1984 Democratic Party Platform
(43,891 words, 127 pages)
PREAMBLE
A fundamental choice awaits America ‹ a choice between two futures.
It is a choice between solving our problems, and pretending they don'texist; between the spirit of community, and the corrosion of selfishness;between justice for all, and advantage for some; between social decencyand social Darwinism; between expanding opportunity and contracting horizons;between diplomacy and conflict; between arms control and an arms race; betweenleadership and alibis.
America stands at a crossroads.
Move in one direction, and the President who appointed James Watt willappoint the Supreme Court majority for the rest of the century. The Presidentwho proposed deep cuts in Social Security will be charged with rescuingMedicare. The President who destroyed the Environmental Protection Agencywill decide whether toxic dumps get cleaned up. The President who foughtthe Equal Rights Amendment will decide whether women get fair pay for theirwork. The President who launched a covert war in Central America will determineour human rights policy. The President who abandoned the Camp David processwill oversee Middle East policy. The President who opposed every nucleararms control agreement since the bomb went off will be entrusted with thefate of the earth.
We offer a different direction.
For the economy, the Democratic Party is committed to economic growth,prosperity, and jobs. For the individual, we are committed to justice, decency,and opportunity For the nation, we are committed to peace, strength, andfreedom.
In the future we propose, young families will be able to buy and keepnew homes ‹ instead of fearing the explosion of their adjustable-ratemortgages. Workers will feel secure in their jobs ‹ instead of fearinglayoffs and lower wages. Seniors will look forward to retirement ‹instead of fearing it. Farmers will get a decent return on their investment‹ instead of fearing bankruptcy and foreclosure.
Small businesses will have the capital they need ‹ instead of creditthey can't afford, People will master technology ‹ instead of beingmastered or displaced by it. Industries will be revitalized ‹ not abandoned.Students will attend the best colleges and vocational schools for whichthey qualify‹instead of trimming their expectations Minorities willrise in the mainstream of economic life ‹ instead of waiting on thesidelines. Children will dream of better days ahead ‹ and not of nuclearholocaust.
Our Party is built on a profound belief in America and Americans.
We believe in the inspiration of American dreams, and the power of progressiveideals. We believe in the dignity of the individual, and the enormous potentialof collective action. We believe in building, not wrecking. We believe inbridging our differences, not deepening them. We believe in a fair societyfor working Americans of average income; an opportunity society for enterprisingAmericans; a caring society for Americans in need through no fault of theirown‹the sick, the disabled, the hungry, the elderly, the unemployed;and a safe, decent and prosperous society for all Americans.
We are the Party of American values ‹ the worth of every human being;the striving toward excellence; the freedom to innovate; the inviolabilityof law; the sharing of sacrifice; the struggle toward justice; the pursuitof happiness.
We are the Party of American progress ‹the calling to explore; thechallenge to invent; the imperative to improve; the importance of courage;the perennial need for fresh thinking, sharp minds, and ambitious goals.
We are the Party of American strength ‹the security of our defenses;the power of our moral values; the necessity of diplomacy; the pursuit ofpeace; the imperative of survival.
We are the Party of American vision ‹ the trustees of a better future.This platform is our road map toward that future.
Chapter 1. Economic Growth, Prosperity, and Jobs
Introduction
Building a prosperous America in a changing world: that is the Democraticagenda for the future. To build that America, we must meet the challengeof long-term, sustainable, noninflationary economic growth. Our future dependson it.
To a child, economic growth means the promise of quality education. Toa new graduate, it means landing a good first job. To a young family, growthmeans the opportunity to own a home or a car. To an unemployed worker, itmeans the chance to live in dignity again. To a farmer, growth means expandingmarkets, fair prices, and new customers. To an entrepreneur, it means ashot at a new business. To our nation, it means the ability to compete ina dramatically changing world economy. And to all in our society, growth‹ and the prosperity it brings ‹ means security, opportunity,and hope. Democrats want an economy that works for everyone ‹ not justthe favored few.
For our party and our country, it is vital that 1984 be a year of newdepartures.
We have a proud legacy to build upon: the Democratic tradition of caring,and the Democratic commitment to an activist government that understandsand accepts its responsibilities.
Our history has been proudest when we have taken up the challenges ofour times, the challenges we accept once again in 1984 ‹ to find newways, in times of accelerating change, to fulfill our historic commitments.We will continue to be the party of justice. And we will foster the productivityand growth on which justice depends.
For the 1980s, the Democratic Party will emphasize two fundamental economicgoals. We will restore rising living standards in our country. And we willoffer every American the opportunity for secure and productive employment.
Our program will be bold and comprehensive. It will ask restraint andcooperation from all sectors of the economy. It will rely heavily on theprivate sector as the prime source of expanding employment. And it willtreat every individual with decency and respect.
A Democratic Administration will take four key steps to secure a brightfuture of long-term economic growth and opportunity for every American:
THE FUTURE IF REAGAN IS REELECTED
"Since the Reagan Administration took office, my wife and I harelost half our net worth. Took us 20 years to build that up, and about threeto lose it. That is hard to deal with." David Sprague, Farmer, Colorado(Democratic Platform Committee Hearing, Springfield, Illinois, April 27,1984)
"There's got to be something wrong with our government's policywhen it's cheaper to shut a plant down than it is to operate it.... TheHouston Works plant sits right in the middle of the energy capital of theworld and 85 percent of our steel went directly into the energy-relatedmarket yet Japan could sit their products on our docks cheaper than we canmake it and roll it there." Early Clowers, President, Steel WorkersLocal 2708 (Democratic Platform Committee Hearing, Houston, Texas, May 29,1984).
A Democratic future of growth and opportunity, of mastering change ratherthan hiding from it, of promoting fairness instead of widening inequality,stands in stark contrast to another four years of Ronald Reagan. Stayingthe course with Ronald Reagan raises a series of hard questions about ableak future.
What would be the impact of the Republican deficit if Mr. Reagan is reelected?
A second Reagan term would bring federal budget deficits larger thanany in American history ‹ indeed, any in world history. Under the Republican'spolicies, the deficit will continue to mount. Interest rates, already risingsharply, will start to soar. Investments in the future will be slowed, thenstopped. The Reagan deficits mortgage the future and threaten the present.
Mr. Reagan has already conceded that these problems exist. But as hesaid in his 1984 Economic Report to the Congress, he prefers to wait untilafter the election to deal with them. And then, he plans "to enactspending reductions coupled with tax simplification that will eventuallyeliminate our budget deficit."
What will Mr. Reagan's plan for "tax simplification" mean toaverage Americans if he is reelected?
Ronald Reagan's tax "reforms" were a bonanza for the very wealthy,and a disaster for poor and middle-class Americans. If reelected, Mr. Reaganwill have more of the same in store. For him, tax simplification will meana further freeing of the wealthy from their obligation to pay their fairshare of taxes and an increasing burden on the average American.
How will Mr. Reagan's "spending reductions" affect averageAmericans if he is reelected?
If he gets a second term, Mr. Reagan will use the deficit to justifyhis policy of government by subtraction. The deficits he created will becomehis excuse for destroying programs he never supported. Medicare, SocialSecurity, federal pensions, farm price supports and dozens of other people-orientedprograms will be in danger.
If Mr. Reagan is reelected, will our students have the skills to workin a changing economy?
If we are to compete and grow, the next generation of Americans mustbe the best-trained, best-educated in history. While our competitors investin educating their children, Mr. Reagan cuts the national commitment toour schools. While our competitors spend greater and greater percentagesof their GNP on civilian research and development, this President has divertedincreasing portions of ours into military weaponry. These policies are short-sightedand destructive.
If Mr. Reagan is reelected, will basic industries and the workers theyemploy be brought into the future?
The Republican Administration has turned its back on basic industriesand their communities. Instead of putting forward policies to help revitalizeand adjust, Mr. Reagan tells blameless, anxious, displaced workers to abandontheir neighborhoods and homes and "vote with their feet."
America's economic strength was built on basic industries. Today, ina changing economy, they are no less important. Strong basic industriesare vital to our economic health and essential to our national security.And as major consumers of high technology, they are catalysts for growthin newly emerging fields. We need new approaches to ensure strong Americanbasic industries for the remainder of this century and beyond.
Can the road to the future be paved with potholes?
Adequate roads and bridges, mass transit, water supply and sewage treatmentfacilities, and ports and harbors are essential to economic growth. Forfour years, the Reagan Administration has refused to confront adequatelythe growing problems in our infrastructure. Another term will bring fourmore years of negligence and neglect.
If Mr. Reagan is reelected, how many children will join the millionsalready growing up at risk?
Between 1980 and 1982, more than two million younger Americans joinedthe ranks of the poor: the sharpest increase on record.
With the Reagan Administration's cutbacks in prenatal care and supplementalfood programs have come infant mortality rates in parts of our cities rivalingthose of the poorest Latin American nations. Black infants are now twiceas likely as white infants to die during the first year of life.
Cuts in school lunch and child nutrition programs have left far too manychildren hungry and unable to focus on their lessons.
Teenage prostitution, alcohol and drug abuse, depression, and suicidehave all been linked to child abuse. The Administration has abandoned mostavenues to breaking the cycle of abuse. Funding to prevent and treat childphysical abuse has been cut in half. And funds to help private groups setup shelters for runaway youth are being diverted elsewhere.
If Mr. Reagan is reelected, will we ensure that our children are ableto enjoy a clean, healthy environment?
Protecting our natural heritage ‹ its beauty and its richness ‹is not a partisan issue. For eighty years, every American President hasunderstood the importance of protecting our air, our water, and our health.Today, a growing population puts more demands on our environment. Chemicalswhich are unsafe or disposed of improperly threaten neighborhoods and families.And as our knowledge expands, we learn again and again how fragile lifeand health ‹ human and animal ‹ truly are.
Ensuring the environmental heritage of future generations demands actionnow. But the Reagan Administration continues to develop, lease, and sellirreplaceable wilderness lands. While thousands of toxic waste sites alreadyexist, and more and more are being created constantly, the Reagan Administrationis cleaning them up at a rate of only 1.5 per year. The environmental legacyof Ronald Reagan will be long-lasting damage that can never truly be undone.
If Mr. Reagan is reelected, will we be able to heat our homes and runour factories?
Twice in the past, our country has endured the high costs of dependenceon foreign oil. Yet the Reagan Administration is leaving us vulnerable toanother embargo or an interruption in oil supply. By failing adequatelyto fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and trusting blindly to the marketto "muddle through" in a crisis this Administration has wageredour national security on its economic ideology. One rude shock from abroador just one "market failure," and our country could find itselfplunged into another energy crisis.
The New Economic Reality: Five Reagan Myths
Underlying the Reagan approach to the economy are five key myths; mythsthat determine and distort the Reagan economic policy, and ensure that itis not the basis for long-term growth.
The world has changed, but Ronald Reagan does not understand.
First, and most fundamental, the Reagan Administration continues to actas if the United States were an economic island unto itself. But we havechanged from a relatively isolated economy to an economy of internationalinterdependence. In fact, the importance of international trade to the U.S.economy has roughly doubled in a decade. Exports now account for almost10 percent of GNP ‹ and roughly 20 percent of U.S. manufactured goods.One in six manufacturing jobs now depends on exports, and one in three acresis now planted for the overseas market. Imports have also doubled in importance.
Financial markets are also closely linked. U.S. direct investments andcommercial loans overseas now amount to hundreds of billions of dollars.A debt crisis in Mexico will affect balance sheets in San Francisco. A recessionin Europe will limit the profits of U.S. subsidiaries operating in the Europeanmarket. Lower overseas profits will limit the flow of earnings back to theUnited States ‹ one important way the U.S. has found to help pay forthe rising tide of imports. Hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign short-termcapital invested here are sensitive to small shifts in interest rates orthe appearance of added risk. It is only partly bad loans that brought ContinentalIllinois to the brink of bankruptcy. Heavily dependent on short-term foreigndeposits, Continental Illinois was particularly vulnerable. Rumors thatwere false at the time were enough to set off a run on the bank.
The strength of American steel, the competitiveness of the U.S. machinetool industry, and the long-term potential of U.S. agriculture are no longermatters decided exclusively in Washington or by the American market. Americamust look to Tokyo, Paris, and the money markets in Singapore and Switzerland.Policy based on the myth that America is independent of the world aroundus is bound to fail.
Second, this Administration has ignored the enormous changes sweepingthrough the American work force.
The maturing of the baby boom generation, the sharp increase in the percentageof women seeking work, and the aging of the work force all have to be takeninto account.
Decade by decade, more and more women have moved into the work force.This large-scale movement is already changing the nature of professions,altering the patterns of child care and breaking down sex-based distinctionsthat have existed in many types of employment.
In Ronald Reagan's vision of America, there are no single parent families,women only stay at home and care for children. Reagan's families do notworry about the effects of unemployment on family stability; they do notworry about decent housing and health care; they do not need child care.But in the real world, most Americans do. Providing adequate child carefor the minions of American children who need it, and for their parents,is surely not a responsibility which belongs solely to the federal government.But, like the responsibility for decent housing and health care, it is onewhere federal leadership and support are essential.
The work force is also aging. For the first time in this century, theaverage American is 31 years of age. Coupled with greater longevity andthe gradual elimination of mandatory retirement rules, older workers canbe expected to increase steadily their share of the total work force.
Moreover, the kinds of jobs available in our economy are changing rapidly.The combined pressures of new products, new process technology, and foreigncompetition are changing the face of American industry.
New technologies, shifting economics and deregulation have opened updozens of new careers both in traditional industrial concerns and in newbusinesses. Many of them did not exist at all only a few years ago.
And the change is far from over. In setting national policy, a governmentthat ignores that change is bound to fail. In setting national policy, agovernment that ignores the future is short-changing the American people.
Third, the Reagan program has ignored the fundamental changes that aresweeping through the structure of American industry, the diversity of theeconomy and the challenges various sectors face. New products and new waysof manufacturing are part of the change. High technology is creating newcompetitive industries, and holding out the promise of making older industriescompetitive once again. Foreign competition has also had a major impact.But the tide runs much deeper than that.
In the past decade, small business and new entrepreneurs have becomemore and more of a driving force in the American economy. Small businessesare a growing force in innovation, employment, and the long-term strengthof the American economy.
Technology itself appears to be changing the optimal size of Americanbusinesses. And unlike the conglomerate mergers of the 1960s, renewed emphasison quality and efficient production has shifted the focus back to industry-specificexperience.
An Administration that sets tax policy, spending priorities, and an overallgrowth program without understanding the new dynamics and the diversityof American industry is weakening, rather than strengthening the Americaneconomy.
Reaganomics is based on the theory that blanket tax cuts for businessand the rich would turn directly into higher productivity, that privateinvestors and industry would use the money saved to restore our edge ininnovation and competitiveness.
In practice, the theory failed because it did not take into account thediversity within our economy. The economy is composed of a set of complexpublic and private institutions which are intricately interrelated and increasinglyinfluenced by the pressures of international competition. In the internationaleconomy, multinational companies and governments cooperate to win tradeadvantage, often at American expense.
We are coming to understand that in an expanding number of markets, industrialstrategies, rather than just the energies of individual firms, influencecompetitive success. Indeed, success in marketing a product may depend moreon the quality and productivity of the relationship between government andbusiness than on the quality of the product. While several foreign industrialstrategies have failed, foreign governments are becoming more sophisticatedin the design and conduct of their industrial strategies. The Reagan Administrationis not.
Fourth, the Reagan Administration has acted as if deficits do not count.The deficits are huge and are expected to get larger ‹ and they area major negative factor in everything from high interest rates to the thirdworld debt crisis.
‹ Because of the huge tax cuts to benefit the wealthy, and an enormousmilitary buildup bought on credit, the federal deficit in 1983 was equivalentto 6% of our GNP. In dollars it amounted to almost 200 billion ‹ morethan three times larger than the deficit Ronald Reagan campaigned againstin 1980.
‹ Under the budget Reagan proposed to Congress earlier this year,the annual deficit would grow to $248 billion by 1989, and unless he makesmajor changes in current policy, it will exceed $300 billion. Reagan doubledthe national debt during his first term. Given eight years, he will havetripled it. According to the proposed budget, at the end of his second termReagan by himself will have put this country three times deeper into debtthan all our other Presidents combined.
‹ As the Reagan debt hangs over us, more and more of our tax dollarsare going nowhere. By 1989, the percentage of federal revenues to be spenton deficit interest payments alone will have doubled. These unproductivepayments will claim a staggering 42¢ on every personal income tax dollarwe pay. This huge allocation will do nothing to reduce the principal ofthe debt; it will only finance the interest payments.
‹ The interest payments on Reagan's debt are grossly out of linewith historical spending patterns. Since 1981, more money has been squanderedon interest payments on the Reagan-created debt alone than has been savedby all of Reagan's cuts in domestic spending. Non-defense discretionaryspending, to be productively invested in programs to benefit the poor andmiddle class, and to build our social capital, is being overwhelmed by theenormous sums of money wasted on interest payments. By 1989, the annualpayment will account for twice the percentage of federal revenue that wehave ever set aside for such discretionary programs.
‹ Interest payments on the debt are rising at an alarming rate.Today the annual payment has already reached $110 billion ‹ twice whatit was four years ago. During a second Reagan term, it will double again,reaching $207 billion by 1989.
‹ The consequences for the individual taxpayer are enormous. Deficitincreases under Reagan so far are equivalent to $2,387 levied from everywoman, man and child alive in the United States today.
‹ The consequences for the nation as a whole are also enormous.The massive government borrowing necessary to service the debt will amountto about three-quarters of the entire nation's net savings between 1983and 1986.
The pressure of the deficits on interest rates has sucked in a wave ofoverseas investment. Some of those investments have been made in manufacturingplants or other commercial enterprises. Much of the foreign money, however,is in the form of portfolio holdings or even more liquid short-term bankdeposits. It is an uncertain source of savings for a long-term investmentprogram. To a limited degree, it puts the country in the same risky positionas Continental Illinois Bank which relied heavily on short-term foreigndeposits to make long-term domestic loans.
High interest rates will eventually take their toll on domestic investment,make their own contribution to inflationary pressure (while eventually slowinggrowth and inflation), and increase the tensions in the domestic bankingsystem. They will also have a potentially devastating impact on the internationaleconomy. Each percentage point rise in U.S. interest rates adds $3-5 billionto the annual debt payments of the developing world. High American interestrates have also put added pressure on interest rates in the industrial democracies,dampening their own prospects for growth, and their ability to buy our goods.
Fifth, and finally, the Reagan Administration has virtually wished awaythe role of government. When it comes to the economy, its Zeus is that thegovernment that governs best is one that governs not at all.
A Democratic Administration must answer this challenge by reaffirmingthe principle that government must both "provide for the common defense"and "promote the general welfare" as coequal responsibilitiesunder the Constitution. If the Democratic Party can succeed in correctingthe present imbalance, it will reverse the cycle of pain and despair, andrecapture the initiative in the area of social and economic progress.
The Reagan Administration succeeded in shifting massive resources fromhuman needs functions of the Federal budget to military-related functionsand created unprecedented deficits, based on the assumption that governmentshould have a diminished responsibility for social progress, and thus, forthe welfare of the needy and disadvantaged in society. The resulting Reagan-inducedrecession caused tremendous suffering, threw millions of people out of work,terminated or reduced benefits, and raised the national misery index.
Mr. Reagan denies government's critical role in our economy. Governmentcannot, and should not, dominate our free enterprise economy. But Americanprosperity has been most pronounced when the government played a supportiveor catalytic role in the nation's economic fortunes. There are a wide varietyof examples stretching back through our entire history: government investmentsin roads and research, in education and training; government initiativesin opening up new economic possibilities, initiatives that started withthe decision to protect domestic markets shortly after the Revolution tothe ongoing commercial development of space.
Agriculture is a clear example of government cooperation with a highlycompetitive private sector that has yielded a harvest of economic resultsthat is the envy of the world. The government helps fund the research, helpsspread it through the economy, educates the modern farmer, influences productionlevels, and helps develop new markets overseas. It is America's most conspicuousexample of a successful industrial strategy ‹ combining the cooperativeefforts of business, government and our universities.
Reagan's Recession and A Recovery Built on Debt
The Economic Roller Coaster ‹ Following the first oil shock in 1973,the United States embarked on a ten year economic roller coaster. The upand down performance of the economy was paralleled by erratic macro-economicpolicy. There were wide swings from stimulative fiscal and monetary policiescausing raging inflation, to government-engineered recessions.
The frequency of the cycles created a climate of uncertainty that wastailor-made to discourage and distort investment. Each cycle left the economyweaker than the one before. At the end of each recession the level of inflationwas higher, and at the end of each recovery the level of unemployment hadrisen.
Even more disturbing was the decline in the rate of growth of productivity.By the end of the 1970s, productivity growth first stopped and then fell.Productivity growth has finally resumed‹but the rate of growth remainsdisappointing compared both to our own economic past and the performanceof other industrial economies.
Reaganomics and an Election Year Recovery ‹ Ronald Reagan sweptinto office on the promise of a smaller government and a bigger privatesector, of higher GNP and lower inflation, and of the elimination of federaldeficits.
First, he proposed huge tax cuts. Mr. Reagan went so far as to suggestthat the growth caused by his tax cuts would be so rapid that total taxrevenues would actually rise even while tax rates were cut.
Second, he promised a huge defense build-up.
Third, he promised stable prices. How was he going to contain priceswhile stimulating rapid growth? His answer was tight money.
Fourth, the supply-siders promised growth and stable prices without theintervening pain of a recession. In effect, Reagan promised tight moneywithout tears.
Cut taxes but raise more revenues. Arm to the teeth. Growth with stableprices. Tight money and no hard times. It just did not work out that way.Worse, there was never any reason to expect that it would. Reagan's kindof tax cuts were based neither on rational economic theory nor on any empiricalevidence. And wishing simply did not make it so. George Bush was right whenhe called Reaganomics "voodoo economics."
Instead of growth, the country had plunging production and record unemployment.Instead of increased savings and investment, the country had bankruptcyand economic decline. The Reagan policies, which were supposed to breakthe cycle of inflation and recession, only made it worse.
Reagan cut domestic programs, but more than offset those cuts with vastlyincreased defense spending. The Government significantly reduced the growthof the money supply and kept real interest rates high. For a recession,real interest rates reached record highs. These interest rates brought anadded problem. They attracted foreign funds and helped drive up the internationalvalue of the dollar. American business was faced with a double whammy‹emptyorder books and high interest rates. For the increasingly large part ofAmerican business that either sells overseas or competes with imports athome, the over-valued dollar abroad meant their products cost far more comparedto the foreign competition.
Reagan effectively created a tax on exports and a subsidy for imports.It was a climate that forced record bankruptcies, enormous unemployment,plant closings, and major corporate reorganizations. It was the largestand most severe economic collapse since the Great Depression.
The Reagan Administration then prepared for the election year by "stayingthe course" in fiscal policy (pumping up demand with huge deficits)and sharply reversing the course in monetary policy.
The Federal Reserve Board rapidly expanded the supply of money and theeconomy ceased to decline and began to recover.
The Millions Left Behind‹But millions of Americans were left behind.Over the last two years, 1.8 million men and women became discouraged workersand more than 5.4 million have fallen into poverty. Nearly half of all minorityyouth are unemployed, and Black males have effectively lost 13 percent oftheir labor force participation in the last two decades. Unemployment onIndian reservations continues to be among the highest in the nation.
The U.S.-Mexico border has been devastated by the currency devaluationsand economic crisis in Mexico. Small businesses have closed; American familiesare suffering hunger and poor health, as unemployment exceeds depressionrates. Women continue to receive less than 60 percent of the wages thatmen receive, with minority women receiving far less. Millions of other Americans,including the growing number of women heading poor households or those whohave been hard-hit by plant closings or obsolescent skills, avidly seektraining or retraining in occupations that hold real promise for sustainedemployment opportunities in the future.
Millions of Americans, including those in the industrial and agriculturalheartland, have been severely affected by the recent recession and the transformationin American industry that accompanied it. Furthermore, the changes seemto have come very quickly, and they do not seem to be over. Many Americansworked in auto steel, machine tool, textile, agriculture and small businessand related industries. Today for many of them, the recovery is a fiction,or seems very fragile. Plant closings have hit hard and job security andloss of health and pension benefits evoke memories from the past.
Investment in jobs for all Americans constitutes the key investment forthe future of the nation. For every one million workers who go back to workour country produces an additional $60-70 billion in goods and adds $25billion to the Federal treasury. The Democratic Party will work aggressivelyto stimulate employment, rebuild trade and encourage labor-intensive industrialization.
Seven Threats to the Recovery
The current election year recovery is in serious jeopardy, threatenedby a series of major economic problems:
Howard Baker called Mr. Reagan's policies a "riverboat gamble."We now know the outcome. The very wealthiest in our society have been bigwinners‹but future generations of Americans will be the losers.
The Americans coming of age today face a future less secure and lessprosperous than their parents did ‹ unless we change course. We havean obligation to our children and to their children. We Democrats have adifferent vision of our future.
THE DEMOCRATIC ALTERNATIVE: A PROSPEROUS AMERICA IN A CHANGINGWORLD
"There's a lot of people out there only making $3.35 an hour, andthat's been since '81. That's a long time to be making $3.35 an hour....Costs of living have gone up considerably. The insurance has gone up, gas,lights, water. It's a whole lot different now, it's not the same as '81.I know times have changed, but why can't the $3.35 change with them? I wouldlike to know if anybody can answer. I urge the Democratic Party to developpolicies and protect working people." Doris Smith, Steward, SEIU Local706 (Democratic Platform Committee Hearing, Houston, Texas, May 29, 1984)
"We do not have a surplus as long as one member of my family ishungry. He may live next door or on the other side of the world. However,it should not be the producer's responsibility to provide cheap food atthe expense of his own children." Roberta Archer, Farmer, Springfield,Illinois (Democratic Platform Committee Hearing, Springfield, Illinois,April 27, 1984)
"In the four years prior to Mr. Reagan taking over, I was fortunateto have four good years of employment, and I was able to put money asidein savings accounts which since have been exhausted. My unemployment benefitsare exhausted too.... I may not qualify for any type of public assistanceand the standard of living I was accustomed to for my wife and myself andmy family has drastically changed.... But we as Democrats can join togetherin harmony and unison and we decide what is the future or the fate of ourpeople and what is good for all of us. So I am very proud to be a Democrat."James Price, unemployed mine worker (Democratic Platform Committee Hearing,Birmingham, Alabama, April 24, 1984)
Democratic growth is not just a matter of good numbers, but of opportunitiesfor people. Jobs and employment are at the center of Democratic thinking.It is not only a question of legislation or appropriations. Rather, it isa philosophy that views employment as the ongoing concern of the country.Work in America is not an idle concept ‹ but a definition of self,a door to future opportunity, and the key step in securing the economicnecessities of the present.
