Dataset[{<|"SourceURL" -> "http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=78283", "Name" -> "2008 Democratic Party Platform", "Party" -> "Democratic", "Year" -> 2008, "Date" -> DateObject[{2008, 8, 25}], "Text" -> "RENEWING AMERICA'S PROMISE\n\nPreamble\n\nWe come together at a defining moment in the history of our nation – the nation that led the 20th Century, built a thriving middle class, defeated fascism and communism, and provided bountiful opportunity to many. We Democrats have a special commitment to this promise of America. We believe that every American, whatever their background or station in life, should have the chance to get a good education, to work at a good job with good wages, to raise and provide for a family, to live in safe surroundings, and to retire with dignity and security. We believe that quality and affordable health care is a basic right. We believe that each succeeding generation should have the opportunity, through hard work, service and sacrifice, to enjoy a brighter future than the last.\nBut today, we are at a crossroads. As we meet, we are in the sixth year of a two-front war. Our economy is struggling. Our planet is in peril.\nA great nation now demands that its leaders abandon the politics of partisan division and find creative solutions to promote the common good. A people that prizes candor, accountability, and fairness insists that a government of the people must level with them and champion the interests of all American families. A land of historic resourcefulness has lost its patience with elected officials who have failed to lead.\nIt is time for a change. We can do better.\nAnd so, Democrats – through the most open platform process in history – are reaching out today to Republicans, Independents, and all Americans who hunger for a new direction a reason to hope. Today, at a defining moment in our history, the Democratic Party resolves to renew America's promise.\nOver the past eight years, our nation's leaders have failed us. Sometimes they invited calamity, rushing us into an ill-considered war in Iraq. But other times, when calamity arrived in the form of hurricanes or financial storms, they sat back, doing too little too late, and too poorly. The list of failures of this Administration is historic.\nThe American Dream is at risk. Incomes are down and foreclosures are up. Millions of our fellow citizens have no health insurance while families working longer hours are pressed for time to care for their children and aging parents. Gas and home heating costs are squeezing seniors and working families alike. We are less secure and less respected in the world. After September 11, we could have built the foundation for a new American century, but instead we instigated an unnecessary war in Iraq before finishing a necessary war in Afghanistan. Careless policies, inept stewardship and the broken politics of this Administration have taken their toll on our economy, our security and our reputation.\nBut even worse than the conditions we find ourselves in are the false promises that brought us here. The Republican leadership said they would keep us safe, but they overextended our military and failed to respond to new challenges. They said they would be compassionate conservatives, but they failed to rescue our citizens from the rooftops of New Orleans, neglected our veterans, and denied health insurance to children. They promised fiscal responsibility but instead gave tax cuts to the wealthy few and squandered almost a trillion dollars in Iraq. They promised reform but allowed the oil companies to write our energy agenda and the credit card companies to write the bankruptcy rules.\nThese are not just policy failures. They are failures of a broken politics –a politics that rewards self-interest over the common interest and the short-term over the long-term, that puts our government at the service of the powerful. A politics that creates a state-of-the-art system for doling out favors and shuts out the voice of the American people.\nSo, we come together not only to replace this President and his party –and not only to offer policies that will undo the damage they have wrought. Today, we pledge a return to core moral principles like stewardship, service to others, personal responsibility, shared sacrifice and a fair shot for all –values that emanate from the integrity and optimism of our Founders and generations of Americans since. Today, we Democrats offer leaders – from the White House to the State House – worthy of this country's trust.\nWe will start by renewing the American Dream for a new era – with the same new hope and new ideas that propelled Franklin Delano Roosevelt towards the New Deal and John F. Kennedy to the New Frontier. We will provide immediate relief to working people who have lost their jobs, families who are in danger of losing their homes, and those who – no matter how hard they work – are seeing prices go up more than their income. We will invest in America again –in world-class public education, in our infrastructure, and in green technology –so that our economy can generate the good, high-paying jobs of the future. We will end the outrage of unaffordable, unavailable health care, protect Social Security, and help Americans save for retirement. And we will harness American ingenuity to free this nation from the tyranny of oil.\nThe Democratic Party believes that there is no more important priority than renewing American leadership on the world stage. This will require diplomatic skill as capable as our military might. Instead of refusing to confront our most pressing threats, we will use all elements of American power to keep us safe, prosperous, and free. Instead of alienating our nation from the world, we will enable America –once again –to lead.\nFor decades, Americans have been told to act for ourselves, by ourselves, on our own. Democrats reject this recipe for division and failure. Today, we commit to renewing our American community by recognizing that solutions to our greatest challenges can only be rooted in common ground and the strength of our civic life. The American people do not want government to solve all our problems; we know that personal responsibility, character, imagination, diligence, hard work and faith ultimately determine individual achievement. But we also know that at every turning point in our nation's history, we have demonstrated our love of country by uniting to overcome our challenges—whether ending slavery, fighting two world wars for the cause of freedom or sending a man to the moon. Today, America must unite again –to help our most vulnerable residents get back on their feet and to restore the vitality of both urban centers and family farms –because the success of each depends on the success of the other. And America must challenge us again –to serve our country and to meet our responsibilities –whether in our families or local governments; our civic organizations or places of worship.\nAmericans have been promised change before. And too often we have been disappointed. We believe we must change not just our policies, but our politics as well. We cannot keep doing the same things and expect to get different results. That is why today we come together not only to prevent a third Bush term. Today, we pledge to renew American democracy by promoting the use of new technologies to make it easier for Americans to participate in their government. We will shine a light on government spending and Washington lobbying –so that every American is empowered to be a watchdog and a whistle blower. We are the party of inclusion and respect differences of perspective and belief. And so, even when we disagree, we will work together to move this country forward. There can be no Republican or Democratic ideas, only policies that are smart and right and fair and good for America –and those that aren't. We will form a government as decent, candid, purposeful and compassionate as the American people themselves.\nThis is the essence of what it means to be a patriot: not only to declare our love of this nation, but to show it –by our deeds, our priorities, and the commitments we keep.\nIf we choose to change, just imagine what we can do. What makes America great has never been its perfection, but the belief that it can be made better. And that people who love this country can change it. This is the country of Abraham Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony, Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, and Rosa Parks – people who had the audacity to believe that their country could be a better place, and the courage to work to make it so. And this Party has always made the biggest difference in the lives of the American people when we summoned the entire nation to a common purpose.\nWe have a choice to make. We can choose to stay the current failed course. Or we can choose a path that builds upon the best of who and what we are, that reflects our highest values. We can have more of the last eight years, or we can rise together and create a new kind of government. The time for change has come, and America must seize it.\nI. Renewing the American Dream\nFor months the state of our economy has dominated the headlines–and the news has not been good. The sub-prime lending debacle has sent the housing market into a tailspin, and many Americans have lost their homes. By early August, the economy had shed 463,000 jobs over seven straight months of job loss. Health, gas and food prices are rising dramatically.\nBut the problem goes deeper than the current crisis. Families have seen their incomes go down even as they have been working longer hours and as productivity has grown. At the same time, health costs have risen while companies have shed health insurance coverage and pensions. Worse yet, too many Americans have lost confidence in the fundamental American promise that our children will have a better life than we do.\nWe are living through an age of fundamental economic transformation. Technology has changed the way we live and the way the world does business. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the advance of capitalism have vanquished old challenges to America's global leadership, but new challenges have emerged. Today, jobs and industries can move to any country with an Internet connection and willing workers.\nLeadership on these issues has been sorely lacking these past eight years. In the 1990s, under Bill Clinton's leadership, employment and incomes grew and we built up a budget surplus. However, our current President pursued misguided policies, missed opportunities, and maintained a rigid, ideological adherence to discredited ideas. Our surplus is now a deficit, and almost a decade into this century, we still have no coherent national strategy to compete in a global economy. The price tag for these failures is being passed on to our families.\nFrom the mother working two jobs to pay the bills and the couple struggling to care for young children and aging parents, to the tens of millions of Americans without health insurance and the workers who have seen their jobs shipped overseas, too many Americans have been invisible to our current President and his party for too long. The people who do the work in America have never been invisible to the Democratic Party. It is time to make the American Dream real for them again.\nWe need a government that stands up for the hopes, values, and interests of working people, and gives everyone willing to work hard the chance to make the most of their God-given potential.\nIn platform hearings around the country, Americans reaffirmed our belief that this great nation can compete–and succeed–in the 21st Century but only if we take a new approach. One that is both innovative and faithful to the basic economic principles that made this country great. We Democrats want–and we hereby pledge–a government led by Barack Obama that looks out for families in the new economy with health care, retirement security, and help, especially in bad times. Investment in our country–in energy, education, infrastructure, science. A ladder of opportunity for all. Democrats see these as the pillars of a more competitive and fair economy that will allow all Americans to take advantage of the opportunities of our new era.\nWe will provide an immediate energy rebate to American families struggling with the record price of gasoline and the skyrocketing cost of other necessities – to spend on those basic needs and energy efficient measures. We will devote $50 billion to jumpstarting the economy, helping economic growth, and preventing another one million jobs from being lost. This will include assistance to states and localities to prevent them from having to cut their vital services like education, health care, and infrastructure. We will quickly implement the housing bill recently passed by Congress and ensure that states and localities that have been hard-hit by the housing crisis can avoid cuts in vital services. We support investments in infrastructure to replenish the highway trust fund, invest in road and bridge maintenance and fund new, fast-tracked projects to repair schools. We believe that it is essential to take immediate steps to stem the loss of manufacturing jobs. Taking these immediate measures will provide good jobs and will help the economy today. But generating truly shared prosperity is only possible if we also address our most significant long-run challenges like the rising cost of health care, energy, and education.\nEmpowering Families for a New Era\nMany Americans once worked 40 hours a week for 40 years for a single employer who provided pay to support a family, health insurance, and a pension. Today, Americans change jobs more frequently than ever and compete against workers around the world for pay and benefits.\nThe face of America's families is also changing, and so are the challenges they confront. Today, in the majority of families, all parents work. Millions of working Americans are also members of a new \"sandwich generation,\" playing dual roles as working parents and working children, responsible not only for their kids but for their aging mothers and fathers. They are working longer hours than ever, while at the same time having to meet a new and growing set of caregiving responsibilities.\nOur government's policies–many designed in the New Deal era–have not kept up with the new economy and the changing nature of people's lives. Democrats believe that it is time for our policies and our expectations to catch up. From health care to pensions, from unemployment insurance to paid leave, we need to modernize our policies in order to provide working Americans the tools they need to meet new realities and challenges.\nAffordable, Quality Health Care Coverage for All Americans\nIf one thing came through in the platform hearings, it was that Democrats are united around a commitment that every American man, woman, and child be guaranteed affordable, comprehensive healthcare. In meeting after meeting, people expressed moral outrage with a health care crisis that leaves millions of Americans–including nine million children–without health insurance and millions more struggling to pay rising costs for poor quality care. Half of all personal bankruptcies in America are caused by medical bills. We spend more on health care than any other country, but we're ranked 47th in life expectancy and 43rd in child mortality. Our nation faces epidemics of obesity and chronic diseases as well as new threats like pandemic flu and bioterrorism. Yet despite all of this, less than four cents of every health care dollar is spent on prevention and public health.