The Vision Shared Uniting Our Family, Our Country, Our World The Republican Platform - 1992 UNITING OUR COUNTRY - PART 2 - REFORMING GOVERNMENT AND THE LEGAL SYSTEM Two centuries ago, the American people created a miracleÑa system of government, founded on limited authority and the rule of law, a system that made government the servant of the people. Today it is in shambles. Citizens feel overwhelmed by vast bureaucracies. Congress insulates incumbents from public judgment. Huge problems get worse while committee chairmen play partisan games. The current legal system tends to breed delay, cost, confusion, and jargonÑ everything but justice. Many of our once great cities are controlled by one-party machines that promote and encourage corruption and incompetence. The Republic has not failed; the Democrat Party bosses failed the Republic. The Republican Party, now as at its founding, challenges a debased status quo. In Congress, the States, our cities, our courtrooms, we fight for the basics of self-government. We rely on what works, judging programs by how well they do instead of how much they spend. The Democrats believe in more government. Republicans believe in leaner, more effective government. We decentralize authority, returning decisions to States, localities, and private institutions. The Democrat bosses want to concentrate power on Capitol Hill Republicans place it in town halls and the American home. Republicans favor the free-enterprise system. We choose market forcesÑ consumer rightsÑover red tape. The Democrats argue that government must constantly override the market. Republicans regard the worst market failure as the failure to have a market. We replace dependency with empowerment. The Democrats see an America filled with wards of the State. Republicans see an America peopled by citizens and consumers eager for the chance to chart their own course. We make electoral systems understandable and accountable to the voter. The Democrats fear proposals that would limit the tenure and hidden power of incumbent politicians. Republicans want the ballot box to prevail over the cloakroom. CLEANING UP THE IMPERIAL CONGRESS. The Democrats have controlled the House of Representatives for 38 yearsÑfive years longer than Castro has held Cuba. They have held the Senate for 32 of those 38. Their entrenched power has produced a Congress arrogant, out of touch, hopelessly entangled in a web of PACs, perks, privileges, partisanship, paralysis, and pork. No wonder they hid their congressional leaders during the Democrat convention of 1992. They didn't want Americans to remember who has been running the Congress. The Democrats have transformed what the Framers of the Constitution intended as the people's House into a pathological institution. They have grossly increased their staffing, their payrolls, their allied bureaucracies in little-known congressional agencies. Congress has ballooned to 284 congressional committees and subcommittees, almost 40,000 legislative branch employees and staff, and $2.5 billion in taxpayer financing, amounting to approximately $5 million per lawmaker per year. Incumbents have abused free mailing privileges for personal political gain. Twenty-two Democrats, with a total of 585 years in power, rule over a committee system that blocks every attempt at reform. The Democrats have trampled the traditions of the House, rigging rules, forbidding votes on crucial amendments, denying fair apportionment of committee seats and resources. They have stacked campaign laws to benefit themselves. The Democrat Leadership of the House has been tainted with scandal and has resisted efforts to investigate scandals once disclosed. Some in their Leadership have resigned in well-earned disgrace. The Democrat Leadership of the Congress has turned the healthy competition of constitutional separation of powers into mean-spirited politics of innuendo and inquisition. Committee hearings are no longer for fact-finding; they are political sideshows. "Advise and consent" has been replaced by "slash and burn." Republicans want to change all that. We reaffirm our support for a constitutional amendment to limit the number of terms House Members and Senators may serve. We want a citizens' Congress, free of bloated pensions and perpetual perks. Congress must stop exempting itself from laws such as the minimum wage and the civil rights statutes, as well as laws which apply to the Executive Branch. The Independent Counsel Act is a case in point. It has permitted rogue prosecutors to spend tremendous amounts to hound some of the Nation's finest public servants. If that Act is reauthorized, it must be extended to Congress as well. Safety and health regulations, civil rights and minimum wage laws are further examples of areas where Congress has set itself apart from the people. This practice must end.Congress must slash its own bureaucracy. Its employees operate in a maze of overlapping jurisdictions. A Republican Congress will cut expenses by 25 percent, reduce the number of committees and subcommittees, and assign staff in accurate proportion to party strength. We will restore integrity to the House of Representatives, reforming its rules, allowing open debate and amendment. The committee system, both in Congress and in Democrat-controlled