From: lazarus@wixer.cactus.org (Michael Lax)
Subject: 1992 REPUBLICAN PLATFORM (2/5)
Organization: Real/Time Communications
Distribution: usa
Date: Sun, 4 Oct 92 04:20:56 GMT



        *Individual Rights, Good Homes and Safe Streets*

     At a time when the rest of the world has rejected socialism,
there are communities here at home where free markets have not
been permitted to flourish.  Decades of liberalism have left us
with two economies.  The pro-growth economy rewards effort,
promotes thrift, and supports strong families.  The other economy
stifles initiative and is anti-work and anti-family.  In one
economy, people are free to be owners and entrepreneurs.  In the
other economy, people are at the mercy of government,  We are
determined to elevate the poor into the pro-growth economy.

     Republicans will lead a new national consensus around
economic opportunity, greater access to property, home ownership
and housing, jobs and entrepreneurship.  We must bring the great
promise of America to every city, every small town, and to all
our people.

     Our agenda for equality of opportunity runs throughout this
Platform and applies to all Americans.  There is no such thing as
segregated success.  We reject the Democrats' politics of
division, envy and conflict.  They believe that America is split
into classes and can be healed only through the redistribution of
wealth.  We believe in the economics of multiplication:  free
markets expand opportunity and wealth for all.

     This is true liberation.  It frees poor people not only from
want but also from government control.  That is why liberal
Democrats have fought us every step of the way, refusing
congressional action on Enterprise Zones until Los Angeles burned
-- and then mocking the expectations of the poor by gutting that
critical proposal.  They can kill bills, but they cannot kill
hope.  We are determined to pass that legislation for the sake of
all who are awaiting their chance for the American Dream.

     We will eliminate laws that keep Americans out of jobs, like
the outdated ban on home work.  The antiquated Davis-Bacon Act
inflates taxpayer costs and keeps willing workers from getting
jobs in federally-assisted projects.  It must go.  Unlike the
Democrats, we believe the private sector, not the federal
government, should set prevailing wage rates.

     As explained elsewhere in this Platform, low-income families
must gain control of their future through choice in their
children's education.

*Rebuilding the Dream.*  Our Party has always championed the
American dream of home ownership.  Abraham Lincoln wanted all
families to have access to property, because it would give them a
tangible stake in their family's future.  As families built homes
and improved the land, they built a brighter future for
themselves and a legacy for their children.  Lincoln's Homestead
Act of 1862 did all this without enlarging government.  It
empowered families.

     In the tradition of Lincoln, President Bush has replicated
the American dream of home-ownership.  For first-time home
buyers, he has proposed a $5,000 tax credit.  For lower-income
families, he has worked to restore opportunity through HOPE, his
initiative to help tenants now dependent on federal aid to buy
their own homes; Mortgage Revenue Bonds, to assist more than 1.9
million families to buy a first home; Low Income Housing Tax
Credits, already producing more than 420,000 decent apartments at
affordable prices; and HOME, a partnership among all levels of
government to help low-income families secure better housing.

     For everyone, but especially for the poor, the best housing
policy is non-inflationary economic growth with low interest
rates, the heart of our opportunity agenda.

*Ending Dependency.*  Welfare is the enemy of opportunity and
stable family life.  Two decades ago, decisions about public
assistance were taken away from States and communities and given
to Washington officials.  Since then, almost everything has gone
wrong.  Since 1965, we have spent $3.5 trillion on welfare.  It
bought a horrendous expansion of dependence, especially among
mothers and children.

     Today's welfare system is anti-work and anti-marriage.  It
taxes families to subsidize illegitimacy.  It rewards unethical
behavior and penalizes initiative.  It cannot be merely tinkered
with by Congress; it must be recreated by States and localities. 
Republican Governors and legislators in several States have
already launched dramatic reforms, especially with workfare and
learnfare.  Welfare can no longer be a check in the mail with no
responsibility.

     We believe fathers and mothers must be held responsible for
their children.  We support stronger enforcement of child support
laws.  We call for strong enforcement and tough penalties against
welfare fraud and insist that work must be a mandatory part of
public assistance for all who are able to work.  Because divorce,
desertion, and illegitimacy account for almost all the increase
in child poverty over the last 20 years, we put the highest
priority upon enforcement of family rights and responsibilities.