\nThe American people understand that good health is the foundation of individual achievement and economic prosperity. Ensuring quality, affordable health care for every single American is essential to children's education, workers' productivity and businesses' competitiveness. We believe that covering all is not just a moral imperative, but is necessary to making our health system workable and affordable. Doing so would end cost-shifting from the uninsured, promote prevention and wellness, stop insurance discrimination, help eliminate health care disparities, and achieve savings through competition, choice, innovation, and higher quality care. While there are different approaches within the Democratic Party about how best to achieve the commitment of covering every American, with everyone in and no one left out, we stand united to achieve this fundamental objective through the legislative process.\nWe therefore oppose those who advocate policies that would thrust millions of Americans out of their current private employer-based coverage without providing them access to an affordable, comprehensive alternative, thereby subjecting them to the kind of insurance discrimination that leads to excessive premiums or coverage denials for older and sicker Americans. We reject those who have steadfastly opposed insurance coverage expansions for millions of our nation's children while they have protected overpayments to insurers and allowed underpayments to our nation's doctors. Our vision of a strengthened and improved health care system for all Americans stands in stark contrast to the Republican Party's and includes:\nWe must fight HIV/AIDS in our country and around the world. We support increased funding into research, care and prevention of HIV/AIDS. We support a comprehensive national strategic plan to combat HIV/AIDS and a Ryan White Care Act designed and funded to meet today's epidemic, that ends ADAP waiting lists and that focuses on the communities such as African Americans and Latino Americans who are disproportionately impacted through an expanded and renewed minority HIV/AIDS initiative, and on new epicenters such as the Southern part of our nation. We support providing Medicaid coverage to more low-income HIV-positive Americans.\nHealth care reform must also provide adequate incentives for innovation to ensure that Americans have access to evidence-based and cost-effective health care. Research should be based on science, not ideology. For the millions of Americans and their families suffering from debilitating physical and emotional effects of disease, time is a precious commodity, and it is running out. Yet, over the past eight years, the current Administration has not only failed to promote biomedical and stem cell research, it has actively stood in the way of that research. We cannot tolerate any further inaction or obstruction. We need to invest in biomedical research and stem cell research, so that we are at the leading edge of prevention and treatment. This includes adequate funding for research into diseases such as heart disease, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, breast cancer, diabetes, autism and other common and rare diseases, and disorders. We will increase funding to the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the National Cancer Institutes.\nRetirement and Social Security\nWe will make it a priority to secure for hardworking families the part of the American Dream that includes a secure and healthy retirement. Individuals, employers, and government must all play a role. We will adopt measures to preserve and protect existing public and private pension plans. In the 21st Century, Americans also need better ways to save for retirement. We will automatically enroll every worker in a workplace pension plan that can be carried from job to job and we will match savings for working families who need the help. We will make sure that CEOs can't dump workers' pensions with one hand while they line their own pockets with the other. At platform hearings, Americans made it clear they feel that's an outrage, and it's time we had leaders who treat it as an outrage. We will ensure all employees who have company pensions receive annual disclosures about their pension fund's investments, including full details about which projects have been invested in, the performance of those investments and appropriate details about probable future investments strategies. We also will reform corporate bankruptcy laws so that workers' retirements are a priority for funding and workers are not left with worthless IOU's after years of service. Finally, we will eliminate all federal income taxes for seniors making less than $50,000 per year. Lower- and middle-income seniors already have to worry about high health care and energy costs; they should not have to worry about tax burdens as well.\nWe reject the notion of the presumptive Republican nominee that Social Security is a disgrace; we believe that it is indispensable. We will fulfill our obligation to strengthen Social Security and to make sure that it provides guaranteed benefits Americans can count on, now and in future generations. We will not privatize it.\nGood Jobs with Good Pay\nIn the platform hearings, Americans expressed dismay that people who are willing to study and work cannot get a job that pays enough to live on in the current economy. Democrats are committed to an economic policy that produces good jobs with good pay and benefits. That is why we support the right to organize. We know that when unions are allowed to do their job of making sure that workers get their fair share, they pull people out of poverty and create a stronger middle class. We will strengthen the ability of workers to organize unions and fight to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. We will restore pro-worker voices to the National Labor Relations Board and the National Mediation Board and we support overturning the NLRB's and NMB's many harmful decisions that undermine the collective bargaining rights of millions of workers. We will ensure that federal employees, including public safety officers who put their lives on the line every day, have the right to bargain collectively, and we will fix the broken bargaining process at the Federal Aviation Administration. We will fight to ban the permanent replacement of striking workers, so that workers can stand up for themselves without worrying about losing their livelihoods. We will continue to vigorously oppose \"Right-to-Work\" Laws and \"paycheck protection\" efforts whenever they are proposed. Suspending labor protections during national emergencies compounds the devastation from the emergency. We opposed suspension of Davis-Bacon following Hurricane Katrina, and we support broad application of Davis-Bacon worker protections to all federal projects. We will stop the abuse of privatization of government jobs. We will end the exploitative practice of employers wrongly misclassifying workers as independent contractors.\nThe Bush Administration Department of Labor has failed in its obligation to stand up and protect American workers. Our Department of Labor will restore and expand overtime rights for millions of Americans, and will actively enforce wage and hour laws. The Bush Administration is the only administration that has never voluntarily issued a significant final standard for workplace safety. Our Occupational Safety and Health Administration will adopt and enforce comprehensive safety standards. Right now, far too many workers – especially those in the construction and mining industries-risk their lives every day just by going to work.\nIn America, if someone is willing to work, he or she should be able to make ends meet and have the opportunity to prosper. To that end, we will raise the minimum wage and index it to inflation, and increase the Earned Income Tax Credit so that workers can support themselves and their families. We will modernize the unemployment insurance program to close gaps and extend benefits to the workers who now fall outside it.\nWork and Family\nOver the last few decades, fundamental changes in the way we work and live have trapped too many American families between an economy that's gone global and a government that's gone AWOL. It's time we stop just talking about family values, and start pursuing policies that truly value families. We will expand the Family and Medical Leave Act to reach millions more workers than are currently covered, and we will enable workers to take leave to care for an elderly parent, address domestic violence and sexual assault, or attend a parent-teacher conference. Today 78 percent of the workers who are eligible for leave cannot take it because it's unpaid, so we will work with states and make leave paid. We will also ensure that every American worker is able earn up to seven paid sick days to care for themselves or an ill family member. And we will encourage employers to provide flexible work arrangements—with the federal government leading by example. We will expand the childcare tax credit, provide every child access to quality, affordable early childhood education, and double funding for after-school and summer learning opportunities for children. We will provide assistance to those who need long-term care and to the working men and women of this country who do the heroic job of providing care for their aging relatives. All Americans who are working hard and taking responsibility deserve the chance to do right by their loved ones. That's the America we believe in.\nPoverty\nWhen Bobby Kennedy saw the shacks and poverty along the Mississippi Delta, he asked, \"How can a country like this allow it?\" Forty years later, we're still asking that question. The most American answer we can give is: \"We won't allow it.\" One in eight Americans lives in poverty today all across our country, in our cities, in our suburbs, and in our rural communities. Most of these people work but still can't pay the bills. Nearly thirteen million of the poor are children. We can't allow this kind of suffering and hopelessness to exist in our country. It's not who we are.\nWorking together, we can cut poverty in half within ten years. We will provide all our children a world-class education, from early childhood through college. We will develop innovative transitional job programs that place unemployed people into temporary jobs and train them for permanent ones. To help workers share in our country's productivity, we'll expand the Earned Income Tax Credit, and raise the minimum wage and index it to inflation. The majority of adults in poverty are women, and to combat poverty we must work for fair pay, support for mothers, and policies that promote responsible fatherhood. We'll start letting our unions do what they do best again—organize and lift up our workers. We'll make sure that every American has affordable health care that stays with them no matter what happens. We will assist American Indian communities, since 10 of the 20 poorest counties in the United States are on Indian lands. We'll bring businesses back to our inner-cities, increase the supply of affordable housing, and establish \"promise neighborhoods\" that provide comprehensive services in areas of concentrated poverty. These will be based on proven models, such as the Harlem Children's Zone in New York City, which seeks to engage all residents with tangible goals such as attendance at parenting schools, retention of meaningful employment, college for every participating student, and strong physical and mental health outcomes for children. The Democratic Party believes that the fight against poverty must be national priority. Eradicating poverty will require the sustained commitment of the President of the United States, and we believe that the White House must offer leadership and resources to advance this agenda.\nOpportunity for Women\nWe, the Democratic Party, are the party that has produced more women Governors, Senators, and Members of Congress than any other. We have produced the first woman Secretary of State, the first woman Speaker of the House of Representatives, and, in 2008, Hillary Rodham Clinton, the first woman in American history to win presidential primaries in our nation. We believe that our daughters should have the same opportunities as our sons; our party is proud that we have put eighteen million cracks in the highest glass ceiling. We know that when America extends its promise to women, the result is increased opportunity for families, communities, and aspiring people everywhere.\nWhen women still earn 76 cents for every dollar that a man earns, it doesn't just hurt women; it hurts families and children. We will pass the \"Lilly Ledbetter\" Act, which will make it easier to combat pay discrimination; we will pass the Fair Pay Act; and we will modernize the Equal Pay Act. We will invest in women-owned small businesses and remove the capital gains tax on startup small businesses. We will support women in math and science, increasing American competitiveness by retaining the best workers in these fields, regardless of gender. We recognize that women still carry the majority of childrearing responsibilities, so we have created a comprehensive work and family agenda. We recognize that women are the majority of adults who make the minimum wage, and are particularly hard-hit by recession and poverty; we will protect Social Security, increase the minimum wage, and expand programs to combat poverty and improve education so that parents and children can lift themselves out of poverty. We will work to combat violence against women.\nWe believe that standing up for our country means standing up against sexism and all intolerance. Demeaning portrayals of women cheapen our debates, dampen the dreams of our daughters, and deny us the contributions of too many. Responsibility lies with us all.\nInvesting in American Competitiveness\nAt a critical moment of transition like this one, Americans understand that, more than anything else, success will depend on the dynamism, determination, and innovation of the American people. But success also depends on national leadership that can move this country forward with confidence and a common purpose. In platform hearings, Americans called on their government to \"invest back\" in them and their country. That's what Lincoln did when he pushed for a transcontinental railroad, incorporated our National Academy of Sciences, passed the Homestead Act and created the land grant colleges. That's what Franklin Delano Roosevelt did in creating the Tennessee Valley Authority, electrifying rural America and investing in an Arsenal of Democracy. That's the kind of leadership we intend to provide.