State legislatures, has been abused by chairpersons who have arbitrarily killed legislation which would have passed. Committees are a place for open and free discussion, not a closet for Democrats to stash Republican legislation. Democracy itself is endangered by these abuses, and Republicans condemn these practices. Both houses of Congress must guarantee protection to whistle blowers to encourage employees to report illegality, corruption, sexual harassment, and discrimination. The Democrat rulers of Congress have blocked or stalled Presidential initiatives in many areas, including education, housing, crime control, economic recovery, job creation, and budget reform. They care more about scoring petty partisan points for them selves and their Party than about achieving real progress for the Nation. To accomplish change, we need a change in Congress. REFORMING THE CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET PROCESS. At the heart of the Democrats' corruption of Congress is a fraudulent budget process. They do not want the public to understand how they spend the public's money. At a time when the Nation's future depends on reduction of deficits, the lords of the Capitol still play the old shell game. Republicans vigorously support a balanced budget, a Balanced Budget Constitutional Amendment, and a line-item veto for the President. Republicans believe this balancing of the budget should be achieved, not by increasing taxes to match spending, but by cutting spending to current levels of revenue. We prefer a Balanced Budget Amendment which contains a super-majority requirement to raise taxes. We also propose procedural reforms. We support legislation that would require Congress to pass a legally binding budget before it can consider spending bills. The budget's spending ceilings shall not be exceeded without a super-majority vote of both chambers. If Congress fails to pass any appropriation bill, funding for its programs will automatically be frozen at the previous year's level. The key to prosperity for the rest of this century and for the next generation of Americans is a budget strategy that restores sanity to the budget process and checks the growth of government. Congress should be forced to confront basic arithmetic through Truth in Counting. The Democrats measure all changes in funding against a "current services baseline," with built-in increases for inflation and other factors. If they want a $I million program to grow to $2 million, they then count an increase to $I.5 million as a half-million dollar cut. This is the accounting system of Wonderland, where words mean exactly what the Democrat Speaker says they mean. The double-talk must end with zero-based budgeting. We also support "sunset laws" that require government agencies to be reviewed periodically and reauthorized only if they can be rejustified. CLEANING UP POLITICS: THE GERRYMANDER. After more than a half-century of distortion by power-hungry Democrats, the political system is increasingly rigged. Throughout the 1980s, voters were cheated out of dozens of seats in the House of Representatives and in State legislatures because districts were oddly shaped to guarantee election of Democrats. It was swindle by law. We support State-level appointment of non-partisan redistricting commissions to apply clear standards for compactness of districts, competitiveness between the parties, and protection of community interests. CLEANING UP POLITICS: CAMPAIGN REFORM. We crusade for clean elections. We support State efforts to increase voter participation but condemn Democrat attempts to perpetrate vote fraud through schemes that override the States' safeguards of orderly voter registration. And it is critical that the States retain the authority to tailor voter registration procedures to unique local circumstances. Most of all, we condemn the Democrats' shameless plots to make taxpayers foot the bills for their campaigns. Their campaign finance bill would have given $1 billion, over six years, in subsidies to candidates. President Bush vetoed that bill. Campaign financing does need reform. It does not need a hand in the public's pocketbook. We will require congressional candidates to raise most of their funds from individuals within their home constituencies. This will limit outside special-interest money and result in less expensive campaigns, with less padding for incumbents. To the same end, we will strengthen the role of political parties to remove pressure on candidates to spend so much time soliciting funds. We will eliminate political action committees supported by corporations, unions, or trade association and restrict the practice of bundling. To restore competition in elections by attacking the unfair advantages of incumbency, we will stop incumbents from warding off challengers merely by amassing huge war chests. Congressional candidates will be forbidden from carrying campaign funds from one election to the next. We will oppose arbitrary spending limitsÑcynical devices which hobble challengers to keep politicians in office. We will fully implement the Supreme Court's decision in the Beck case, ensuring that workers have the right to stop the use of their union dues for political or other non-collective bargaining purposes. MANAGING GOVERNMENT IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST. The focus of government must shift from quantity to quality, from spending to service. Americans should expect measurable, published standards for services provided by government at all levels. Performance standards and rules, commonplace in the private sector, must be applied to government activities as well. Because federal government employees should not be a privileged caste, we will remove the bar to garnishing their wages to ensure payment of their debts. The Quality Revolution in American business has quietly but profoundly transformed American culture over the past decade. Millions of American workers have benefited from the more cooperative spirit the Quality Revolution has brought to tens of thousands of workplaces; and every American has benefited from the lower costs, higher quality service, and greater level of competitiveness it has produced. Republicans are proud to have played a leading role in this transformation, especially through the annual Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, which recognizes companies that best represent the principles of Quality. The Quality Revolution in the private sector, with its concepts of Continuous Improvement, Profound Knowledge, and "Doing the Right Thing Right the First Time," stands in stark contrast to the outmoded practices, insensitivity and outright waste, abuse, and corruption endemic in the bureaucratic welfare state. The Republican Party is firmly committed to bringing the Quality Revolution into government at every level by creating a "Quality Workers for a Quality America" coalition whose aim will be to transform the bureaucratic welfare state into a government that is customer-friendly, cost-effective, and improving constantly. Privatization is an important alternative to higher taxes and reduced services. If private enterprise can perform better and more cheaply than government, let it do so. This is especially true of properties now decaying under government control. such as public housing, where residents should have the option to manage their own projects. These citizens should have the chance to become stockholders and managers of government enterprises and to run them more efficiently as private enterprises. We applaud President Bush's initiative to allow States and localities to privatize facilities built with federal aid. Where it advances both efficiency and safety, we will advocate privatization of airport operation and management. We deplore the blatant political bias of the government-sponsored radio and television networks. It is especially outrageous that taxpayers are now forced to underwrite this biased broadcasting through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). We call for sweeping reform of CPB, including greater accountability through application of the Freedom of Information Act, a one-year funding cycle, and enforcement of rigorous fairness standards for all CPB-supported programming. We look forward to the day when public broadcasting is self-sufficient. Always trusting the initiative of the American people over the ways of government, we will not initiate production of goods or delivery of services by the federal government if they can be procured from the private sector. We will not initiate any federal activity that can be conducted better on the State or local level. In doing so, we reassert the crucial importance of the Tenth Amendment. We oppose costly federal mandates that stifle innovation and force tax hikes upon States and localities. We require that Congress calculate the cost of mandated initiatives upon communities affected and provide adequate financial support for mandates invoked. We will continue the process of returning power to local voters by replacing federal programs with block grants. REFORMING THE LEGAL SYSTEM. The United States, with five percent of the world's population, has two-thirds of the world's lawyers. Litigation has become an industry, an end in itself. The number of civil cases in federal district courts has more than tripled in the past thirty years. It now takes more than a year to resolve the average lawsuit. Delays of three to five years are commonplace. The current legal system forces consumers to pay higher prices for everything from basic goods to medical treatment Direct litigation and inflated insurance premiums sock American consumers for an estimated $80 billion a year. All told, our legal system costs, directly and indirectly, $300 billion a year. What it costs us in the world marketplace, by hindering our competitiveness, is beyond calculation. We therefore endorse the President's proposals for legal reform as developed by Vice President Quayle, and we salute his principled challenge to the American Bar Association to clean up its own house. We support the Fairness Rule, to allow the winning party to a lawsuit to recover the costs of litigation from the losing party. This will discourage needless suits, freeing legal resources for people with genuine cases. We believe complainants should have a choice of ways to settle problems through alternative dispute programs that will permit parties to pursue less costly and less complicated ways to resolve conflicts. We also call for greater use of judicial