OCR Text |
Show Tfa Year If What would a Republican controlled House do? It would be certain to Increase defense de-fense spending and force the president - away from his continuing policy of delaying de-laying and scrapping new weapons systems sys-tems Carter and the Democratic Cong-- Cong-- ress have cut back UJS. Navy shipbuilding shipbuild-ing 50. And they have cut back military mili-tary budgets projected by the Ford ad-, ministration by billions of dollars. A republican Congress could act to insure that the American government provides Afghan rebels with arms with which to resist occupying Russian troops. With the collapse, at least for the present, of SALT II deliberations in the Senate, a Republican controlled House would be willing to move quickly to fund and built the Tomahawk sea -launched ' cruise missile. That weapon would be restricted under the SALT pact, but the shelving of the pact means that the U.S. must be ready to move to fill holes in Its defensive capabilities. Congress cannof be faulted for Involving In-volving Itself In foreign and military policy. It has an obligation to do so. But that power breeds responsibility as well, and one aspect of responsibility Is to accept blame as well as credit. When things go wrong, the American people have a right to know why, and who Is responsible. respon-sible. Bad policies are bad policies, no matter mat-ter who recommends them. And the people making those recommendations must accept ac-cept the responsibility, the blame, when bad policies and bad recommendations lead to bad results and national suffering. suffer-ing. Does it make a difference which party r controls Congress? The answer to that question is obvious. ; And the most encouraging news Is found burled In those public opinion polls. For the first time In years, the American people say they are deeply disturbed about Jhese problems that affect ther personal lives. They know Democrats have controlled con-trolled Congress for more than 10 years. They say Congress Is to blame. And they want a change. This year a national election on the future of Congress will take place indi-. indi-. vtdually In 435 separate House districts across the country. It Is the year of Congress. For In 1980, the American people have " a chance to vote for that change. End result of the Republican plan: Lower Inflation, more available Investment Invest-ment capital to spur economic growth, and an actual Increase in employment, rather than staggering unemployment lines caused by the Democrats. Congress has a right to be confused, perhaps, about President Carter's energy policy. After all, he announced three totally different national energy policies in a three year period. But Congress has no right, considering consider-ing the fact that the energy crunch has been in a crisis stage since the 1974 embargo em-bargo and was in sight long before that, not to have an energy plan of Its own today. Yet under Democratic leadership,. It does not. It has made mincemeat of every one of Carter's proposals. It has rejected out of hand virtually all Republican proposals pro-posals for a coherent national energy policy. po-licy. It has been unable to agree ln ternally on the scores of completely contradictory plans put forward-by. a host of Democratic lawmakers. During the activist days of the 60s someone coined a catchy slogan: "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem."' In dealing with one of the gravest national crises of this century, the Democrats in Congress have proven that they are unable to govern themselves, and unwilling to let the Republicans govern In their place. The foreign affairs situation Is just as bad. The UJS. Constitution hands to the president the power to head American foreign policy. But It leaves to Congress the right to legislate In recent years, the Democratic leaders of Congress have demonstrated that even their own presidents presi-dents are not Immune to congresslonally Imposed mistakes and mandated disasters. dis-asters. , . Because no one In the White House on In the Intelligence field believes that Congress can keep a secret, the CIA has simply stopped all Its operations, rather than break the law or run the risk of a top security leak from one of those committees. In 1974, those same House Democrats helped push through an embargo on arms sales to Turkey, due to the Greek Turkish war on Cyprus. The move was aimed directly at Greek American voters In the home districts of many of those liberal Democrats. cles, without direct orders from a Democratic Demo-cratic Congress. It is time for the year of Congress. It Is time to elect a Congress willing will-ing to face those problems. Take the economy, for Instance. Every knowledgeable economist agrees the UJS. In now In a recession, ad that the current state of the economy threatens to worsen this year. "It wasn't shouted from the rooftops but when the fiscal 1980 budget was put together. It was deliberately fashioned to slow down the economy," House Budget Committee Chairman Robert Glalmo admitted ad-mitted bluntly last summer about the recession. Slow down the economy. That's a polite way of saying raise unemployment to put wage earners out of work. That's been the Democratic answer to run away Inflation. And what has been the result? Unemployment has soared. It helps at times to put those sorts of dry statistics In human terms that all can understand. From the time Glalmo made that mid year comment until the end of 1979, unemployment climbed 1.4 percent. per-cent. And In the U.S. each tenth of a percentage point equals 100,000 workers, wage earners, taxpayers. That Is 1.4 million people thrown out of work by those economic policies written into law by congressional Democrats. If those policies are continued, the Democrats' own economists admit, unemployment unem-ployment could hit an eight percent level this year. That's an additional one million mil-lion American workers