\nNew American Energy\nIn the local platform hearings, Americans talked about the importance of energy to the economy, to national security, and to the health of our planet. Speaking loud and clear, they said that America needs a new bold and sustainable energy policy to meet the challenges of our time. In the past, America has been stirred to action when faced with new threats to our national security, or new competitive conditions that undercut our economic leadership. The energy threat we face today may be less immediate than threats from dictators, but it is as real and as dangerous. The dangers are eclipsed only by the opportunities that would come with change. We know that the jobs of the 21st Century will be created in developing new energy solutions. The question is whether these jobs will be created in America, or abroad. We should use government procurement policies to incentivize domestic production of clean and renewable energy. Already, we've seen countries like Germany, Spain and Brazil reap the benefits of economic growth from clean energy. But we are decades behind in confronting this challenge.\nFor the sake of our security–and for every American family that is paying the price at the pump– we will break our addiction to foreign oil. In platform hearings around the country, Americans called for a Manhattan or Apollo Project-level commitment to achieve energy independence. We hear that call and we Democrats commit to fast-track investment of billions of dollars over the next ten years to establish a green energy sector that will create up to five million jobs. Good jobs, like those in Pennsylvania where workers manufacture wind turbines, the ones in the factory in Nevada producing components for solar energy generation plants, or the jobs that will be created when plug-in hybrids start rolling off the assembly line in Michigan. This transition to a clean-energy industry will also benefit low-income communities: we'll create an energy-focused youth job program to give disadvantaged youth job skills for this emerging industry.\nIt will not be easy, but neither was getting to the moon. We know we can't drill our way to energy independence and so we must summon all of our ingenuity and legendary hard work and we must invest in research and development, and deployment of renewable energy technologies—such as solar, wind, geothermal, as well as technologies to store energy through advanced batteries and clean up our coal plants. And we will call on businesses, government, and the American people to make America 50 percent more energy efficient by 2030, because we know that the most energy efficient economy will also gain the competitive edge for new manufacturing and jobs that stay here at home. We will help pay for all of it by dedicating a portion of the revenues generated by an economy-wide cap and trade program- a step that will also dramatically reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and jumpstart billions in private capital investment in a new energy economy.\nWe'll dramatically increase the fuel efficiency of automobiles, and we'll help auto manufacturers and parts suppliers convert to build the cars and trucks of the future and their key components in the United States. And we will help workers learn the skills they need to compete in the green economy. We are committed to getting at least 25 percent of our electricity from renewable sources by 2025. Building on the innovative efforts of the private sector, states, cities, and tribes across the country, we will create new federal-local partnerships to scale the success and deployment of new energy solutions, install a smarter grid, build more efficient buildings, and use the power of federal and military purchasing programs to jumpstart promising new markets and technologies. We'll invest in advanced biofuels like cellulosic ethanol which will provide American-grown fuel and help free us from the tyranny of oil. We will use innovative measures to dramatically improve the energy efficiency of buildings.\nTo lower the price of gasoline, we will crack down on speculators who are driving up prices beyond the natural market rate. We will direct the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice to vigorously investigate and prosecute market manipulation in oil futures. And we will help those who are hit hardest by high energy prices by increasing funding for low-income heating assistance and weatherization programs, and by providing energy assistance to help middle-class families make ends meet in this time of inflated energy prices.\nThis plan will safeguard our economy, our country, and the future of our planet. This plan will create good jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced. With these policies, we will protect our country from the national security threats created by reliance on foreign oil and global insecurity due to climate change. And this is how we'll solve the problem of four-dollar-a-gallon gas— with a comprehensive plan and investment in clean energy.\nA World Class Education for Every Child\nIn the 21st Century, where the most valuable skill is knowledge, countries that out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow. In the platform hearings, Americans made it clear that it is morally and economically unacceptable that our high-schoolers continue to score lower on math and science tests than most other students in the world and continue to drop-out at higher rates than their peers in other industrialized nations. We cannot accept the persistent achievement gap between minority and white students or the harmful disparities that exist between different schools within a state or even a district. Americans know we can and should do better.\nThe Democratic Party firmly believes that graduation from a quality public school and the opportunity to succeed in college must be the birthright of every child–not the privilege of the few. We must prepare all our students with the 21st Century skills they need to succeed by progressing to a new era of mutual responsibility in education. We must set high standards for our children, but we must also hold ourselves accountable–our schools, our teachers, our parents, business leaders, our community and our elected leaders. And we must come together, form partnerships, and commit to providing the resources and reforms necessary to help every child reach their full potential.\nTo reward our teachers, we will follow the lead of school districts and educators that have pioneered innovative ways to increase teacher pay that are developed with teachers, not imposed on them. We will make an unprecedented national investment to provide teachers with better pay and better support to improve their skills, and their students' learning. We'll reward effective teachers who teach in underserved areas, take on added responsibilities like mentoring new teachers, or consistently excel in the classroom.\nWe will fix the failures and broken promises of No Child Left Behind–while holding to the goal of providing every child access to a world-class education, raising standards, and ensuring accountability for closing the achievement gap. We will end the practice of labeling a school and its students as failures and then throwing our hands up and walking away from them without having provided the resources and supports these students need. But this alone is not an education policy. It's just a starting point. We will work with our nation's governors and educators to create and use assessments that will improve student learning and success in school districts all across America by including the kinds of critical thinking, communication, and problem-solving skills that our children will need. We will address the dropout crisis by investing in intervention strategies in middle schools and high schools and we will invest in after-school programs, summer school, alternative education programs, and youth jobs.\nWe will promote innovation within our public schools–because research shows that resources alone will not create the schools that we need to help our children succeed. We need to adapt curricula and the school calendar to the needs of the 21st Century; reform the schools of education that produce most of our teachers; promote public charter schools that are accountable; and streamline the certification process for those with valuable skills who want to shift careers and teach.\nWe will also meet our commitment to special education and to students who are English Language Learners. We support full funding of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. We also support transitional bilingual education and will help Limited English Proficient students get ahead by supporting and funding English Language Learner classes. We support teaching students second languages, as well as contributing through education to the revitalization of American Indian languages.\nWe know that there is no program and no policy that can substitute for parents who are involved in their children's education from day one–who make sure their children are in school on time, help them with their homework, and attend those parent-teacher conferences; who are willing to turn off the TV once in a while, put away the video games, and read to their children. Responsibility for our children's education has to start at home. We have to set high standards for them, and spend time with them, and love them. We have to hold ourselves accountable.\nHigher Education\nWe believe that our universities, community colleges, and other institutions of higher learning must foster among their graduates the skills needed to enhance economic competitiveness. We will work with institutions of higher learning to produce highly skilled graduates in science, technology, engineering, and math disciplines who will become innovative workers prepared for the 21st Century economy.\nAt community colleges and training programs across the country, we will invest in short-term accelerated training and technical certifications for the unemployed and under-employed to speed their transition to careers in high-demand occupations and emerging industries. We will reward successful community colleges with grants so they can continue their good work. We support education delivery that makes it possible for non-traditional students to receive support and encouragement to obtain a college education, including Internet, distance education, and night and weekend programs.\nWe must also invest in training and education to prepare incumbent job-holders with skills to meet the rigors of the new economic environment and provide them access to the broad knowledge and concrete tools offered by apprenticeships, internships, and postsecondary education. We need to fully fund joint labor-management apprenticeship programs and reinvigorate our industrial crafts programs to train the next generation of skilled American craft workers.\nWe recognize the special value and importance of our Historically Black Colleges and Universities and other minority serving institutions in meeting the needs of our increasingly diverse society and will work to ensure their viability and growth.\nWe will make college affordable for all Americans by creating a new American Opportunity Tax Credit to ensure that the first $4,000 of a college education is completely free for most Americans. In exchange for the credit, students will be expected to perform community service. We will continue to support programs, especially the Pell Grant program, that open the doors of college opportunity to low-income Americans. We will enable families to apply for financial aid simply by checking a box on their tax form.\nOur institutions of higher education are also the economic engines of today and tomorrow. We will partner with them to translate new ideas into innovative products, processes and services.\nScience, Technology and Innovation\nAmerica has long led the world in innovation. But this Administration's hostility to science has taken a toll. At a time when technology helps shape our future, we devote a smaller and smaller share of our national resources to research and development.\nIt is time again to lead. We took a critical step with the America Competes Act and we will start by implementing that Act —then we will do more. We will make science, technology, engineering, and math education a national priority. We will double federal funding for basic research, invest in a strong and inspirational vision for space exploration, and make the Research and Development Tax Credit permanent. We will invest in the next generation of transformative energy technologies and health IT and we will renew the defense R&D system. We will lift the current Administration's ban on using federal funding for embryonic stem cells– cells that would have otherwise have been discarded and lost forever–for research that could save lives. We will ensure that our patent laws protect legitimate rights while not stifling innovation and creativity. We will end the Bush Administration's war on science, restore scientific integrity, and return to evidence-based decision-making.\nIn sum, we will strengthen our system, treat science and technology as crucial investments, and use these forces to ensure a future of economic leadership, health well-being and national security.\nWe will invest in American jobs and finally end the tax breaks that ship jobs overseas. We will create an Advanced Manufacturing Fund to provide for our next generation of innovators and job creators; we will expand the Manufacturing Extension Partnerships and create new job training programs for clean technologies. We will bring together government, private industry, workers, and academia to turn around the manufacturing sector of the U.S. economy and provide assistance to automakers and parts companies to encourage retooling of facilities in this country to produce advanced technology vehicles and their key components. We will support efforts like the recently proposed Senate Appropriations measure that gives manufacturers access to low-interest loans to help convert factories to build more fuel-efficient vehicles. And we will invest in a clean energy economy to create up to five million new green-collar jobs.\nOur manufacturing communities need immediate relief. And we will help states and localities whose budgets are strained in times of need. We will modernize and expand Trade Adjustment Assistance. We will help workers build a safety net, with health care, retirement security, and a way to stay out of crippling debt. We will partner with community colleges and other higher education institutions, so that we're training workers to meet the demands of local industry, including environmentally-friendly technology.\nCreating New Jobs by Rebuilding American Infrastructure\nA century ago, Teddy Roosevelt called together leaders from business and government to develop a plan for the next century's infrastructure. It falls to us to do the same. Right now, we are spending less than at any time in recent history and far less than our international competitors on this critical component of our nation's strength. We will start a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank that can leverage private investment in infrastructure improvements, and create nearly two million new good jobs. We will undertake projects that maximize our safety and security and ability to compete, which we will fund as we bring the war in Iraq to a responsible close. We will modernize our power grid, which will help conservation and spur the development and distribution of clean energy. We need a national transportation policy, including high-speed rail and light rail. We can invest in our bridges, roads, and public transportation so that people have choices in how they get to work. We will ensure every American has access to highspeed broadband and we will take on special interests in order to unleash the power of the wireless spectrum.