An America at work is a moral obligation as well as the most effectiveway to return our economy to a high growth path. Employed people stimulatethe economy, their taxes pay for the expenses of government and their productionadds to our national wealth. Moreover, the social and economic fabric ofthe nation will be strengthened as millions of Americans who presently arefrozen out of productive and dignified employment become contributing citizens.
The potential for America is unlimited. It is within our means to putAmerica back on a long-term path that will assure both growth and broad-basedeconomic opportunity. That is what the next Democratic Administration willdo. First, we will adopt overall economic policies that will bring interestrates down, free savings for private investment, prevent another explosionof inflation, and put the dollar on a competitive basis. Second, we willinvest for our future ‹ in our people, and in our infrastructure. Third,we will promote new partnerships and participation by all levels of government,by business and labor, to support growth and productivity. Finally, governmentwill work with the private sector to assure that American businesses andAmerican workers can compete fully and fairly in a changing world economy.
Overall Economic Policies: A Firm Ground For Growth
A Democratic Administration will pursue economic policies which providethe basis for long-term economic growth and will allow us to fulfill ourcommitment to jobs for all Americans who want to work. A key part of theeffort will be reducing and eventually eliminating the deficits that currentlyform a dark cloud over the nation's future. In addition, monetary policymust be set with an eye to stability and to the strengths or weaknessesof the economy. Finally, we will pursue policies that will promote pricestability and prevent inflation from breaking out again.
Reducing the Reagan Budget Deficits
After plunging the nation into a deficit crisis, President Reagan refusesto take part in efforts to solve it. He postpones hard decisions until afterthe Presidential election, refusing to compromise, refusing to address revenuesand defense spending seriously, refusing all but a "down payment"on the deficit. The President continues to stand apart from serious, comprehensiveefforts to cut the deficit. There must be statesmanship and compromise here,not ideological rigidity or election year politics.
The Democratic Party is pledged to reducing these intolerable deficits.We will reassess defense expenditures; create a tax system that is bothadequate and fair; control skyrocketing health costs without sacrificingquality of care; and eliminate other unnecessary expenditures. Through efficiencyand toughness, we will restore sanity to our fiscal house.
We oppose the artificial and rigid Constitutional restraint of a balancedbudget amendment. Further we oppose efforts to call a federal constitutionalconvention for this purpose.
Rational Defense Spending ‹ In the last three years, the DefenseDepartment was told by this Administration that it could have anything itwanted, and at any price. As Democrats, we believe in devoting the neededresources to ensure our national security. But military might cannot bemeasured solely by dollars spent. American military strength must be securedat an affordable cost. We will reduce the rate of increase in defense spending.Through careful reevaluation of proposed and existing weapons, we will stopthrowing away money on unworkable or unnecessary systems; through militaryreform we will focus defense expenditure on the most cost-effective militarypolicies. We will insist that our allies contribute fairly to our collectivesecurity, and that the Department of Defense reduces its scandalous procurementwaste.
And above all else, we will seek sensible arms control agreements asa means of assuring that there will be a future for our children and thatwe as a nation will have the resources we need to invest for the future.
Tax Reform‹America needs a tax system that encourages growth andproduces adequate revenues in a fair, progressive fashion. The DemocraticParty is committed to a tax policy that embodies these basic values.
The present system is unfair, complex, and encourages people to use awide range of loopholes to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. The combinationof loopholes for the few and high rates for the many is both unfair andanti-growth. It distorts investment, diverting creative energies into taxavoidance. And it makes the tax code even less comprehensible to the averageAmerican.
Our tax code must produce sufficient revenue to finance our defense andallow for investment in our future, and we will ask every American to payhis or her fair share. But by broadening the tax base, simplifying the taxcode, lowering rates, and eliminating unnecessary, unfair and unproductivedeductions and tax expenditures, we can raise the revenues we need and promotegrowth without increasing the burden on average taxpayers.
Ronald Reagan's tax program gave huge breaks to wealthy individuals andto large corporations while shifting the burden to low and moderate incomefamilies. The Democratic Party is pledged to reverse these unsound policies.We will cap the effect of the Reagan tax cuts for wealthy Americans andenhance the progressivity of our personal income tax code, limiting thebenefits of the third year of the Reagan tax cuts to the level of thosewith incomes of less than $60,000. We will partially defer indexation whileprotecting average Americans. We will close loopholes, eliminate the preferencesand write-offs, exemptions, and deductions which skew the code toward therich and toward unproductive tax shelters. Given the fact that there hasbeen a veritable hemorrhage of capital out of the federal budget, reflectedin part by the huge budget deficit, there must be a return to a fair taxon corporate income. Under the Reagan Administration, the rate of taxationon corporations has been so substantially reduced that they are not contributingtheir fair share to federal revenues. We believe there should be a 15% minimumcorporate tax. In addition, our tax code has facilitated the transfer ofcapital from the United States to investments abroad, contributing to plantclosing without notice in many communities and loss of millions of jobs.We will toughen compliance procedures to reduce the $100 billion annualtax evasion.
Our country must move to a simpler, more equitable, and more progressivetax system. Our tax code can let the market put our country's savings tothe best use. There must be a fair balance between corporate and personaltax increases. Wealthier taxpayers will have to shoulder a greater shareof the new tax burdens. Economic distortions must be eliminated.
Controlling Domestic Spending‹A balanced program for reducing Republicanmegadeficits must also deal with the growing costs of domestic programs.But this must be done in a way that is fair to average Americans.
Social Security is one of the most important and successful initiativesin the history of our country, and it is an essential element of the socialcompact that binds us together as a community. There is no excuse ‹as the Reagan Administration has repeatedly suggested ‹ for slashingSocial Security to pay for excesses in other areas of the budget. We willsteadfastly oppose such efforts, now and in the future.
It is rather in the area of health care costs that reform is urgentlyneeded. By 1988, Medicare costs will rise to $106 billion; by the turn ofthe century, the debt of the trust fund may be as great as $1 trillion.In the Republican view, the problem is the level of benefits which seniorcitizens and the needy receive. As Democrats, we will protect the interestsof health care beneficiaries. The real problem is the growing cost of healthcare services.
We propose to control these costs, and to demand that the health careindustry become more efficient in providing care to all Americans, bothyoung and old. We will limit what health care providers can receive as reimbursement,and spur innovation and competition in health care delivery. The growthof alternative health care delivery systems such as HMOs, PPOs and alternativesto long-term care such as home care and social HMOs should be fostered sothat high quality care will be available at a lower cost. We must learnthe difference between health care and sick care.
Unlike the Republicans, we recognize that investing in preventive healthcare saves dollars as well as lives, and we will make the needed investment.The states must be the cornerstone of our health care policies, but a DemocraticAdministration will provide the leadership at the federal level to assurethat health care is available to all who need help at a cost we can afford.In addition, we pledge to scour the budget for other areas of wasteful orunnecessary spending.
Monetary Policy for Growth
Reducing the deficit is the first step toward lowering interest ratesand establishing the basis for fair tax and budget policies. But even witha Democratic fiscal policy reining in the deficit, the task of the FederalReserve Board will be critical. Monetary policy must work to achieve stablereal interest rates, the availability of capital for long-term investments,predictable long-term policy and stable prices. We reject the rigid adherenceto monetary targets that has frequently characterized the Reagan monetarypolicy. Whatever targeting approach the Federal Reserve Board adopts, itmust be leavened with a pragmatic appraisal of what is happening in theharsh world of the real economy, particularly the impact on unemployment,interest rates, and the international value of the dollar.
An Anti-Inflation Program
We have learned that sustained economic growth is impossible in a climateof high inflation or of inflationary expectations. The Reagan Administration'sonly prescription for inflation is recession ‹ deliberate high unemployment‹ coupled with a relentless assault on the collective bargaining powerand rights of working men and women. The Democratic Party believes thatthese tactics are both unacceptable and ineffective.
We will develop the following five-step program to stabilize prices:
‹ Growth ‹ full order books encourage investments in new plantsand equipment and research and development. The productivity growth thatcomes in tandem with new investment will help offset ‹ point for point‹ any increase in cost.
‹ Increased flexibility in the marketplace ‹ will also helpkeep inflationary pressures under control. There is no single policy thatwill make the U.S. economy more adaptable. Rather, there is a series ofsmaller steps which will help keep prices stable. In general, competitivemarkets are more likely to restrain sudden surges of prices than are marketsdominated by a few large firms. No Democratic Administration will forgetthe use of old fashioned antitrust policy to keep markets competitive andprices down.
‹ Trade policy ‹ is also an important component of any effectiveanti-inflation program. Expanding world markets for American goods increasethe gains from large scale production and stimulate research and developmenton new products and processes.
‹ The price-wage spiral ‹ as part of any effective anti-inflationprogram, serious policies to address the price-wage spirals and other inflationarypressures we have experienced in the past must be developed.
‹ We believe that an attack on sectoral sources of inflation ‹in food, fuel, utilities, health care, and elsewhere ‹ is essentialwithout economic distortions. Our agriculture, energy, and health programswill all promote sectoral price stability while assuring fair treatmentfor average Americans, including working men and women and family farmers.For examples the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is one clear response to reducingthe chance of another oil shock. The very presence of reserves in the U.S.,Japan, and elsewhere reduces the likelihood of panic buying to replace suddenlythreatened oil supplies. In this context, a far-reaching energy policy thatemphasizes conservation and the development of alternative energy supplieswill also help stabilize energy prices. And lower interest rates from reducedbudget deficits will reduce upward pressure on housing costs and bring housingback within the reach of millions of Americans now excluded from the market.
Investing in People
America's greatest resource is our people. As Democrats, we affirm theneed for both public and private investment‹in our children; in oureducational institutions and our students; in jobs, training, and transitionalassistance for our workers ‹to build America's future. If we choosewisely, these investments will be returned to our country many times over.They are essential if we are to create an America with high-quality jobsand rising opportunities for all. And they are vital if we are to safeguardour competitive position in the world economy.
Investing in Children
Simple decency demands that we make children one of our highest nationalpriorities. But the argument for so acting goes well beyond that. Programsfor children represent the most critical investment we can make in our abilityto compete in future world markets and maintain a strong national defensein the decades ahead.
Above all else, the Democratic Party stands for making the proper investmentin coming generations of Americans.
Preventive efforts must be at the heart of the broad range of health,child care, and support programs for children. Helping these children makesgood moral sense‹ and sound economic sense. Measles vaccine alone hassaved $1.3 billion in medical costs in just ten years. Supplemental foodprograms for low-income pregnant women and infants save $3 for every dollarspent.
By improving access to medical care before and after birth, we can promotea generation of healthy mothers and healthy babies. Seeing that supplementalfood programs for low-income pregnant women and infants reach all thoseeligible will do more than save the $40,000 now spent to treat one low birthweight infant in a neo-natal ward. It will also reduce the risk of birthdefects for such infants.
We recognize that a hungry child is a child who cannot learn. Restoringschool breakfast and school lunches for millions of children will improvetheir alertness and concentration in school.
Child care must also be a top priority. Helping communities establishafterschool care programs will remove millions of American children fromthe serious risks they now face of injury, abuse and alienation by stayingat home alone. Encouraging employers, churches, public centers, and privategroups to provide quality, affordable child care will give millions of childrenwhose parents must work the kind of adult supervision necessary to thrive.And setting up centers for child care information and referral will assistparents wherever they reside to locate quality care for their children.
Preventing child abuse must be at the forefront of Democratic Party concern.Local, community-based child abuse prevention programs must be strengthenedand expanded. A child who learns first about the risks of sexual abuse inschool will be less likely to become the target of repeated victimization.Federal challenge grants could encourage states to make local preventionefforts a real priority.
Prompt intervention efforts must also be provided for children in crisis.If we are to make any headway in breaking the cycle of child abuse, bothvictims and offenders must have access to treatment programs.
Juvenile offenders must not be left in adult jails where the only skillsthey acquire are those of the career criminal. Safe shelter and assistancemust be available for the hundreds of thousands of runaway children at riskof exploitation in our cities. Local, state, and federal law enforcementagencies must refine ways to locate children who have been abducted. Andchildren in foster care must not be allowed to graduate to the streets atage 18 without ever having known a permanent home.
We must ensure that essential surveys on children's health and welfarestatus are reinstated. We know more about the number of matches sold thanabout the number of children across the country who die in fires while aloneat home. Likewise, we know less about hunger and malnutrition among childrenthan we do about the health of the nation's poultry stock.
The Democratic Party affirms its commitment to protecting the healthand safety of children in the United States. Existing laws mandating theuse of automobile child restraints must be enforced, and child safety seatloaner or rental programs and public education programs must be encouraged,in order to reduce significantly the leading cause of death and seriousinjury among children between the ages of six months and five years ‹motor vehicle crashes.
The crises devastating many of our nation's youth is nowhere more dramaticallyevidenced than in the alarming rate of increase in teenage suicide. Over6,000 young people took their lives in 1983, and for each actual suicide50 to 100 other youths attempted suicide. The underlying causes of teenagesuicide, as well as its full scope, are not adequately researched or understood.We must commit ourselves to seek out the causes, formulate a national policyof prevention, and provide guidance to our state and local governments indeveloping means to stem this devastating tide of self-destruction. We supportthe creation of a national panel on teenage suicide to respond to this challenge.
A Democratic Administration which establishes these priorities can reducethe risks for our young people and improve the odds. By so doing, it willserve their future ... and ours.
Investing in Education
No public investment is more important than the one we make in the minds,skills and discipline of our people. Whether we are talking about a strongeconomy, a strong defense or a strong system of justice, we cannot achieveit without a strong educational system. Our very future in internationaleconomic competition depends on skilled workers and on first-rate scientists,engineers, and managers.
We Democrats are committed to equity in education. We will insist onexcellence, discipline, and high standards. Quality education depends onstudents, teachers and parents performing at the highest levels of achievement.
Today, education in America needs help. But, the Reagan Administrationoffers misleading homilies about the importance of education while aggressivelyslashing education programs.
This is intolerable. We know that every dollar we invest in educationis ultimately returned to us six-fold. We know that the education of ourcitizens is critical to our democracy.
There are four key goals that a Democratic program for educational excellencemust address: strengthening local capacity to innovate and progress in publiceducation and encourage parental involvement; renewing our efforts to ensurethat all children, whatever their race, income, or sex have a fair and equalchance to learn; attracting the most talented young people into teachingand enabling them to remain and develop in their profession; and ensuringthat all American families can send their children on to college or advancedtraining.
Primary and Secondary Education ‹ While education is the responsibilityof local government, local governments already strapped for funds by thisAdministration cannot be expected to bear alone the burden of undertakingthe efforts we need for quality education ‹ from teacher training,to the salaries needed to attract and retain able teachers, to new labs,to new programs to motivate talented and gifted students, to new ties betweenbusinesses and schools ‹ without leadership at the federal level.
Democrats will provide that leadership. We call for the immediate restorationof the cuts in funding of education programs by the Reagan Administration,and for a major new commitment to education. We will create a partnershipfor excellence among federal, state and local governments. We will provideincentives to local school districts to concentrate on science, math, communicationsand computer literacy; to provide access to advanced technology. In allof these fields, but particularly in computers, there is a growing dangerof a two-tier education system. The more affluent districts have adequatehardware and teachers prepared to use it. Many districts are left completelybehind or saddled with a modern machine but no provision for faculty training.Every American child should have the basic education that makes computerliteracy possible and useful. Major attention must be given to recruitingthe finest young people into teaching careers, and to providing adequatestaff development programs that enable educators to increase their effectivenessin meeting the needs of all students.
Vocational education should be overhauled to bring instructional materials,equipment, and staff up to date with the technology and practices for theworkplace and target assistance to areas with large numbers of disadvantagedyouth. We will insist that every child be afforded an equal opportunityto fulfill his or her potential. We will pay special attention to the needsof the handicapped.
Education is an important key to the upward mobility of all citizensand especially the disadvantaged, despite the fact that racial discriminationand other prejudices have set limits to such achievement.
The Reagan Administration has singled out for extinction the proven mostsuccessful education program ‹ compensatory education for disadvantagedchildren. The Democratic Party will reverse this malicious onslaught anddramatically strengthen support in order to provide educational equity forall children.
Bilingual education enables children to achieve full competence in theEnglish language and the academic success necessary to their full participationin the life of our nation. We reject the Reagan doubletalk on bilingualeducation and commit ourselves to expanding and increasing its effectiveness.
We will emphasize the importance of preventing one-third of our studentbody nationwide from dropping out of school in the first place. And, wewill supplement community-based programs encouraging students who have leftschool due to teenage parenthood, alcohol and drug abuse, or economic difficultiesat home to complete their educations.
Recognizing that young people who are never given an opportunity fora job will be less likely to hold one in adulthood, we will also emphasizetraining and employment opportunities for youth. In so doing, we need toestablish a genuine working partnership with the private sector.
Private schools, particularly parochial schools, are also an importantpart of our diverse educational system. Consistent with our tradition, theDemocratic Party accepts its commitment to constitutionally acceptable methodsof supporting the education of all pupils in schools which do not raciallydiscriminate, and excluding so-called segregation academies. The Party willcontinue to support federal education legislation which provides for theequitable participation in federal programs of all low and moderate incomepupils.
For its part, when added to the traditional educational institutionsof family, school and church, television has enormous promise as a teacher.When children spend more time in front of the television set than they doin the classroom, we must ask how television can help children, and whycommercial broadcasters do so little programming for children today despitetheir legal responsibility as "public trustees" of the airwavesgranted to them. The National Science Board, for instance, has recommendedthat commercial television stations be required to air a certain amountof information/educational programming for children each week. Properlydeveloped, television can be an enormously efficient and effective supplementalteaching tool.
Higher Education ‹ We will make certain that higher education doesnot become a luxury affordable only by the children of the rich. That isRonald Reagan's America. In our America, no qualified student should bedeprived of the ability to go on to college because of financial circumstance.
The Democratic Party reaffirms the importance of historically Black colleges.Today the survival of many of these colleges is threatened. The programsthat assist them, which have been severely weakened in recent years, mustbe greatly strengthened with funding targeted toward Black and Hispanicinstitutions.
An explosion in demand for certain types of engineers, scientists andother technical specialists is creating a shortage of faculty and PhD candidates.We must encourage colleges and universities to train more scientists andengineers. More than one hundred years ago the Morrill Land Grant Act providedfor agricultural colleges and programs that today still help keep Americanagriculture the world leader. We need a similar program today to encouragethe training of scientists and engineers. At the same time, we must notneglect the arts and humanities, which enrich our spirit. The private sectormust also recognize its responsibility to join partnerships which strengthenour diverse public and private higher education system.
Finally, all our educational institutions must adapt to growing numbersof adults returning to school to upgrade their skills, acquire new skills,prepare themselves for entirely new occupations, and enrich their lives.
Investing in the Arts
America is truly growing and prosperous when its spirit flourishes. Thearts and humanities are at the core of our national experience. Creativityand the life of the mind have defined us at our best throughout our history.As scholars or artists, the museum-goers or students, craftsmen and craftswomenor the millions who use our libraries, countless Americans have a stakein a nation that honors and rejoices in intelligence and imagination.
The Democratic Party will set a new national tone of respect for learningand artistic achievement. Not only will the federal agencies that supportthem be strengthened and freed from political intimidation, but the WhiteHouse itself will once again be a place where American cultural and intellectuallife ‹ in all its rich diversity ‹ is honored. Excellence muststart at the top.
Finally, the Democratic Party is also committed to the survival of publictelevision and radio stations, which allow all Americans, regardless ofability to pay, to appreciate high quality, alternative programming. Weoppose the efforts of the Reagan Administration to enact draconian cutswhich would totally undermine the viability of this nation's excellent publicbroadcasting system, a broadcasting system which has given the country SesameStreet, 3-2-1 Contact, and other superb children's as well as cultural andpublic affairs programming.
Jobs, Training and Transitional Assistance
We must have a growing economy if we are to have jobs for all Americanswho seek work. But even in a growing economy, the pressures of competitionand the pace of change ensure that while jobs are being created, othersare being destroyed. Prosperity will not be evenly distributed among regionsand communities. We must make special efforts to help families in economictransition who are faced with loss of homes health benefits, and pensions.And far too many of our young people, especially minorities, do not havethe training and skills they need to get their first job. Democrats believethat it is a national responsibility to ensure that the burdens of changeare fairly shared and that every young American can take the first stepup the ladder of economic opportunity.
Of the 8.5 million Americans still out of work, 40 percent are under25. Unemployment among teenagers stands at almost 20 percent. Less thanthree percent of the jobs created in the last three and a half years havegone to young people. Black and Hispanic youth have a double burden. Unemploymentfor black teenagers stands at 44 percent ‹ a 20 percent increase inthe last three years. Hispanic teens face a 26 percent unemployment rate.
As disturbing as these figures are, they do not tell the whole story.The unemployment rate measures only those teenagers who were actively lookingfor work, not those who have given up, completely discouraged by the lackof opportunity. Again the burden falls disproportionately on minority youth.
The Reagan Administration has dismantled virtually all of the successfulprograms to train and employ young people. Today, we are spending less toput young people to work than we were even under the last Republican Administration‹ 70 percent less, when inflation is taken into account. Youth unemploymenthas skyrocketed, while government efforts to combat it have dwindled toa trickle.
Unless we address this problem now, half of an entire generation maynever know what it means to work. America cannot successfully compete inthe world economy if a significant portion of our future work force is illiterate,unskilled, and unemployable.
The Democratic Party must give our young people new skills and new hope;we must work hand in hand with the private sector if job training is tolead to jobs. Specifically, targeted efforts are needed to address the urgentproblem of unemployment among minority teenagers. We must provide job trainingfor those who have dropped out of school, and take every step to expandeducational opportunity for those still in school. We must recognize thespecial needs of the over-age 50 worker and the displaced homemaker. Througheducation, training and retraining we must reduce these dangerously highlevels of unemployment.
We must provide an opportunity for workers, including those dislocatedby changing technologies, to adapt to new opportunities; we must provideworkers with choices as to which skills they wish to acquire. We know thatAmericans want to work. We are committed to ensuring that meaningful jobtraining is available ‹ for our students, for housewives returningto the workplace, and for those displaced by changing patterns of technologyor trade.
‹ The federal government will develop a major comprehensive nationaljob skills development policy that is targeted on the chronically unemployedand underemployed. We must train and place these Americans in high-demandlabor shortage occupations, working with the private sector so that maximumemployment and job creation can be achieved. We will overhaul the currentlyantiquated unemployment compensation system, and adequately fund job searchlistings of local employment agencies.
‹ We will also launch meaningful training programs that lead tojob placement for women who receive public assistance, in order to breakthe cycle of dependence and to raise their standard of living. Instead ofpunitive reductions in AFDC and other benefits for women who seek trainingand employment while receiving such assistance, beneficiaries should
be given a transition period during which they are permitted to earnincome in a formal training program while receiving full benefits.
‹ We will seriously examine new approaches to training and retrainingprograms that could be financed directly by government, by labor and management,or by tax free contributions.
‹ If cancellations of specific weapons systems result in significanteconomic dislocations and job loss, it is a national responsibility to addressthe human consequences of national policy.
Investing in Infrastructure
Economic growth requires that America invest in our infrastructure aswell as in our people. Investing in infrastructure means rebuilding ourbridges and roads and sewers, and we are committed to doing that. But italso means investing in our cities, in decent housing and public transportation,and in regulatory systems for finance and telecommunication that will providea sound basis for future economic growth.
Investing in our Cities
The Democratic Party recognizes the value of prosperous local government,and within that context we recognize that a healthy city is essential tothe well-being of the nation, state, county and surrounding local governments.
Our nation's economic life depends on the economic growth of our cities.Our cities are not only the treasuries from which the nation draws its wealth;they are the centers of industry, the centers of art and culture, the breedingground for economic innovation, and home to the majority of the Americanpeople. Our cities are among this country's greatest achievements, and theycan be our country's greatest engine of economic growth.
Cities can be active partners with the federal government and privateenterprises for creating new growth. They can be a dynamic entrepreneurialforce ‹ by encouraging education and research, by incubating promisingnew industries, by steering resources toward those most in need, and byfostering new cooperative arrangements among public agencies and privatebusiness. Cities can be a leading force for rebuilding the nation's economy.
But to do this, cities need state and national leadership which valuesthe role of city and county government. Cities need a President willingto work and consult with mayors and county executives. They need an Administrationwhich puts the needs of urban America on the top of the national agenda‹ because no plan for economic strength will survive when our citiesare left behind.
Today, the Reagan Administration has turned its back on the cities. Bysapping our cities' strength, this Administration is sapping our country'sstrength. Only the intervention of the Congress has prevented further andmore devastating cuts in city-oriented programs. The Democratic Party believesin making our cities' needs a federal priority once again. We want to seeagain cities where people have jobs and adequate housing, cities whose bridgesand mass transit are being maintained, and whose neighborhoods are safeto live in. And that will take a commitment by our federal government tohelp our cities again.
