It has been a decade since Newt and the GOP came to power promising sweeping reforms. In that time, many have wondered what might have happened had the revolution been all that we hoped it would be. Assuming we had elected a "revolutionary" president in 1996 (perhaps an Alan Keyes or a Bob Dornan), what might America look like today?
The United States Supreme Court would no longer be the arbiter of the most profound aspects of our lives. Congress would have exercised their constitutional authority to rein in the federal judiciary, thus restoring the balance of powers. Wrongheaded decisions like Lawrence vs. Texas (the right to homosexual sodomy), Carhart vs. Stenberg (the right to infanticide) and Kelo vs. New London (the right to seize private property for commercial use) would never have happened.
All federal agencies would be required to justify their existence at the beginning of each fiscal year. Some would be dismantled entirely, including:
The Internal Revenue Service. My personal tax reform preference is a federal consumption tax, currently known as the Fair Tax (see www.fairtax.org). However, in my fantasy, slashes in federal spending would mean that the rate would need to be no more than ten percent. No sense giving government more than the Lord requests. So the IRS would be long gone.
The U.S. Department of Education. This agency, born out of a political payoff from Jimmy Carter to the nation's powerful teachers' unions, should have been dismantled by now. A tidy way to do it would have been to send block grants back to the states each year for use in implementing school choice proposals. At ten percent per year, by the end of one decade the department would have been gone, and the state of American education would have been dramatically improved.
Health and Human Services. The funding for this agency, even after welfare reform, is still staggering -- and largely unconstitutional. With serious reforms, families, churches and other charitable institutions could have picked up the slack for those truly needy in society. (Perhaps by now there would be no such thing as "a job no American will take.")
Other agencies that should have disappeared by now: HUD, OSHA, the EPA, the Commerce and Energy Departments and the Social Security Administration. Does that mean Congress could no longer have introduced legislation in these areas? Of course not, but the agencies themselves have become intrusive bureaucracies impeding the growth of the economy, and in my perfect GOP Revolution they would be gone by now.
With a sufficiently restrained federal court system, amendments to the Constitution might not have been necessary, but just in case, I would include a few:
A Human Life Amendment. This, by definition, would have reaffirmed the Founders vision of the first right -- the right to life -- for every innocent, law-abiding American, from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death.
A Defense of Marriage Amendment. This amendment would have established not only the self-evident truth that marriage is a covenant between one man and one woman, it also would have given preference to the rights of married people in a society that has devalued families to an alarming extent.
A Balanced Budget Amendment. Again, with the cuts in spending, this measure probably would not have been necessary. But then, we never know when we might awake from this dream and discover that Hillary and the Democrats have regained power and re-implemented America's march toward tax-and-spend socialism.
There are a handful of budget increases that should have come into being. One is a dramatic increase in defense spending, with a heavy emphasis on making U.S. troops the best paid and the best equipped ever.
Another increase would have been in the area of counter-terrorism. In the wake of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and other terrorist acts, perhaps we could have prevented 9/11 altogether.
Finally, in my fantasy, my party would have made sure that the United States of America was not invaded by millions of illegal immigrants. In short, the U.S. Border Patrol would actually patrol the border! And enforce it!
So, that's my vision of what the revolution would have been. Please don't wake me. Allow me the dream a little longer.
Doug Patton is a freelance columnist who has served as a political speechwriter and policy advisor for federal, state and local candidates, elected officials and public policy organizations. His weekly column can be read in newspapers across the country and on selected Internet web sites, including www.TheConservativeVoice.com and www.GOPUSA.com, where he also serves as the Nebraska editor. Write him at dpatton@neonramp.com.