     Among these responsibilities is the obligation to get an
education -- a key to avoid dependency.  Families on welfare with
school-age children must be required to send them to school or
provide adequate home education in keeping with various State
laws in order to continue receiving public assistance.  Young
adult heads of welfare households should be required to complete
appropriate education or training programs.

*Safe Homes and Streets.*  One of the first duties of government
is to protect the public security -- to maintain law and order so
that citizens are free to pursue the fruits of life and liberty. 
The Democrats have forsaken this solemn pledge.  Instead of
protecting society from hardened criminals, they blame society
and refuse to hold accountable for their actions individuals who
have chosen to engage in violent and criminal conduct.  This has
led to the state of affairs in which we find ourselves today.

     Violent crime is the gravest domestic threat to our way of
life.  It has turned our communities into battlegrounds,
playgrounds into grave yards.  It threatens everyone, but
especially the very young, the elderly, the weak.  It destroys
business and suffocates economic opportunity in struggling
communities.  It is a travesty that some American children have
to sleep in bathtubs for protection from stray bullets.  The
poverty of values that justifies drive-by shootings and random
violence holds us hostage and insecure, even in our own homes. 
We must work to develop community-help projects designed to
instill a sense of responsibility and pride.

     This is the legacy of a liberalism that elevates criminals'
rights above victims' rights, that justifies soft-on-crime
judges' approving early-release prison programs, and that leaves
law enforcement officers powerless to deter crime with the threat
of certain punishment.

     For twelve years, two Republican Presidents have fought to
reverse this trend, along with Republican officials in the
States.  They have named tough law-and-order judges, pushed for
minimum mandatory sentences, expanded federal assistance to
States and localities, sought to help States redress court orders
on prison overcrowding, and devoted record resources that are
turning the tide against drugs.  They have repeatedly proposed
legislation, consistently rejected by congressional Democrats, to
restore the severest penalties for the most heinous crimes, to
ensure swift and certain punishment, and to end the legal
loopholes that let criminals go free.

     Congressional Democrats reject Republican reform of the
exclusionary rule that prohibits use of relevant evidence
obtained in good faith and allows criminals, even murderers, to
go free on a technicality.  They reject our reform of habeas
corpus law to prevent the appellate process from becoming a
lawyers' game to thwart justice through endless appeals and
procedural delays.  They refuse to enact effective procedures to
reinstate the death penalty for the most heinous crimes.  They
reject tougher, mandatory sentences for career criminals. 
Instead, Congressional Democrats actually voted to create more
loopholes for vicious thugs and fewer protections for victims of
crime and have opposed mandatory restitution for victims.  Their
crime legislation, which we emphatically reject, cripples law
enforcement by overturning over twenty United States Supreme
Court cases that have helped to reduce crime and keep violent
criminal offenders off the streets.

     For too long our criminal justice system has carefully
protected the rights of criminals and neglected the suffering of
the innocent victims of crime and their families.  We support the
rights of crime victims to be present, heard, and informed
throughout the criminal justice process and to be provided with
restitution and services to aid their recovery.

     We believe in giving police the resources to do their job. 
Law enforcement must remain primarily a State and local
responsibility.  With 95 percent of all violent crimes within the
jurisdiction of the States, we have led efforts to increase the
number of police protecting our citizens.  We also support
incentives to encourage personnel leaving the Armed Forces to
continue to defend their country -- against the enemy within --
by entering the law enforcement profession.

     Narcotics traffic drives street crime.  President Bush has,
for the first time, used the resources of our Armed Forces
against the international drug trade.  By our insistence,
multilateral control of precursor chemicals and money laundering
is now an international priority.  We decry efforts by
congressional Democrats to slash international anti-narcotics
funding and inhibit the most vital control efforts in Peru.  We
support efforts to work with South and Central American leaders
to eradicate crops used to produce illegal narcotics.

     The Republican Party is committed to a drug-free America. 
During the last twelve years, we have radically reversed the
Democrats' attitude of tolerance toward narcotics, vastly
increased federal operations against drugs, cleaned up the
military, and launched mandatory testing for employees in various
fields, including White House Personnel.  As a result, overall
drug abuse is falling.  We urge that States and communities
emphasize anti-drug education by police officers and others in
schools to educate young children to the dangers of the drug
culture.  Dope is no longer trendy.

