix the immigration laws so we encourage smart, talented people to come here and create jobs and thus generate economic activity, which in turn generates tax revenue;
- Reduce discretionary spending by 2 percent a year for the next five years;
- Change the healthcare system to reward outcomes and quality instead of utilization and fraud;
- Protect American intellectual property;
- Fix Social Security so it is solvent, a simple exercise that just requires bipartisan leadership.
Numbers 2, 3, 4 and 6 really should be doable in a bipartisan way. The others seem much less likely, though number 7 might actually be easier to do than people might think in the wake of the deficit commission.
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