Toward that end, the Democratic Party pledges:
‹ a commitment to full employment. We believe the federal governmentmust develop a major, comprehensive national job skills development policytargeted on the chronically unemployed and underemployed. We must launchspecial training programs for women who receive public assistance. We needto increase government procurement opportunities for small and minorityfirms and to encourage deposits of federal funds in minority-owned financialinstitutions. And to build for the future, the Democratic Party calls fora new national commitment to education, which must include raising standards,insisting on excellence, and giving all children a chance to learn, regardlessof race, income or sex.
‹ a commitment to rebuilding the infrastructure of America. We needto inventory facility needs, set priorities and establish policies for therepair, maintenance, and replacement of public works by all levels of government.We need to create a federal capital budget to separate operating and capitaloutlays. We will consult local governments in decisions affecting the designand performance standards of facilities constructed under federal programs.And we need to create a national reconstruction fund to provide affordableloans to states and localities for infrastructure projects. This will notonly rebuild the infrastructure of our cities but provide badly needed employmentfor people who live there.
‹ a commitment to housing. We must restore government's positiverole in helping all Americans find adequate and affordable housing. We reaffirmour commitment to public housing for the most disadvantaged members of oursociety. We must strengthen our commitment to the operation and rehabilitationof current government-assisted housing. We must maintain and expand theflow of mortgage capital, and bring interest rates down with sensible economicpolicies. We must pull together the patchwork of housing programs and cutthrough the red tape to make it easier for cities to receive the assistanceto meet their own unique needs. We must upgrade and replenish housing inminority communities and create more units for poor and low-income people.And we must enforce fair housing standards to prohibit discrimination inthe housing market.
Our Party must be a vehicle for realizing the hopes, the aspirations,and the dreams of the people of this country. And that includes the peoplewho live in cities.
Physical Infrastructure
This nation's physical infrastructure ‹ our bridges and roads, ourports, our railroads, our sewers, our public transit and water supply systems‹ is deteriorating faster than we can repair it. The gap between thenecessary improvements and available resources grows every year. State andlocal governments, strapped by Reaganomics, have been forced repeatedlyto defer maintenance, and to abandon plans for construction.
As Democrats, we recognize that infrastructure is the basis for efficientcommerce and industry. If our older industrial cities are to grow, if ourexpanding regions are to continue to expand, then we must work with stateand local governments to target our investment to our most important infrastructure.There is work to be done in rebuilding and maintaining our infrastructure,and there are millions of American men and women in need of work. The federalgovernment must take the lead in putting them back to work, and in doingso, providing the basis for private sector investment and economic growth.We need to inventory facility needs, set priorities, and establish policiesfor the repair, maintenance and replacement of the public works by all levelsof government. We need a capital budget to separate paying for these long-terminvestments from regular expenditures. Furthermore, we need a national reconstructionfund to provide affordable loans to states and localities for infrastructureprojects.
Finance Infrastructure
At the heart of our economy is the financial infrastructure: a set ofdiverse interdependent institutions and markets which are the envy of theworld. We must preserve their strengths. Until very recently, the UnitedStates operated with a domestic financial system that was built in responseto the stock market crash of 1929, the massive series of bank failures thataccompanied the Great Depression, and the speculative excesses of the stockmarket. There was an emphasis on placing different types of financial activitiesin different institutions. Commercial banks were not to float stock marketissues. Investment bankers could. Neither took equity positions in individualcompanies. Separate savings and credit institutions were established tosupport housing and consumer durables. Soundness of the system, liquidity,investor and depositor protection, neutrality of credit and capital decisions,and a wide variety of financial institutions to serve the varying needsof business and consumers have been the fundamental goals.
Bit by bit, the American financial system began to change. The domesticfinancial market became closely tied to the international market, whichin turn had become larger, more competitive, and more volatile. Inflation,technology, the growth of foreign competition, and institutional innovationall combined to create strong pressures for change. The 1980s brought aderegulation of interest rates and a wave of deregulatory decisions by financialregulators.
These changes raise serious threats to our traditional financial goals.Before leaping into a highly uncertain financial future, the country shouldtake a careful look at the direction deregulation is taking, and what itmeans to our financial system and the economy.
Telecommunications
Telecommunications is the infrastructure of the information age. Thelast decade has seen an explosion in new technologies, expanded competition,and growing dependence on high quality telecommunications.
Nationwide access to those networks is becoming crucial to full participationin a society and economy that are increasingly dependent upon the rapidexchange of information. Electronically-delivered messages, and not thewritten word, are becoming the dominant form of communication. A citizenwithout access to telecommunications is in danger of fading into isolation.Therefore, the proper regulation of telecommunications is critical. We mustencourage competition while preventing regulatory decisions which substantiallyincrease basic telephone rates and which threaten to throw large numbersof low-income, elderly, or rural people off the telecommunications networks.We must also insure that workers in the telecommunications industry do notfind their retirement or other earned benefits jeopardized by the consequencesof divestiture.
This electronic marketplace is so fundamental to our future as a democracy(as well as to our economy) that social and cultural principles must beas much a part of communications policy as a commitment to efficiency, innovation,and competition. Those principles are diversity, the availability of a widechoice of information services and sources; access, the ability of all Americans,not just a privileged few, to take advantage of this growing array of informationservices and sources; and opportunity, a commitment to education and diverseownership, particularly by minorities and women, that will give every Americanthe ability to take advantage of the computer and the telecommunicationsrevolution. We support the Fairness Doctrine and Equal Time requirements,along with other laws and regulations to the electronic media which encourageor require responsiveness to community needs and a diversity of viewpoints.
Housing
Decent, affordable housing has been a goal of national public policyfor almost half a century, since the United States Housing Act of 1937.The Democratic Party has repeatedly reaffirmed the belief that Americancitizens should be able to find adequate shelter at reasonable cost. Andwe have been unwavering in our support of the premise that government hasa positive role to play in ensuring housing opportunities for less fortunateAmericans, including the elderly and the handicapped, not served by theprivate market.
In the last four years this long-standing commitment to decent shelterhas been
crippled by the underfunding, insensitivity, high interest rates, anddistorted priorities of the Reagan Administration.
The Democratic Party has always accorded housing the high priority itdeserves. One essential quality will characterize this commitment in thefuture. It must and will be comprehensive.
By advocating a comprehensive policy which addresses the totality ofour housing needs, we do not mean to suggest that all concerns have an equalclaim on resources or require the same level of governmental intervention.The bulk of our resources will be concentrated on those most in need, andgovernment must take a leadership role where others cannot or will not participate.
Within a comprehensive framework for policy development and constituencybuilding, we will establish priorities according to principles of compassionand equity. We would like to see a special effort in two areas in the firstyears of a new Democratic Administration.
First, we must intensify our commitment to the adequate operation, management,and rehabilitation of the current inventory of government-assisted housing.This housing stock is not one, but the only option for the least fortunateamong our lower income families and senior citizens. It is the right thingto do and it makes economic sense to preserve our own economic investment.
Second, we must maintain and expand the flow of mortgage capital. TheAmerican dream of home ownership will fall beyond the reach of this generationand future ones if government fails to help attract new sources of capitalfor housing.
We will draw on our historic commitment to housing, and the best insightsand energies of today's Democratic Party, to address the future housingneeds of all the American people. The Democratic Party will develop short-rangeemergency responses to the problem of homelessness as well as long-rangesolutions to its causes. The Democratic Party will support upgrading andreplenishment of the housing stock in minority communities, with more affordableunits available so that poor and low income people can buy units with lowinterest loans. Also, fair housing standards need to be vigorously enforcedby the federal, state and local governments in order to deal with persistentdiscrimination in the housing market for buyers and renters. Finally, theexpansion of public housing and other publicly-assisted housing programsis a necessity due to the growth in the homeless population and in the highcost of commercially available units.
Transportation
Democrats vigorously support the concept of promoting competition intransportation and the elimination of unnecessary and inefficient regulationof the railroad industry. Democrats also insist on insuring a fair ratefor captive shippers. It was the Democratic Party which was primarily responsiblefor the passage of the Staggers Rail Act of 1980, which was designed toaccomplish these objectives.
The Democratic Party is committed to a policy of administering the transportationlaws in a manner which will encourage competition and provide protectionfor captive shippers.
A comprehensive maritime policy that is tailored to the realities oftoday's international shipping world and to the economic, political, andmilitary needs of the United States is a necessity. Such a policy shouldaddress all facets of our maritime industry ‹ from shipping to shipbuildingand related activities ‹ in an integrated manner.
A Framework for Growth
The American economy is a complex mix, incorporating any number of differentactors and entities ‹ private businesses, professional societies, charitableinstitutions, labor unions, regional development councils, and local schoolboards. The economy is driven by millions of individual decisions on spendingand saving, on investing and wages. Government is only one force among manywoven into the fabric of American economic life. Just as the wrong overalleconomic policy can disrupt the best private decisions, the best governmenteconomic policies will not put us on a path to long-term growth unless business,labor and other private institutions meet their responsibilities and riseto the competitive challenge of a new era.
Private Sector Responsibilities
In many cases, the private sector is already playing a major role inlaying the basis for future growth and meeting broad community responsibilities.In other cases, however, short-term considerations have been allowed topredominate at the expense of the long-term needs of the national economy.
A recent wave of mergers has been particularly troubling. Any numberof large corporations have focused their energies arranging the next mergeror defending against the latest takeover bid.
Many of our major competitors have targeted their efforts on investmentsin new methods of producing cheaper, high-quality products. To respond tothe growing pressure of foreign competition, America's private sector mustmeet several challenges:
‹ Investing strategically ‹ the more U.S. companies focus onlong-term strategies to improve their competitive positions, the betteroff the entire economy will be.
‹ Managing cost and quality ‹ U.S. companies will have to placesimilar emphasis on controlling costs and quality to effectively meet thebest of the foreign competition.
‹ Competing internationally ‹ U.S. business like other institutionsin the country need to pay greater attention to the international marketplace.
Partnership, Cooperation and Participation
Partnership, cooperation and participation are central to economic growth.We need new cooperative institutions, and a steady redefinition of how laborand management, universities, the private sector, and state and local governmentscan work together.
‹ National cooperation ‹ In developing a long-term growth strategy,there are several particularly important functions that today are poorlyperformed or poorly coordinated by the government: coordination and policycoherence; developing and disseminating useful economic information; anticipatingeconomic problems; and developing long-term consensus between public andprivate sectors. To better accomplish these tasks, it is time that a nationalEconomic Cooperation Council was created. Its charter would be simple andbasic: (1) to collect, analyze, and disseminate economic data; (2) to createa forum where the gap between business, labor, and government is bridged,where all three develop the trust, understanding, and cooperation necessaryto improve productivity; and, (3) to identify national priorities, makerecommendations on how best to reach those goals, and help build consensusfor action.
‹ State involvement ‹ Under the guise of increasing the powerof state government, the Reagan Administration has actually given the statesonly the power to decide what programs to cut or eliminate, because of thesubstantially decreased funding it has made available to the states. Shouldit be baby clinics, child immunization against disease, day care, maternalhealth, or youth services? The Democratic Party believes a strong partnershipof federal, state and local governments is basic to effective and efficientdecision -making, problem -solving, and provision of adequate services.We must also encourage cooperation between states and the private sector.State development agencies are already seeking closer ties to both businessand universities. And universities are increasingly looking to the privatesector in setting their research agendas.
‹ Local and community involvement ‹ Citizen involvement ingovernance should be as great as possible. The responsibility for generalgovernance, the delivery of programs and services, and the resolution ofproblems should be with the level of government that is closest to the citizenryand that can still discharge those responsibilities effectively and efficiently.These levels of government must assure basic civil liberties and justicefor all citizens. They must not be abrogated by any local jurisdiction.The federal government should focus on the importance of local initiatives.For example, vocational education is an area where local schools and localbusiness will increasingly be brought together. Financial stability andadequate authority are essential prerequisites to developing successfulpublic-private partnerships and maximizing citizen involvement in governance.
Government financial and technical assistance programs should give preferenceto viable worker and/or community-owned or run businesses, especially asa response to plant shutdowns.
Broadening Labor Management Cooperation
We support greater employee participation in the workplace. Employeesshould have an opportunity to make a greater contribution to workplace productivityand quality through actual ownership of the company, employee representationon corporate boards, quality work circles, and greater worker participationin management decisions. The government should encourage employee participationand ownership, particularly as an alternative to plant shutdowns. It isdestructive of labor-management relations when concessions extracted fromlabor to preserve jobs are converted, after the restoration of profitability,into management bonuses, rather than restoring the concessions that theworkers made. Such practices offend our sense of fairness, as does the ReaganAdministration-inspired union-busting. Essential to fairness in the workplaceis the basic right of workers to organize collectively.
Consumer Protection
The Democratic Party strongly reaffirms its commitment to federal programswhich are designed to enhance and protect the health and safety of all Americans.Under the Reagan Administration, the critical missions of agencies suchas the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the National Highway TrafficSafety Administration (NHTSA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), theOccupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Mine Safety andHealth Administration (MSHA), and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) havebeen ignored and subverted.
The Reagan Administration proposed abolishing the CPSC, which has recalledover 300 million dangerous and defective products in its 10 year history.When it failed to accomplish this, the Administration attempted to submergeCPSC in the Department of Commerce. Also failing in this attempt, the ReaganAdministration inflicted massive budget and personnel cuts on the Commission.The impact has been far reaching: recalls declined 66 %, inspections werecut in half and over half of CPSC's regional offices have been closed. Theresult has been a paralysis of mission and an America more susceptible todangerous products.
The record at the NHTSA, the agency mandated to reduce the appallingannual highway deaths of more than 50,000 Americans, is just as shameful.The President has appointed administrators with no safety background andeven less commitment to the public health mission of the agency. Criticallifesaving safety standards, such as one requiring automatic crash protectionin cars, have been revoked. The enforcement of defect and recall programs,designed to remove dangerous vehicles from our roads, has been cut back.Recalls are at an all-time low and only one safety standard has been proposedin four years.
At OSHA and MSHA, we have witnessed a retreat from agency mandates toprovide safe and healthful working conditions for this nation's workingmen and women. Existing standards have been weakened or revoked and notone single new standard has been implemented. Similarly, at the FDA therehas been an important shift away from removing dangerous and ineffectivedrugs in favor of weakening standards for products. The FTC has run roughshodover the nation's antitrust laws allowing 9 of the 10 largest mergers inhistory to occur.
The dangerous trends in all these areas must be immediately reversedto allow these vital health and safety agencies to pursue their missionsaggressively, to protect and enhance the health and safety of all Americans.
Individual Empowerment
The Democratic Party's commitment to full equality is as much a partof providing individual opportunity as it is part of a program of socialjustice. At the heart of our values as a nation is our belief in independence.Anyone who has brought home a paycheck, bought a car, or paid off a mortgageknows the pride that economic self-sufficiency brings. And anyone who haslost a job, watched one's children go hungry, or been denied a chance atsuccess knows the terrible indignity that comes with dependence.
As Democrats, we share that belief in independence. Our goal is to allowthe greatest number of people the greatest opportunity for self-sufficiency.
As a Party, we are committed to preparing people to stand on their own;that is why we insist on adequate nutrition for our children and good educationsfor our young people. We are committed to permitting independence; that'swhy we believe discrimination on any basis must come to an end. We believethat independence should be prolonged for as long as possible; to ensureit continues even after retirement, we support Social Security and Medicare.And we believe we must preserve the self-respect of those who are unableto be completely self-sufficient ‹ the very young, the unskilled, thedisabled, the very old ‹ and to help them toward as much independenceas possible. As much as it is a strategy for long run economic growth, individualempowerment must itself be an operating philosophy. In the welfare system,in education, and in the laws affecting everyone from shareholders to theaverage voter, the Democratic Party will ask if the individual is beingmade stronger and more independent.
America in a World Economy
The reality of international competition in the 1980s requires governmentpolicies which will assure the competitiveness of American industry andAmerican workers. Democrats will support and encourage innovation and researchand development in both the private and public sector. We will seek to strengthenAmerica's small businesses. And we will pursue trade policies and industrialstrategies to ensure that our workers and our businesses can compete fullyand fairly in the international arena.
Innovation
Innovation ‹ in process and product technology ‹ is at theheart of our ability to compete in a world economy and produce sustainedeconomic growth at home. And research and development, critical as it isfor our growing high technology industries, is no less important for ourbasic industries. In the past generation, our world leadership in innovationhas been increasingly jeopardized. We have not invested enough ‹ orwidely enough‹to match our major competitors.
Research and Development ‹ Since the mid-1960s, all the other majorindustrial nations have increased their expenditures for research and developmentmore rapidly than we have. Over the past decade, manufacturing productivityrose more than four times faster in Japan, more than three times fasterin France, and more than twice as fast in both West Germany and the UnitedKingdom than in the United States. And the number of patents granted toAmericans each year has plunged by 40 percent.
The United States should revise its downward trend and increase the percentageof GNP devoted to commercially-rated R&D;as a long-term spending goal. Wew must be at the cutting edge, and we will not get there without cooperationbetween the government and the private sector. As Democrats, our goal isto increase civilian research and development in this country, to expandits commercial application, and to provide more industries with the opportunityto take advantage of it.
At the national level, this means enhanced support for undergraduateand graduate training in science, mathematics, and engineering; increasedsupport to refurbish and modernize university research laboratories; increasedsupport for the National Science Foundation and similar efforts; and a commitmentto civilian research and development.
Centers of Excellence ‹ In the past generation, scientists and engineers,together with educators and business leaders throughout the United States,have begun countless new, high technology businesses such as those in Boston,Massachusetts, California's Silicon Valley, North Carolina's Research Triangle,greater Denver, Colorado, and Austin, Texas to establish this country asa leader in the next generation of high technology industries ‹ biotechnology,polymer sciences, robotics, photovoltaics, marine sciences, microelectronics.The Democratic Party will encourage and support centers that provide forcooperation of academic and entrepreneurial excellence, thereby strengtheningour scientific and technological resources and creating tomorrow's jobs.
Small and Minority Business
The Democratic Party recognizes that small businesses create many, ifnot most of the new jobs in our country, and are responsible for much ofthe innovation They are thus our greatest hope for the future. Our capacityas a nation to create an environment that encourages and nurtures innovativenew businesses will determine our success in providing jobs for our people.In the private sector, spurring innovation means paying special attentionto the needs of small, including minority and women-owned, and rapidly growingbusinesses on the cutting edge of our economy.
This will require incentives for research and development and for employeeeducation and training, including relaxing certain restrictions on pensionfund investment; targeted reform that stimulates the flow of capital intonew and smaller businesses; a tax code that is no longer biased againstsmall and rapidly growing firms; vigorous enforcement of our antitrust laws,coupled with antitrust policies that permit clearly legitimate joint researchand development ventures; expanded small business access to the Export-ImportBank and other agencies involved in export promotion; and targeted reformthat provides for the delivery of community-based, community-supported managementassistance, and innovative means of making seed capital available for companiesin our large cities as well as our rural communities.
Rules and regulations should not weigh more heavily on new firms or smallbusinesses than they do on the large, well-established enterprise. Risktaking is a key to economic growth in a modern industrial society. If anything,rules and regulations should encourage it.
The Small Business Administration must once again be responsive to theneeds of entrepreneurs, including minorities and women In addition, theheads of the Small Business Administration, the Minority Business DevelopmentAdministration and other government agencies must ensure that the needsof smaller minority businesses are met at the regional and local levels.To further meet the needs of smaller minority businesses, we favor increasinggovernment procurement, opportunities for smaller minority firms, encouragingdeposits of federal funds in minority-owned financial institutions, andvigorously implementing all set-aside provisions for minority businesses.
The Democratic Party pledges to bring about these reforms and createa new era of opportunity for the entrepreneurs who have always led the wayin our economy.
Meeting the Challenge of Economic Competition
Thirty years ago, half of all goods produced in the world were made inthe United States. While we have greatly expanded our output of services,our share of manufactured products is now just one-fifth of the world'stotal. Once dominant U.S. industries are now hard-pressed. In April, ourtrade deficit reached a stunning $12.2 billion for one month. At that rate,we would lose two million or more jobs this year alone. We will not allowour workers and our industries to be displaced by either unfair import competition,or irrational fiscal and monetary policies.
Some of these difficulties we have brought on ourselves, with shortsightedstrategies, inadequate investment in plant, equipment, and innovation, andfiscal and monetary policies that have impaired our international competitivenessby distorting the value of the dollar against foreign currencies. But otherdifficulties have been thrust upon us by foreign nations.
The reality of the 1980s is that the international economy is the arenain which we must compete. The world economy is an integrated economy; thechallenge for our political leadership is to assure that the new arena isin fact a fair playing field for American businesses and consumers. We arecommitted to pursuing industrial strategies that effectively and imaginativelyblend the genius of the free market with vital government partnership andleadership. As Democrats, we will be guided by the following principlesand policies.
‹ We need a vigorous, open and fair trade policy that builds America'scompetitive strength and that allows our nation to remain an advanced, diversifiedeconomy while promoting full employment and raising living standards inthe United States and other countries of the world; opens overseas marketsfor American products; strengthens the international economic system; assistsadjustment to foreign competition; and recognizes the legitimate interestsof American workers, farmers and businesses
‹ We will pursue international negotiations to open markets andeliminate trade restrictions, recognizing that the growth and stabilityof the Third World depends on its ability to sell its products in internationalmarkets. High technology, agriculture and other industries should be broughtunder the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs. Moreover, the developingworld is a major market for U.S. exports, particularly capital goods. Asa result, the U.S. has a major stake in international economic institutionsthat support growth in the developing world.
‹ We recognize that the growth and development of the Third Worldis vital both to global stability and to the continuing expansion of worldtrade. The U.S. presently sells more to the Third World than to the EuropeanCommunity and Japan combined. If we do not buy their goods, they cannotbuy ours, nor can they service their debt. Consequently, it is importantto be responsive to the issues of the North/South dialogue such as volatilecommodity prices, inequities in the functioning of the international financialand monetary markets, and removal of barriers to the export of Third Worldgoods.
‹ If trade has become big business for the country, exports havebecome critical to the economic health of a growing list of American industries.In the future, national economic policy will have to be set with an eyeto its impact on U.S. exports. The strength of the dollar, the nature ofthe U.S. tax system, and the adequacy of export finance all play a rolein making U.S. exports internationally competitive.
‹ The United States continues to struggle with trade barriers thataffect its areas of international strength. Subsidized export financingon the part of Europe and Japan has also created problems for the UnitedStates, as has the use of industrial policies in Europe and Japan. In somecases, foreign governments target areas of America's competitive strength.In other cases, industrial targeting has been used to maintain industriesthat cannot meet international competition ‹ often diverting exportsto the American market and increasing the burden of adjustment for America'simport-competing industries. We will ensure that timely and effective financingcan be obtained by American businesses through the Export-Import Bank, sothat they can compete effectively against subsidized competitors from abroad.
‹ A healthy U.S. auto industry is essential to a strong trade balanceand economy. That industry generates a large number of American jobs andboth develops and consumes new technology needed for economic vitality.We believe it is a sound principle of international trade for foreign automakerswhich enjoy substantial sales in the United States to invest here and createjobs where their markets are. This can promote improved trade relationsand a stronger American and world economy. We also believe U.S. automakersneed to maintain high volume small car production in the U.S. With the U.S.auto companies' return to profitability (despite continued unemploymentin the auto sector), we urge expanded domestic investment to supply consumerswith a full range of competitive vehicles. We support efforts by managementand labor to improve auto quality and productivity, and to restrain prices.
‹ Where foreign competition is fair, American industry should competewithout government assistance. Where competition is unfair, we must respondpowerfully. We will use trade law and international negotiations to aidU.S. workers, farmers, and business injured by unfair trade practices.
‹ We need industrial strategies to create a cooperative partnershipof labor, capital, and management to increase productivity and to make Americacompetitive once more. Our keystone industries must be modernized and rebuilt,through industry-wide agreements. Where necessary, through Presidentialleadership, we must negotiate industrial modernization and growth agreementsthat commit management to new domestic investment, higher levels of employmentand worker training, as well as commit labor to ease the introduction ofnew technologies
‹ There must be a broad consensus and commitment among labor, businessand financial institutions that industry should and can be assisted, andin a particular way. We believe that all parties to modernization agreementsmust contribute to their success and that the government must be preparedto use a range of tools‹including tax, import, and regulatory relief,and appropriate financing mechanisms‹to assist this revitalization.There should be a primary emphasis on private capital in any such agreements.
‹ The problems of individual industries, rather than industry asa whole, is another area in which an Economic Cooperation Council will beeffective. In the case of a particular industry, the Council would selectsub-councils to solve specific problems. Key members of the interested businessesand unions, financial institutions, academic specialists and other concernedand knowledgeable parties would meet to hammer out proposed strategies andagreements. It is not a question of picking winners and losers. Nor is iteven always a question of some industries being more important than others.Rather, it is an opportunity for government and the private sector to forgea consensus to capture new markets, to restore an industry to competitivehealth, or to smooth the transition of workers and firms to new opportunities.
‹ We want industries to modernize so as to restore competitivenesswhere it is flagging If temporary trade relief is granted, the quid proquo for relief will be a realistic, hardheaded modernization plan whichwill restore competitiveness involving commitments by all affected parties.The public is entitled to receive a fair return on its investment. Wheregovernment initiatives are necessary to save an industry like steel, autoor textiles, we must see that those initiatives meet the needs of the wholecommunity‹workers as well as executives, taxpayers and consumers aswell as stockholders.
‹ To facilitate the efforts of workers and communities to keep plantsopen and operating and, in cases which closings are unavoidable, to helpworkers and communities to adapt, we support a requirement that companiesgive advance notification of plant closings or large-scale layoffs to theiremployees, surrounding communities and local governments. Where plants arenonetheless closed, we will help workers and communities to adapt.
‹ Finally, we need a vigorous effort to redress the currency distortionsthat are undermining our international competitiveness. In addition to reducingour budget deficit, we will press for improved economic coordination withthe major industrialized nations; work with Japan and other countries tofurther liberalize currency and investment regulations; and negotiate towardagreements that will blunt speculative currency swings and restore stabilityand predictability to the international monetary system.