     We oppose legalizing or decriminalizing drugs.  That is a
morally abhorrent idea, the last vestige of an ill-conceived
philosophy that counseled the legitimacy of permissiveness. 
Today, a similarly dysfunctional morality explains away drug-
dealing as an escape, and drive-by shootings as an act of
political violence.  There is no excuse for the wanton
destruction of human life.  We therefore support the stiffest
penalties, including the death penalty, for major drug
traffickers.

     Drug users must face punishment, including fines and
imprisonment, for contributing to the demand that makes the drug
trade profitable.  Among possible sanctions should be the loss of
government assistance and suspension of drivers' licenses. 
Residents of public housing should be able to protect their
families against drugs by screening out abusers and dealers.  We
support grassroots action to drive dealers and crack-houses out
of operation.

     Safe streets also mean highways that are free of drunken
drivers and drivers under the influence of illegal drugs. 
Republicans support the toughest possible State laws to deal with
drunken drivers and users of illegal drugs, who deserve no
sympathy from our courts or State legislatures.  We also oppose
the illicit abuse of legal drugs.

     White-collar crime threatens homes and families in a
different way.  It steals secretly, forcing up prices, rigging
contracts, swindling consumers, and harming the overwhelming
majority of business people, who play fair and obey the law.  We
support imprisonment for those who steal from the American
people.  We pledge an all out fight against it, especially within
the political machines that control many of our major cities.  We
will continue to bring to justice corrupt politicians and those
who collude with them to plunder savings and loans.

*New Members of the American Family.*  Our Nation of immigrants
continues to welcome those seeking a better life.  This reflects
our past, when some newcomers fled intolerance; some sought
prosperity; some came as slaves.  All suffered and sacrificed but
hoped their children would have a better life.  All searched for
a shared vision -- and found one in America.  Today we are
stronger for our diversity.

     Illegal entry into the United States, on the other hand,
threatens the social compact on which immigration is based.  That
is, the Nation accepts immigrants and is enriched by their
determination and values.  Illegal immigration, on the other
hand, undermines the integrity of border communities and already
crowded urban neighborhoods.  We will build on the already
announced strengthening of the Border Patrol to better coordinate
interdiction of illegal entrants through greater cross-border
cooperation.  Specifically, we will increase the size of the
Border Patrol in order to meet the increasing need to stop
illegal immigration and we will equip the Border Patrol with the
tools, technologies, and structures necessary to secure the
border.

     We will seek stiff penalties for those who smuggle illegal
aliens into the country, and for those who produce or sell
fraudulent documents.  We also will reduce incentives to enter
the United States by promoting initiatives like the North
American Free Trade Agreement.  In creating new economic
opportunity in Mexico, a NAFTA removes the incentive to cross the
border illegally in search of work.

*Individual Rights.*  The protection of individual rights is the
foundation for opportunity and security.

     The Republican Party is unique in this regard.  Since it
inception, it has respected every person, even when that
proposition was not universally popular.  Today, as in the day of
Lincoln, we insist that no American's rights are negotiable.

     That is why declare that bigotry and prejudice have no place
in American life.  We denounce all who practice or promote
racism, anti-Semitism, or religious intolerance.  We believe
churches and religious schools should not be taxed; we defend the
right of religious leaders to speak out on public issues; and we
condemn the cowardly desecration of places of worship that has
shocked our country in recent years.

     Asserting equal rights for all, we support the Bush
Administration's vigorous enforcement of statutes to prevent
illegal discrimination on account of sex, race, creed, or
national origin.  Promoting opportunity, we reject efforts to
replace equal rights with quotas or other preferential treatment. 
That is why President Bush fought so long against the Democrat
Congress to win a civil rights bill worthy of that name.

     We renew the historic Republic commitment to the rights of
women, from the early days of the suffragist movement to the
present.  Because legal rights mean little without opportunity,
we assert economic growth as the key to the continued progress of
women in all fields of American life.

     We believe the unborn child has a fundamental individual
right to life which cannot be infringed.  We therefore reaffirm
our support for a human life amendment to the Constitution, and
we endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth
Amendment's protections apply to unborn children.  We oppose
using public revenues for abortion and will not fund
organizations which advocate it.  We commend those who provide
alternatives to abortion by meeting the needs of mothers and
offering adoption services.  We reaffirm our support for
appointment of judges who respect traditional family values and
the sanctity of innocent human life.