sent to the unemployment un-employment lines. Inflation continues to soar. It hit a staggering 13.3 percent annual rate last year. For the essentials of life - food, housing and energy the inflation rate soared past 17 percent. When President Ftird left office, Inflation was 4.8 percent per-cent per year. Now there Is no let up In sight. " So to fight Inflation, the Democratic Demo-cratic leaders in Congress pushed thru a $548.2 billion budget last fall. It jumped a full $54 billion In federal spending In just one year. And It Included a whopping, whop-ping, Inflation soaring $29.2 billion deficit at a time when the Democrats claimed they were fighting Inflation. Yet at the same time they rejected a Republican alternative budget that would have cut the budget some $9 billion, reduced the deficit to $20 billion and set Into In-to motion a series of tax cuts over a five year period totalling $170 billion. Admittedly this article put out by the Republican National Committee Is partisan. We don't necessarily agree that all Democrats are bad and all Republicans Re-publicans are good. However, we do agree that all the Ills of this country are not the fault of the administration alone. Certainly we voters must accept a share of the responsibility. After all we did elect both the president and members mem-bers of Congress. We believe the article pinpoints many crucial Issues. We think you will agree that there have been Democrats as well as Republicans on both sides of every Issue. Increasingly, Congress Is coming to the realization that straight partisan putties is bad. Voters must also realize this when they go to the polls this fall. It's far more Important that we make our decisions this fall on the basis of a candidate's record, and character, than on partisan politics. There are waves and troughs In the tides of American politics. The politics of some generations are dominated by a single philosophy or party or branch of government. Other generations see com -plete control by directly opposing views. Still other eras confront turmoil and conflict, the clash of ideas, and the slow ebb of one viewpoint matched against the flow of countervailing views. Since at least 1960, when Theodore H. White wrote the first of his The Making Mak-ing of the President' series, the politics poli-tics of the U.S. and the time and at -tentlon of those who watch It closely -has been centered on the presidency and the race for the Oval Office. The trend was Introduced by the 1960 Kennedy vs. Nixon race, accented by Johnson vs. Goldwater In 1964, and driven home by the Vietnam War and Nixon vs. Humphrey in 1968. Watergate and Nixon vs. McGovern in 1972 reinforced It. The Carter vs. Ford contest, with the promise pro-mise that the former Georgia governor was going to restore the purity to the presidency simply capped the process. ' ' -It has been the era of the president presi-dent In politics. Yet throughout those two decades, we have changed presidents five times, and may be about to do it once again. And regardless of the person in the presidency the problems have remained. Inflation mounts as federal deficits climb. Six years after an oil embargo by OPEC nations the US still lacks a clear national energy policy. Every presidential candidate, regardless regard-less of party, mouths mandatory attacks on the growth of government bureaucracy and vows to cut It back. Then each president presi-dent watches as government agencies grow and grow and intervene in the marketplace, until the cost of government govern-ment regulation alone adds $102 billion a year to consumer bills In the UJS. In foreign affairs, the president presi-dent watches while Americans are terrorized ter-rorized overseas and our nation is forced to retreat rather than protect its vital Interests. We are equipped with armed forces we know could not meet the test of arms If major war comes. Our Intelligence In-telligence agencies sit crippled, bound by restrictions that harm us, not our enemies. ene-mies. We watch silently while Pravda proclaims In banner headlines that America must satisfy itself with the status sta-tus of a second rate power in the future. fu-ture. We change presidents, yet the problems prob-lems remain. The American people know those problems are there. That is seen constantly con-stantly In the national public opinion polls. No Issues stand out higher in terms of popular discontent than the economy, the energy crisis, and the decline of America's Ameri-ca's prestige In the world. The American people know those problems are there. That is seen In the national public opinion polls. No Issues stand out higher In terms of popular discontent than the economy, the energy crisis, and the decline of America's prestige In the world. But for the first time, the polls are beginning to Indicate that the American Ameri-can people know where to place the blame for these recurring crises as well. They know the president does not govern alone. For the first time, appreciable num -bers of Americans say that changing Congress voting out the Incumbents who have voted In those policies would go a long way toward easing many of those conflicts. The simple fact is that we have changed the man In the White House repeatedly and we have changed the party In control of the presidency regularly, but the problems have remained. They have remained because one party has been in control of Congress for that entire two decades. Even longer, in fact. It has been a full quarter century since since the Republicans had a majority In the House of Representatives. In that quarter century no president has collected a tax that has not been levied first by a Democratic Congress. No president has hired a bureaucrat to enforce a regulation without first gaining approval from that Democratically Democratical-ly controlled Congress. And no cuts have been made In our military preparedness, no blinders put on our Intelligence agen- |