Agriculture
Agriculture ‹ America's largest, most fundamental industry ‹has been plunged into its worst depression since Herbert Hoover presidedover the farm economy's collapse half a century ago. During President Reagan'sstewardship of our nation's agriculture economy: real prices paid to farmersfor their commodities have plummeted by twenty-one percent; real interestrates paid by farmers have increased by as much as 1,200 percent; real farmincome has fallen to its lowest level since 1933; debt owed by U.S. farmersand ranchers has swelled to $215 billion; and farm foreclosures and forcedsales have tripled.
Ronald Reagan has hung a "for sale" sign on America's independent,family-based system of agricultural production. While these farmers haveraised their production efficiency to record highs, Reagan's policies haveforced down their prices, income, and financial worth.
The Reagan Administration has been unwilling to take sensible, fiscallyresponsible action needed to halt this accelerating downward cycle in agriculture.Because of this failure of leadership, nearly 200,000 good farmers and ranchers,including minority farmers, have gone out of business since he took officein 1981. This is a rate of more than 1,000 families pushed off their landevery week, the equivalent of all the farms and ranches in California andIowa, our two largest agricultural states. Hundreds of thousands of theremaining enterprises teeter on the brink of bankruptcy and cannot surviveanother four years of this Administration's agricultural mismanagement.
This collapse is happening despite the fact that Ronald Reagan has squanderedtaxpayers' money on his farm policies, spending $31 billion on his programslast year alone. That is six times more than any other President in historyhas spent on farm programs, and it is $9 billion more than was spent onfarm programs in all eight years of President Kennedy's and President Johnson'sAdministrations combined.
Like 1932 and 1960, this election year represents a watershed for Americanagriculture. At stake is the survival of the family farm. Under PresidentReagan's policies of high costs and low prices, these family farmers cannotsurvive. They will continue to go out of business at a historic pace, tobe replaced by an industrialized structure of agriculture that is dominatedby conglomerates, giant farm combinations, and tax loss ventures. Already,under Reagan, 65 percent of net farm income has been concentrated in thehands of the largest 1 percent of farms, up from 42 percent just three yearsago.
The Democratic Party renews its commitment to the family farm structureof American agriculture. We believe that the public need for a reliablesupply of high-quality, reasonably priced food and fiber is best met byfamily farm enterprises whose primary business is farming or ranching. Itis from hundreds of thousands of those competitive, diverse, decentralized,entrepreneurial families that the public gains superior agricultural efficiencyand productivity. Accordingly, it is in these farming families that thepublic finds its most sensible investment. In addition, these farmers arethe ones who show greatest concern for good conservation practices, qualityof food, and rural values. We need more of these farmers, not fewer.
The Democratic Party pledges action. We must solve the immediate farmcrisis through a combination of humanitarian aid programs abroad, aggressivepromotion of farm exports, and a fair moratorium on farm debt and foreclosureby federal credit agencies to family farm borrowers being forced out ofbusiness through no fault of their own, until a long-term program addressingthe farm credit crisis can be put into place. Beginning next January withthe writing of a new long-term farm bill, the Democratic Party pledges torebuild ad prosperous system of family farms and ranches. We will forgea new agreement on a farm and food policy that assures a fair deal for familyfarmers, consumers, taxpayers, conservationists, and others with a directstake in the organizational structure of the food economy.
Our goal is to restore the faith of family farmers that their hard work,ingenuity, efficiency, and good stewardship will be rewarded with profit,rather than debt. We seek a program that is focused specifically on thetrue family farm that encourages long-term financial planning, that is tiedto locally-approved soil conservation programs, and that reduces federalbudget costs for farm programs.
We will target federal assistance toward true family-sized and beginningfarmers' operations. We will stop good, efficient farmers from being thrownoff their farms, while structuring incentives so as to achieve maximum participationin farm commodity programs. We will bring farm credit interest rates downand set supports at levels that at least enable farmers to recover actualproduction costs. We will use the full range of programs to reduce excessproduction when necessary to assure fair prices to farmers. As the overalleconomy improves, we will gradually adjust price supports toward a firmgoal of parity of income. We will give new emphasis to producer-controlledmarketing arrangements. We will revitalize the farmer-owned commodity reservesystem. We will put in place tax policies that are fair to farmers, whileremoving unproductive incentives for investors seeking to avoid taxes. Wemust protect family farmers from land speculators and we must protect bothfarmers and consumers from income losses resulting from exorbitant pricingof middlemen. We will renew our country's historic commitment to agriculturalscience and education, to rural services such as cooperative electrificationand telephones. We oppose Reagan Administration proposals that would morethan double interest rates to rural cooperatives, and sharply reduce ruralelectric loan levels.
The Democratic Party reaffirms its commitment to soil and water conservation.We will actively promote the production of ethanol and other biomass sourcesof renewable energy and encourage conversion to energy self-sufficient farmingoperations.
Finally, we must reverse the annual decrease in the value and volumeof U.S. farm exports which has occurred in each year of Ronald Reagan'sterm. Our farm exports are vital to the nation's prosperity and providea major part of total farm income. We must restore the ability of U.S. farmproducts to compete in world markets, and increase world-wide demand forAmerican agricultural products. To do this, we must make major changes inRonald Reagan's economic policies, and correct his grossly distorted currencyexchange rates, which have caused American competitiveness in internationaltrade to decline. We must also resist efforts to lower commodity price supports;such action would only lower farm income without addressing the economicpolicies which are the root cause of declining competitiveness of U.S. farmproducts in world markets.
Critical to the recovery of farm income and exports will be the pursuitof economic policies that contribute to worldwide economic recovery. Flexibleexport credit programs and assurances of long-term availability of U.S.farm products will also be necessary to restore America's preeminence asan agricultural exporter and end the destruction of the family farm broughton by Ronald Reagan.
Managing Our Natural Resources
Our economy, the quality of our lives, and the kind of opportunitiesthat we leave to our children all depend on how well we manage our wealthof natural resources. We must harvest enough timber and food, produce enoughminerals, coal, oil and gas, and provide enough electric power to keep oureconomy growing. We must be prepared to avoid severe dislocations when conflictsin other parts of the world force energy prices to climb. At the same timethat we encourage enhanced energy production, we must recognize that conservingirreplaceable resources, using energy efficiently instead of wasting it,and protecting our environment help guarantee a better life for twenty-firstcentury America.
Protecting Our National Security
President Reagan has reduced our ability to defend our economy from thedisruptions that would come if conflicts in other countries interrupt theworld's oil supply. While the percentage of our oil imports from the MiddleEast has dropped, U.S. oil imports from other countries have increased.If war in the Middle East cuts back oil supplies from that region, Europeand Japan will pay higher prices to get replacement oil; a bidding war amongoil-importing nations means that the price of oil all over the world, includingthe United States, will rise dangerously.
Ronald Reagan has refused to prepare us for that day. He has refusedto fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as quickly as authorized by law,and in case of emergency, he has made clear that his policy will be simplyto allow those who can pay the most to buy whatever supplies are available.
Our Party must spell out a comprehensive program for energy security.We should accelerate the filling of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, sothat it can play its intended role as a temporary national oil supply duringfuture energy emergencies. And in an oil crisis, a Democratic Presidentwill make every effort to ensure that essential users‹schools, farmers,hospitals, local bus and rail systems‹have the supplies they need atreasonable prices. The Democratic Party will ensure that the especiallyvulnerable ‹ the unemployed, the elderly, the poor‹will not beunfairly forced to share the burden of rising oil prices.
Developing U.S. Energy Supplies
In today's complex world, no industrial nation can be fully self-sufficient.The United States and all countries in the free world depend on each otherfor resources, as markets, or as economic and political allies. But thestrength of our own economy and the influence we exercise in the rest ofthe world are sure to be increased if we are capable of supplying more,not less, of our own energy.
America is blessed with abundant coal and natural gas, substantial suppliesof oil, and plentiful reserves of uranium. Although very costly to process,vast supplies of oil shales and tar sands represent future energy sources.Significant contributions to our energy supply can be made by utilizingrenewable resources and indigenous energy, such as active and passive solarsystems, windpower, geothermal and ocean thermal power, and the recoveryof gas from agricultural waste, coal mines, and garbage dumps. These provenenergy sources, as well as more experimental energy systems, should be encouragedfor the positive environmental and economic contribution they can make toour energy security.
The Democratic Party supports the aggressive promotion of coal exports,research and development into better technologies for using coal, and assurancesthat rates for transporting coal are fair and reasonable. To ensure thatthe environment and worker safety are fully protected as coal productionincreases to meet our national energy needs, we will vigorously implementand strictly enforce laws governing worker safety, land reclamation, airand water quality, and the protection of agriculture, fish, and wildlife.
The Democratic Party will support research and development for solarenergy and other renewable energy systems, and will provide incentives foruse of solar and other emerging energy systems. We will vigorously pursueour solar energy efforts and dramatically increase funding for the SolarEnergy and Energy Conservation Bank and low-income weatherization, whichcould put hundreds of thousands of unemployed people to work weatherizingand installing solar energy systems in millions of American homes, especiallythe homes of low-income Americans. We oppose the Reagan Administration'sefforts to fund these programs through petroleum price overcharge refundsfrom the oil companies.
We will support the federal research and development efforts slashedby the Reagan Administration, to promote the discovery of new energy suppliesand energy use technologies.
The Democratic Party strongly opposes the Reagan Administration's policyof aggressively promoting and further subsidizing nuclear power. Today,millions of Americans are concerned about the safety of nuclear power plantsand their radioactive waste. We recognize the safety and economic factorswhich bring into question the viability of this energy source.
We will insist on the highest possible standards of safety and protectionof public health with respect to nuclear power, including siting, design,operation, evacuation plans, and waste disposal procedures. We will requirenuclear power to compete fairly in the marketplace. We will reexamine andreview all federal subsidies to the nuclear industry, including the Price-AndersonAct's limits on the liability of the industry which will be considered forreauthorization in the next Congress. A Democratic Administration will givethe Nuclear Regulatory Commission the integrity, competence, and credibilityit needs to carry out its mandate to protect the public health and safety.We will expand the role of the public in NRC procedures.
The Democratic Party believes high-level radioactive waste and otherhazardous materials should be transported only when absolutely necessary.We will guarantee states full participatory rights in all decisions affectingthe movement of high-level radioactive waste within their borders. We willrequire radioactive waste and hazardous materials emergency response plansalong transportation routes, similar to those required for nuclear powerplants. The Democratic Party will act swiftly to ensure states' authorityto regulate routes and schedules for radioactive and other hazardous shipments.
We will ensure that no offshore oil and gas exploration will be takenup that is inconsistent with the protection of our fisheries and coastalresources. The leasing of public lands, both onshore and offshore, willbe based on present demand and land use planning processes, and will beundertaken in ways that assure fair economic return to the public, protectionof the environment and full participation by state and local governments.The Coastal Zone Management Act should be amended to require initial leasingdecisions to be consistent with federally approved state and territorialcoastal zone management plans. Interior states should be given consultationand concurrence rights with respect to onshore leases comparable to therights afforded coastal states with respect to offshore leases.
We believe that synthetic fuels research and development support shouldemphasize environmental protection technologies and standards and hold outreasonable hope of long-term economic viability The Democratic Party proposesto reevaluate the Synthetic Fuels Corporation.
Energy Conservation
The high cost of producing and using energy now constitutes a substantialshare of U.S. capital spending, Energy conservation has become essentialto our economy as well as our national security.
Strict standards of energy efficiency for home appliances, for example,could save enough money in the next 15 years to avoid the need for 40 newpower plants. Better insulated houses and apartments can sharply reducepower and heating bills for families throughout America, and help utilitiesavoid the high cost of building more expensive powerplants.
Ronald Reagan sees no role for government in conserving energy, and hehas gutted promising conservation efforts. The Democratic Party supportsextension of the existing tax credits for business and residential energyconservation and renewable energy use, and expansion of those tax creditsto include the incorporation of passive solar designs in new housing. TheDemocratic Party also supports faithful implementation of existing programsfor energy efficiency standards for new appliances; upgrading of fuel efficiencystandards for new automobiles; establishment of comparable fuel efficiencystandards for new light trucks and vans; and development of an energy efficiencyrating system to be used to advise homebuyers at the time of sale of thelikely future energy costs of houses.
Lifeline Utility Rates
Recognizing that the elderly and the poor suffer most from high energycosts, the Democratic Party supports special, lower electricity and naturalgas rates for senior citizens and low-income Americans.
Recycling
The Democratic Party recognizes that recovering and recycling new materialscan conserve energy and natural resources, create additional jobs, reducethe costs of material goods, eliminate solid waste and litter, and avoidpollution. We will increase efforts to recover and recycle useful materialsfrom municipal waste.
Protecting Our Environment
Americans know that industrial production and economic development donot have to mean ruined land or polluted air and water. Sound resource management,careful planning, and strict pollution control enforcement will allow usto have a prosperous economy and a healthy environment. For the last fouryears the Reagan Administration has assumed a radical position, workingto eliminate the environmental protections forged through years of bipartisancooperation.
Ronald Reagan's first appointees to key environmental positions havealready been forced to resign. But the American people are entitled to morethan the absence of scandal ‹ they demand real action to protect thehealth and safety of our families and communities. The Democratic Partysupports revitalizing the Environmental Protection Agency by providing itwith a budget increase adequate to allow it to carry out its substantiallyincreased responsibility to protect the people and enforce the law.
Hazardous Wastes
Thousands of dump sites across America contain highly dangerous poisonsthat can threaten the health and safety of families who live nearby or whodepend on water supplies that could be contaminated by the poisons. AlthoughCongress has established the Superfund for emergency cleanup of these dangeroussites, President Reagan refuses to use it vigorously. The Democratic Partyis committed to enforcing existing laws, to dramatically increasing Superfundresources to clean up all sites that threaten public health, and to assuringthat everyone whose health or property is damaged has a fair opportunityto force the polluters to pay for the damage. This increased support shouldbe financed at least in part through new taxes on the generation of hazardouswastes, so companies have an economic incentive to reduce the volume andtoxicity of their dangerous wastes.
The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act should be expanded to includemajor new requirements for safer management of newly generated toxic waste.High priority must be given to establishing and implementing a program tophase out the land disposal of untreated hazardous waste, requiring insteadthat it be treated by chemical, biological, or thermal processes that renderit harmless and safe for disposal. The Environmental Protection Agency alsoshould adopt standards to ensure that the safest possible methods of managingparticular wastes are used, and that available methods are used to reducethe volume and toxicity of waste produced by industry.
Clean Air and Water
The Democratic Party supports a reauthorized and strengthened Clean AirAct. Statutory requirements for the control of toxic air pollutants shouldbe strengthened, with the environmental agency required to identify andregulate within three years priority air pollutants known or anticipatedto cause cancer and other serious diseases. The Democratic Party calls foran immediate program to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions by 50% from 1980levels within the next decade; this program shall include interim reductionswithin five years of its enactment. Our effort should be designed to reduceenvironmental and economic damage from acid rain while assuring such effortsdo not cause regional economic dislocations. Every effort should be madeto mitigate any job losses associated with any national acid rain program.
The Democratic Party is committed to strengthening the Clean Water Actto curb both direct and indirect discharge of toxic pollutants into ournation's waters, and supports a strengthened Environmental Protection Agencyto assure help to American cities in providing adequate supplies of drinkingwater free of toxic chemicals and other contaminants.
Workplace Safety
The Democratic Party believes all Americans, in their workplaces andcommunities, have the right to know what hazardous materials and chemicalsthey may have been exposed to and how they may protect their health fromsuch exposure. The Democratic Party supports appropriate funding levelsfor the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, reversing the Reaganbudget cuts in that agency; vigorous enforcement of occupational safetyand health standards; and worker right-to-know requirements.
Pesticides and Herbicides
The Democratic Party is committed to establishing standards and deadlinesrequiring all pesticides and herbicides to be thoroughly tested to ensurethey do not cause cancer, birth defects, or other adverse health effects.We support rigorous research and information programs to develop and assistfarmers with the use of integrated pest management and non-chemical pestcontrol methods to reduce the health risk of controlling agricultural pests,and the establishment of strict deadlines to ensure that pesticides arefully tested and in compliance with health and safety standards. The DemocraticParty is committed to ensuring that our nation's food supply is free ofpesticides whose danger to health has been demonstrated, and believes itis irresponsible to allow the export to other nations of herbicides andpesticides banned for use in the U.S. and will act swiftly to halt suchexports.
EPA Budget
The Democratic Party opposes the Reagan Administration's budget cuts,which have severely hampered the effectiveness of our environmental programs.The Environmental Protection Agency should receive a budget that exceedsin real dollars the agency's purchasing power when President Reagan tookoffice, since the agency's workload has almost doubled in recent years.
Managing our Public Lands
The Democratic Party believes in retaining ownership and control of ourpublic lands, and in managing those lands according to the principles ofmultiple use and sustained yield, with appropriate environmental standardsand mitigation requirements to protect the public interest. The DemocraticParty supports the substantial expansion of the National Wilderness PreservationSystem, with designations of all types of ecosystems, including coastalareas, deserts, and prairies as well as forest and alpine areas. Congressionaldecisions to designate wilderness should include evaluations of mineralresources and other potential land values.
The Democratic Party supports adequate funding of and restoration offederal programs to protect fully national parks, wildlife refuges, andwilderness areas from external and internal threats. Development activitieswithin national wildlife refuges which are not compatible with the purposesfor which the refuges were designated should not be allowed. The letterand the spirit of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of1980 should be followed, with an end to unsound land exchanges and otherefforts to circumvent the law.
A new Democratic Party will provide adequate appropriations for the Landand Water Conservation Fund.
Wetlands ‹ The Democratic Party supports coherent and coordinatedfederal policies to protect our nation's valuable and disappearing wetlands,which are critical nurseries for commercial fisheries and vital ecological,scenic, and recreational sources These policies will include more activeefforts to acquire threatened wetland areas, consideration of new tax incentivesto encourage private efforts to preserve instead of develop wetlands, andelimination of current incentives that encourage wetlands destruction.
Wildlife ‹ Fishing, hunting, and enjoyment of America's wildlifecan continue to be an important part of our natural heritage only throughactive programs to maintain the diversity and abundance of plants, animals,and natural habitats. The Democratic Party supports protection of endangeredspecies, land management to maintain healthy populations of wildlife, andfull United States participation to implement international wildlife treaties.
Water Policy ‹ The Democratic Party recognizes that finite and diminishingquantities of water, and often antiquated, inadequate, or inefficient watersupply systems, threaten economic growth and the quality of life in allregions of the country. New water project starts, in the West by the Bureauof Reclamation, and in the rest of the country by the Corps of Engineers,are critical. We recognize that strong federal leadership is necessary tomeet these needs, and to do so in environmentally sound ways.
The Democratic Party supports the creation of a national water resourcesplanning board and a comprehensive review of the nation's water needs. Wesupport major new water policy efforts addressing several national needs:
‹ We will help meet our nation's infrastructure needs, includingthe construction of new projects which are economically and environmentallysound. In the West, new reclamation water project starts are critical. Inall cases, we will consider innovative and nonstructural alternatives onan equal basis.
‹ We will examine the water quantity and water quality issues associatedwith providing adequate water supply.
‹ We will help meet navigation, flood control, and municipal watersupply system needs, with new assistance.
Federal water policy efforts must be carefully coordinated with affectedstate governments, making possible not only cooperative financing of waterinvestments but a commensurate sharing of decision-making authority andresponsibility.
Chapter II. Justice, Dignity and Opportunity
Introduction
Fulfilling America's highest promise, equal justice for all: that isthe Democratic agenda for a just future.
For many of our citizens, it is only in the last two decades that theefforts of a broad, bipartisan coalition have begun to give real meaningto the dream of freedom and equality. During that time Democrats, spurredby the Civil Rights Movement, have enacted landmark legislation in areasincluding voting, education, housing and employment.
A nation is only as strong as its commitment to justice and equality.Today, a corrosive unfairness eats at the underpinnings of our society.Civil rights laws and guarantees ‹ only recently achieved after hard-foughtbattles, personal sacrifice and loss of life ‹ are imperiled by anAdministration that consciously seeks to turn the clock back to an era whensecond-class citizenship for women and minorities, disenfranchisement, andde jure and de facto segregation were very much the facts of life for wellover half of America's population. Moreover, justice encompasses more thanour nation's laws. The poor, the female, the minority ‹ many of themjust like boats stuck on the bottom ‹ have come to experience an implacableand intractable foe in the Reagan Administration.
A new Democratic Administration will understand that the age-old scourgeof discrimination and prejudice against many groups in American societyis still rampant and very much a part of the reason for the debilitatingcircumstances in which disadvantaged peoples are forced to live. Althoughstrides have been made in combatting discrimination and defamation againstAmericans of various ethnic groups, much remains to be done. Therefore,we pledge an end to the Reagan Administration's punitive policy toward women,minorities, and the poor and support the reaffirmation of the principlethat the government is still responsible for protecting the civil rightsof all citizens. Government has a special responsibility to those whom societyhas historically prevented from enjoying the benefits of full citizenshipfor reasons of race, religion, sex, age, national origin and ethnic heritage,sexual orientation, or disability.
The goal for the coming decades is not only full justice under the law,but economic justice as well. In the recent past, we have put our nationon the road toward achieving equal protection of all our citizens' humanrights. The challenge now is to continue to press that cause, while joininga new battle ‹ to assure justice and opportunity in the workplace,and in the economy.
Justice for all in today's America and the America of tomorrow demandsnot one, but two broad guarantees. First, we must guarantee that our nationwill reinforce and extend its commitment to human rights and equal opportunity.And second, we must guarantee progress on the new frontier for the future:economic and social justice.
We are determined to enforce the laws guaranteeing equal opportunity,and to complete the civil rights agenda cast aside by the Reagan Administration.No President has the right to do what this Administration has done: to readselectively from the United States Code and simply ignore the laws ensuringbasic rights and opportunities because they conflict with this Administration'sideology. As Democrats, we pledge to reverse the trend towards lawlessnesswhich has characterized this Administration, and to keep our commitmentsto all in our community who look to the government for defense of theirrights.
But we recognize that while a first step toward a just society is toguarantee the right of all workers to compete equally for a job, the nextstep is assuring that enough new jobs are created to give meaningful employmentto all our workers for the future.
If in past decades we won the right for minorities to ride at the frontof the bus, in coming years we must assure that minorities have the opportunityto own the bus company.
It will not be enough to say that our nation must offer equal accessto health care‹we must put comprehensive health care within the reachof all of our citizens, at a price all can afford.
It will not do simply to guarantee women a place in the work force‹womendeserve an equal chance at a career leading to the board of directors.
As Democrats, we believe that human rights and an economy of opportunityare two sides of the same coin of justice. No economic program can be consideredjust unless it advances the opportunity of all to live a better, more dignifiedlife. No American is afforded economic justice when he or she is deniedan opportunity to reap the rewards of economic growth.
Economic justice is also economic common sense. Any who doubt that shouldconsider the toll of welfare, crime, prisons, public housing and urban squaloron our national wealth. We will pay a high price for all the disadvantagedor disenfranchised if we fail to include them in the new economic revolution.
As Democrats, therefore, we pledge to pursue a new definition of justicethat meets the new demands of our time. Under a Democratic Administration,equality and fairness under the law will be matched by justice in the economyand in the workplace.
THE FUTURE IF REAGAN IS REELECTED
"Twenty years after the Equal Pay Act should have eradicated thelast vestige of economic discrimination against women, employers have madelittle progress in integrating their work force.... It is the Republicangovernor of Washington State, and the Republican County Executive of NassauCounty, New York, who are committing public resources to mount a legal defensefor their jurisdictions' blatant sex discrimination practices.... The ReaganAdministration from the outset has made it abundantly clear that civil rightsand economic justice are to be sacrificed on the altar of corporate greed...."Diana Rock, Director of Women's Rights, American Federation of State, County,and Municipal Employees (Democratic Platform Committee Hearing, Cleveland,Ohio, May 21, 1984)
"The Reagan Administration, upon taking office in 1981, set upona concerted effort to roll back civil rights protections. This attack isunderway in agency enforcement, court litigation, legislative initiative,and nominations of federal appointees " Virna M. Canson, Regional Director,West Coast Region, NAACP (Democratic Platform Committee Hearing, Los Angeles,California, May 14, 1984)
The neglect of our historic human rights commitment will already be recordedas the first legacy of Ronald Reagan's years in the White House. But supposeMr. Reagan is reelected.
What would become of America's commitment to equal justice and opportunityif Mr. Reagan is reelected?
The hard truth is that if Mr. Reagan is reelected our most vigorous defenderof the rule of law ‹ the United States Supreme Court ‹ could belost to the cause of equal justice for another generation. Today, five ofthe nine members of the Court are over 75. Our next President will likelyhave the opportunity to shape that Court, not just for his own term ‹or even for his own lifetime ‹ but for the rest of ours, and for ourchildren's too.
There can be little doubt that a Supreme Court chosen by Ronald Reaganwould radically restrict constitutional rights and drastically reinterpretexisting laws. Today, the fundamental right of a woman to reproduction freedomrests on the votes of six members of the Supreme Court ‹ five of whomare over 75. That right could easily disappear during a second Reagan term.Already, the protections against employment discrimination have been restrictedby the Court; a Reagan Court surely would reduce them further. The sameis true for the right of workers to have a healthy and safe workplace, andto organize collectively in unions. Although the statute protecting votingrights has been extended through a massive bipartisan effort, opposed bythe Reagan Administration, a Reagan Supreme Court could still effectivelynullify it simply by erecting impossible standards of proof. Not long ago,the Court decided it should hire independent counsel to argue that tax exemptionsfor racially discriminatory schools were unlawful because the Justice Departmentrefused to do so. Can anyone imagine a Reagan Court doing that? How mucheasier it would be for a Reagan Court simply to agree with a Reagan Departmentof Justice.
If Mr. Reagan is reelected, who would protect women and minorities againstdiscrimination?