     President Bush signed into law the greatest advance ever for
disabled persons:  The Americans with Disabilities Act, a
milestone in removing barriers to full participation in our
country's life.  We will fully implement it, with sensitivity to
the needs of small businesses, just as we have earlier legal
protections for the disabled in federal programs.  We oppose the
nonconsensual withholding of health care or treatment from any
person because of handicap, age, or infirmity, just as we oppose
euthanasia and assisted suicide.

     We support full access to the polls, and the entire
political process, by disabled voters.  We will ensure that
students with disabilities benefit from AMERICA 2000's new
emphasis on testing for excellence and accountability for
results.

     Promoting the rights of the disabled requires, before all
else, an expanding economy, both to advance assistive technology
and to create opportunities for personal advancement.  That is
another reason why Republicans are committed to growth.

     We reaffirm our commitment to the Fifth Amendment to the
Constitution:  "No personal shall be...deprived of life, liberty,
or property, without due process of law; nor shall private
property be taken for public use, without just compensation."  We
support strong enforcement of this Takings clause to keep
citizens secure in the use and development of their property.  We
also seek to reduce the amount of land owned or controlled by the
government, especially in the western States.  We insist upon
prompt payment for private lands certified as critical for
preserving essential parks and preserves.

     Republicans defend the constitutional right to keep and bear
arms.  We call for stiff mandatory sentences for those who use
firearms in a crime.  We note that those who seek to disarm
citizens in their homes are the same liberals who tried to disarm
our Nation during the Cold War and are today seeking to cut our
national defense below safe levels.  We applaud congressional
Republicans for overturning the District of Columbia's law
blaming firearm manufacturers for street crime.

     We affirm the right of individuals to form, join, or assist
labor organizations to bargain collectively, consistent with
State laws.  We support the right of States to enact Right-to-
Work laws.

     A Republican Congress will amend the Hobbs Act, so that
union officials will not be exempt from the law's prohibition
against extortion and violence.  We call for greater legal
protection from violence for workers who stay on the job during
strikes.

     We support self-determination for Indian Tribes in managing
their own affairs and resources.  Recognizing the government-to-
government trust responsibility, we aim to end dependency
fostered by federal controls.  Reservations and tribal lands held
in trust should be free to become enterprise zones so their
people can fully share in the Nation's prosperity.  We will work
with tribal governments to improve education, health, economic
opportunity, and environmental conditions.  We endorse efforts to
preserve the culture and languages of Native Americans and
Hawaiians and to ensure their equitable participation in federal
programs.

                      *UNITING OUR COUNTRY*

     Over the last four years, the United States has achieved our
overriding objective since the end of World War II.  Communism
and other forms of planned economies lie in the ash heap of
history, defeated not only by our military strength but by the
force of our ideas -- democracy and free enterprise.

     Now a huge international market is evolving.  Combined with
America's low inflation and low interest rate environment, it
presents us with unprecedented economic opportunity.  We commit
to the proposition that the American economy will remain first in
the world.  This is our goal.  Achieving it will ensure that our
people will enjoy the jobs, benefits, and economic growth to
sustain the American dream for themselves and their posterity.

     Republicans believe that the greatest engine for social
change and economic progress is the entrepreneurial economy.  We
believe that America has broken down the lines of class to a
greater degree than any society on earth, not because of
government but because of an economic system that allows men and
women to create wealth for themselves and their communities.  We
believe that positive change can occur and benefit all Americans
if we continue to remove governmental barriers to
entrepreneurship and, thus, economic growth.

     Our cause embraces traditional ideals and modern realities. 
It both reforms and innovates.  We aim to shape history through
faith in one another.  Because we look forward, we emphasize
saving, investment, and job creation.  We encourage innovation
and the entrepreneurial spirit that are, together, part of our
national character.  We both conserve and develop our natural
resources.  Because we have learned from the past, we are
determined to change what desperately needs changing in
government.

     Government does not have all the answers, but we know where
to find them:  in the spirit of our people.  We know the weapons
for this battle:  economic and political liberty in the pursuit
of happiness.  We understand that material gain improves life
only if it lifts us all to pursue higher ends:  self-respect,
work and study, a decent life and future for our children, and a
useful old age.

     So we rededicate ourselves to the truths the Nation keeps
coming back to -- the simple, spiritual truths about our family,
our country, our world -- for upon them we will build our more
perfect union.