Democrats Advocate Issues That Matter Most
Vice President Al Gore or former US Senator Bill Bradley is better suited for the presidency than the GOP alternatives. While George W. Bush and John McCain politically posture over who is the true “Reagan conservative,” both Democrats are emphasizing solutions to the issues that matter most to Americans: education, economic growth, health care reform and gun safety.
Bradley's education agenda includes opening up Head Start to nearly every eligible child, placing 60,000 new, well-trained teachers each year into low-income urban and rural school districts and investing more in community colleges. Gore is proposing incentives to create smaller high schools (which have proven to be much more effective), triple the number of charter schools, raise standards for students, require rigorous tests for teachers and help needy local school districts build and renovate their facilities.
Bush and McCain make school vouchers the centerpiece of their plans. Both are wrong if they think that removing the most motivated students and parents will somehow increase the drive to improve schools for everyone else.
On the economy, either Democratic hopeful is sure to continue the successful policies of President Clinton: expanding international trade while using budget surpluses to pay down the national debt. In addition to strengthening Social Security, that strategy will generate high-paying jobs while holding down interest rates, decreasing debt service and freeing up resources for needed public investments. Just as important, Gore and Bradley will make smart investments in education, training, lifelong learning, research and development, and the infrastructure to ensure the benefits are broadly shared.
Increasing healthcare costs, the threat of losing coverage or actually being uninsured are real problems facing many Americans everyday. While the GOP is largely silent, Gore's and Bradley's proposals are giving Americans a worthy, substantive debate.
Gore would move toward universal coverage step by step by providing the states incentives regarding coverage of children, making federal grants contingent on the states' willingness to cover the uninsured. In addition, he wants to provide a partial, and refundable, federal tax credit for individuals purchasing private health insurance, rather than exclusively relying on their employer's offerings. His proposal has the advantage of being adopted in the near future without endangering fiscal discipline.
Bradley's more sweeping initiative replaces both Medicaid and the Child Health Insurance Program (CHIP) with a system of premium subsidies and tax credits for the purchase of private health insurance by the poor and uninsured. Uninsured individuals would buy into the Federal Employee Health Benefit Plan in which insurers compete for business on the basis of both cost and quality. His boldness in proposing to get rid of the bureaucratic structure of programs like Medicaid and CHIP is very appealing
When compared with other nations, gun violence in the United States is tragically off the charts. Children here die from guns at a rate nine times higher than the combined totals of 25 other industrialized countries. In 1994 and 1995, we accounted for 86 percent of the world's firearm-related fatalities among the young.
Meanwhile, the GOP argues that any restrictions on firearms unfairly burden their use for self-protection or hunting by law-abiding citizens. In fact, Republicans continue to push for getting more guns on the streets by allowing people without criminal records to carry concealed weapons - in effect urging Americans to conduct a personal arms race against gun-toting criminals. Except when pandering to the National Rifle Association, Bush and McCain virtually never mention the issue.
In contrast, Bradley and Gore are calling for reasonable safeguards, similar to those on any other legal but extremely dangerous product. In a society that not only accepts but demands childproof caps on aspirin bottles, it is only reasonable to require firearm producers to make their products as safe as possible and sell them in a way that keeps them from getting into the wrong hands.
Gore's gun safety agenda includes mandatory photo licenses for handgun purchases and tougher penalties for crimes committed with guns. Bradley wants to go even further - requiring the licensing and registration of all handguns, eliminating “Saturday Night Specials” and limiting the purchase of handguns to one per person per month.
At this stage of the election, personality and leadership style receive intense media attention. Nonetheless, the issues will ultimately drive the vote on Election Day. In the end, a candidate's message and policy agenda will be the decisive factors.
Which is why either of the Democratic candidates will ultimately prevail in November.
Jim Gibson is president of the Colorado Democratic Leadership Council.