In the first year after the Reagan Administration assumed office, thenumber of cases involving charges of employment discrimination filed incourt by the EEOC dropped by more than 70 percent. During this Administration,the EEOC has refused to process a single comparable worth case filed bya woman. Meanwhile, the Reagan Justice Department has sought to destroyeffective affirmative action remedies, and even to undermine private plansto reduce discrimination in employment. The actions of the Reagan Administrationserve only to delay the day when fairness is achieved and such remedialmeasures are, therefore, no longer needed.
It is now clear that if Mr. Reagan is reelected, women and minoritiesseeking protection of their rights would be forced to contend not only withtheir employers, but with a hostile government. Equal employment opportunityand equity would remain elusive dreams.
If Mr. Reagan is reelected, who would assure access to justice?
Since the day of its inauguration, the Reagan Administration has conducteda continuous, full-scale war against the federal Legal Services Corporation,whose only job is to ensure that the poor are fairly heard in court, andthat they get equal access to our system of justice. Thirty percent of theCorporation's lawyers have been laid off, and the Administration has usedevery means it could find to stack its Board with people hostile to thevery concept of equal justice for the poor.
In the America of Ronald Reagan, you will only get as much justice asyou pay for.
If Mr. Reagan is reelected, who would protect the rights of workers?
The Republican Administration has consistently viewed the dollar coststo businesses of providing a safe workplace as more important than the impactof injury and disease on working men and women. It has appointed officialsto the National Labor Relations Board who openly oppose the rights of workersto organize and bargain collectively. The Department of Labor has ignoredits mandate to enforce fair labor standards and has sought to reverse hard-wongains in protections for worker health and safety.
What would happen if Mr. Reagan is reelected? Will the right to bargaincollectively be eviscerated through Republican W approved abuses of thebankruptcy laws? Will the National Labor Relations Act be converted intoa tool that limits working men and women and empowers only their employers?Who will ensure that our next generation does not suffer the effects oftoxic substances in the workplace ‹ substances whose existence is noteven revealed to the worker?
If Mr. Reagan is reelected, who would protect the rights of senior citizens?
Speaking at Philadelphia in 1980 during his campaign, Ronald Reagan vowedto a large audience of senior citizens his strong support for Social Security.He assured thousands of senior citizens on that occasion that as Presidenthe would see to it that every commitment made by the federal governmentto the senior citizens was faithfully kept.
Ronald Reagan violated that promise shortly after he became President.In 1981, speaking to a joint session of Congress President Reagan said,"We will not cut Medicare." In a matter of weeks thereafter PresidentReagan asked the Congress of the United States to cut $88 billion in 1981and the following four years from Social Security programs. He proposedto reduce by a third the number of people protected by the disability insuranceprogram. He proposed to reduce by a third the benefits a senior citizenwould receive if he or she retired at 62. He proposed to cut out the burialprogram for recipients of Social Security.
He proposed to cut millions from programs that Democratic Administrationshad provided for the education of the children of the elderly covered bySocial Security, slashing the list of beneficiaries of these programs byhundreds of thousands of sons and daughters of men and women covered bySocial Security. And he called for the abolition of the $122-a-month minimumbenefit program, which would have dropped over three million people fromSocial Security altogether.
The American people then revolted, and so did the Congress. The DemocraticParty put a stop to the decimation of the Social Security program, but notbefore President Reagan had cut $19 billion from Social Security benefitsin 1981 and the ensuing four years. Democrats in Congress forced the restorationof the $122-a-month minimum benefit program to those who were covered beforethe Reagan cuts, but never succeeded in extending coverage to the additional7,000 people a month who would have become eligible after the Reagan cuts.
Instead of keeping his word that he would not cut Medicare, Reagan forcedCongress every year beginning in 1981 to cut billions from the Medicareprogram. When Social Security developed financial problems due to massiveunemployment in 1982, the Reagan Administration moved to "solve"them by cutting benefits further. Only the Democrats on the Social SecurityCommission prevented him from doing that.
If Mr. Reagan is reelected, how would we teach our children to respectthe law?
We cannot teach our children to respect the law when they see the highestofficials of government flaunting it at their will. Lawlessness has beena pattern in this Administration ‹ and it is a pattern that is unlikelyto be altered if Reagan and the Republicans stay in the White House.
More than forty top Republican officials have already been implicatedin all kinds of wrongdoing. Murky transactions on the fringe of organizedcrime, accepting gifts from foreign journalists and governments, misusinggovernment funds, lying under oath, stock manipulations, taking interest-freeloans from wealthy businessmen who later receive federal jobs ‹ allof these are part of business as usual with Ronald Reagan's appointees.
The Republicans profess to stand for "law and order." But thisis the same Administration that vetoed the bipartisan anti-crime bill in1982. And when it comes to laws they do not like ‹ whether they concerntoxic wastes, pure food and drugs, or worker health and safety ‹ thisAdministration simply makes believe they do not exist. The same is trueoverseas: this Administration is just as willing to ignore internationallaw as domestic law. When we finally learned of its illegal mining of Nicaragua'sharbors, the Reagan Administration hastily attempted, the night before Nicaraguasued us, to withdraw jurisdiction over the question from the World Court.But even this maneuver was carried out in an illegal fashion that the WorldCourt later set aside.
This Republican Administration has been unprecedentedly eager to limitpublic debate by instituting "security agreements" that censorex-officials, "revising" the Freedom of Information Act, refusingvisas to foreign visitors who might provide another perspective on Americanpolicies overseas, and denying our war correspondents their historic positionalongside our troops. This comes as no surprise: in the first term the ReaganAdministration had a lot to hide. What would happen in a second?
If Mr. Reagan &;reelected, what would happen to our unfinished civilrights agenda?
The answer is clear: an Administration which refuses to enforce the lawsthat are on the books can hardly be expected to respect ‹ or even recognize‹ the rights of those who are not already specifically protected byexisting law.
Nowhere is this Administration's hostility to equal rights and equaljustice more apparent than in its attitude to the Equal Rights Amendment.As soon as the Reagan Action took control of the Republican Party at itsconvention in 1980, it ended that Party's forty-year commitment to passageof the Equal Rights Amendment. So long as this Administration remains inoffice, the proponents of unamended ERA have nothing less than an enemyin the White House. And if this is true for the women of America, it isequally true for disadvantaged minorities who must depend on this government'ssense of justice to secure their rights and lead independent lives.
Since assuming office, the Reagan Administration has shown more hostility‹ indeed, more outright and implacable aggression ‹ toward theAmerican ideal of equal justice for all than even its harshest critics wouldhave predicted in 1980. Given its first-term record, even our most pessimisticforecasts for four more Republican years may well fall short of the mark.No one knows the full extent of the damage Reagan could wreak on this countryin another term. But we do know one thing: we cannot afford to find out.
THE DEMOCRATIC ALTERNATIVE: EQUAL JUSTICE FOR ALL
"The Democratic Party is challenged as never before to redirectthe present dangerous course of our nation and our world, and to providemeaningful work at adequate pay for all our citizens and justice for allAmericans
"The dream of a nation fully committed to peace, jobs, and justicehas fast become a nightmare under this Administration....
"Our choice today is to become just a new party in power in Novemberwith new faces and new pledges‹or a truly great party with the courageto develop a new vision and a new direction for the sake of our nation andour world." Coretta Scott King (Democratic Platform Committee Hearing,Washington, D.C., June 11, 1984)
"The Equal Rights Amendment is the only guarantee of full equalitythe women of this nation can trust and count on. We have seen in the pastthree and one-half years an administration that has gone out of its wayto prove that laws, court decisions, executive orders, and regulations arenot enough ‹ they can be changed by a new majority, overturned, sweptaside, underfunded, or rescinded. Only when the legislative protectionsagainst such discrimination are grounded in the bedrock of the Constitutioncan we feel that the vagaries of changing political climates or a hostileadministration will not wipe out those protections." Judy Goldsmith,President, National Organization for Women (Democratic Platform CommitteeHearing, Washington, D.C., June 12, 1984)
Equal justice for all, in a Democratic future, means that every individualmust have a fair and equal opportunity to fulfill his or her potential,and to be an independent, working member of our society ‹ and it isthe commitment of our Party to secure that opportunity.
We are determined to build an America of self-sufficient, independentpeople. We will enforce the laws guaranteeing equal opportunity and humanrights, and complete the unfinished civil rights agenda. We will keep ourcommitments to all of the members of our community who rely upon our wordto stay, or to become, independent‹our senior citizens, those who servedin the Armed Forces, the handicapped and disabled, the members of our Americanfamily who are trapped in poverty, and all Americans who look to governmentto protect them from the pain, expense, and dislocation caused by crime.And in fulfilling these and all the duties of government, a Democratic Administrationwill stand as an example to all of integrity and justice.
Equal Justice Under Law
Many have suffered from historical patterns of discrimination and others,because of their recent immigration in sizeable numbers, are subject tonew forms of discrimination. Over the years, the Democratic Party has voiceda commitment to eradicating these injustices. In 1948, the Democratic Platformfor the first time contained a plank committing this Party to the causeof civil rights. For almost forty years, we have fought proudly for thatcause. In 1964, a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress enactedthe landmark legislation prohibiting discrimination in employment and publicaccommodations. And for nearly two decades, a bipartisan commitment hasexisted in Congress and in the White House to expand and enforce those laws.Until Ronald Reagan.
This Administration has sought to erode the force and meaning of constitutionally-mandatedand court-sanctioned remedies for long-standing patterns of discriminatoryconduct. It has attempted to create new standards under each of our nation'scivil rights laws by requiring a showing of intent to discriminate, andcase-by-case litigation of class-wide violations. Its interpretation oftwo recent Supreme Court decisions attempts to sound the death knell forequal opportunity and affirmative action. In one case, the Administrationinterpreted the Court's decision as requiring that equal opportunity mandatesassociated with the receipt of all federal monies apply only to the specificprogram receiving federal funds. In the other, the Administration is usinga ruling in favor of a bona fide seniority system to assault all affirmativeaction plans. As Democrats, we disagree. Instead, we reaffirm our long-standingcommitment to civil rights for all and we pledge to enforce the laws guaranteeingequal opportunity for all Americans. The next Democratic Administrationwill offer unwavering support for the following:
A Strong, Independent Civil Rights Commission ‹ A Democratic Administrationwill return the Commission on Civil Rights to an independent status andincrease its funding. The Commission must be restored to its original missionof ensuring the enforcement of civil rights by those federal agencies chargedwith the task.
Strengthened Civil Rights Enforcement ‹ We will restore a strongEqual Employment Opportunity Commission and renew the commitment of theDepartment of Justice and the Department of Labor to enforce civil rightslaws and executive orders. A Democratic Administration will, by vigorouslyenforcing laws and strengthening education and training opportunities, increaseminority participation in the workplace and eliminate wage inequities whichleave minorities at the bottom of the pay scale.
Equal Educational Opportunity ‹ The Democratic Party pledges todo all it can, beginning this year, to reverse the decision of the UnitedStates Supreme Court in the Grove City College case, and to restore as thelaw of the land the prohibition of any use of federal financial assistanceto subsidize discrimination because of race, national origin, sex, age,or disability. Fulfilling this commitment means that every institution whichreceives government funds must guarantee equality and equal opportunityin all of its programs.
Religious Liberty and Church/State Separation ‹ The current Administrationhas consistently sought to reverse in the courts or overrule by constitutionalamendment a long line of Supreme Court decisions that preserve our historiccommitment to religious tolerance and church/state separation. The DemocraticPlatform affirms its support of the principles of religious liberty, religioustolerance and church/state separation and of the Supreme Court decisionsforbidding violation of those principles. We pledge to resist all effortsto weaken those decisions.
Ensure Fair Housing‹We will enhance the authority of the Departmentof Housing and Urban Development to enforce our fair housing laws. A DemocraticAdministration will work to provide the Department with the resources andthe power to seek cease and desist orders to prevent housing discriminationagainst minorities, women and families with children.
Affirmative Action ‹ The Democratic Party firmly commits itselfto protect the civil rights of every citizen and to pursue justice and equaltreatment under the law for all citizens. The Party reaffirms its long-standingcommitment to the eradication of discrimination in all aspects of Americanlife through the use of affirmative action, goals, timetables, and otherverifiable measurements to overturn historic patterns and historic burdensof discrimination in hiring, training, promotions, contract procurement,education, and the administration of all Federal programs. A DemocraticAdministration will resist any efforts to undermine the progress made underprevious Democratic administrations and shall strongly enforce Federal civilrights standards such as equal opportunity, affirmative action in employment,contract procurement, education, and training. The Federal Government mustset an example and be a model for private employers, making special effortsin both recruitment, training, and promotion to aid minority Americans inovercoming both the historic patterns and the historic burdens of discrimination.We will reverse the regressive trend of the Reagan Administration by makinga commitment to increase recruitment, hiring, training, retraining, procurement,and promotional opportunity at the Federal level to aid minority Americansand women. We call on the public and private sectors to live up to and enforceall civil rights laws and regulations, i.e., Equal Employment OpportunityPrograms, Title VI and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the Fair HousingLaws, and affirmative action requirements.
Eliminate Ethnic-Stereotyping and Recognize Ethnic Diversity ‹ Whilestrides have been made in combatting discrimination and defamation againstAmericans of various ethnic groups, ethnic stereotyping continues. We supportcooperation and understanding between racial, ethnic, and cultural groupsand reject those who promote division based on fear or stereotyping whichhave their basis in social and economic inequity. We encourage respect forAmerica's ethnic diversity.
Equal Access to Justice ‹ Democrats believe that all our governmentprocesses should be open to all Americans, and that no essential right shouldbe denied based on wealth or status. We therefore strongly support a well-funded,unrestricted Legal Services Corporation to ensure that none of our citizensis denied the full benefits of our judicial system. No American should sufferillegality or abuse simply because he or she is poor. And lawyers for thepoor must not be prevented from acting in accordance with the same ethicalcanons as apply to lawyers for the rich: to represent their clients withall the zeal, devotion, energy, and creativity that the law allows.
Equal Rights for Women ‹ A top priority of a Democratic Administrationwill be ratification of the unamended Equal Rights Amendment. In a DemocraticAmerica, the Constitution will be amended to provide:
Section l. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridgedby the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriatelegislation, the provisions of this article.
Section 3. This article shall take effect two years after the date ofratification.
We will insist on pay equity for women. Today, white women who can findwork earn, on average, only 62 cents for every dollar earned by white men.Black women earn only 58 cents for every dollar earned by white men, andHispanic women only 56 cents. The earnings gap ‹ and the occupationalsegregation of women which it reflects ‹ extends to all women at everyeducational level, but is most pronounced w among black and other womenof color who are confronted by historical and contemporary racial barrierswhich transcend sex. The Democratic Party defines nondiscrimination to encompassboth equal pay for equal work and equal pay for work of comparable worth,and we pledge to take every step, including enforcement of current law andamending the Constitution to include the unamended ERA, to close the wagegap. We also support efforts to reform private and civil service pensionrules to ensure equal treatment for women, prohibit discrimination in insurancepractices, and improve enforcement of child-support obligations. Our Partyalso recognizes that women cannot compete equally with men so long as theyare expected to choose between having a job and having a family. The DemocraticParty calls for universally available day-care with federal or businessfunding, for meaningful part-time work, and for flex time on the job sothat women ‹ and men ‹ can shape even full-time jobs around theirfamily schedules.
Political Empowerment for Minorities and Women ‹ The DemocraticParty is committed to placing women as well as minorities in positions ofpower in government. We establish the goal of doubling the number of minoritiesand women in Congress by 1988. We will create and fund a talent bank ofminorities and women to fill policy positions in the next Administration.We will recruit women and minorities to run for Governorships and all stateand local offices. The Democratic Party (through all of its campaign committees)will commit to spending maximum resources to elect women and minority candidatesand offer these candidates in-kind services, including political organizingand strategic advice. And the bulk of all voter registration funds willbe spent on targeted efforts to register minorities and women.
Reproductive Freedom ‹ The Democratic Party recognizes reproductivefreedom as a fundamental human right. We therefore oppose government interferencein the reproductive decisions of Americans, especially government interferencewhich denies poor Americans their right to privacy by funding or advocatingone or a limited number of reproductive choices only. We fully recognizethe religious and ethical concerns which many Americans have about abortion.But we also recognize the belief of many Americans that a woman has a rightto choose whether and when to have a child. The Democratic Party supportsthe 1973 Supreme Court decision on abortion rights as the law of the landand opposes any constitutional amendment to restrict or overturn that decision.We deplore violence and harassment against health providers and women seekingservices, and will work to end such acts. We support a continuing federalinterest in developing strong local family planning and family life educationprograms and medical research aimed at reducing the need for abortion.
The Rights of Workers ‹ This nation established a labor policy morethan a generation ago whose purpose is to encourage collective bargainingand the right of workers to organize to obtain this goal. The DemocraticParty is committed to extending the benefit of this policy to all workersand to removing the barriers to its administration. To accomplish this,the Democratic Party supports: the repeal of Section 14B of the NationalLabor Relations Act; labor law reform legislation; a prohibition on themisuse of federal bankruptcy law to prevent the circumvention of the collectivebargaining process and the destruction of labor-management contracts; andlegislation to allow building trades workers the same peaceful picketingrights currently afforded industrial workers. We support the right of publicemployees and agricultural workers to organize and bargain collectively,and we will act to assure that right. Inasmuch as farm workers are excludedfrom coverage under the National Labor Relations Act, the Democratic Partyrecognizes the heroic efforts of farm workers to gain contracts and theirright under the law to use boycotts as an effective tool to achieve suchends. We must restore to federal workers their First Amendment rights byreforming the Hatch Act. We must also protect federal and private sectorworkers from invasions of their privacy by prohibiting the use of polygraphsand other "Truth Test" devices. In addition, the Mine Health SafetyAct and the Occupational Health and Safety Act must be properly administered,with the concern of the worker being the highest priority. All efforts toweaken or undermine OSHA's basic worker protection provisions, or to shirkthe duty to enforce them, are unacceptable and intolerable. For the victimsof occupational disease, we insist on legislation to assure just compensationand adequate health care for these workers as well as vigorous enforcementaction by OSHA to eradicate the causes of occupational disease. All fairlabor standards acts, such as the minimum wage and Davis-Bacon protections,must be effectively enforced. We reject the so-called "sub-minimumwage" as an appropriate tool of social or economic policy. We stronglyoppose workfare which penalizes welfare recipients and undercuts the basicprinciple of equal pay for equal work. Workfare is not a substitute fora jobs program.
The Responsibility of Economic Institutions ‹ The Democratic Partycontinues to support the struggle of all citizens to secure economic equality.Therefore, we support policies calling for increased involvement of minoritiesand women in job training and apprenticeship programs. The Democratic Partyencourages all economic institutions, including business and labor, to workactively to ensure that leadership at all levels of decision-making reflectsthe ethnic and gender diversity of the relevant work force by expandingopportunities for training and advancement.
Enforcing The Voting Rights Act ‹ The right to vote ‹ and tohave one's vote counted fully and fairly ‹ is the most important civilright of every American citizen. For without it, no other social, economic,or political rights can be fully realized.
Nothing is more shameful in the record of the Reagan Administration thanits willful refusal to fulfill its responsibility to guarantee the votingrights of every American. Instead of moving America forward by expandingvoting rights and by eliminating barriers to voting by minority citizens,the Reagan Administration fought a year-long, rear-guard action againstefforts to strengthen the Voting Rights Act.
The Democratic Party commits itself to a wholly different course thanthat of the Reagan Administration. For while we are proud of our recordof commitment to civil rights in the past, we recognize that the test ofour commitment is what a Democratic Administration will do in the future.Despite the great progress in securing voting rights for minority Americansin the past, there remain throughout our nation voting rules, practices,and procedures that have been and are used to discriminate against manycitizens to discourage or deny their right to register and to vote, or dilutetheir vote when they do. A Democratic President and Administration pledgeto eliminate any and all discriminatory barriers to full voting rights,whether they be at-large requirements, second-primaries, gerrymandering,annexation, dual registration, dual voting or other practices. Whateverlaw, practice, or regulation discriminates against the voting rights ofminority citizens, a Democratic President and Administration will move tostrike it down.
This is more than a verbal pledge. For minority citizens have waitedfar too long already to realize their full voting rights.
To prevent any further delay, the Democratic Party pledges to fund aserious, in-depth study of the use of second primaries and other practicesthroughout the nation that may discriminate against voting rights. Thisstudy shall be completed in ample time prior to the 1986 elections for theParty to act. The Democratic Party commits to use its full resources toeliminate any second primary, gerrymandering, at-large requirements, annexation,dual registration, dual voting or other voting practices that discriminateor act to dilute votes of minority citizens.
Wherever a runoff primary or other voting practice is found to be discriminatory,the State Party shall take provable, positive steps to achieve the necessarylegislative or party rules changes.
Provable positive steps shall be taken in a timely fashion and shallinclude the drafting of corrective legislation, public endorsement by thestate Party of such legislation, efforts to educate the public on the needfor such legislation, active support for the legislation by the state Partylobbying state. legislators, other public officials, Party officials andParty members, and encouraging consideration of the legislation by the appropriatelegislative committees and bodies.
A Democratic Administration pledges also that the Justice Departmentshall initiate a similar study, and use the full resources of the law toeliminate any voting practice, such as second primaries, gerrymandering,annexation, dual registration, dual voting, or any other practice that discriminatesor acts to dilute votes of minority citizens.
A Democratic President and Administration will use the full resourcesof the Voting Rights Act of 1982, with its strengthened enforcement powers,to investigate and root out any and all discriminatory voting barriers.A Democratic President will appoint as Attorney General, as Assistant AttorneyGeneral for Civil Rights, and throughout the Justice Department individualswith a proven record of commitment to enforcing civil rights and votingrights for all our citizens. The full resources of the Justice Departmentshall be used to investigate fully and speedily all alleged instances ofdiscriminatory barriers. And a Democratic Administration shall use the fullresources of the law, the power of government, and shall seek new legislation,if needed, to end discrimination in voting wherever it exists.
We are committed to a massive, nationwide campaign to increase registrationand voting participation by women and minorities, including blacks, AsianAmericans, native Americans, and Hispanics. Moreover, our Party must callfor the creation of a new program to strengthen our democracy and removeexisting obstacles to full participation in the electoral process. We shouldallow registration and voting on the same day (same day plans have workedwell in several states) and we should provide mail-in registration formsthroughout our communities. We should consider holding our elections onweekends or holidays, instituting 24-hour voting days, staggering votingtimes, and closing all polling places across the country at the same time.
We call on the television networks and all other media in the case ofpresidential elections to refrain from projecting winners of national races,either implicitly or explicitly, while any polls are still open in the continentalUnited States; in the case of state elections, to refrain from projectingwinners within a state, either implicitly or explicitly, while any pollsin that state are still open.
Voting Rights for the District of Columbia ‹ The Democratic Partysupports self-determination for the District of Columbia that guaranteeslocal control over local affairs and full voting representation in Congress.Towards this end, the Democratic Party supports the attainment of statehoodfor New Columbia; ratification of the District of Columbia Voting RightsAmendment; legislative, judicial, and fiscal autonomy; and a formula-basedfederal payment.
Puerto Rico ‹ We continue to support Puerto Rico's right to enjoyfull self determination and a relationship that can evolve in ways thatwill most benefit U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico. The Democratic Party respectsand supports the desire of the people of Puerto Rico, by their own willfreely-expressed in a peaceful and democratic process, to associate in permanentunion with the United States either as a commonwealth or as a state or tobecome an independent nation. We are also committed to respecting the culturalheritage of the people of Puerto Rico and to the elimination of the discriminatoryor unfair treatment of Puerto Ricans as U.S. citizens under federal programs.
A Fair and Humane Immigration Policy ‹ Our nation's outdated immigrationlaws require comprehensive reform that reflects our national interests andour immigrant heritage. Our first priority must be to protect the fundamentalhuman rights of American citizens and aliens. We will oppose any "reforms"that violate these rights or that will create new incentives for discriminationagainst Hispanic Americans and other minorities arising from the discriminatoryuse of employer sanctions. Specifically, we oppose employer sanctions designedto penalize employers who hire undocumented workers. Such sanctions inevitablywill increase discrimination against minority Americans. We oppose identificationprocedures that threaten civil liberties, as well as any changes that subvertthe basic principle of family unification. And we will put an end to thisAdministration's policies of barring foreign visitors from our country forpolitical or ideological reasons. We strongly oppose "bracero"or guest-worker programs as a form of legalized exploitation. We firmlysupport a one-tiered legalization program with a 1982 cut-off date.
The Democratic Party will implement a balanced, fair, and non-discriminatoryimmigration and refugee policy consistent with the principle of affordingall applications for admission equal protection under the law. It will workfor improved performance by the Immigration and Naturalization Service inadjudicating petitions for permanent residence and naturalization. The Partywill also advocate reform within the INS to improve the enforcement operationsof the Service consistent with civil liberties protection. The correctionof past and present bias in the allocation of slots for refugee admissionswill be a top priority. Additionally, it will work to ensure that the RefugeeAct of 1980, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of ideology andrace in adjudicating asylum claims, is complied with. The Party will providethe necessary oversight of the Department of State and the Immigration andNaturalization Service so as to ensure that the unjustifiable treatmentvisited upon the Haitian refugees will never again be repeated.
The Democratic Party will formulate foreign policies which alleviate,not aggravate, the root causes of poverty, war, and human rights violationsand instability which compel people to flee their homelands.
We support the creation of an international body on immigration to addressthe economic development problems affecting Mexico and Latin American countrieswhich contribute to unauthorized immigration to the U.S. and to respondto the backlog of approved immigrant visas.
To pursue these and other goals, the Democratic Party nominee upon electionshall establish the following national advisory committees to the Presidentand the national Democratic Party: civil rights and justice; fair housing;affirmative action; equal rights for women; rights for workers; immigrationpolicy; and voting rights. These committees shall be representative on thebasis of geography, race, sex, and ethnicity.