\nA Connected America\nIn the 21st Century, our world is more intertwined than at any time in human history. This new connectedness presents us with untold opportunities for innovation, but also new challenges. We will protect the Internet's traditional openness and ensure that it remains a dynamic platform for free speech, innovation, and creativity. We will implement a national broadband strategy (especially in rural areas, and our reservations and territories) that enables every American household, school, library, and hospital to connect to a world-class communications infrastructure. We will rededicate our nation to ensuring that all Americans have access to broadband and the skills to use it effectively. In an increasingly technology-rich, knowledge-based economy, we understand that connectivity is a key part of the solution to many of our most important challenges: job creation, economic growth, energy, health care, and education. We will establish a Chief Technology Officer for the nation, to ensure we use technology to enhance the functioning, transparency, and expertise of government, including establishing a national interoperable public safety communications network to help first responders at the local, state and national level communicate with one another during a crisis.\nWe will toughen penalties, increase enforcement resources, and spur private sector cooperation with law enforcement to identify and prosecute those who exploit the Internet to try to harm children. We will encourage more educational content on the Web and in our media. We will give parents the tools and information they need to manage what their children see on television and the Internet – in ways fully consistent with the First Amendment. We will strengthen privacy protections in the digital age and will harness the power of technology to hold government and business accountable for violations of personal privacy. We will encourage diversity in the ownership of broadcast media, promote the development of new media outlets for expression of diverse viewpoints, and clarify the public interest obligations of broadcasters who occupy the nation's spectrum.\nSupport Small Business and Entrepreneurship\nEncouraging new industry and creating jobs means giving more support to American entrepreneurs. We will exempt all start-up companies from capital gains taxes and provide them a tax credit for health insurance. We will provide a new tax credit for small businesses that offer quality health insurance to their employees. We will help small businesses facing high energy costs. We will work to remove bureaucratic barriers for small and start-up businesses–for example, by making the patent process more efficient and reliable. Our Small Business Administration will recognize the importance of small business to women, people of color, tribes, and rural America and will work to help nurture entrepreneurship. We will create a national network of public-private business incubators and technical support.\nReal Leadership for Rural America\nRural America is home to 60 million Americans. The agricultural sector is critical to the rural economy and to all Americans. We depend on those in agriculture to produce the food, feed, fiber, and fuel that support our society. Thankfully, American farmers possess an unrivaled capacity to produce an abundance of these high-quality products.\nIn return, we will provide a strong safety net for family farms, a permanent disaster relief program, expansion of agriculture research, and an emphasis on agricultural trade. We will promote economic development in rural and tribal communities by investing in renewable energy, which will transform the rural economy and create millions of new jobs, by upgrading technological and physical infrastructure, by addressing the challenges faced by public schools in rural areas, including forest county schools, supporting higher education opportunities and by attracting quality teachers, doctors and nurses through loan forgiveness programs and other incentive programs. All Americans, urban and rural, hold a shared interest in preserving and increasing the economic vitality of family farms. We will continue to develop and advance policies that promote sustainable and local agriculture, including funding for soil and water conservation programs.\nEconomic Stewardship\nSince the time of our Founders, we have struggled to balance the same forces that confronted Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson–self-interest and community; markets and democracy; the concentration of wealth and power, and the necessity of transparency and opportunity for each and every American. Throughout our history, Americans have pursued their dreams within a free market that has been the engine of America's progress. It's a market that has created a prosperity that is the envy of the world, and opportunity for generations of Americans. A market that has provided great rewards to the innovators and risk-takers who have made America a beacon for science, technology, and discovery.\nBut the American experiment has worked in large part because we have guided the market's invisible hand with a higher principle. Our free market was never meant to be a free license to take whatever you can get, however you can get it. That is why we have put in place rules of the road to make competition fair, open, and honest. We have done this not to stifle–but rather to advance – prosperity and liberty.\nIn this time of economic transformation and crisis, we must be stewards of this economy more than ever before. We will maintain fiscal responsibility, so that we do not mortgage our children's future on a mountain of debt. We can do this at the same time that we invest in our future. We will restore fairness and responsibility to our tax code. We will bring balance back to the housing markets, so that people do not have to lose their homes. And we will encourage personal savings, so that our economy remains strong and Americans can live well in their retirements.\nRestoring Fairness to Our Tax Code\nWe must reform our tax code. It's thousands of pages long, a monstrosity that high-priced lobbyists have rigged with page after page of special interest loopholes and tax shelters. We will shut down the corporate loopholes and tax havens and use the money so that we can provide an immediate middle-class tax cut that will offer relief to workers and their families. We'll eliminate federal income taxes for millions of retirees, because all seniors deserve to live out their lives with dignity and respect. We will not increase taxes on any family earning under $250,000 and we will offer additional tax cuts for middle class families. For families making more than $250,000, we'll ask them to give back a portion of the Bush tax cuts to invest in health care and other key priorities. We will end the penalty within the current Social Security system for public service that exists in several states. We will expand the Earned Income Tax Credit, and dramatically simplify tax filings so that millions of Americans can do their taxes in less than five minutes.\nHousing\nThe housing crisis has been devastating for many Americans. Minorities have been hit particularly hard—in 2006, more than 40 percent of the home loans made to Hispanic borrowers were subprime, while more than half of those made to African Americans were subprime. We will ensure that the foreclosure prevention program enacted by Congress is implemented quickly and effectively so that at-risk homeowners can get help and hopefully stay in their homes. We will work to reform bankruptcy laws to restore balance between lender and homeowner rights. Because we have an obligation to prevent this crisis from recurring in the future, we will crack down on fraudulent brokers and lenders and invest in financial literacy. We will pass a Homebuyers Bill of Rights, which will include establishing new lending standards to ensure that loans are affordable and fair, provide adequate remedies to make sure the standards are met, and ensure that homeowners have accurate and complete information about their mortgage options. We will support affordable rental housing, which is now more critical than ever. We will implement the newly created Affordable Housing Trust Fund to ensure that it can start to support the development and preservation of affordable housing in mixed-income neighborhoods throughout the country, restore cuts to public housing operating subsidies, and fully fund the Community Development Block Grant program. We will work with local jurisdictions on the problem of vacant and abandoned housing in our communities. We will work to end housing discrimination and to ensure equal housing opportunity. We will combat homelessness and target homelessness among veterans in particular by expanding proven programs and launching innovative preventive services.\nReforming Financial Regulation and Corporate Governance\nWe have failed to guard against practices that all too often rewarded financial manipulation instead of productivity and sound business practices. We have let the special interests put their thumbs on the economic scales. We do not believe that government should stand in the way of innovation, or turn back the clock to an older era of regulation. But we do believe that government has a role to play in advancing our common prosperity: by providing stable macroeconomic and financial conditions for sustained growth; by demanding transparency; and by ensuring fair competition in the marketplace. We will reform and modernize our regulatory structures and will work to promote a shift in the cultures of our financial institutions and our regulatory agencies. We will ensure shareholders have an advisory vote on executive compensation, in order to spur increased transparency and public debate over pay packages. To make our communities stronger and more livable, and to meet the challenges of increasing global competitiveness, America will lead innovation in corporate responsibility to create jobs and leverage our private sector entrepreneurial leadership to help build a better world.\nConsumer Protection\nWe will establish a Credit Card Bill of Rights to protect consumers and a Credit Card Rating System to improve disclosure. Americans need to pay what they owe, but they should pay what's fair. We'll reform our bankruptcy laws to give Americans in debt a second chance. If people can demonstrate that they went bankrupt because of medical expenses, they will be able to relieve that debt and get back on their feet. We will ban executive bonuses for bankrupt companies. We will crack down on predatory lenders and make it easier for low-income families to buy homes. We will require all non-home-based child care facilities to be lead-safe within five years. We must guarantee that consumer products coming in from other countries are truly safe, and will call on the Federal Trade Commission to ensure vulnerable consumer populations, such as seniors, are addressed.\nSavings\nThe personal saving rate is at its lowest since the Great Depression. Currently, 75 million working Americans—roughly half the workforce—lack employer-based retirement plans. That's why we will create automatic workplace pensions. People can add to their pension, or can opt out at any time; the savings account will be easily transferred between jobs; and people can control it themselves if they become self-employed. We will ensure savings incentives are fair to all workers by matching half of the initial $1000 of savings for families that need help; and employers will have an easy opportunity to match employee savings. We believe this program will increase the saving participation rate for low- and middle-income workers from its current 15 percent to 80 percent. We support good pensions, and will adopt measures to preserve and protect existing public and private pension plans. We will require that employees who have company pensions receive annual disclosures about their pension fund's investments. This will put a secure retirement within reach for millions of working families.\nSmart, Strong, and Fair Trade Policies\nWe believe that trade should strengthen the American economy and create more American jobs, while also laying a foundation for democratic, equitable, and sustainable growth around the world. Trade has been a cornerstone of our growth and global development, but we will not be able to sustain this growth if it favors the few rather than the many. We must build on the wealth that open markets have created, and share its benefits more equitably.\nTrade policy must be an integral part of an overall national economic strategy that delivers on the promise of good jobs at home and shared prosperity abroad. We will enforce trade laws and safeguard our workers, businesses, and farmers from unfair trade practices–including currency manipulation, lax consumer standards, illegal subsidies, and violations of workers' rights and environmental standards. We must also show leadership at the World Trade Organization to improve transparency and accountability, and to ensure it acts effectively to stop countries from continuing unfair government subsidies to foreign exporters and non-tariff barriers on U.S. exports.\nWe need tougher negotiators on our side of the table–to strike bargains that are good not just for Wall Street, but also for Main Street. We will negotiate bilateral trade agreements that open markets to U.S. exports and include enforceable international labor and environmental standards; we pledge to enforce those standards consistently and fairly. We will not negotiate bilateral trade agreements that stop the government from protecting the environment, food safety, or the health of its citizens; give greater rights to foreign investors than to U.S. investors; require the privatization of our vital public services; or prevent developing country governments from adopting humanitarian licensing policies to improve access to life-saving medications. We will stand firm against bilateral agreements that fail to live up to these important benchmarks, and will strive to achieve them in the multilateral framework. We will work with Canada and Mexico to amend the North American Free Trade Agreement so that it works better for all three North American countries. We will work together with other countries to achieve a successful completion of the Doha Round Agreement that would increase U.S. exports, support good jobs in America, protect worker rights and the environment, benefit our businesses and our farms, strengthen the rules-based multilateral system, and advance development of the world's poorest countries.\nJust as important, we will invest in a world-class infrastructure, skilled workforce, and cutting-edge technology so that we can compete successfully on high-value-added products, not sweatshop wages and conditions. We will end tax breaks for companies that ship American jobs overseas, and provide incentives for companies that keep and maintain good jobs here in the United States. We will also provide access to affordable health insurance and enhance retirement security, and we will update and expand Trade Adjustment Assistance to help workers in industries vulnerable to international competition, as well as service sector and public sector workers impacted by trade, and we will improve TAA's health care benefits. The United States should renew its own commitment to respect for workers' fundamental human rights, and at the same time strengthen the ILO's ability to promote workers' rights abroad through technical assistance and capacity building.