sanctions to stop frivolous lawsuits. We call for changes to the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law to limit its use in civil litigation by requiring proof of all elements by clear and convincing proof We seek to restore fairness and predictability to punitive damages by placing appropriate limits on them, dividing trials into two phases to determine liability separately from damages, and requiring clear proof of wrongdoing. This will go a long way to reduce insurance premiums for professional and product liability and for all malpractice, including medical, thereby lowering costs for consumers throughout the economy, while preserving the ability of injured persons to obtain damages. It will also foster the creation of new products for the American marketplace, perhaps cures for the diseases we most fear. The Republican Party commends President Bush and Vice President Quayle for their continued leadership in helping volunteers overcome their concern that their good acts and voluntary donations of time on behalf of civic groups, community organizations, and churches will result in civil liability and lawsuits. We encourage the State legislatures to pass the Administration's model bill, "The Volunteerism Act." We will throw out "junk science" by requiring courts to verify the legitimacy of persons called as expert witnesses. To restore integrity to courtroom testimony, we will ban the practice of paying fees to experts only if a successful verdict is obtained. We will maintain diversity jurisdiction for citizens of different States to ensure access to the federal courts when appropriate. Because four-fifths of the time and cost of a lawsuit involves discoveryÑ pre-trial investigation of the factsÑwe will require automatic disclosure, by both sides, of basic information. We will ban abuses of the discovery process used to intimidate opponents and drive up their costs. We will fight rising health care costsÑand equally important, help dedicated doctors to keep practicing in critical areas like obstetricsÑby providing incentives for States to reform their liability laws. This will reduce the practice of"defensive medicine," requiring patients to be tested for every conceivable ailment at their own enormous expense to guard against the mere possibility of a lawsuit. Recognizing that legal reform can solve only parts of the larger problem, we support a federal product liability law. The cost of product liability protection is a great expense to the American consumer and seriously impedes our international competitiveness. For example, a consumer pays an additional 17 percent to cover the liability insurance of an ordinary stepladder. If thirteen European nations can enact uniform product liability laws to give them a competitive edge against the United States, we can do it here tooÑonce we break the Democrat hold on the Congress so Republicans can put the interests of workers and consumers ahead of trial lawyers. Some of the problems in our legal system are rooted in a declining sense of, and respect for, individual responsibility. We reaffirm that all Americans are first and finally responsible for their own behavior. THE NATION S CAPITAL. We call for closer and responsible Congressional scrutiny of the city, federal oversight of its law enforcement and courts, and tighter fiscal restraints over its expenditures. We oppose statehood as inconsistent with the original intent of the Framers of the Constitution and with the need for a federal city belonging to all the people as our Nation's Capital. A NEW ERA FOR THE TERRITORIES. We welcome greater participation in all aspects of the political process by Americans residing in Guam, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, the Northern Marianas, and Puerto Rico. Because territorial America is far-flung and divergent, we know that any single approach to the future will not necessarily meet the needs of all. Republicans therefore emphasize respect for the wishes of those who reside in the territories regarding their relationship to the rest of the Union. We affirm the right of American citizens in the United States territories to seek the full extension of the Constitution with the accompanying rights and responsibilities, and we support all necessary legislation to permit them to do so. The Republican Party supports the right of the United States citizens of Puerto Rico to be admitted to the Union as a fully sovereign State after they freely so determine. We recognize that the people of Guam have voted for a closer relationship with the United States of America, and we reaffirm our support of their right to mutually improve their political relationship through commonwealth. We support American Samoa's efforts to advance toward economic self- reliance through a multi-year plan, while ensuring the protection afforded to the people of American Samoa by the original treaty of cession. We support the full extension of rights and responsibilities under the U.S. Constitution to American citizens of the Virgin Islands. We commend President Bush for the successful development of self- government in Micronesia and the Marshall Islands and for efforts to conclude the United Nations' last trusteeship in Palau consistent with the people's right of self-determination.