Dignity for All ‹ As Democrats, we take pride in our accomplishmentsof the past decades in enacting legislation to assure quality and in fightingthe current efforts of this Administration to turn its back on equal opportunity.But we also recognize that so long as any Americans are subject to unfairdiscrimination, our agenda remains unfinished. We pledge to complete theagenda, and to afford dignity for all.
‹ We reaffirm the dignity of all people and the right of each individualto have equal access to and participation in the institutions and servicesof our society. To ensure that government is accessible to those Americansfor whom English is a second language, we call for federal hiring and traininginitiatives to increase the number of government employees skilled in morethan one language. All groups must be protected from discrimination basedon race, color, sex, religion, national origin, language, age, or sexualorientation. We will support legislation to prohibit discrimination in theworkplace based on sexual orientation. We will assure that sexual orientationper se does not serve as a bar to participation in the military. We willsupport an enhanced effort to learn the cause and cure of AIDS, and to providetreatment for people with AIDS. And we will ensure that foreign citizensare not excluded from this country on the basis of their sexual orientation.
‹ We have long failed to treat the original inhabitants of thisland with the dignity they deserve. A Democratic Administration will workin partnership with Indian nations to target assistance to address the twinproblems of unemployment and poverty, recognizing appropriate Native Americanrights to self-determination and the federal government's fiduciary responsibilityto the Native American nations. We will take the lead in efforts to resolvewater and other natural resource claims of Native Americans. We must alsoreevaluate the mission of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in light of its troubledrecord.
‹ We owe history and ourselves a formal apology and a promise ofredress to Japanese Americans who suffered unjust internment during WorldWar II. No commitment to civil liberties could be complete without a formalapology, restitution of position, status or entitlements and reparationsto those who suffered deprivation of rights and property without due processforty years ago.
‹ The Democratic Party strongly condemns the Ku Klux Klan, the AmericanNazi Party, and other hate groups. We pledge vigorous federal prosecutionof actions by the Klan and American Nazi Party that violate federal law,including the enactment of such laws in jurisdictions where they do notexist. We further condemn those acts, symbols, and rituals, including cross-burnings,associated with anti-civil rights activities. We urge every state and localgovernment to pursue vigorous protection of actions by the Klan and NaziParty and other such groups that violate state or local law.
Americans Abroad ‹ Americans abroad play a vital role in promotingthe ideals, culture, and economic well being of the United States. Theyare entitled to equitable treatment by their government and greater participationin decisions which directly affect them.
The Democratic Party will work to remedy the unique problems that U.S.citizens encounter abroad. In particular, we will consider ways to: protecttheir rights; eliminate citizenship inequities; make it easier for themto vote; have their interests actively represented in the federal government;provide them with fair coverage in federal social programs; honor the principlesof residency in taxation; and ensure the adequate education of federal dependentsabroad.
Insular Areas ‹ The territories are in spirit full partners in theAmerican political family; they should always be so treated. Their uniquecircumstances require the sensitive application of federal policy and specialassistance. Their self-determination, along with that of the Trust Territoryof the Pacific Islands, is an American commitment.
Democrats will work with the territories to improve their relationshipwith the rest of the United States and obtain equal rights for their citizens,including the right to vote for President. A Democratic President and Congresswill coordinate their interests as foreign and domestic policy is made.We are committed to providing territorial America with essential assistanceand equitable participation in federal programs. We will promote the growthand ensure the competitive position of territorial private sectors. It isDemocratic policy that, together with the territories, the United Statesshould strive to assist and develop closer relations with the territories'neighbors in the Caribbean and Pacific regions.
Economic Justice: Keeping Our Commitments
For some, the goal of independence requires greater support and assistancefrom government. We pledge to provide that support. Justice demands thatwe keep our commitments and display our compassion to those who most needour help ‹ to veterans and seniors, to disadvantaged minorities, tothe disabled and the poor ‹ and we will.
A Healthy America ‹ As Democrats we believe that quality healthcare is a necessity for everyone. We reaffirm our commitment to the long-termgoal of comprehensive national health insurance and view effective healthcare cost containment as an essential step toward that goal. Health costcontainment must be based on a strong commitment to quality of service deliveryand care. We also pledge to return to a proper emphasis on basic scientificresearch and meeting the need for health professionals‹areas devastatedby the Reagan Administration.
Sickle Cell Anemia ‹ Sickle Cell disease is a catastrophic illnessthat affects thousands of persons annually. Its victims include, but arenot limited to, blacks, Hispanics, and persons of Mediterranean ancestryincluding Turks, Creeks, and Italians. Its morbidity rate is particularlyhigh among infants, women and children.
Despite the compelling need for a national policy of sickle cell diseaseprevention and control, the present Administration has dramatically reducedthe federal commitment to research and funding. The Democratic Party, onthe other hand, pledges to make sickle cell a national health priority becausewe believe that only the federal government can adequately focus the necessaryresources to combat such a major public health problem. Specifically, wepledge that a Democratic Administration will restore the National SickleCell Anemia Control Act to provide health parity to those individuals andfamilies whose lives are threatened by this chronic and debilitating disorder.
Opportunities for the Elderly ‹ There are more than 26 million Americansover the age of 65, and their numbers are growing rapidly. Most have spenta lifetime building America and raising the next generation, and when theychoose to retire ‹ and it should be their choice ‹ they deserveto retire with dignity and security. Yet for millions of Americans, particularlywomen, minorities, and ethnic Americans, old age means poverty, insecurity,and desperation.
Beginning with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Democratic Partyhas been dedicated to the well-being of the senior citizens of America.President Roosevelt gave to the elderly Social Security. The following DemocraticAdministrations provided the elderly with Medicare, the Older AmericansAct, the nutrition program, low-cost housing, elderly employment programsand many others to make lives longer, healthier and happier for senior citizens,those who have done so much to make America the great nation it is today.This Reagan Republican Administration is the first administration to stopthe progress of aid to the elderly and to cut back on every helpful programwhich Democratic Administrations had enacted for our elders.
Now we have a crisis facing the country with respect to Medicare. Fundswill be short in four years. Again, the Reagan Republican Administration,speaking recently through the Social Security Advisory Council, proposedthat the way to meet this financial crisis was to make the people alreadypaying into Medicare pay more and to cut benefits by raising the age ofeligibility from 65 to 67.
Too many elderly people covered by Medicare are not able to pay the deductiblenow required by Medicare. We Democrats will never add more to the burdensof the people now covered by Medicare. Nor will we Democrats allow benefitsto be cut under Medicare by raising the age of eligibility, for we knowthat Medicare, which Democratic leadership established in 1964, is the onlychance that millions of senior citizens have to Bet the health care theyneed.
To date, the needs of America's ethnic elderly have not been met. EthnicAmerican elderly number over seven million persons, or approximately onequarter of the total population of people over 65. A close examination ofdata from the U.S. Census reveals that nearly one-half of this ethnic populationwho are 65 years of age or older do not speak English. To assure the well-beingof ethnic seniors who comprise a large segment of our elderly population,we should promote programs to strengthen family life, care for the elderly,and spur neighborhood revitalization and development of "language barrier-free"social and health services.
We also know that the number of senior citizens as a percentage of thepopulation is rapidly growing. The Democratic Party is committed to theprinciple of forbidding any discrimination on account of age against theelderly, either in holding a job or obtaining one. We offer to the elderlyan opportunity for additional training or retraining that will enable themto do better at the jobs they have or to turn to other jobs which they wouldlike better.
In short, the Democratic Party, which for so long has been the championof the elderly, assures the senior citizens of America that it will maintainits longstanding good faith with them. Whatever is right and good for thesenior citizen shall always be close to the heart of the Democratic Partyand ever a primary dedication of our Party.
It is the cherished aim and high purpose of the Democratic Party to makethe last part of the long journey of life for our senior citizens as long,as healthy and as happy as may be.
As Democrats, we are proud of the programs we have created ‹ SocialSecurity and Medicare ‹ to allow our senior citizens to live theirlives independently and with dignity, and we will fight to preserve andprotect those programs. We will work for decent housing and adequate nutritionfor our senior citizens, and we will enforce the laws prohibiting age discrimination.We will not break faith with those who built America.
The Social Security Administration long had a reputation for administrativeefficiency and high quality public service. Problems which have emergedunder the current Administration ‹ the financing crises, a deterioratingcomputer system, and arbitrary terminations of benefits to hundreds of thousandsof disabled Americans ‹ threaten the agency's ability to carry outits mission. The current Administration's policies have shaken people'sconfidence in the entire Social Security system.
The policies and operations of the Social Security Administration mustbe carefully and fully investigated to reform its operations so that theelderly and disabled receive the services and treatment to which they areentitled. In particular, we should explore the recommendation that the SocialSecurity Administration become an independent agency.
Opportunities for Disabled Americans ‹ There are nearly 36 millionpeople with disabilities in the United States, who look to our governmentfor justice. As Democrats, we have long recognized that a disability neednot be an obstacle to a productive, independent life and we have foughtto guarantee access to facilities, and adequate training and support tomeet the special needs of the disabled. This Administration has closed itseyes to those needs, and in so doing, violated a fundamental trust by seekingto condemn millions of disabled Americans to dependency. We will honor ourcommitments. We will insist that those who receive federal funds accommodatedisabled employees ‹ a requirement this Administration sought to eliminate.We will insist that benefits be available for those who cannot work, andthat training is available for those who need help to find work.
The Democratic Party will safeguard the rights of the elderly and disabledto remain free from institutionalization except where medically indicated.The rights of the disabled within institutions should be protected fromviolations of the integrity of their person. Also, we will promote accessiblepublic transportation, buildings, make voting booths accessible, and strictlyenforce laws such as the entire Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
Opportunities for Veterans ‹ This country has a proud traditionof honoring and supporting those who have defended us. Millions of Americansin the years after World War II went to college and bought their homes thanksto GI benefits. But for the latest generation of American veterans, neededsupport and assistance have been missing.
The nation has begun to welcome home with pride its Vietnam veterans,as reflected in the extraordinary Vietnam Veterans Memorial which was builtthrough public contributions. The Democratic Party shares the nation's commitmentto Vietnam veterans.
No President since the beginning of the Vietnam War has been so persistentlyhostile to Vietnam veterans programs as Ronald Reagan. He has sought todismantle the Readjustment Counseling Centers, opposed employment and AgentOrange benefits, as well as basic due process at the Veterans Administration,including judicial review.
The Vietnam War divided our nation. Many of the rifts remain, but allagree on the respect due Vietnam veterans for their distinguished serviceduring a troubled time. The Democratic Party pledges to reverse Ronald Reagan'sVietnam veteran policies, helping our nation come together as one people.And we believe it is especially important that we end discrimination againstwomen and minority veterans, particularly in health and education programs.
We believe that the government has a special obligation to all of thisnation's veterans, and we are committed to fulfilling it ‹to providingthe highest quality health care, improving education and training, providingthe assistance they need to live independent and productive lives.
Opportunities for the Poor ‹ For the past four years, this Administrationhas callously pursued policies which have further impoverished those atthe bottom of the economic ladder and pushed millions of Americans, particularlywomen and children, below the poverty line. Thanks to the Reagan budgetcuts, many of the programs upon which the poor rely have been gutted ‹from education to housing to child nutrition. Far from encouraging independence,the Administration has penalized those seeking to escape poverty throughwork, by conditioning assistance on nonparticipation in the workplace Thefigures tell part of the story:
‹ Today, 15 percent of all Americans live below the poverty line;
‹ Over three million more children are in poverty today than therewere in 1979;
‹ Over half of all black children under age three live in poverty;
‹ More than one-third of all female-headed households are belowthe poverty line, and for non-white families headed by women with more thanone child, the figure is 70 percent.
But the numbers tell only part of the story; numbers do not convey thefrustration and suffering of women seeking a future for themselves and theirchildren, with no support from anyone; numbers do not recount the pain ofgrowing numbers of homeless men and women with no place to sleep, or ofincreasing infant mortality rates among children born to poor mothers. Numbersdo not convey the human effects of unemployment on a once stable and strongfamily.
As Democrats, we call upon the American people to join with us in a renewedcommitment to combat the feminization of poverty in our nation so that everyAmerican can be a productive, contributing member of our society. In thateffort, our goal is to strengthen families and to reverse the existing incentivesfor their destruction. We therefore oppose laws requiring an unemployedparent to leave the family or drop out of the work force in order to qualifyfor assistance and health care. We recognize the special need to increasethe labor force participation of minority males, and we are committed toexpanding their opportunities through education and training and to enforcingthe laws which guarantee them equal opportunities. The plight of young mothersmust be separately addressed as well: they too need education and training,and quality child care must be available if they are to participate in suchprograms. Only through a nation that cares and a government that acts canthose Americans trapped in poverty move toward meaningful independence.
The Hungry and the Homeless ‹ In the late 1960s, the nation discoveredwidespread hunger and malnutrition in America, especially among poor childrenand the elderly. The country responded with a national effort, of whichAmericans should be justly proud. By the late 1970s, medical researchersfound that hunger had nearly been eliminated.
Since 1980, however, hunger has returned. High unemployment, coupledwith deep cutbacks in food assistance and other basic support programs forpoor families have led to conditions not seen in this country for years.Studies in hospitals and health departments document increases in numbersof malnourished children. Increasing numbers of homeless wander our cities'streets in search of food and shelter. Religious organizations, charitiesand other agencies report record numbers of persons standing in line forfood at soup kitchens and emergency food pantries.
Strong action is needed to address this issue and to end the resurgenceof hunger in America. The Democratic Party is committed to reversing regressiveReagan policies and to providing more adequate food aid for poor families,infants, children, elderly and handicapped persons. It is time to resumethe national effort, jettisoned in 1980, to ensure that less fortunate Americansdo not go without adequate food because they are too poor to secure a decentdiet. As Democrats, we call upon the American people to join with us ina renewed commitment to fight hunger and homelessness so that every Americancan be a productive, contributing member of our society.
Hunger is an international problem as well. In many countries it threatenspeace and stability. The United States should take the lead in working withour allies and other countries to help wipe hunger from the face of theearth.
A Democratic President will ensure that the needs of the world's childrenare given priority in all U.S. foreign assistance programs and that internationalassistance programs are geared toward increasing self-reliance of localpopulations and self-sufficiency in food production.
Integrity in Government
As Democrats, we believe that the American people are entitled to a governmentthat is honest, that is open, and that is fully representative of this nationand its people, and we are committed to providing it.
After four years in which the roll of dishonor in the Administrationhas grown weekly and monthly ‹ from Richard Allen to Rita Lavelle,from Thomas Reed to James Watt ‹ it is time for an end to the embarrassmentof Republican cronyism and malfeasance. Our appointments will be ones ofwhich Americans can be proud. Our selection process in staffing the governmentwill be severe. We will not tolerate impropriety in a Democratic Administration.
We must work to end political action committee funding of federal politicalcampaigns. To achieve that, we must enact a system of public financing offederal campaigns. At the same time, our Party should assure that a systemof public financing be responsive to the problem of underrepresentationof women and minorities in elective offices.
We Democrats are not afraid to govern in public and to let the Americanpeople know and understand the basis for our decisions. We will reversecurrent Administration policies that permit the widespread overclassificationof documents lacking a relationship to our national security. We will rescindReagan Administration directives imposing undue burdens on citizens seekinginformation about their government through the Freedom of Information Act.
We will insist that the government, in its relations with its own employees,set a standard of fairness which is a model for the private sector. We believe,moreover, that an Administration that cannot run its own house fairly cannotserve the American people fairly. We will ensure that government's numberone priority is the performance of its mission under the law, and not theimplementation of the narrow political agenda of a single Party. Sound managementand fair government cannot be administered by a politicized work force.Neither can it be accomplished by a demoralized work force. A DemocraticAdministration will not devalue the pay, benefits, and retirement rightsof federal workers guaranteed under the law. We will work to reverse personnelpolicies, including the contracting out of work traditionally performedby public employees, that have made it impossible for current federal employeesto recommend a career in federal service to our nation's young people.
Our judicial system must be one in which excellence and access are thefoundations. It is essential to recruit people of high integrity, outstandingcompetence, and high quality of judgment to serve in our nation's judiciary.And we oppose efforts to strip the federal courts of their historic jurisdictionto adjudicate cases involving questions of federal law and constitutionalright.
Crime
No problem has worried Americans more persistently over the past 20 yearsthan the problem of crime. Crime and the fear of crime affect us all, butthe impact is greatest on poor Americans who live in our cities Neithera permissive liberalism nor a static conservatism is the answer to reducingcrime. While we must eliminate those elements ‹ like unemployment andpoverty ‹ that foster the criminal atmosphere, we must never let thembe used as an excuse.
Although the primary responsibility for law enforcement rests at thelocal level, Democrats believe the federal government can play an importantrole by encouraging local innovation and the implementation of new crimecontrol methods as their effectiveness is shown. And when crime spills acrossstate borders, the federal government must take the lead, and assume responsibilityfor enforcing the law. This Administration has done neither. It has talked"law and order" while cutting law enforcement budgets. It hasdecried the influence of drugs, while cutting back on customs enforcement.
As a result, drug trafficking and abuse have risen to crisis proportionsin the United States. In 1983, an estimated 60 tons of cocaine, 15,000 tonsof marijuana, and 10 tons of heroin entered the United States, clear evidencethat we are losing the effort overseas to control the production and transshipmentof these and other dangerous drugs. Domestically, the illicit traffickingin drugs is a $100 billion per year business; the economic and social coststo our society are far higher.
Today, in our country, there are 25 million regular abusers of marijuana,close to 12 million abusers of cocaine, and half a million heroin addicts.Since 1979, hospital emergency room incidents ‹ including deaths ‹related to cocaine have soared 300 percent; incidents related to heroinhave climbed 80 percent. According to the 1983 National High School Surveyon Drug Abuse, 63 percent of high school seniors have tried an illicit drug,and 40 percent have tried a drug other than marijuana. Alcohol abuse isalso a serious problem which must be faced.
‹ For this reason, the Democratic Party believes it is essentialto make narcotics control a high priority on the national agenda, and amajor consideration in our dealings with producer and transshipment countries,particularly if they are recipients of U.S. assistance.
‹ At the national level, the effort must begin by introducing acomprehensive management plan to eliminate overlap and friction betweenthe 113 different federal agencies with responsibilities for fighting crime,particularly with respect to the control of drug traffic. We must providethe necessary resources to federal agencies and departments with responsibilityfor the fight against drugs.
‹ To spur local law enforcement efforts, establishment of an independentcriminal justice corporation should be considered. This corporation couldserve as a means of encouraging community-based efforts, such as neighborhoodcitizen watches, alternative deployment patterns for police, and communityservice sentencing programs, which have proven effectiveness.
‹ Violent acts of bigotry, hatred and extremism aimed at women,racial, ethnic and religious minorities, and gay men and lesbians have becomean alarmingly common phenomenon. A Democratic Administration will work vigorouslyto address, document, and end all such violence.
‹ We believe that victims of crime deserve a workable program ofcompensation. We call for sentencing reforms that routinely include monetaryor other forms of restitution to victims. The federal government shouldensure that victims of violent federal crime receive compensation. We needto establish a federal victim compensation fund, to be financed, in part,by fines and the proceeds from the sale of goods forfeited to the government.
We support tough restraints on the manufacture, transportation, and saleof snubnosed handguns, which have no legitimate sporting use and are usedin a high proportion of violent crimes.
‹ We will establish a strong federal-state partnership to push forfurther progress in the nationwide expansion of comprehensive, community-basedanti-drunk driving programs. With the support of citizens, private-sectorbusiness and government at all levels; we will institutionalize fatalityand injury reduction on the nation's highways.
‹ We support fundamental reform of the sentencing process so thatoffenders who commit similar crimes receive similar penalties. Reform shouldbegin with the establishment of appropriately drafted sentencing guidelines,and judges deviating from such guidelines should be required to providewritten reasons for doing so.
‹ Finally, we believe that the credibility of our criminal courtsmust be restored. Our courts should not be attacked for failing to eliminatethe major social problem of crime ‹ courts of justice were not designed,and were never intended, to do that. A Democratic Administration will encourageexperimentation with alternative dispute-resolution mechanisms, diversionprograms for first and nonviolent offenders, and other devices to eliminatethe congestion in our courts and restore to them an atmosphere in whichthey can perform their intended job: doing real individualized justice,in an orderly way.
Chapter III.
Peace, Security, and Freedom
Introduction
Building a safer future for our nation and the world: that is the Democraticagenda for our national security. Every responsibility before our nation,every task that we set, pales beside the most important challenge we face‹ providing new leadership that enhances our security, promotes ourvalues, and works for peace.
The next American President will preside over a period of historic changein the international system. The relatively stable world order that hasprevailed since World War II is bursting at the seams from the powerfulforces of change ‹ the proliferation of nuclear and conventional weapons,the relentless Soviet military buildup, the achievement of rough nuclearparity between the Soviet Union and the United States, the increasinglyinterdependent nature of the international economic order, the recoveryand rise of European and Asian powers since the devastation of the SecondWorld War, and the search for a new American political consensus in thewake of Vietnam and Lebanon and in the shadow of a regional crisis in CentralAmerica.
The greatest foreign policy imperative of the Democratic Party and ofthe next President is to learn from past mistakes and adapt to these changes,rather than to resist or ignore them. While not underestimating the Sovietthreat, we can no longer afford simplistically to blame all of our troubleson a single "focus of evil," for the sources of internationalchange run even deeper than the sources of superpower competition. We mustsee change as an opportunity as well as a challenge. In the 1980s and beyond,America must not only make the world safe for diversity; we must learn tothrive on diversity.
The Democratic Party believes that it is time to harness the full rangeof America's capacity to meet the challenges of a changing world. We rejectthe notion that America is beset by forces beyond its control. Our commitmentto freedom and democracy, our willingness to listen to contrasting viewpoints,and our ingenuity at devising new ideas and arrangements have given us advantagesin an increasingly diverse world that no totalitarian system can match.
The Democratic Party has a constructive and confident vision of America'sability to use all of our economic, political, and military resources topursue our wide-ranging security and economic interests in a diverse andchanging world. We believe in a responsible defense policy that will increaseour national security. We believe in a foreign policy that respects ourallies, builds democracy, and advances the cause of human rights. We believethat our economic future lies in our ability to rise to the challenge ofinternational economic competition by making our own industries more competitive.Above all, we believe that our security requires the direct, personal involvementof the President of the United States to limit the Soviet military threatand to reduce the danger of nuclear war.
We have no illusions about the forces arrayed against the democraticcause in our time. In the year made famous by George Orwell, we can seethe realization of many of his grimmest prophecies in the totalitarian Sovietstate, which has amassed an arsenal of weapons far beyond its defensiveneeds. In the communist and non-communist world, we find tyrannical regimesthat trample on human rights and repress their people's cry for economicjustice.
The Reagan Administration points to Soviet repression ‹ but hasno answer other than to escalate the arms race. It downgrades repressionin the noncommunist world, by drawing useless distinctions between "totalitarian"and "authoritarian" regimes.
The Democratic Party understands the challenge posed by the enemies ofdemocracy. Unlike the Reagan Administration, however, we are prepared towork constructively to reduce tensions and make genuine progress towarda safe world.
The Democratic Party is confident that American ideals and American interestsreinforce each other in our foreign policy: the promotion of democracy andhuman rights not only distinguishes us from our adversaries, but it alsobuilds the long-term stability that comes when governments respect theirpeople. We look forward to the 21st Century as a century of democratic solidaritywhere security, freedom, and peace will flourish.
Peace, freedom and security are the essence of America's dream. Theyare the future of our children and their children.
This is the test where failure could provide no opportunity to try oncemore. As President Kennedy once warned: "We have the power to makethis the best generation of mankind in the history of the world ‹ orto make it the last."
THE FUTURE IF REAGAN IS REELECTED
"Star Wars is not the path toward a less dangerous world. A directand safe road exists: equitable and verifiable deep cuts in strategic offensiveforces. We must abandon the illusion that ever more sophisticated technologycan remove the perils that science and technology have created. " Statementby Dr. Jerome B. Wiesner, Dr. Carl Sagan, Dr. Henry Kendall, and AdmiralNoel Gayler (Democratic Platform Committee Hearing, Washington, D.C., June12, 1984)
"The minister of the apartheid government recently boasted of thefruitful relationship between Pretoria and Washington since the advent ofthe Reagan regime Now apartheid South Africa has acquired the military muscleto bomb, to maim, to kill men, women, and children, and to bully these statesinto negotiating with apartheid through the threat of increased militaryaction. This may be hailed as a victory for apartheid and for the ReaganAdministration, but in truth it can only create anger and contempt in theAfrican people." Professor Dennis Brutus, Northwestern University (formerpolitical prisoner in South Africa) (Democratic Platform Committee HearingNew York, New York, April 9, 1984)
Suppose Mr. Reagan is reelected. How would he deal with the serious threatsthat face us and our children?
Under Mr. Reagan, the nuclear arms race would continue to spiral outof control. A new generation of destabilizing missiles will imperil allhumanity. We will live in a world where the nuclear arms race has spreadfrom earth into space.
Under Mr. Reagan, we would continue to overemphasize destabilizing andredundant nuclear weapons programs at the expense of our conventional forces.We will spend billions for weapons that do not work. We will continue toignore proposals to improve defense management, to get a dollar's worthfor each dollar spent, and to make our military more combat-effective andour weapons more cost-effective.
Under Mr. Reagan, regional conflicts would continue to be dangerouslymismanaged. Young Americans may be sent to fight and die needlessly. Thespread of nuclear materials to new nations and the spread of sophisticatedconventional weapons to virtually every nation on earth will continue unabated.
Can America afford a President so out of touch with reality that he tellsus "I think the world is safer and further removed from a possiblewar than it was several years ago"?
Can America afford the recklessness of a President who exposed AmericanMarines to mortal danger and sacrificed 262 of them in a bungled missionin Lebanon against the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and broughtupon us the worst U.S. military disaster since the Vietnam War?
