Category: Pete du Pont

So, is America ready for a third-party? Ross Perot thinks so. So does David Broder of the Washington Post, who writes that by 2000, a third party will be a major political force in America.

For the past year, the Republicans have been a fractious lot. The Gingrich conservatives have argued with the liberal Senate Republicans. The presidential primaries were nasty. Abortion is an issue that splits the party into warring factions on a weekly basis.

The American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Brookings Institution, the Urban Institute, and the National Center for Policy Analysis. Who are they? Some of America's "think tanks." What are they? In the battle of public policy ideas, they are the information warriors, and they are changing the way America thinks.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.1

On April 16, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Washington, D.C.'s delegate to Congress, introduced a bill to institute a flat rate federal income tax in the District of Columbia. The rate would be 15 percent on all income above a large threshold – $15,000 for single filers, and $30,000 for married couples filing jointly. She would also eliminate capital gains taxes for D.C. investments. In recent weeks, the Norton proposal has been endorsed by House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott.

No matter what your sixth grade teacher or My Weekly Reader said, America is not running out of space to put its garbage, recycling is not always good, and the world is not running out of resources.

Memo to true believers in campaign finance reform: The only way to ensure fairer, freer elections is to get rid of the campaign spending laws.

The Chicken Littles who had the last word on the International Panel on Climate Change tell us that the sky is falling again.

It's no wonder the 20th Century is called the "American Century." Not only was our nation triumphant in two World Wars, the 50-year Cold War, and the race into space, but it served as the beacon of hope and economic opportunity for the world.

As Ronald Reagan reminded us, ideas have consequences. And sometimes very quickly.

The new Republican Congress roared into Washington and set out to change the rules of environmental policy. Environmental reforms were going to be based on risk assessment, cost-benefit analysis, less business regulation and smaller environmental agencies. Congress was going to prune back the oppressive bureaucracy and get the government off our backs.

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil," Edmund Burke observed, "is for good men to do nothing." While what has happened in Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 is hardly evil; communism was the evil; the fact is that good men have done very little to nourish the seeds of Western values in the freed nations of Eastern Europe.

One of the success stories of the Contract With America is that Congress has made it illegal for the federal government to impose unfunded mandates – requirements to take certain actions or provide certain services without providing the federal funds to pay for those mandates – on state and local governments.

Tired of the seemingly endless stream of award shows? Have the Emmys, the Grammys, and the People's Choice – not to mention the Country Music and MTV video awards – turned into one long blur of banal platitudes? Perhaps we need a new and different kind of award. So, move over Oscar and Tony, here comes the Louis.

With commencement season upon us once again, there is good news for graduates: America is still the Land of Opportunity. You can – and with some hard work likely will – live better than your parents. And all of us, wealthy, middle class, and poor, are becoming better off as the years go by. As President John F. Kennedy observed, the tide of economic growth is lifting all our boats.

Popcorn is not a trivial matter. I am reminded of that at the movies where buttered buckets of the stuff are consumed and the surplus spread on the floor under my seat.

"[It] is not," Winston Churchill said after the British military victory at El Alamein, "the end. It is not even the beginning of the end."

One great strength of the American political system – and one that no doubt baffles foreigners – is the way it brings people who are enemies one day together as allies the next. Just recently we saw Phil Gramm, Lamar Alexander and Steve Forbes attacking Bob Dole in Iowa and New Hampshire. But just a few weeks later, Gramm, Alexander and Forbes all dropped out of the race and endorsed him.

The Great Wall of China dates from the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), but successive invasions from the North proved that it had no more military utility than the "impregnable" Maginot Line did for the French in 1940. Gunpowder and artillery long ago had rendered castle walls useless too.

The campaigns of Steve Forbes and Pat Buchanan resonated with voters this primary season because they were the only two candidates running who directly addressed the problem of economic growth. Inside the Beltway everything seems fine – and why not? Bill Clinton has created lots of employment for policy wonks, with his everchanging agenda of plans to nationalize health care, raise taxes, and pay people to become "volunteers."

For a decade employers and benefits managers have been aggressively working to lower their health care costs. While they have been largely successful in their efforts – health care costs rose only 2.1 percent in 1995 – the savings came at a price: a lot of employees have been dissatisfied with being transferred into managed care plans.

Pat Buchanan is running hard and strong, perplexing all the pundits in the process. His issues, mostly trade, immigration and abortion, appear to be resonating with a sizable block of voters. But, there's a broader message here – Pat is tapping into a rich vein of distrust and disgust with the national government.

Social Security is back in the news. First, Republican presidential candidate Steve Forbes suggested a market-based retirement system for young people. Now press reports indicate that the Advisory Council on Social Security will soon endorse a privatization of Social Security.

There's an old joke about the man who was asked in a poll, "Do you think the nation has a problem with ignorance and apathy?" To which he responded, "I don't know and I don't care."

One of the most controversial welfare reform proposals under consideration would limit the amount of cash assistance mothers on welfare would receive if they bear additional illegitimate children. But in this case it's not just a theory, there is some practical experience to help evaluate the idea. The state of New Jersey passed a family cap law in 1992, taking effect in August 1993. No longer does a mother on welfare receive additional welfare money for bearing more children.