Category: Pete du Pont

Two roads diverged in a health care woods,

And sorry they could not travel both,

Republicans chose the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

By vetoing the District of Columbia Student Opportunity Scholarship Act, President Clinton rebuffed members of his own party and thwarted the hopes of thousands of District of Columbia parents. He told them and their children to suffer in silence in Washington's terrible public schools.

Lest we be caught up in euphoria about all that federal tax revenue creating a budget surplus, or about the surplus tax revenue that most of the states are gathering, it might be well to remember this:

Earth Day 1998 passed relatively unnoticed last month, although President Clinton and Vice-President Gore spent the day moving rocks, planting trees and calling for increased spending on old and new environmental programs.

Last month's tragic sniper attack at a middle school in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and the past weekend's shooting at an eighth-grade dance in Edinboro, Pennsylvania, provided extraordinary opportunities for sociologizing about the causes of youth crime. The usual suspects were trotted out: violence-drenched movies and television, the spread of urban ills to rural America, easy access to firearms, and the decline of the two-parent family.

One of the more exciting developments ever in the school choice movement will begin next fall in the 14,000-student Edgewood Independent School District in a suburb of San Antonio, Texas.

As a longtime supporter of Social Security reform, my expectations for President Bill Clinton's national dialogue on Social Security were low. It seemed just another White House PR effort designed to avoid making politically difficult decisions. But I was pleasantly surprised to discover that something substantive actually came out of the first Social Security conference in Kansas City on April 7th.

You may not be aware that you're eating and coming into contact with hundreds of potential cancer-causing chemicals every day – not from pesticides, but from nature!

John Kenneth Galbraith, of all people, once said, "The State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly too."

There seems to be a growing sentiment among members of Congress and state legislators that consumers need to be protected from the practices of health insurance companies and managed care plans. In response to their concerns, President Clinton appointed an advisory committee that proposed a "Consumer Bill of Rights" last fall.

Let's talk bluntly, shall we? Education in our nation's capitol is a disgrace. Washington, D.C., has about 80,000 elementary and secondary students, but only a little more than half of them will graduate. Tests show that District students are increasingly falling behind other children around the country.

The United States is the only country where the longer students stay in school, the worse they do in math and science in comparison with students in other countries. In the fourth grade, American students do well. By the eighth grade their performance is flagging. And by their last year of high school they outperform only students in Cyprus and South Africa, according to the recently released results of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study.

Now that President Clinton has ratcheted up the Social Security debate with his proposal to dedicate budget surpluses to shore up a weakening system, the hard choices will soon be upon us.

If money is the mother's milk of politics, then organized labor has been the udder for the Democratic Party. In 1995-96 unions spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to defeat Republicans in hopes of recapturing the House of Representatives for the Democrats. It was for them a Gettysburg. A victory could turn the war in their favor. A defeat would likely mean a continuing decline into oblivion, including congressional investigations into labor's financial dealings, campaign contributions and even its own internal elections. Most of all, a Democratic defeat would mean continuing scrutiny into labor's secret accounting practices.

Maybe the Third Big Lie, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you," should be amended to "I'm from the government and I'm here to help the children."

Under a new law passed by Congress, seniors on Medicare who want to "privately contract" with a physician – that is, pay out of pocket for some service that Medicare pays for – must find a doctor who is willing to forgo all Medicare reimbursements from any patient for two years. That's no easy task considering 96 percent of all physicians take some form of Medicare reimbursement.

Was it only a little over a year ago, during the 1996 presidential election, that conservatives were accusing President Clinton of co-opting the Republican agenda, of stealing Republican ideas and claiming them as his own?

You may have heard about the survey that found twice as many young people believing in UFOs as believing they will ever be able to collect Social Security. The survey result would have been more amusing if there were not so much substance to those fears about the future of Social Security.

For the most part, the tradition of employer-provided health insurance began burgeoning during World War II. Because of government wage and price controls, employers couldn't hire vital workers away from other companies with more money. But they could compete using health insurance and other fringe benefits, which weren't covered by the controls. And they did.

The Clinton administration took a big step toward unilaterally disarming the U.S. military last December in Kyoto, Japan. To state the matter more precisely, if the Senate should approve the greenhouse gas treaty agreed to in Japan, the U.S. military will have to dramatically reduce its training and limit its missions. The military will still be able to carry out missions that defend U.S. interests – but only if the United Nations approves of the missions.

Once upon a time, in the political campaigns of the 1980s, the idea of requiring welfare recipients to work for their benefits was considered radical. Liberals and moderates (and most conservatives) thought it shocking, for the economic and social devastation that is a result of the welfare state was not yet apparent to everyone.

You're on the verge of bankruptcy so you apply for more credit cards, take on more debt, spend more money.

For a global agreement, there is really very little "global" to the treaty proposal agreed to in Kyoto. Out of 160 nations party to the agreement, 130 will not have to reduce their energy use.

Historically, role models have come in all types. And that's probably a good thing, since very few people are perfect and we all need models with whom we can relate.

People working in the nation's government-operated foster care system finally have gained permission to give a foster child's safety and well-being priority over anything else.