The first priority under our current obligations and analysis of threats is to improve our military and invest in R&D in order to maintain a commanding lead over other nations, who might be able to exceed us in raw manpower or equalize matters with weapons of mass destruction. Our second priority is to put the economy on a sounder footing, which means to eliminate all possible inefficiencies and drags, including superfluous regulation, unfunded mandates, excessive compliance costs, differential tax rates, the corporate income tax, and capping liability in civil court. Next, we want to use the thrust of such an exercise to reduce the size of the Federal government, and to confine it to statistical research and grant- giving in many areas, such as education, labor, and commerce, leaving more substantive functions to the states. If the economy improves and the Federal government requires less "feeding", then is the time to put in the pilot projects, perhaps encouraged by Federal dollars, some of the reforms in welfare and education I was talking about. That is a general description of how these things inter- relate in my mind.
In the personal instance, well, we seem to differ in our view of what occurred...... |