Can America afford the irresponsibility of a President who underminesconfidence in our deterrent with misleading allegations of Soviet nuclear"superiority" and whose Administration beguiles the American publicwith false claims that nuclear war can be survived with enough shovels?
Can America afford the unresponsiveness of a President who thwarts thewill of the majority of Americans by waging a secret war against Nicaragua?
In a second Reagan term, will our heavens become a nuclear battleground?
In 1980, candidate Ronald Reagan promised the American people a moresecure world. Yet, as President:
‹ He has raced to deploy new weapons that will be destabilizingand difficult to verify. He has pressed for a multi-billion dollar chemicalweapons program. He has launched his trillion dollar "Star Wars"arms race in space.
‹ He has relaxed controls on nuclear proliferation, thus enhancingthe risk that nuclear weapons will be acquired and used by unstable governmentsand international terrorists.
‹ He has become the first President since the Cold War to presideover the complete collapse of all nuclear arms negotiations with the Soviets.
‹ He has rejected SALT II, threatened the ABM Treaty, and abandonedthe goal of
a complete ban on nuclear weapons tests that has been pursued by everyPresident since Eisenhower. He has refused to seek negotiations to limitanti-satellite weapons that could threaten our vital early-warning and militarysatellites. Over 250 strategic missiles and bombers that would have beeneliminated under SALT II are still in Soviet hands.
Can we afford four more years of a Pentagon spending binge?
In 1980, candidate Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party promised theAmerican people a defense spending increase "to be applied judiciouslyto critically needed programs." Yet, as President:
‹ He has initiated the largest peacetime defense build-up in ourhistory with no coherent plan for integrating the increased programs intoan effective military posture.
‹ He has slighted training and readiness of our conventional forcesin favor of big ticket nuclear items, "preparing," in the wordsof General Maxwell Taylor, "for the least possible threats to the neglectof the most probable."
‹ He has brought us the worst-managed and most wasteful DefenseDepartment in history. Under the Pentagon's wasteful purchasing system,the American taxpayer has paid $435 for a $17 claw hammer, $1100 for a 22-centplastic steel cap, over $2000 for a 13-cent plain round nut, and $9600 fora $9 Allen wrench.
Can we afford four more years of dangerous foreign policy failures?
In 1980, candidate Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party promised "toput America on a sound, secure footing in the international arena."Yet, as President:
‹ He has contributed to the decline of U.S.-Soviet relations toa perilous point. Instead of challenges, he has used easy and abusive anti-Sovietrhetoric as a substitute for strength, progress, and careful use of power.
‹ He has strained vital U.S. alliances through his bungled effortsto stop the Soviet natural gas pipeline, his inflammatory nuclear rhetoricand policies, and his failure to support the efforts of our democratic alliesto achieve a negotiated political solution in Central America.
‹ He has had as many Middle East policies as he has had staff turnovers.First, he offered strategic cooperation to Israel as if it were a gift.Then he took it away to punish Israel as if it were not our ally. Then hepressured Israel to make one-sided concessions to Jordan. Then he demandedthat Israel withdraw from Lebanon. Then he pleaded with them to stay. Thenhe did not accept their offer of medical help for our wounded Marines. Heundercut American credibility throughout the Middle East by declaring Lebanona vital interest of the United States and then withdrawing.
‹ He has failed to understand the importance for the United Statesof a solid relationship with the African continent ‹ not only fromthe perspective of human decency, but also from enlightened concern forour own self-interest. By his lack of sensitivity and foresight, he hasignored the fate of millions of people who need our help in developing theireconomies and in dealing with the ravages of drought, and he has jeopardizedour relations with countries that are important to U.S. security and well-being.
‹ He has brought us a strategy in Central America and the Caribbeanthat has failed. Since he took office, the region has become much more unstable;the hemisphere is much more hostile to us; and the poverty is much deeper.Today in El Salvador, after more than a billion dollars in American aid,the guerrillas are stronger than they were three years ago, and the peopleare much poorer. In Nicaragua, our support for the Contras and for the covertwar has strengthened the totalitarians at the expense of the moderates.In Honduras, an emerging democracy has been transformed into a staging groundfor possible regional war. And in Costa Rica our backing for rebels basedthere is in danger of dragging that peaceful democracy into a military confrontationwith Nicaragua. In Grenada, Mr. Reagan renounced diplomacy for over twoyears, encouraging extremism, instability, and crisis. By his failure toavoid military intervention, he divided us from our European allies andalienated our friends throughout the Western hemisphere. And by excludingthe press, he set a chilling precedent, greatly hampering public scrutinyof his policies. After three and one-half years of Mr. Reagan's tunnel vision,extremism is stronger, our democratic friends are weaker, and we are furtherthan ever from achieving peace and security in the region.
‹ He is the first President to fail to support publicly the ratificationof the Genocide Convention. His Vice President has praised the Philippinedictator for his "love of democracy," his first Secretary of Stateannounced that human rights would be replaced as a foreign policy priority,and his first nominee for Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rightswas rejected by the U.S. Senate as unfit for that post. He has closely identifiedthe United States with the apartheid regime in South Africa, and he hastime and again failed to confront dictators around the globe.
This is an unprecedented record of failure. But President Reagan is contentto make excuses for failure.
President Reagan blames Congress and the Democratic Party. He rebukesAmericans deeply and genuinely concerned about the threat of nuclear war.He rails at the Soviet Union ‹ as if words alone, without strategyor effective policy, will make that nation change its course.
It is time for Democrats and Americans to apply a tough standard to RonaldReagan. Let us paraphrase the question he asked in 1980: Are we safer todaythan we were three and a half years ago? Are we further from nuclear war?After more than a thousand days of Mr. Reagan, is the world anywhere lesstense, anywhere closer to peace?
Americans throughout this land are answering with a resounding no.
President Reagan himself is responsible ‹ responsible for four yearsof a failed foreign policy. America elects its President to lead. It doesnot elect its President to make excuses.
The Democratic Party believes that it is time to harness the full powerof America's spirit and capacity to meet the challenges of a changing world.
The Democratic Party has a different and positive vision of America'sfuture. What is at stake may be freedom and survival itself.
THE DEMOCRATIC ALTERNATIVE:
A SAFER FUTURE FOR OUR NATION AND THE WORLD
"I do not see why we think of Democracy as so weak and so vulnerable.Let us for heavens sake have some confidence in America and not tremble,fearing that our society will fall apart at the least rattle of the door.If I were constructing this platform, I would ask that its planks be carvedout of self-confidence, and planted in belief in our own system."
Historian Barbara Tuchman (Democratic Platform Committee Hearing, NewYork,
New York, April 9,1984)
"The Democratic Party requires a foreign policy which approachesthe problems that confront us primarily in their national and regional contexts,rather than viewing them, as the Reagan Administration does, almost exclusivelyas a manifestation of the 'evil empire's' efforts to extend its sway overthe entire globe. What we need is a foreign policy which promotes the causeof human rights by opposing tyranny on the part of left as well as rightwing governments, rather than a foreign policy, like the one we have now,which supports virtually every reactionary and repressive regime that professesto be anti-communist."
Honorable Stephen J. Solarz, U.S. Representative, New York (Democratic
Platform Committee Hearing, New York, New York, April 9, 1984)
There is no higher goal for the Democratic Party than assuring the nationalsecurity of the United States. This means a strong national defense, vigorouspursuit of nuclear arms control, and a foreign policy dedicated to advancingthe interests of America and the forces of freedom and democracy in a periodof global transformation. This will require new leadership, strong alliances,skillful diplomacy, effective economic cooperation, and a foreign policysustained by American strength and ideals. And to hold the support of theAmerican people, our leaders must also be careful and measured in the useof force.
The Democratic Party is committed to a strong national defense. Democratsknow that a relentless Soviet military build-up ‹ well beyond its defensiveneeds ‹ directly challenges world security, our democratic values,and our free institutions. On the nature of the Soviet threat and on theessential issue of our nation's security Americans do not divide. On thecommon interest in human survival, the American and Soviet peoples do notdivide.
Maintaining strong and effective military forces is essential to keepingthe peace and safeguarding freedom. Our allies and adversaries must neverdoubt our military power or our will to defend our vital interests. To thatend, we pledge a strong defense built in concert with our allies, basedon a coherent strategy, and supported by a sound economy.
In an age of about 50,000 nuclear weapons, however, nuclear arms controland reductions are also essential to our security. The most solemn responsibilityof a President is to do all that he or she can to prevent a single nuclearweapon from ever being used. Democrats believe that mutual and verifiablecontrols on nuclear arms can, and must be, a serious integral part of nationaldefense. True national security requires urgent measures to freeze and reversethe arms race, not the pursuit of the phantom of nuclear superiority orfutile Star Wars schemes.
The Democratic Party believes that the purpose of nuclear weapons isto deter war, not to fight it. Democrats believe that America has the strengthand tenacity to negotiate nuclear arms agreements that will reduce the riskof nuclear war and preserve our military security.
Today we stand at one of the most critical junctures in the arms racesince the explosion of the first atomic bomb. Mr. Reagan wants to open theheavens for warfare.
His Star Wars proposal would create a vulnerable and provocative "shield"that would lull our nation into a false sense of security. It would leadour allies to believe that we are retreating from their defense. It wouldlead to the death of the ABM Treaty ‹the most successful arms controltreaty in history‹and this trillion-dollar program would provoke adangerous offensive and defensive arms race.
If we and our allies could defend our populations effectively againsta nuclear war, the Democratic Party would be the first to endorse such ascheme. Unfortunately, our best scientists agree that an effective populationdefense is probably impossible. Therefore, we must oppose an arms race wherethe sky is no longer the limit.
Arms Control and Disarmament
Ronald Reagan is the first American President in over twenty years whohas not reached any significant arms control agreements with the SovietUnion, and he is the first in over fifty years who has not met face to facewith Soviet leaders. The unjustified Soviet walkout from key nuclear talksdoes not excuse the arms control failures of the Administration.
To reopen the dialogue, a Democratic President will propose an earlysummit with regular, annual summits to follow with the Soviet leaders, andmeetings between senior civilian and military officials, in order to reducetensions and explore possible formal agreements. In a Democratic Administration,the superpowers will not communicate through megaphones.
A new Democratic Administration will implement a strategy for peace whichmakes arms control an integral part of our national security policy. Wemust move the world back from the brink of nuclear holocaust and set a newdirection toward an enduring peace, in which lower levels of military spendingwill be possible. Our ultimate aim must be to abolish all nuclear weaponsin a world safe for peace and freedom.
This strategy calls for immediate steps to stop the nuclear arms race,medium-term measures to reduce the dangers for war, and long-term goalsto put the world on a new and peaceful course.
The first practical step is to take the initiative, on January 20, 1985,to challenge the Soviets to halt the arms race quickly. As President Kennedysuccessfully did in stopping nuclear explosions above ground in 1963, aDemocratic President will initiate temporary, verifiable, and mutual moratoria,to be maintained for a fixed period during negotiations so long as the Sovietsdo the same, on the testing of underground nuclear weapons and anti-satelliteweapons; on the testing and deployment of all weapons in space; on the testingand deployment of new strategic ballistic missiles now under development;and on the deployment of nuclear-armed, sea-launched cruise missiles.
These steps should lead promptly to the negotiation of a comprehensive,mutual and verifiable freeze on the testing, production, and deploymentof all nuclear weapons.
Building on this initiative, the Democratic President will:
‹ update and resubmit the SALT II Treaty to the Senate for its adviceand consent.
‹ pursue deep, stabilizing reductions in nuclear arsenals withinthe framework of SALT II, in the meantime observing the SALT II limits ourselvesand insisting that the Soviets do likewise.
‹ propose the merging of the intermediate-range and strategic armslimitations negotiations, if the President judges that this could advancea comprehensive arms limitation agreement with the Soviet Union.
‹ immediately resubmit to the Senate for its advice and consentthe 1974 Threshold Test Ban Treaty and the 1976 Peaceful Nuclear ExplosionsTreaty.
‹ conclude a verifiable and Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
‹ reaffirm our commitment to the ABM Treaty, ensure U.S. compliance,and vigorously demand answers to questions about Soviet compliance throughthe Standing Consultative Commission and other appropriate channels.
‹ actively pursue a verifiable, anti-satellite weapons treaty andban on weapons in space.
‹ seek a verifiable international ban on the production of nuclearweaponsgrade fissile material, such as plutonium and highly enriched uranium.
‹ undertake all-out efforts to halt nuclear proliferation.
‹ terminate production of the MX missile and the B-1 bomber.
‹ prohibit the production of nerve gas and work for a verifiabletreaty banning chemical weapons.
‹ establish U.S.-Soviet nuclear risk reduction centers and otherimproved communications for a crisis.
‹ invite the most eminent members of the scientific community tostudy and report on the worldwide human suffering and the long-term environmentaldamage which would follow in the days after a nuclear war, and take intoaccount as fully as possible the results of such study in the formulationof our nuclear weapons and arms control policies.
‹ strengthen broad-based, long-term public support for arms controlby working closely with leaders of grass-roots, civic, women's, labor, business,religious and professional groups, including physicians, scientists, lawyers,and educators. provide national leadership for economic adjustment for affectedcommunities and industries, and retraining for any defense workers affectedby the termination or cutbacks in weapons programs.
‹ initiate, in close consultation with our NATO allies, a strategyfor peace in Europe including:
‹ achieving a balance of conventional forces in order to reducereliance on nuclear weapons and to permit the Atlantic Alliance to movetoward the adoption of a "no first use" policy;
‹mutually pulling back battlefield nuclear weapons from the frontlinesof Europe, in order to avoid the necessity of having to make a "usethem or lose them" choice should hostilities erupt in Europe.
‹negotiating new approaches to intermediate nuclear force limitsalong the lines of the "walk in the woods" proposal, and thenseeking to move closer to zero INF deployments by the U.S. and U.S.S.R.;
‹negotiating significant mutual and balanced reductions in conventionalforces of both NATO and the Warsaw Pact, and confidence-building measuresto reduce the dangers of a surprise attack.
We are under no illusion that these arms control proposals will be easyto achieve. Most will involve patience and dedication, and above all leadershipin the pursuit of peace, freedom, and security. The Soviets are tough negotiatorsand too often seek to use arms control talks for their propaganda purposes.On this issue ‹ preventing nuclear war ‹ America must lead, andthe Democratic Party intends to lead. Without our leadership the nationsof the world will be tempted to abandon themselves, perhaps slowly at first,but then relentlessly to the quest for nuclear weapons, and our childrenwill look back with envy upon today's already dangerous nuclear world asa time of relative safety.
Defense Policy
The Reagan Administration measures military might by dollars spent. TheDemocratic Party seeks prudent defense based on sound planning and a realisticassessment of threats. In the field of defense policy, the Democratic Administrationwill:
‹ Work with our NATO and other allies to ensure our collective security,especially by strengthening our conventional defenses so as to reduce ourneed to rely on nuclear weapons, and to achieve this at increased spendinglevels, with funding to continue at levels appropriate to our collectivesecurity, with the firm hope that successful steps to reduce tensions andto obtain comprehensive and verifiable arms control agreements will guaranteeour nation both military security and budgetary relief.
‹ Cancel destabilizing or duplicative weapons systems, while proceedingin the absence of appropriate arms control agreements with necessary modernizationof our strategic forces.
‹ Scale back the construction of large, expensive and vulnerablenuclear carriers.
‹ Modernize our conventional forces by balancing new equipment purchaseswith adequate resources spent on training, fuel, ammunition, maintenance,spare parts, and airlift and sealift to assure combat readiness and mobility,and by providing better equipment for our Reserves and National Guard.
‹ Reorganize Pentagon management and strengthen the JCS system toreduce interservice rivalries, promote military leadership over bureaucraticskills, assure effective execution of policies and decisions, undertakebetter multi-year planning based upon realistic projections of availableresources, and reduce conflicts of interest.
‹ Ensure open and fair competitive bidding for procurement of necessaryequipment and parts, and establish a system of effective, independent testingof weapons for combat conditions.
‹ Implement a program of military reform. Our forces must be combatready our doctrines should emphasize outthinking and out-maneuvering ouradversaries; and our policies should improve military organization and unitcohesion.
‹ Press our European allies to increase their contributions to NATOdefense to levels of effort comparable to our own‹ an approach thatthe Administration undercut by abandoning the NATO-wide agreement concludedby its Democratic predecessor ‹ and pursue improved trans-Atlanticeconomic cooperation and coordination of arms procurement.
‹ Recognize that the heart of our military strength is people, Americansin uniform who will have the skills and the will to maintain the peace.The men and women of our armed services deserve not only proper pay andbenefits, but the nation's recognition, respect and gratitude as well.
‹ Recognize the importance of the intelligence community and emphasizeits mission as being dedicated to the timely collection and analysis ofinformation and data. A Democratic Administration will also recognize theurgent need to depoliticize the intelligence community and to restore professionalleadership to it.
‹ Oppose a peacetime military draft or draft registration.
‹ Oppose efforts to restrict the opportunities of women in the militarybased solely on gender. The Reagan Administration has used the combat designationas an arbitrary and inappropriate way to exclude women from work they canlegitimately perform. Women nurses and technicians, for example, have longserved with distinction on the front lines; women must not be excluded fromjobs that they are trained and able to perform.
‹ Seek ways to expand programs such as VISTA, the Young Adult ConservationCorps, and the Peace Corps.
These and other qualitative improvements will ensure effective Americanstrength at affordable cost. With this strength, we will restore the confidenceof our fellow citizens and our allies; we will be able to mount an effectiveconventional defense, and we will present our adversaries with a crediblecapability to deter war.
The Democratic Party is committed to reversing the policies of the ReaganAdministration in the area of military and defense procurement. Public accountsreveal a four-year record of waste, fraud, conflicts of interest and indicationsof wrongdoing. Administration officials have engaged in practices that havecost the taxpayers billions of dollars. Further, the Reagan Administrationhas ignored legal remedies to stop the abuses, recover the funds, and punishthose responsible.
A Democratic President will demand full disclosure of all information,launch a thorough investigation, and seek recovery of any tax funds illegallyspent. This will be a major step towards restoring integrity to defenseprocurements and reducing unnecessary expenditures in the defense budget.
Foreign Policy
The purpose of foreign policy is to attain a strong and secure UnitedStates and a world of peace, freedom and justice. On a planet threatenedby dictatorships on the left and right, what is at stake may be freedomitself. On a planet shadowed by the threat of a nuclear holocaust, whatis at stake may be nothing less than human survival.
A Democratic Administration will comprehend that the gravest politicaland security dangers in the developing world flow from conditions that openopportunities for the Soviet Union and its surrogates: poverty, repressionand despair. Against adversaries such as these, military force is of limitedvalue. Such weapons as economic assistance, economic and political reformand support for democratic values by, among other steps, funding scholarshipsto study at U.S. colleges and universities must be the leading elementsof our presence and the primary instruments of American influence in thedeveloping countries.
To this end, a Democratic President will strengthen our Foreign Service,end the present practice of appointing unqualified persons as Ambassadors,strengthen our programs of educational and cultural exchange, and draw uponthe best minds in our country in the quest for peace.
A Democratic Administration will initiate and establish a Peace Academy.In the interests of balancing this nation's investment in the study of makingwar, the Peace Academy will study the disciplines and train experts in thearts of waging peace.
The Democratic Party is committed to ensuring strong representation ofwomen and minorities in military and foreign policy decisionmaking positionsin our government.
In addition, a Democratic President will understand that as Commander-in-Chief,he or she directs the forces of peace as well as those of war, and willrestore an emphasis on skilled, sensitive, bilateral and multilateral diplomacyas a means to avert and resolve international conflict.
A Democratic President will recognize that the United States, with broadeconomic, political, and security interests in the world, has an unparalleledstake in the rule of international law. Under a Democratic Administration,there will be no call for clumsy attempts to escape the jurisdiction ofthe International Court of Justice, such as those put forth by the ReaganAdministration in connection with its mining of the harbors of Nicaragua.
A Democratic President will reverse the automatic militarization of foreignpolicy and look to the causes of conflict to find out whether they are internalor external, whether they are political or primarily social and economic.
In the face of the Reagan Administration's cavalier approach to the useof the military force around the world the Democratic Party affirms itscommitment to the selective, judicious use of American military power inconsonance with Constitutional principles and reinforced by the War PowersAct. A Democratic President will be prepared to apply military force whenvital American interests are threatened, particularly in the event of anattack upon the United States or its immediate allies. But he or she willnot hazard American lives or engage in unilateral military involvement:
€ Where our objectives are not clear;
€ Until all instruments of diplomacy and non-military leverage,as appropriate, have been exhausted;
€ Where our objectives threaten unacceptable costs or unreasonablelevels of military force;
€ Where the local forces supported are not working to resolve thecauses of conflict;
€ Where multilateral or allied options for the resolution of conflictare available.
Further, a Democratic Administration will take all reasonable domesticaction to minimize U.S. vulnerability to international instability, suchas reducing Western alliance on Persian Gulf oil and other strategic resources.To this end, a Democratic Administration will implement, with our allies,a multilateral strategy for reduction of allied dependence on critical resourcesfrom volatile regions of the world.
U.S. covert operations under a Democratic President will be strictlylimited to cases where secrecy is essential to the success of an operationand where there is an unmistakable foreign policy rationale. Secrecy willnot be used simply to hide from the American people policies they mightbe expected to oppose.
Finally, a Democratic President will recognize our democratic processas a source of strength and stability, rather than an unwelcome restrainton the control of foreign policy. He or she will respect the War PowersResolution as a reflection of wise judgment that the sustained commitmentof America's fighting forces must be made with the understanding and supportof Congress and the American people. A Democratic President will understandthat United States leadership among nations requires a proper respect forlaw and treaty obligations, and the rights of men and women everywhere.
Europe and the Atlantic Alliance ‹ American leadership is not aboutstanding up to your friends. It is about standing up with them, and forthem. In order to have allies, we must act like one.
Maintaining a strong alliance is critically important. We remain absolutelycommitted to the defense of Europe, and we will work to ensure that ourallies carry their fair share of the burden of the common defense. A DemocraticAdministration in turn will commit itself to increased consultation on securityaffairs.
We must work to sustain and enhance Western unity. We must persuade thenext generation of Europeans that America will use its power responsiblyin partnership with them. We Democrats affirm that Western security is indivisible.We have a vital interest in the security of our allies in Europe. And itmust always remain clear that an attack upon them is the same as an attackupon us ‹ by treaty and in reality.
A strong Western alliance requires frank discussions among friends aboutthe issues that from time to time divide us. For example, we must enterinto meaningful negotiations with the European Community to reduce theiragricultural export subsidies which unfairly impair the competitivenessof American agricultural products in third-country markets.
A Democratic President will encourage our European friends to resolvetheir longstanding differences over Ireland and Cyprus.
The Democratic Party supports an active role by the United States insafeguarding human rights in Northern Ireland and achieving an enduringpeaceful settlement of that conflict. We oppose the use of plastic bulletsin Northern Ireland, and we urge all sides to reject the use of violence.The Democratic Party supports a ban on all commercial transactions by theU.S. government with firms in England and Ireland that practice, on an on-goingbasis, discrimination in Northern Ireland on the basis of race, religion,or sex. We affirm our strong commitment to Irish unity ‹ achieved byconsent and based on reconciliation of all the people of Ireland. The DemocraticParty is greatly encouraged by the historic and hopeful Report of the NewIreland Forum which holds the promise of a real breakthrough. A DemocraticPresident will promptly appoint a special envoy and urge the British aswell as the political leaders in Northern Ireland to review the findingsand proposals of the Forum with open hearts and open minds, and will appealto them to join a new initiative for peace. The Congress and a DemocraticPresident will stand ready to assist this process, and will help promotejobs and investments, on a non-discriminatory basis, that will representa significant contribution to the cause of peace in Ireland.
In strong contrast to President Reagan's failure to apply effective diplomacyin Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterranean, a Democratic President will actwith urgency and determination to make a balanced policy in the area anda peaceful resolution of the Cyprus dispute a key foreign policy priority.A Democratic President will utilize all available U.S. foreign policy instrumentsand will play an active, instead of a passive, role in the efforts to secureimplementation of U.N. Resolutions so as to achieve removal of Turkish troops,the return of refugees, reestablishment of the integrity of the Republicof Cyprus, and respect for all citizens' human rights on Cyprus.
United States ‹ Soviet Relations ‹ U.S. relations with theSoviet Union are a critical element of our security policy. All Americansrecognize the threat to world peace posed by the Soviet Union. The U.S.S.R.is the only adversary with the capability of destroying the United States.Moreover, Americans are more generally concerned about the Soviet leadership'sdangerous behavior internationally and the totalitarian nature of theirregime. The Brezhnev Doctrine proclaims Soviet willingness to maintain communistregimes against the opposition of their own people. Thus, Soviet troopshave invaded and today continue to wage war on the proud people of Afghanistan.In Poland, a military government, acting under Soviet pressure, has soughtto crush the indomitable spirit of the Polish people and to destroy Solidarity,a free trade Union movement of ten million members and the first such movementin a communist country. In recent years, the Soviet Union and its allieshave played a more aggressive role in countries around the world. At thesame time the Soviet military arsenal, nuclear and conventional, far exceedsthat needed for its defense.
Yet we also recognize that the Soviets share a mutual interest in survival.They, too, have no defense against a nuclear war. Our security and theirsecurity can only be strengthened by negotiation and cooperation.
To shape a policy that is both firm and wise, we must first stand confidentand never fear the outcome of any competition between our systems. We mustsee the Soviet Union as it is‹neither minimizing the threats that Sovietpower and policies pose to U.S. interests, nor exaggerating the strengthof a Soviet regime beset by economic stagnation and saddled with a bankruptand sterile ideology. We must join with our allies and friends to maintainan effective deterrent to Soviet power. We must pursue a clear, consistentand firm policy of peaceful competition toward the Soviet Union, a steadyand pragmatic approach that neither tolerates Soviet aggression and repressionnor fuels Soviet paranoia.
The job of an American President is both to check Soviet challenges toour vital interests, and to meet them on the common ground of survival.The risk of nuclear ward cannot be eliminated overnight. But every day itcan be either increased or decreased. And one of the surest ways to increaseit is to cut off communications.
