The Republicans: Looking to the 21st Century

As Americans and Jews, we view this November election as a watershed event, the political gateway to the 21st century.

In the domestic arena, the stakes for our community are high. We face a choice between the continuation of a welfare system that traps millions in a generational cycle of poverty and despair and an economy that rewards initiative and merit.

We face a choice between tolerating as inevitable the growing epidemic of criminal violence and making a determined effort to make our streets as safe as they were when we and our parents were young. It is a choice between group rights and quotas and individual rights and merit in jobs and government contracts.

It is a choice between the New Age values of Hollywood and the steadfast values of family and synagogue. It is a choice between more of the Clinton-Gore incumbency and the future envisioned by Bob Dole and Jack Kemp.

Bob Dole and Jack Kemp are committed to unleashing the productivity of America through a 15 percent tax cut. This tax relief will be financed, in part, through increased economic growth and through cutting our bloated federal budget.

The Washington pundits all say that cutting your taxes will explode the deficit. Bob Dole has always been a deficit hawk. We can pay for this tax cut by cutting just six cents out of every dollar. Surely we can find six cents of waste. Bob Dole and Jack Kemp would rather put $1500 back into the pocket of the average family than into the Internal Revenue Service!

In contrast, candidate Clinton in 1991 promised a middle-class tax cut and reneged on that commitment within a week of taking office. Instead, he gave us higher taxes.

A 15 percent tax cut will move us inevitably toward tax simplification. The Dole-Kemp plan will radically dismantle the IRS as we now know it. Americans spend over five billion hours a year filling out tax forms in a system overwhelmed with regulations and red tape. There is no reason why we cannot work toward a tax system in which you can file your taxes with a postcard.

That is the Dole-Kemp vision.

Americans should not have to enter the next century with fears about unsafe streets and a growing drug epidemic, but if we continue with the current policy, we will. So far, the Clinton drug program has been a resounding failure, with the rate of drug abuse among teenagers doubling since 1992. LSD use is at its highest since the government began gathering data in 1975. Yet President Clinton has reduced the budget for drug interdiction some 37 percent since taking office.

In 1993, Clinton gutted the “Drug Czar’s” office, cutting its staff by 83 percent. Only now in an election year is he taking this issue seriously.

Over 42 million crimes were committed in 1994 at an economic cost of about $400 billion. It’s time to start punishment where criminal careers begin — through tougher sentences for violent juvenile offenders. And it’s time to keep violent criminals in jail longer.

While Bill Clinton talks the talk about crime, he won’t walk the walk. Much has been made about Clinton’s pledge to add 100,000 new police officers. But, according to Attorney General Janet Reno, since that promise was made, only 17,000 have been added. Bob Dole supports the kind of realistic anti-crime measure that will make a difference and Bob Dole supports the rights of the victims of crime.

Most importantly, neither Bill Clinton nor Al Gore understand the fundamental truth that the root cause of crime is wrong moral choices. The solution, as Jack Kemp has stated, is “in teaching and modeling values and virtue to our youth.”

In the last 10 years, the Supreme Court has finally made explicit its opposition to the use of racial and ethnic quotas under the guise of affirmative action. The court has struck down racially motivated electoral districts in Shaw vs. Hunt and Bush vs. Vera, and it has outlawed the use of racial and ethnic numerical quotas in government contracting programs in Aderand.

In contrast, the promotion of discriminatory quotas has been a hallmark of the Clinton administration. The vaunted Clinton health care bill contained a provision which would have required medical schools to give preferences to “underrepresented” minorities in their selection of future medical specialists.

Even more remarkable, consider the recent quota case in Piscataway, N.J., where a downsizing school board had to choose between two business education teachers, one black and one white. The two teachers were stipulated to be equal in training and experience, yet instead of some random selection process, the school board laid off Sharon Taxman solely because she was white. When Taxman sued, she had the support of the Bush administration’s Justice Department.

In 1994, while the school board was appealing the case, the Clinton administration, to its shame, tried to switch sides and support the school board’s use of quotas. The Clinton Justice Department was wrong and a Dole/Kemp administration will stop this kind of proquota policy.

Jewish tradition tells us that wise men try to stand on the shoulders of their predecessors, taking the wisdom of the past and encapsulating it into a vision for the future. Bob Dole and Jack Kemp recognize that our future will not be secure if the values of family and synagogue do not endure into the next century. As we move closer to the 21st century, we need a leadership team with the character and moral vision to lead us into that future — Bob Dole and Jack Kemp.