\nFiscal Responsibility\nOur agenda is ambitious–particularly in light of the current Administration's policies that have run up the national debt to over $4 trillion. Just as America cannot afford to continue to run up huge deficits, so too can we not afford to short-change investments. The key is to make the tough choices, in particular enforcing pay-as-you-go budgeting rules. We will honor these rules by our plan to end the Iraq war responsibly, eliminate waste in existing government programs, generate revenue by charging polluters for the greenhouse gases they are releasing, and put an end to the reckless, special interest driven corporate loopholes and tax cuts for the wealthy that have been the centerpiece of the Bush Administration's economic policy. We will not raise taxes on people making less than $250,000, and we will eliminate federal income taxes for seniors making less than $50,000. We recognize that Social Security is not in crisis and we should do everything we can to strengthen this vital program, including asking those making over $250,000 to pay a bit more. The real long-run fiscal challenge is rooted in the rising spending on health care, but we cannot address this in a way that puts our most vulnerable families in jeopardy. Instead, we must strengthen our public programs by bringing down the cost of health care and reducing waste while making strategic investments that emphasize quality, efficiency, and prevention. In the name of our children, we reject the proposals of those who want to continue George Bush's disastrous economic policies.\nII. Renewing American Leadership\nAt moments of great peril in the last century, American leaders such as Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy managed both to protect the American people and to expand opportunity for the next generation. They ensured that America, by deed and example, led and lifted the world–that we stood for and fought for the freedoms sought by billions of people beyond our borders. They used our strengths to show people everywhere America at its best. Just as John Kennedy said that after Hoover we needed Franklin Roosevelt, so too after our experience of the last eight years we need Barack Obama.\nToday, we are again called to provide visionary leadership. This century's threats are at least as dangerous as, and in some ways more complex than, those we have confronted in the past. They come from weapons that can kill on a mass scale and from violent extremists who exploit alienation and perceived injustice to spread terror. They come from rogue states allied to terrorists and from rising powers that could challenge both America and the international foundation of liberal democracy. They come from weak states that cannot control their territory or provide for their people. They come from an addiction to oil that helps fund the extremism we must fight and empowers repressive regimes. And they come from a warming planet that will spur new diseases, spawn more devastating natural disasters, and catalyze deadly conflicts.\nWe will confront these threats head on while working with our allies and restoring our standing in the world. We will pursue a tough, smart, and principled national security strategy. It is a strategy that recognizes that we have interests not just in Baghdad, but in Kandahar and Karachi, in Beijing, Berlin, Brasilia and Bamako. It is a strategy that contends with the many disparate forces shaping this century, including: the fundamentalist challenge to freedom; the emergence of new powers like China, India, Russia, and a united Europe; the spread of lethal weapons; uncertain supplies of energy, food, and water; the persistence of poverty and the growing gap between rich and poor; and extraordinary new technologies that send people, ideas, and money across the globe at ever faster speeds.\nBarack Obama will focus this strategy on seven goals: (i) ending the war in Iraq responsibly; (ii) defeating Al Qaeda and combating violent extremism; (iii) securing nuclear weapons and materials from terrorists; (iv) revitalizing and supporting our military; (v) renewing our partnerships to promote our common security; (vi) advancing democracy and development; and (vii) protecting our planet by achieving energy security and combating climate change.\nEnding the War in Iraq\nTo renew American leadership in the world, we must first bring the Iraq war to a responsible end. Our men and women in uniform have performed admirably while sacrificing immeasurably. Our civilian leaders have failed them. Iraq was a diversion from the fight against the terrorists who struck us on 9-11, and incompetent prosecution of the war by civilian leaders compounded the strategic blunder of choosing to wage it in the first place.\nWe will re-center American foreign policy by responsibly redeploying our combat forces from Iraq and refocusing them on urgent missions. We will give our military a new mission: ending this war and giving Iraq back to its people. We will be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely remove our combat brigades at the pace of one to two per month and expect to complete redeployment within sixteen months. After this redeployment, we will keep a residual force in Iraq to perform specific missions: targeting terrorists; protecting our embassy and civil personnel; and advising and supporting Iraq's Security Forces, provided the Iraqis make political progress.\nAt the same time, we will provide generous assistance to Iraqi refugees and internally displaced persons. We will launch a comprehensive regional and international diplomatic surge to help broker a lasting political settlement in Iraq, which is the only path to a sustainable peace. We will make clear that we seek no permanent bases in Iraq. We will encourage Iraq's government to devote its oil revenues and budget surplus to reconstruction and development. This is the future the American people want. This is the future that Iraqis want. This is what our common interests demand.\nDefeating Al Qaeda and Combating Terrorism\nThe central front in the war on terror is not Iraq, and it never was. We will defeat Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where those who actually attacked us on 9-11 reside and are resurgent.\nWin in Afghanistan\nOur troops are performing heroically in Afghanistan, but as countless military commanders and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff acknowledge, we lack the resources to finish the job because of our commitment to Iraq. We will finally make the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban the top priority that it should be.\nWe will send at least two additional combat brigades to Afghanistan, and use this commitment to seek greater contributions–with fewer restrictions–from our NATO allies. We will focus on building up our special forces and intelligence capacity, training, equipping and advising Afghan security forces, building Afghan governmental capacity, and promoting the rule of law. We will bolster our State Department's Provincial Reconstruction Teams and our other government agencies helping the Afghan people. We will help Afghans educate their children, including their girls, provide basic human services to their population, and grow their economy from the bottom up, with an additional $1 billion in non-military assistance each year–including investments in alternative livelihoods to poppy-growing for Afghan farmers–just as we crack down on trafficking and corruption. Afghanistan must not be lost to a future of narco-terrorism–or become again a haven for terrorists.\nThe greatest threat to the security of the Afghan people–and the American people–lies in the tribal regions of Pakistan, where terrorists train, plot attacks, and strike into Afghanistan and move back across the border. We cannot tolerate a sanctuary for Al Qaeda. We need a stronger and sustained partnership between Afghanistan, Pakistan, and NATO–including necessary assets like satellites and predator drones–to better secure the border, to take out terrorist camps, and to crack down on cross-border insurgents. We must help Pakistan develop its own counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency capacity. We will invest in the long-term development of the Pashtun border region, so that the extremists' program of hate is met with an agenda of hope.\nWe will ask more of the Pakistani government, rather than offer a blank check to an undemocratic President. We will significantly increase non-military aid to the Pakistani people and sustain it for a decade, while ensuring that the military assistance we provide is actually used to fight extremists. We must move beyond an alliance built on individual leaders, or we will face mounting opposition in a nuclear-armed nation at the nexus of terror, extremism, and the instability wrought by autocracy.\nCombat Terrorism\nBeyond Afghanistan and Pakistan, we must forge a more effective global response to terrorism. There must be no safe haven for those who plot to kill Americans. We need a comprehensive strategy to defeat global terrorists–one that draws on the full range of American power, including but not limited to our military might. We will create a properly resourced Shared Security Partnership to enhance counter-terrorism cooperation with countries around the world, including through information sharing as well as funding for training, operations, border security, anti-corruption programs, technology, and targeting terrorist financing.\nWe will pursue policies to undermine extremism, recognizing that this contest is also between two competing ideas and visions of the future. A crucial debate is occurring within Islam. The vast majority of Muslims believe in a future of peace, tolerance, development, and democratization. A small minority embrace a rigid and violent intolerance of personal liberty and the world at large. To empower forces of moderation, America must live up to our values, respect civil liberties, reject torture, and lead by example. We will make every effort to export hope and opportunity–access to education, that opens minds to tolerance, not extremism; secure food and water supplies; and health care, trade, capital, and investment. We will provide steady support for political reformers, democratic institutions, and civil society that is necessary to uphold human rights and build respect for the rule of law.\nSecure the Homeland\nHere at home, we will strengthen our security and protect the critical infrastructure on which the entire world depends. We will fully fund and implement the recommendations of the bipartisan 9-11 Commission. We will spend homeland security dollars on the basis of risk. This means investing more resources to defend mass transit, closing the gaps in our aviation security by screening all cargo on passenger airliners and checking all passengers against a reliable and comprehensive watch list, and upgrading plant security and port security by ensuring that cargo is screened for radiation. To ensure that resources are targeted, we will establish a Quadrennial Review at the Department of Homeland Security to undertake a top to bottom assessment of the threats we face and our ability to confront them. And we will develop a comprehensive National Infrastructure Protection Plan that draws on both local know-how and national priorities. We will ensure direct coordination with state, local, and tribal jurisdictions so that first responders are always resourced and prepared.\nPursue Intelligence Reform\nTo succeed, our homeland security and counter-terrorism actions must be linked to an intelligence community that deals effectively with the threats we face. Today, we rely largely on the same institutions and practices that were in place before 9-11. Barack Obama will depoliticize intelligence by appointing a Director of National Intelligence with a fixed term, create a bipartisan Consultative Group of congressional leaders on national security, and establish a National Declassification Center to ensure openness. To keep pace with highly adaptable enemies, we need technologies and practices that enable us to efficiently collect and share information within and across our intelligence agencies. We must invest still more in human intelligence and deploy additional trained operatives with specialized knowledge of local cultures and languages. And we will institutionalize the practice of developing competitive assessments of critical threats and strengthen our methodologies of analysis.\nPreventing the Spread and Use of Weapons of Mass Destruction\nWe will urgently seek to reduce dramatically the risks from three potentially catastrophic threats: nuclear weapons, biological attacks, and cyber warfare. In an age of terrorism, these dangers take on new dimensions. Nuclear, biological, and cyber attacks all pose the potential for large-scale damage and destruction to our people, to our economy and to our way of life. The capacity to inflict such damage is spreading not only to other countries, but also potentially to terrorist groups.\nA World Without Nuclear Weapons\nAmerica will seek a world with no nuclear weapons and take concrete actions to move in this direction. We face the growing threat of terrorists acquiring nuclear weapons or the materials to make them, as more countries seek nuclear weapons and nuclear materials remain unsecured in too many places. As George Shultz, Bill Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn have warned, current measures are not adequate to address these dangers. We will maintain a strong and reliable deterrent as long as nuclear weapons exist, but America will be safer in a world that is reducing reliance on nuclear weapons and ultimately eliminates all of them. We will make the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons worldwide a central element of U.S. nuclear weapons policy.\nWe will work with other nations to secure, eliminate, and stop the spread of nuclear weapons and materials to dramatically reduce the dangers to our nation and the world. There are nuclear weapons materials in 40 countries, and we will lead a global effort to work with other countries to secure all nuclear weapons material at vulnerable sites within four years. We will work with nations to increase security for nuclear weapons. We will convene a summit in 2009 (and regularly thereafter) of leaders of Permanent Members of the U.N. Security Council and other key countries to agree on implementing many of these measures on a global basis.\nEnd the Production of Fissile Material\nWe will negotiate a verifiable global ban on the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons. We will work to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons technology so that countries cannot build–or come to the brink of building–a weapons program under the guise of developing peaceful nuclear power. We will seek to double the International Atomic Energy Agency's budget, support the creation of an IAEA-controlled nuclear fuel bank to guarantee fuel supply to countries that do not build enrichment facilities, and work to strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.