The Democratic Party condemns continued Soviet persecution of dissidentsand refuseniks, which may well have brought Nobel laureate Andrei Sakharovand his wife to the verge of death in internal exile in Gorki. We will notbe silent when Soviet actions, such as the imprisonment of Anatoly Shcharanskyand Ida Nudel and thousands of others, demonstrate the fundamentally repressiveand anti-Semitic nature of the Soviet regime. A Democratic Administrationwill give priority to securing the freedom to emigrate for these brave menand women of conscience including Jews and other minorities, and to assuringtheir fair treatment while awaiting permission to leave. These freedomsare guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and by the HelsinkiFinal Act which the Soviets have signed and with whose provisions they mustbe required to comply. Jewish emigration, which reached the level of fiftythousand per year during the last Democratic Administration and which hasvirtually ended under its Republican successor, must be renewed throughfirm, effective diplomacy. We also recognize that Jewish emigration reachedits height at the same time there was an American Administration dedicatedto pursuing arms control, expanding mutually beneficial trade, and reducingtensions with the Soviet Union ‹ fully consistent with the interestsof the United States and its allies. It is no contradiction to say thatwhile pursuing an end to the arms race and reducing East-West tensions,we can also advance the cause of Soviet Jewish emigration.
Eastern Europe ‹ We must respond to the aspirations and hopes ofthe peoples of Eastern Europe and encourage, wherever possible, the forcesof change and pluralism that will increase these people's freedom from Soviettyranny and communist dictatorship. We should encourage Western Europeancountries to pursue independent foreign policies and to permit greater liberalizationin domestic affairs, and we should seek independent relationships to furtherthese objectives with them.
The Democratic Party condemns the Soviet repression by proxy in Polandand the other countries of Eastern Europe. The emergence of the free tradeunion Solidarity is one of the most formidable developments in post-warEurope and inspires all who love freedom. The struggle of the Polish peoplefor a democratic society and religious freedom is eloquent testimony totheir national spirit and bravery that even a brutal martial law regimecannot stamp out .
Today the Jaruzelski regime claims to have ended the harshest repressivemeasures. Yet it continues to hold political prisoners, it continues tomistreat them, and it continues to hunt down members of Solidarity.
The Democratic Party agrees with Lech Walesa that the underground Solidaritymovement must not be deprived of union freedoms. We call for the releaseof all political prisoners in Poland and an end to their harassment, therecognition of the free trade union Solidarity, and the resumption of progresstoward liberty and human rights in that nation. A Democratic President willcontinue to press for effective international sanctions against the Polishregime until it makes satisfactory progress toward these objectives.
The Middle East‹The Democratic Party believes that the securityof Israel and the pursuit of peace in the Middle East are fundamental prioritiesfor American foreign policy. Israel remains more than a trusted friend,a steady ally, and a sister democracy Israel is strategically importantto the United States, and we must enter into meaningful strategic cooperation.
The Democratic Party opposes this Administration's sales of highly advancedweaponry to avowed enemies of Israel, such as AWACS aircraft and Stingermissiles to Saudi Arabia. While helping to meet the legitimate defensiveneeds of states aligned with our nation, we must ensure Israel's militaryedge over any combination of Middle East confrontation states. The DemocraticParty opposes any consideration of negotiations with the PLO, unless thePLO abandons terrorism, recognizes the state of Israel, and adheres to U.N.Resolutions 242 and 338.
Jerusalem should remain forever undivided with free access to the holyplaces for people of all faiths. As stated in the 1976 and 1980 platforms,the Democratic Party recognizes and supports the established status of Jerusalemas the capital of Israel. As a symbol of this stand, the U.S. Embassy shouldbe moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
The Democratic Party condemns this Administration's failure to maintaina high-level Special Negotiator for the Middle East, and believes that theCamp David peace process must be taken up again with urgency. No nationin the Middle East can afford to wait until a new war brings even worsedestruction. Once again we applaud and support the example of both Israeland Egypt in taking bold steps for peace. We believe that the United Statesshould press for negotiations among Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and otherArab states. We re-emphasize the fundamental principle that the prerequisitefor a lasting peace in the Middle East remains an Israel with secure anddefensible borders, strong beyond a shadow of a doubt; that the basis forpeace is the unequivocal recognition of Israel's right to exist by all otherstates; and that there should be a resolution of the Palestinian issue.
The United States and our allies have vital interests in the PersianGulf. We must be prepared to work with our allies in defense of those interests.We should stand by our historic support for the principle of freedom ofthe high seas. At the same time, we and our allies should employ activediplomacy to encourage the earliest possible end to the Iran/Iraq conflict.
The Western Hemisphere ‹ The Western Hemisphere is in trouble. CentralAmerica is a region at war. Latin America is experiencing the most seriouseconomic crisis in 50 years. The Inter-American system is on the verge ofcollapse. Concern about U.S. policies has risen sharply.
It is time to make this Hemisphere a top priority. We need to developrelations based on mutual respect and mutual benefit. Beyond essential securityconcerns, these relations must emphasize diplomacy, development and respectfor human rights. Above all, support for democracy must be pursued. TheReagan Administration is committing the old error of supporting authoritarianmilitary regimes against the wishes of the people they rule, but the UnitedStates was not founded, and defended for 200 years with American blood,in order to perpetuate tyranny among our neighbors.
The Hemisphere's nations must strive jointly to find acceptable solutionswith judgments and actions based on equally-applied criteria. We must condemnviolations of human rights, aggression, and deprivation of basic freedomswherever they occur. The United States must recognize that the economicand debt crisis of Latin America also directly affects us.
The Reagan Administration has badly misread and mishandled the conflictin Central America. The President has chosen to dwell on the strategic importanceof Central America and to cast the struggle in almost exclusively East-Westterms. The strategic importance of Central America is not in doubt, noris the fact that the Soviet Union, Cuba and Nicaragua have all encouragedinstability and supported revolution in the region. What the President ignores,however, are the indigenous causes of unrest. Historically, Central Americahas been burdened by widespread hunger and disease. And the historic patternof concentrated wealth has done little to produce stable democratic societies.
Sadly, Mr. Reagan has opted for the all too frequent American responseto the unrest that has characterized Central America ‹ military assistance.Over the past 100 years, Panama, Nicaragua, and Honduras have all been occupiedby U.S. forces in an effort to suppress indigenous revolutionary movements.In 1954, CIA-backed forces successfully toppled the Government of Guatemala.
President Reagan's massive transfusions of military aid to El Salvadorare no substitute for the social and economic reforms that are necessaryto undermine the appeal the guerrillas hold for many Salvadorans. The changesand upheavals in El Salvador and Nicaragua are home-grown, but they areexacerbated by forces from outside of Central America. The undoubted communistinfluence on these revolutions cannot be nullified by the dispatch of navaland air armadas to the waters off Nicaragua and thousands of troops to thejungles of Honduras. The solution lies with a new policy that fosters social,economic and political reforms that are compatible with our legitimate vitalinterests while accommodating the equally legitimate forces of change.
America must find a different approach. All too often, the United Statesthinks in terms of what it can do for the nations of Latin America and theCaribbean region. Rarely does it think in terms of what it can do with them.Even with the best of intentions, the difference is more than rhetorical,for paternalism can never be disguised and it is always resented ‹whether we choose to label it a "special relationship" or to callit a "defensive shield." Acting for the nations of the Hemisphererather than acting in concert with them is the surest way of repeating themistakes of the past and casting a dark shadow over the future.
It need not be. There is an alternative, a good alternative. The greatMexican patriot Benito Juarez pointed the way and said it best: "Betweenmen as between nations, respect for the rights of others is peace."Working With our hemispheric neighbors produces understanding and cooperation.Doing something for them produces resentment and conflict.
Democrats know there is a real difference between the two and a DemocraticPresident will seek the advice and counsel of the authentic democratic voiceswithin the region ‹ voices that may be heard north and south, eastand west; the voices of President Miguel de la Madrid of Mexico, PresidentBelisario Betancur of Colombia, and President Raul Alfonsin of Argentina;the voices of President Jorge Blanco of the Dominican Republic, Prime MinisterTom Adams of Barbados, and President Alberto Monge of Costa Rica. By consultingwith and listening carefully to these leaders and their democratic colleagueselsewhere in the region, the next Democratic President of the United Stateswill fashion a policy toward the region which recognizes that:
‹ the security and well-being of the Hemisphere are more a functionof economic growth and development than of military agreements and armstransfers;
‹ the mounting debt crisis throughout the region poses a broaderthreat to democratic institutions and political stability than does anyinsurgency or armed revolutionary movement;
‹ there is an urgent and genuine need for far-reaching economic,social and political reforms in much of the region and that such reformsare absolutely essential to the protection of basic human rights;
‹ the future belongs as much to the people of the region ‹the politically forgotten and the economically deprived ‹ as it doesto the rich and powerful elite;
‹ preservation and protection of U.S. interests in the Hemisphererequires mutual respect for national sovereignty and demilitarization ofthe region, prior consultation in accordance with the Rio Treaty and theOAS Charter regarding the application of the Monroe Doctrine, the use ofmilitary force, and a multilateral commitment to oppose the establishmentof Soviet and Cuban military bases, strategic facilities, or combat presencein Central America or elsewhere in Latin America;
‹ efforts to isolate Cuba only serve to make it more dependent onthe Soviet Union; U.S. diplomatic skills must be employed to reduce thatlevel of dependence and to explore the differences that divide us with aview to stabilizing our relations with Cuba. At the same time we must continueto oppose firmly Cuban intervention in the internal affairs of other nations.Progress in our relationship will depend on Cuba's willingness to end itssupport for violent revolution, to recognize the sovereignty and independenceof other nations by respecting the principle of non-intervention, to demonstraterespect for human rights both inside and outside of Cuba, and to abide byinternational norms of behavior.
Mindful of these realities and determined to stop widening, militarizing,and Americanizing the conflict, a Democratic President's immediate objectivewill be to stop the violence and pursue a negotiated political solutionin concert with our democratic allies in the Contadora group. He or shewill approach Central American policy in the following terms:
‹ First, there must be unequivocal support for the Contadora processand for the efforts by those countries to achieve political solutions tothe conflicts that plague the Central American region.
‹ Second, there must be a commitment on the part of the United Statesto reduce tensions in the region. We must terminate our support for thecontras and other paramilitary groups fighting in Nicaragua. We must haltthose U.S. military exercises in the region which are being conducted forno other real purpose than to intimidate or provoke the Nicaraguan governmentor which may be used as a pretext for deeper U.S. military involvement inthe area. And, we must evidence our firm willingness to work for a demilitarizedCentral America, including the mutual withdrawal of all foreign forces andmilitary advisers from the region. A Democratic President will seek a multilateralframework to protect the security and independence of the region which willinclude regional agreements to bar new military bases, to restrict the numbersand sophistication of weapons being introduced into Central America, andto permit international inspection of borders. This diplomatic effort cansucceed, however, only if all countries in Central America, including Nicaragua,will agree to respect the sovereignty and integrity of their neighbors,to limit their military forces, to reject foreign military bases (otherthan those provided for in the Panama Canal Treaties), and to deny any externalforce or power the use of their territories for purposes of subversion inthe region. The viability of any security agreement for Central Americawould be enhanced by the progressive development of pluralism in Nicaragua.To this end, the elections proposed for November are important how theyare conducted will be an indication of Nicaragua's willingness to move inthe direction of genuine democracy.
‹ Third, there must be a clear, concise signal to indicate thatwe are ready, willing and able to provide substantial economic resources,through the appropriate multilateral channels, to the nations of CentralAmerica, as soon as the Contadora process achieves a measure of successin restoring peace and stability in the region. In the meantime, of course,we will continue to provide humanitarian aid and refugee relief assistance.The Democratic Administration will work to help churches and universitieswhich are providing sanctuary and assistance to Guatemalan, Haitian, andSalvadoran refugees, and will give all assistance to such refugees as isconsistent with U.S. law.
‹ Fourth, a Democratic President will support the newly electedPresident of El Salvador in his efforts to establish civilian democraticcontrol, by channeling U.S. aid through him and by conditioning it on theelimination of government-supported death squads and on progress towardhis objectives of land reform, human rights, and serious negotiations withcontending forces in El Salvador, in order to achieve a peaceful democraticpolitical settlement of the Salvadoran conflict.
‹ Fifth, a Democratic President will not use U.S. armed forces inor over El Salvador or Nicaragua for the purpose of engaging in combat unless:
1) Congress has declared war or otherwise authorized the use of U.S.combat forces, or
2) the use of U. S. combat forces is necessary to meet a clear and presentdanger of attack upon the U.S., its territories or possessions or upon U.S.embassies or citizens, consistent with the War Powers Act.
These are the key elements that evidence very real differences betweenthe Democrats' approach to Central America and that of the Reagan Administration.And these are the key elements that will offer the American public a choice‹ a very significant choice ‹ between war and peace in the CentralAmerican region.
A Democratic President would seek to work with the countries of the Caribbeanto strengthen democratic institutions. He or she would not overlook humanrights, by refusing to condemn repression by the regimes of the right orthe left in the region. A Democratic President would give high priorityto democracy, freedom, and to multilateral development. A Democratic Presidentwould encourage regional cooperation and make of that important area a showplacerather than a footstool for economic development. Finally, support for democracymust be pursued in its own right, and not just as a tactic against communism.
Human rights principles were a cornerstone of President Carter's foreignpolicy and have always been a central concern in the Inter-American system.Regional multilateral action to protect and advance human rights is an internationalobligation.
A Democratic President must not overlook human rights, refusing to condemnrepression by the regimes of the right or the left in the region. Insistencethat government respect their obligations to their people is a criterionthat must apply equally to all. It is as important in Cuba as in El Salvador,Guatemala as in Nicaragua, in Haiti as in Paraguay and Uruguay.
A Democratic Administration would place protection of human rights ina core position in our relations with Latin America and the Caribbean. Itwould particularly seek multilateral support for such principles by strengtheningand backing the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and by encouragingthe various private organizations in the hemisphere dedicated to monitoringand protecting human rights.
Africa ‹ The Democratic Party will advocate a set of bold new initiativesfor Third World nations in general and Africa in particular. Hunger, drought,and famine have brought untold suffering to millions in Africa. This humanmisery ‹ and the armies of nationless ‹ requires a policy of substantialincreases in humanitarian assistance, a major thrust in agricultural technologytransfer, and cessation of the unfortunate tendency to hold such aid hostageto East-West confrontation or other geopolitical aims. The United Statesalso must offer substantially greater economic assistance to these nations,while engaging in a North-South multilateral dialogue that addresses mutualeconomic development strategies, commodities pricing, and other treatiesrelevant to international trade. A Democratic President will join with ourfriends within and outside the continent in support of full respect forthe sovereignty and territorial integrity of all African states. Africais the home of one-eighth of the world's population and a continent of vastresources. Our national interest demands that we give this rich and diversecontinent a much higher priority.
A Democratic President will reverse the Reagan Administration's failedpolicy of "constructive engagement" and strongly and unequivocallyoppose the apartheid regime in South Africa. A Democratic Administrationwill:
‹ exert maximum pressure on South Africa to hasten the establishmentof a democratic, unitary political system within South Africa.
‹ pursue scrupulous enforcement of the 1977 U.N. arms embargo againstSouth Africa, including enforcement of restrictions on the sale of "dualuse" equipment.
‹ impose a ban on all new loans by U.S. business interests to theSouth African government and on all new investments and loans to the SouthAfrican private sector, until there is substantial progress toward the fullparticipation of all the people of South Africa in the social, political,and economic life in that country and toward an end to discrimination basedon race or ethnic origin.
‹ ban the sale or transfer of sophisticated computers and nucleartechnology to South Africa and the importation of South African gold coins.
‹ reimpose export controls in effect during the Carter Administrationwhich were relaxed by the Reagan Administration.
‹ withdraw landing rights to South African aircraft.
The Democratic Party condemns South Africa for unjustly holding politicalprisoners. Soviet harassment of the Sakharovs is identical to South Africanhouse arrests of political opponents of the South African regime. Specifically,the detention of Nelson Mandela, leader of the African National Congress,and Winnie Mandela must be brought to the world's attention, and we demandtheir immediate release. In addition, we demand the immediate release ofall other political prisoners in South Africa.
A Democratic Administration will work as well toward legitimate rightsof self-determination of the peoples of Namibia by:
‹ demanding compliance with U.N. Security Council Resolution 435‹ the six-year-old blueprint for Namibian independence;
‹ imposing severe fines on U.S. companies that violate the UnitedNations Decree prohibiting foreign exploitation of Namibian mineral wealthuntil Namibia attains independence;
‹ progressively increasing effective sanctions against South Africaunless and until it grants independence to Namibia and abolishes its ownabhorrent apartheid system.
Asia ‹ Our relationship with the countries of Asia and the PacificBasin will continue to be of increasing importance. The political, cultural,economic, and strategic ties which link the United States to this regioncannot be ignored.
With our Asian friends and allies, we have a common cause in preservingthe security and enhancing democracy in the area.
With our Asian trading partners, we share a common interest in expandingcommerce and fair trade between us, as evidenced by the 33 percent of totalAmerican trade now conducted with those countries.
And with the growing number of Asian/Pacific-Americans, we welcome thestrength and vitality which increased cultural ties bring to this country.
Our relationship with Japan is a key to the maintenance of peace, security,and development in Asia and the Pacific region. Mutual respect, enhancedcooperation, and steady diplomacy must guide our dealings with Japan. Atthe same time, as allies and friends, we must work to resolve areas of disagreement.A Democratic President, therefore, will press for increased access to Japaneseas well as other Asian markets for American firms and their products. Finally,a Democratic President will expect Japan to continue moving toward assumingits fair share of the burden of collective security ‹ in self-defenseas well as in foreign assistance and democratic development.
Our security in the Pacific region is also closely tied to the well-beingof our long-time allies, Australia and New Zealand. A Democratic Presidentwill honor and strengthen our security commitment to ANZUS as well as toother Southeast Asian friends.
Our relationship with the People's Republic of China must also be nurturedand strengthened. The Democratic Party believes that our developing relationswith the PRC offer a historic opportunity to bring one quarter of the world'spopulation into the community of nations, to strengthen a counterweightto Soviet expansionism, and to enhance economic relations that offer greatpotential for mutual advantage. At the same time, we recognize our historicties to the people on Taiwan and we will continue to honor our commitmentsto them, consistent with the Taiwan Relations Act.
Our own principles and interests demand that we work with those in Asia,as well as elsewhere, who can encourage democratic institutions and supportgreater respect for human rights. A Democratic President will work closelywith the world's largest democracy, India, and maintain mutually beneficialties. A Democratic President will press for the restoration of full democracyin the Philippines, further democratization and the elimination of martiallaw in Taiwan, the return to freedom of speech and press in South Korea,and restoration of human rights for the people of East Timor. Recognizingthe strategic importance of Pakistan and the close relationship which hasexisted between our two countries, a Democratic President would press torestore democracy and terminate its nuclear weapons program. Finally, aDemocratic President would press for the fullest possible accounting ofAmericans still missing in Indochina.
For the past four years, the Soviet Union has been engaged in a brutaleffort to crush the resistance of the people of Afghanistan. It denies theirright to independence. It is trying to stamp out their culture and to denythem the right to practice their religion, Islam. But despite appallingcosts, the people of Afghanistan continue to resist ‹ demonstratingthe same qualities of human aspiration and fortitude that made our own nationgreat. We must continue to oppose Soviet aggression in Afghanistan. We shouldsupport the efforts of the Afghanistan freedom fighters with material assistance.
If the Soviet Union is prepared to abide by the principles of internationallaw and human dignity, it should find the U.S. prepared to help producea peaceful settlement.
Global Debt and Development
The Democratic Party will pursue policies for economic development, foraid and trade that meet the needs of the people of the developing worldand that further our own national interest. The next Democratic Presidentwill support development policies that meet the basic needs of the poorfor food, water, energy, medical care, and shelter rather than "trickledown" policies that never reach those on the bottom. The next DemocraticAdministration will give preference in its foreign assistance to countrieswith democratic institutions and respect for human rights.
A Democratic President will seek to cut back record U.S. budget deficitsand interest rates not only for our own economic well-being, but to reducethe economic crisis confronting so many industrialized and developing statesalike.
Mr. Reagan has perceived national security in very limited and parochialterms, and thus has failed completely to grasp the significance of the internationaldebt which now has sky-rocketed to some $800 billion. In 1983, some thirtynations accounting for half of this total were forced to seek restructuringof their debts with public and private creditors because they were unableto meet their debt payments.
The U.S. economy is directly linked to the costs of these loans throughtheir variable interest rates (tied to the U.S. prime rate). A rise in theU.S. prime rate by one percent added more than $4 billion to the annualinterest costs associated with these external debts. The struggle to meettheir external debts has slashed the purchasing power of these developingcountries and forced them to curtail imports from the U.S. This accountsfor one-third to one-half of the adverse turn in the U.S. trade deficit,which is projected to reach $130 billion this year. The social and politicalstability of these developing countries is seriously challenged by the debtcrisis. In light of the interdependence of the international economy, thecrisis also threatens the very foundation of the international financialsystem. To answer these dangers, the Democratic Administration will:
‹ Call immediately for discussions on improving the functioningof the international monetary systems and on developing a comprehensivelong-term approach to the international debt problem.
‹ Instruct the Treasury Department to work with the Federal ReserveBoard, U.S. bank regulators, key private banks, and the finance ministersand central bankers of Europe and Japan, to develop a short-term programfor reducing the debt service obligations of less developed countries, while1) preserving the safety and soundness of the international banking systemand 2) ensuring that the costs of the program are shared equitably amongall parties to existing and rescheduled debts.
‹ Recommend an increase in the lending capacity of the World Bank,as well as an increase in the lending capacity of the Export-Import Bankof the U.S., to ensure that debtor nations obtain adequate capital for investmentin export industries.
‹Review international trade barriers which limit the ability ofthese countries to earn foreign exchange.
Security assistance can, in appropriate circumstances, help our friendsmeet legitimate defense needs. But shifting the balance from economic developmenttoward military sales, as has occurred over the past three and one-halfyears, sets back the cause of peace and justice, fuels regional arms races,and places sophisticated weapons in the hands of those who could one dayturn them back upon us and upon our friends and allies. The Democratic Partyseeks now, as in the past, effective international agreements to limit andreduce the transfer of conventional arms.
A Democratic President will seize new opportunities to make major advancesat limited cost in the health and survival of the world's poorest people‹thusenabling more people to contribute to and share in the world's resources,and promoting stability and popular participation in their societies. Recognizingthat unrestrained population growth constitutes a danger for economic progressand political stability, a Democratic President will restore full U.S. supportfor national and international population programs that are now threatenedby the policies of the Reagan Administration.
A Democratic President will work to see the power and prestige of theU.S. fully committed to the reform and strengthening of the United Nationsand other international agencies in the pursuit of their original purposes‹peace,economic and social welfare, education, and human rights.
Because of the economic instability caused by global debts and by otherproblems, unprecedented migration into the United States and other partsof the world is occurring in the form of economic refugees. The DemocraticParty will support economic development programs so as to aid nations inreducing migration from their countries, and thereby reduce the flow ofeconomic refugees to the U.S. and other parts of the world.
Rather than scuttling the international Law of the Sea negotiations afterover a decade of bipartisan U.S. involvement, a Democratic President willactively pursue efforts to achieve an acceptable Treaty and related agreementsthat protect U.S. interests in all uses of ocean space.
Human Rights and Democratic Solidarity
The Democratic Party believes that we need new approaches to replacethe failed Republican policies. We need sustained, personal, presidentialleadership in foreign policy and arms control. We need a President who willmeet with the Soviets to challenge them to reduce the danger of nuclearwar, who will become personally involved in reviving the Camp David peaceprocess, who will give his or her full support to the Contadora negotiations,and who will press the South Africans to repeal their policies of apartheidand destabilization. We need a President who will understand that humanrights and national security interests are mutually supportive. We needa President to restore our influence, enhance our security, pursue democracyand freedom, and work unremittingly for peace. With firm purpose, skill,sensitivity, and a recovery of our own pride in what we are‹a DemocraticPresident will build an international alliance of free people to promotethese great causes.
A Democratic President will pursue a foreign policy that advances basiccivil and political rights ‹ freedom of speech, association, thoughtand religion, the right to leave, freedom of the integrity of the person,and the prohibition of torture, arbitrary detention and cruel, inhuman anddegrading treatment ‹ and that seeks as well to attain basic, economic,social, and cultural rights. A Democratic President's concern must extendfrom the terror of the Russian Gulag to the jails of Latin generals. Thebanning of South African blacks is no more acceptable than the silencingof Cuban poets. A Democratic President will end U.S. support for dictatorsthroughout the world from Haiti to the Philippines. He or she will supportand defend the observance of basic human rights called for in the UniversalDeclaration of Human Rights and the Helsinki Final Act. He or she will seek,through both quiet diplomacy and public measures, the release of politicalprisoners and the free immigration of prosecuted individuals and peoplesaround the world. He or she will seek U.S. ratification of the GenocideConvention, the International Covenants on Human Rights, and the AmericanConvention on Human Rights, as well as the establishment of a U.N. HighCommissioner for Human Rights. He or she will fulfill the spirit as wellas the letter of our legislation calling for the denial of military andeconomic assistance to governments and systematically violate human rights.
The Democratic Party believes that whether it is in response to totalitarianismin the Soviet Union or repression in Latin America and East Asia, to apartheidin South Africa or martial law in Poland, to terrorism in Libya or the reignof terror in Iran, or to barbaric aggression in Southeast Asia and Afghanistan,the foreign policy of the United States must be unmistakably on the sideof those who love freedom.
As Democrats and as Americans, we will make support for democracy, humanrights, and economic and social justice the cornerstone of our policy. Theseare the most revolutionary ideas on our planet. They are not to be feared.They are the hallmarks of the democratic century that lies before us.