\nEnd Cold War Nuclear Postures\nTo enhance our security and help meet our commitments under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, we will seek deep, verifiable reductions in United States and Russian nuclear weapons and work with other nuclear powers to reduce global stockpiles dramatically. We will work with Russia to take as many weapons as possible off Cold War, quick-launch status, and extend key provisions of the START Treaty, including its essential monitoring and verification requirements. We will not develop new nuclear weapons, and will work to create a bipartisan consensus to support ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which will strengthen the NPT and aid international monitoring of nuclear activities.\nPrevent Iran from Acquiring Nuclear Weapons\nThe world must prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. That starts with tougher sanctions and aggressive, principled, and direct high-level diplomacy, without preconditions. We will pursue this strengthened diplomacy alongside our European allies, and with no illusions about the Iranian regime. We will present Iran with a clear choice: if you abandon your nuclear weapons program, support for terror, and threats to Israel, you will receive meaningful incentives; so long as you refuse, the United States and the international community will further ratchet up the pressure, with stronger unilateral sanctions; stronger multilateral sanctions inside and outside the U.N. Security Council, and sustained action to isolate the Iranian regime. The Iranian people and the international community must know that it is Iran, not the United States, choosing isolation over cooperation. By going the extra diplomatic mile, while keeping all options on the table, we make it more likely the rest of the world will stand with us to increase pressure on Iran, if diplomacy is failing.\nDe-Nuclearize North Korea\nWe support the belated diplomatic effort to secure a verifiable end to North Korea's nuclear weapons program and to fully account for and secure any fissile material or weapons North Korea has produced to date. We will continue direct diplomacy and are committed to working with our partners through the six-party talks to ensure that all agreements are fully implemented in the effort to achieve a verifiably nuclear-free Korean peninsula.\nBiological and Chemical Weapons\nWe will strengthen U.S. intelligence collection overseas to identify and interdict would-be bioterrorists before they strike. We will also build greater capacity to mitigate the consequences of bio-terror attacks, ensuring that the federal government does all it can to get citizens the information and resources they need to help protect themselves and their families. We will accelerate the development of new medicines, vaccines, and production capabilities, and lead an international effort to detect and diminish the impact of major infectious disease epidemics. And we will fully fund our contribution to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and work to ensure that remaining stockpiles of chemical weapons are destroyed swiftly, safely, and securely.\nStronger Cyber-Security\nWe will work with private industry, the research community and our citizens, to build a trustworthy and accountable cyber-infrastructure that is resilient, protects America's competitive advantage, and advances our national and homeland security.\nRevitalizing and Supporting the Military, Keeping Faith With Veterans\nTo renew American leadership in the world, we must revitalize our military. A strong military is, more than anything, necessary to sustain peace.\nEnding the war in Iraq will be the beginning, but not the end, of addressing our defense challenges. We will use this moment both to rebuild our military and to prepare it for the missions of the future. We must retain the capacity to swiftly defeat any conventional threat to our country and our vital interests. But we must also become better prepared to take on foes that fight asymmetrical and highly adaptive campaigns on a global scale.\nWe will not hesitate to use force to protect the American people or our vital interests whenever we are attacked or imminently threatened. But we will use our armed forces wisely, with others when we can, unilaterally when we must. When we send our men and women into harm's way, we must clearly define the mission, listen to the advice of our military commanders, objectively evaluate intelligence, and ensure that our troops have the strategy, resources, and support they need to prevail.\nWe believe we must also be willing to consider using military force in circumstances beyond self-defense in order to provide for the common security that underpins global stability–to support friends, participate in stability and reconstruction operations, or confront mass atrocities. But when we do use force in situations other than self-defense, we should make every effort to garner the clear support and participation of others. The consequences of forgetting that lesson in the context of the current conflict in Iraq have been grave.\nExpand the Armed Forces\nWe support plans to increase the size of the Army by 65,000 troops and the Marines by 27,000 troops. Increasing our end strength will help units retrain and re-equip properly between deployments and decrease the strain on military families.\nRecruit and Retain\nA nation of 300 million people should not struggle to find additional qualified personnel to serve. Recruitment and retention problems have been swept under the rug, including by applying inconsistent standards and using the \"Stop Loss\" program to keep our servicemen and women in the force after their enlistment has expired. We will reach out to youth, as well as to the parents, teachers, coaches, and community and religious leaders who influence them, and make it an imperative to restore the ethic of public service, whether it be serving their local communities in such roles as teachers or first responders, or serving in the military and reserve forces or diplomatic corps that keep our nation free and safe.\nRebuild the Military for 21st-Century Tasks\nWe will rebuild our armed forces to meet the full spectrum needs of the new century. We will strongly support efforts to: build up our special operations forces, civil affairs, information operations, engineers, foreign area officers, and other units and capabilities that remain in chronic short supply; invest in foreign language training, cultural awareness, human intelligence, and other needed counter-insurgency and stabilization skill sets; and create a specialized military advisor corps, which will enable us to better build up local allies' capacities to take on mutual threats. We also will ensure that military personnel have sufficient training time before they are sent into battle. This is not the case at the moment, when American forces are being rushed to Iraq and Afghanistan, often with less individual and unit training than is required.\nDevelop Civilian Capacity to Promote Global Stability and Improve Emergency Response\nWe will build the capacity of U.S. civilian agencies to deploy personnel and area experts where they are needed, so that we no longer have to ask our men and women in uniform to perform non-military functions. The creation of a volunteer Civilian Assistance Corps of skilled experts (e.g., doctors, lawyers, engineers, city planners, agriculture specialists, police) who are pre-trained and willing to aid in emergencies will involve more Americans in public service and provide our nation with a pool of talent to assist America in times of need at home and abroad.\nDo Right by Our Veterans and Their Families\nWe believe that every servicemember is a hero who deserves our respect and gratitude, not just on Veterans Day or Memorial Day, but every day. When they put on their uniforms, these servicemembers all become all of our daughters and all of our sons, and it is time we started treating them as such. As the shameful events at Walter Reed hospital and the recent reports on growing numbers of homeless and unemployed veterans show, this Administration that has asked so much of them has not repaid their sacrifice.\nWe will build a 21st century Department of Veterans Affairs that reflects the reality of America's all volunteer military and has the resources, without returning every year to fight the same battles, to uphold America's sacred trust with our veterans. We will make sure that members of our Armed Forces have a fair shot at the American Dream by implementing the new GI Bill. We will ensure that every veteran has access to quality health care for injuries both physical and mental, and we will require that health professionals screen all servicemembers upon their return from combat. We will aggressively address Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Traumatic Brain Injury. We will work to ensure that every veteran receives the benefits he or she has earned and the assistance he or she needs by making the disability benefits process more fair, efficient, and equitable. We will dramatically reduce the backlog of disability claims. We will combat homelessness, unemployment, and underemployment among veterans and improve the transition for servicemen between the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs. We will continue to honor our promises to all veterans, including the Filipino veterans, especially with regards to citizenship and family reunification.\nLift Burdens on Our Troops and Their Families\nWe must better support those families of whom we are asking so much. We will create a Military Families Advisory Board to help identify and develop practical policies to ease the burden on spouses and families.\nWe will protect our military families from losing their homes to foreclosure. We will work for pay parity so that compensation for military service is more in line with that of the private sector. We will end the stop-loss and reserve recall policies that allow an individual to be forced to remain on active duty well after his or her enlistment has expired, and we will establish regularity in deployments so that active duty and reserve troops know what they must expect and their families can plan for it.\nSupport the Readiness of the Guard and Reserve\nDemocrats will provide the National Guard with the equipment it needs for foreign and domestic emergencies and provide time and support to restore and refit between deployments. We will also ensure that reservists and Guard members are treated fairly when it comes to employment, health, education benefits, deployment, and reintegration. We will do this by adequately funding reintegration programs to assist returning service members and by enforcing the Service Members Civil Relief Act and the Uniformed Service Employment Rights and Readjustment Act, laws too often observed in the breach today. To ensure that the concerns of our citizen soldiers reach the level they mandate, Democrats will elevate the Chief of the National Guard to be a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.\nAllow All Americans to Serve\nWe will also put national security above divisive politics. More than 12,500 service men and women have been discharged on the basis of sexual orientation since the \"Don't Ask, Don't Tell\" policy was implemented, at a cost of over $360 million. Many of those forced out had special skills in high demand, such as translators, engineers, and pilots. At a time when the military is having a tough time recruiting and retaining troops, it is wrong to deny our country the service of brave, qualified people. We support the repeal of \"Don't Ask Don't Tell\" and the implementation of policies to allow qualified men and women to serve openly regardless of sexual orientation\nReform Contracting Practices and Make Contractors Accountable\nWe believe taxpayer dollars should be spent to invest in our fighting men and women, not to fatten the pockets of private companies. We will instruct the Defense and State Departments to develop a strategy for determining when contracting makes sense, and when certain functions are \"inherently governmental\" and should not be contracted out. We will establish the legal status of contractor personnel, making possible prosecution of any abuses committed by private military contractors, and create a system of improved oversight and management, so that government can restore honesty, openness, and efficiency to contracting and procurement.\nWorking for Our Common Security\nTo renew American leadership in the world, we will rebuild the alliances, partnerships, and institutions necessary to confront common threats and enhance common security. Needed reform of these alliances and institutions will not come by bullying other countries to ratify American demands. It will come when we convince other governments and peoples that they too have a stake in effective partnerships. It is only leadership if others join America in working toward our common security.\nToo often, in recent years, we have sent the opposite signal to our international partners. In the case of Europe, we dismissed European reservations about the wisdom and necessity of the Iraq war and their concerns about climate change. In Asia, we belittled South Korean efforts to improve relations with the North. In Latin America, from Mexico to Argentina, we failed to address concerns about immigration and equity and economic growth. In Africa, we have allowed genocide to persist for over five years in Darfur and have not done nearly enough to answer the United Nation's call for more support to stop the killing. Under Barack Obama, we will rebuild our ties to our allies in Europe and Asia and strengthen our partnerships throughout the Americas and Africa.\nU.S. engagement with Africa should reflect its vital significance to the U.S. as well as its emerging role in the global economy. We recognize Africa's promise as a trade and investment partner and the importance of policies that can contribute to sustainable economic growth, job creation, and poverty alleviation. We are committed to bringing the full weight of American leadership to bear in unlocking the spirit of entrepreneurship and economic independence that is sweeping across markets of Africa.\nWe believe that sustainable economic growth and development will mitigate and even help to reverse such chronic and debilitating challenges as poverty, hunger, conflict, and HIV/AIDS. We are committed to bringing the full weight of American leadership to bear to work in partnership with Africa to confront these crises. We will work with the United Nations and Africa's regional organizations to prevent and resolve conflict and to build the capacity of Africa's weak and failing states. We must respond effectively when there is a humanitarian crisis–particularly at this moment in Sudan where genocide persists in Darfur and the Comprehensive Peace Agreement is threatened.\nMany African countries have embraced democratization and economic liberalization. We will help strengthen Africa's democratic development and respect for human rights, while encouraging political and economic reforms that result in improved transparency and accountability. We will defend democracy and stand up for rule of law when it is under assault, such as in Zimbabwe.\nRecommit to an Alliance of the Americas\nWe recognize that the security and prosperity of the United States is fundamentally tied to the future of the Americas. We believe that in the 21st Century, the U.S. must treat Latin America and the Caribbean as full partners, just as our neighbors to the south should reject the bombast of authoritarian bullies. Our relationship with Canada, our long-time ally, should be strengthened and enhanced. An alliance of the Americas will only succeed if it is founded on the bedrock of mutual respect and works to advance democracy, opportunity, and security from the bottom-up. We must turn the page on the arrogance in Washington and the anti-Americanism across the region that stands in the way of progress. We must work with close partners like Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia on issues like ending the drug trade, fighting poverty and inequality, and immigration. We must work with the Caribbean community to help restore stability and the rule of law to Haiti, to improve the lives of its people, and to strengthen its democracy. And we must build ties to the people of Cuba and help advance their liberty by allowing unlimited family visits and remittances to the island, while presenting the Cuban regime with a clear choice: if it takes significant steps toward democracy, beginning with the unconditional release of all political prisoners, we will be prepared to take steps to begin normalizing relations.\nLead in Asia\nWe are committed to U.S. engagement in Asia. This begins with maintaining strong relationships with allies like Japan, Australia, South Korea, Thailand, and the Philippines, and deepening our ties to vital democratic partners, like India, in order to create a stable and prosperous Asia. We must also forge a more effective framework in Asia that goes beyond bilateral agreements, occasional summits, and ad hoc diplomatic arrangements.\nWe need an open and inclusive infrastructure with the countries in Asia that can promote stability, prosperity, and human rights, and help confront transnational threats, from terrorist cells in the Philippines to avian flu in Indonesia. We will encourage China to play a responsible role as a growing power—to help lead in addressing the common problems of the 21st century. We are committed to a \"One China\" policy and the Taiwan Relations Act, and will continue to support a peaceful resolution of cross- Straits issues that is consistent with the wishes and best interests of the people of Taiwan. It's time to engage China on common interests like climate change, trade, and energy, even as we continue to encourage its shift to a more open society and a market-based economy, and promote greater respect for human rights, including freedom of speech, press, assembly, religion, uncensored use of the internet, and Chinese workers' right to freedom of association, as well as the rights of Tibetans.\nStrengthen Transatlantic Relations\nEurope remains America's indispensable partner. We support the historic project to build a strong European Union that can be an even stronger partner for the United States. NATO has made tremendous strides over the last fifteen years, transforming itself from a Cold War security structure into a partnership for peace. But today, NATO's challenge in Afghanistan has exposed a gap between its missions and its capabilities. To close this gap, we will invest more in NATO's mission in Afghanistan and use that investment to leverage our NATO allies to contribute more resources to collective security operations and to invest more in reconstruction and stabilization capabilities. As we promote democracy and accountability in Russia, we must work with the country in areas of common interest–above all, in making sure that nuclear weapons and materials are secure. We will insist that Russia abide by international law and respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of its neighbors. We are committed to active Presidential leadership in the full implementation of the Irish Good Friday Agreement and St. Andrews Accords. We will seek to strengthen and broaden our strategic partnership with Turkey, end the division of Cyprus, and continue to support a close U.S. relationship with states that seek to strengthen their ties to NATO and the West, such as Georgia and Ukraine.\nStand with Allies and Pursue Diplomacy in the Middle East\nFor more than three decades, Israelis, Palestinians, Arab leaders, and the rest of the world have looked to America to lead the effort to build the road to a secure and lasting peace. Our starting point must always be our special relationship with Israel, grounded in shared interests and shared values, and a clear, strong, fundamental commitment to the security of Israel, our strongest ally in the region and its only established democracy. That commitment, which requires us to ensure that Israel retains a qualitative edge for its national security and its right to self-defense, is all the more important as we contend with growing threats in the region–a strengthened Iran, a chaotic Iraq, the resurgence of Al Qaeda, the reinvigoration of Hamas and Hezbollah. We support the implementation of the memorandum of understanding that pledges $30 billion in assistance to Israel over the next decade to enhance and ensure its security.\nIt is in the best interests of all parties, including the United States, that we take an active role to help secure a lasting settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with a democratic, viable Palestinian state dedicated to living in peace and security side by side with the Jewish State of Israel. To do so, we must help Israel identify and strengthen those partners who are truly committed to peace, while isolating those who seek conflict and instability, and stand with Israel against those who seek its destruction. The United States and its Quartet partners should continue to isolate Hamas until it renounces terrorism, recognizes Israel's right to exist, and abides by past agreements. Sustained American leadership for peace and security will require patient efforts and the personal commitment of the President of the United States. The creation of a Palestinian state through final status negotiations, together with an international compensation mechanism, should resolve the issue of Palestinian refugees by allowing them to settle there, rather than in Israel. All understand that it is unrealistic to expect the outcome of final status negotiations to be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949. Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel. The parties have agreed that Jerusalem is a matter for final status negotiations. It should remain an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths.\nDeepen Ties with Emerging Powers\nWe also will pursue effective collaboration on pressing global issues among all the major powers–including such newly emerging ones as China, India, Russia, Brazil, Nigeria, and South Africa. With India, we will build on the close partnership developed over the past decade. As two of the world's great, multi-ethnic democracies, the U.S. and India are natural strategic allies, and we must work together to advance our common interests and to combat the common threats of the 21st Century. We believe it is in the United States' interest that all of these emerging powers and others assume a greater stake in promoting international peace and respect for human rights, including through their more constructive participation in key global institutions.\nRevitalize Global Institutions\nTo enhance global cooperation on issues from weapons proliferation to climate change, we need stronger international institutions. We believe that the United Nations is indispensable but requires far-reaching reform. The U.N. Secretariat's management practices remain inadequate. Peacekeeping operations are overextended. The new U.N. Human Rights Council remains biased and ineffective. Yet none of these problems will be solved unless America rededicates itself to the organization and its mission. We support reforming key global institutions —such as the U.N. Security Council and the G-8—so they will be more reflective of 21st Century realities.\nAdvancing Democracy, Development, and Respect for Human Rights\nNo country in the world has benefited more from the worldwide expansion of democracy than the United States. Democracies are our best trading partners, our most valuable allies, and the nations with which we share our deepest values. The United States must join with our democratic partners around the world to meet common security challenges and uphold our shared values whenever they are threatened by autocratic practices, coups, human rights abuses, or genocide.\nBuild Democratic Institutions\nThe Democratic Party reaffirms its longstanding commitment to support democratic institutions and practices worldwide. A more democratic world is a more peaceful and prosperous place. Yet democracy cannot be imposed by force from the outside; it must be nurtured with moderates on the inside by building democratic institutions.\nThe United States must be a relentless advocate for democracy and put forward a vision of democracy that goes beyond the ballot box. We will increase our support for strong legislatures, independent judiciaries, free press, vibrant civil society, honest police forces, religious freedom, equality for women and minorities, and the rule of law. In new democracies, we will support the development of civil society and representative institutions that can protect fundamental human rights and improve the quality of life for all citizens, including independent and democratic unions. In non-democratic countries, we pledge to work with international partners to assist the efforts of those struggling to promote peaceful political reforms. Ongoing funding to the National Endowment for Democracy and other U.S. government-funded democracy programs reflects American values and serves our interests.\nInvest in Our Common Humanity\nTo renew American leadership in the world, we will strengthen our common security by investing in our common humanity. In countries wracked by poverty and conflict, citizens long to enjoy freedom from want. Because extremely poor societies and weak states provide optimal breeding grounds for terrorism, disease, and conflict, the United States has a direct national security interest in dramatically reducing global poverty and joining with our allies in sharing more of our riches to help those most in need.\nIt is time to make the U.N. Millennium Development Goals, which aim to cut extreme poverty in half by 2015, America's goals as well. We need to invest in building capable, democratic states that can establish healthy and educated communities, develop markets, and generate wealth. Such states would also have greater institutional capacities to fight terrorism, halt the spread of deadly weapons, and build health-care infrastructures to prevent, detect, and treat deadly diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, and avian flu.\nWe will double our annual investment in meeting these challenges to $50 billion by 2012 and ensure that those new resources are directed toward worthwhile goals. We will work with philanthropic organizations and the private sector to invest in development and poverty reduction. But if America is going to help others build more just and secure societies, our trade deals, debt relief, and foreign aid must not come as blank checks. We will recognize the fragility of small nations in the Caribbean, the Americas, Africa, and Asia and work with them to successfully transition to a new global economy. We will couple our support with an insistent call for reform, to combat the corruption that rots societies and governments from within. As part of this new funding, we will create a $2 billion Global Education Fund that will bring the world together in eliminating the global education deficit with the goal of supporting a free, quality, basic education for every child in the world. Education increases incomes, reduces poverty, strengthens communities, prevents the spread of disease, improves child and maternal health, and empowers women and girls. We cannot hope to shape a world where opportunity outweighs danger unless we ensure that every child everywhere is taught to build and not to destroy.\nOur policies will recognize that human rights are women's rights and that women's rights are human rights. Women make up the majority of the poor in the world. So we will expand access to women's economic development opportunities and seek to expand microcredit. Women produce half of the world's food but only own one percent of the land upon which it is grown. We will work to ensure that women have equal protection under the law and are not denied rights and therefore locked into poverty.\nWe will modernize our foreign assistance policies, tools, and operations in an elevated, empowered, consolidated, and streamlined U.S. development agency. Development and diplomacy will be reinforced as key pillars of U.S. foreign policy, and our civilian agencies will be staffed, resourced, and equipped to address effectively new global challenges.\nAmerican leadership on human rights is essential to making the world safer, more just, and more humane. Such leadership must begin with steps to undo the damage of the Bush years. But we also must go much further. We should work with others to shape human rights institutions and instruments tailored to the 21st Century. We must make the United Nations' human rights organs more objective, energetic, and effective. The U.S. must lead global efforts to promote international humanitarian standards and to protect civilians from indiscriminate violence during warfare. We will champion accountability for genocide and war crimes, ending the scourge of impunity for massive human rights abuses. We will stand up for oppressed people from Cuba to North Korea and from Burma to Zimbabwe and Sudan. We will accord greater weight to human rights, including the rights of women and children, in our relationships with other global powers, recognizing that America's long-term strategic interests are more likely to be advanced when our partners are rights-respecting.\nGlobal Health\nDemocrats will invest in improving global health. It is a human shame that many of the diseases which compound the problem of global poverty are treatable, but they are yet to be treated.\nThe HIV/AIDS pandemic is a massive human tragedy. It is also a security risk of the highest order that threatens to plunge nations into chaos. There are an estimated 33 million people across the planet infected with HIV/AIDS, including more than one million people in the U.S. Nearly 8,000 people die every day of AIDS. We must do more to fight the global HIV/AIDS pandemic, as well as malaria, tuberculosis, and neglected tropical diseases. We will provide $50 billion over five years to strengthen existing U.S. programs and expand them to new regions of the world, including Southeast Asia, India, and parts of Europe, where the HIV/AIDS burden is growing. We will increase U.S. contributions to the Global Fund to ensure that global efforts to fight endemic disease continue to move ahead.\nWe also support the adoption of humanitarian licensing policies that ensure medications developed with the U.S. taxpayer dollars are available off patent in developing countries. We will repeal the global gag rule and reinstate funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). We will expand access to health care and nutrition for women and reduce the burden of maternal mortality.\nHuman Trafficking\nWe will address human trafficking—both labor and sex trafficking–through strong legislation and enforcement to ensure that trafficking victims are protected and traffickers are brought to justice. We will also address the root causes of human trafficking, including poverty, discrimination, and gender inequality, as well as the demand for prostitution.\nProtecting our Security and Saving our Planet\nWe must end the tyranny of oil in our time. This immediate danger is eclipsed only by the longer-term threat from climate change, which will lead to devastating weather patterns, terrible storms, drought, conflict, and famine. That means people competing for food and water in the next fifty years in the very places that have known horrific violence in the last fifty: Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. That could also mean destructive storms on our shores, and the disappearance of our coastline.\nWe understand that climate change is not just an economic issue or an environmental concern– this is a national security crisis.\nEstablish Energy Security\nNot since the 1970s has America's national security been so threatened by its energy insecurity, and, as we have learned the hard way over the past eight years, achieving energy security in the 21st century requires far more than simply expending our economic and political resources to keep oil flowing steadily out of unstable and even hostile countries and regions.\nRather, energy security requires stemming the flow of money to oil rich regimes that are hostile to America and its allies; it requires combating climate change and preparing for its impacts both at home and abroad; it requires making international energy markets work for us and not against us; it requires standing up to the oil companies that spend hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbying and political contributions; it requires addressing nuclear safety, waste, and proliferation challenges around the world; and more.\nDemocrats will halt this dangerous trend, and take the necessary steps to achieving energy independence. We will make it a top priority to reduce oil consumption by at least 35 percent, or ten million barrels per day, by 2030. This will more than offset the amount of oil we are expected to import from OPEC nations in 2030.\nLead to Combat Climate Change\nWe will lead to defeat the epochal, man-made threat to the planet: climate change. Without dramatic changes, rising sea levels will flood coastal regions around the world. Warmer temperatures and declining rainfall will reduce crop yields, increasing conflict, famine, disease, and poverty. By 2050, famine could displace more than 250 million people worldwide. That means increased instability in some of the most volatile parts of the world.\nNever again will we sit on the sidelines, or stand in the way of collective action to tackle this global challenge. Getting our own house in order is only a first step. We will invest in efficient and clean technologies at home while using our assistance policies and export promotions to help developing countries preserve biodiversity, curb deforestation, and leapfrog the carbon-energy-intensive stage of development.\nWe will reach out to the leaders of the biggest carbon emitting nations and ask them to join a new Global Energy Forum that will lay the foundation for the next generation of climate protocols. China has replaced America as the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Clean energy development must be a central focus in our relationships with major countries in Europe and Asia. We need a global response to climate change that includes binding and enforceable commitments to reducing emissions, especially for those that pollute the most: the United States, China, India, the European Union, and Russia.\nThis challenge is massive, but rising to it will also bring new benefits to America. By 2050, global demand for low-carbon energy could create an annual market worth $500 billion. Meeting that demand would open new frontiers for American entrepreneurs and workers.\nSeizing the Opportunity\nIt is time for a new generation to tell the next great American story. If we act with boldness and foresight, we will be able to tell our grandchildren that this was the time we confronted climate change and secured the weapons that could destroy the human race. This was the time we defeated global terrorists and brought opportunity to forgotten corners of the world. This was the time when we helped forge peace in the Middle East. This was the time when we renewed the America that has led generations of weary travelers from all over the world to find opportunity and liberty and hope on our doorstep.\nIt was not all that long ago that farmers in Venezuela and Indonesia welcomed American doctors to their villages and hung pictures of John F. Kennedy on their living room walls, when millions waited every day for a letter in the mail that would grant them the privilege to come to America to study, work, live, or just be free.\nWe can be this America again. This is our moment to renew the trust and faith of our people– and all people–in an America that battles immediate evils, promotes an ultimate good, and leads the world once more.\nIII. Renewing the American Community\nIn local platform hearings around the country and the world, Americans talked of the need for compassion, empathy, a commitment to our values, and the importance of being united in order to take on the challenges and opportunities of the new century. They sounded the same themes we have heard since the campaign began, whether in town halls in Nevada, policy roundtables in Philadelphia, or online gatherings held by Democrats Abroad. They said that they valued Barack Obama's message that alongside Americans' famous individualism, there's another ingredient in the American saga: a belief that we are connected to each other. We could all choose to focus on our own concerns and live our lives in a way that tries to keep our individual stories separate from the larger story of America. But that is not who we are. That is not our American story. If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to us, even if it's not our child. Similarly, if there's a senior citizen in Elko, Nevada who has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes our lives poorer, even if it's not our grandmother. Because it is only when we join together in something larger than ourselves that we can write the next great chapter in America's story.\nService\nThe future of our country will be determined not only by our government and our policies but through the efforts of the American people. That is why we will ask all Americans to be actively involved in meeting the challenges of the new century. In this young century, our military has answered the call to serve, even as that call has come too often. We must now make it possible for all citizens to serve. We will expand AmeriCorps, double the size of the Peace Corps, enable more to serve in the military, create new opportunities for international service, integrate service into primary education, and create new opportunities for experienced and retired persons to serve. And if you invest in America, America will invest in you: we will increase support for service-learning, establish tax incentives for college students who serve, and create scholarships for students who pledge to become teachers. We will use the Internet to better match volunteers to service opportunities. In these ways, we will unleash the power of service to meet America's challenges in a uniquely American way.\nAmerica has always been a nation of immigrants. Over the years, millions of people have come here in the hope that in America, you can make it if you try. Each successive wave of immigrants has contributed to our country's rich culture, economy and spirit. Like the immigrants that came before them, today's immigrants will shape their own destinies and enrich our country.\nNonetheless, our current immigration system has been broken for far too long. We need comprehensive immigration reform, not just piecemeal efforts. We must work together to pass immigration reform in a way that unites this country, not in a way that divides us by playing on our worst instincts and fears. We are committed to pursuing tough, practical, and humane immigration reform in the first year of the next administration.\nWe cannot continue to allow people to enter the United States undetected, undocumented, and unchecked. The American people are a welcoming and generous people, but those who enter our country's borders illegally, and those who employ them, disrespect the rule of the law. We need to secure our borders, and support additional personnel, infrastructure, and technology on the border and at our ports of entry. We need additional Customs and Border Protection agents equipped with better technology and real-time intelligence. We need to dismantle human smuggling organizations, combating the crime associated with this trade. We also need to do more to promote economic development in migrant-sending nations, to reduce incentives to come to the United States illegally. And we need to crack down on employers who hire undocumented immigrants. It's a problem when we only enforce our laws against the immigrants themselves, with raids that are ineffective, tear apart families, and leave people detained without adequate access to counsel. We realize that employers need a method to verify whether their employees are legally eligible to work in the United States, and we will ensure that our system is accurate, fair to legal workers, safeguards people's privacy, and cannot be used to discriminate against workers.\nWe must also improve the legal immigration system, and make our nation's naturalization process fair and accessible to the thousands of legal permanent residents who are eager to become full Americans. We should fix the dysfunctional immigration bureaucracy that hampers family reunification, the cornerstone of our immigration policy for years. Given the importance of both keeping families together and supporting American businesses, we will increase the number of immigration visas for family members of people living here and for immigrants who meet the demand for jobs that employers cannot fill, as long as appropriate labor market protections and standards are in place. We will fight discrimination against Americans who have always played by our immigration rules but are sometimes treated as if they had not.\nFor the millions living here illegally but otherwise playing by the rules, we must require them to come out of the shadows and get right with the law. We support a system that requires undocumented immigrants who are in good standing to pay a fine, pay taxes, learn English, and go to the back of the line for the opportunity to become citizens. They are our neighbors, and we can help them become full tax-paying, law-abiding, productive members of society.\nHurricane Katrina\nFor many in America, Hurricane Katrina conjures up the memory of a time when America's government failed its citizens. When the winds blew and the floodwaters came, we learned that for all of our wealth and power, something wasn't right with Washington. Our government's response during Hurricane Katrina is a national shame—and yet three years later, the government has still failed to keep its promise to rebuild.\nThe people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are heroes for returning and rebuilding, and they shouldn't face these challenges alone. We will partner with the people of the Gulf Coast to assist the victims of Hurricane Katrina and restore the region economically. We will create jobs and training opportunities for returning and displaced workers as well as contracting opportunities for local businesses to help create stronger, safer, and more equitable communities. We will increase funding for affordable housing and home ownership opportunities for returning families, workers, and residents moving out of unsafe trailers. We will reinvest in infrastructure in New Orleans: we will construct levees that work, fight crime by rebuilding local police departments and courthouses, invest in hospitals, and rebuild the public school system.\nWe also commit to the rebuilding and restoration of the Iowa communities affected by the floods of 2008.\nWe will also work to prevent future catastrophic response failures, whether the emergency comes from hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, wild fires, drought, bridge collapses, or any other natural or man-made disaster. Maintaining our levees and dams is not pork barrel spending–it is an urgent priority. We will fix governmental agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency, ensure that they are staffed with professionals, and create integrated communication and response plans. We will reform the Small Business Administration bureaucracy, and develop a real National Response Plan.\nWe will develop a National Catastrophic Insurance Fund to offer an affordable insurance mechanism for high-risk catastrophes that no single private insurer can cover by itself for fear of bankruptcy. This will allow states and territories to deal comprehensively with the economic dislocation of natural disasters.\nStewardship of Our Planet and Natural Resources\nGlobal climate change is the planet's greatest threat, and our response will determine the very future of life on this earth. Despite the efforts of our current Administration to deny the science of climate change and the need to act, we still believe that America can be earth's best hope. We will implement a market-based cap and trade system to reduce carbon emissions by the amount scientists say is necessary to avoid catastrophic change and we will set interim targets along the way to ensure that we meet our goal. We will invest in advanced energy technologies, to build the clean energy economy and create millions of new, good \"Green Collar\" American jobs. Because the environment is a truly global concern, the United States must be a leader in combating climate change around the world, including exporting climate-friendly technologies to developing countries. We will use innovative measures to dramatically improve the energy efficiency of buildings, including establishing a grant program for early adopters and providing incentives for energy conservation. We will encourage local initiatives, sustainable communities, personal responsibility, and environmental stewardship and education nationwide.\nWe will help local communities in the American West preserve water to meet their fast growing needs. We support a comprehensive solution for restoring our national treasures—such as the Great Lakes, Everglades, and Chesapeake Bay—including expanded scientific research and protections for species and habitats there. We will reinvigorate the Environmental Protection Agency so that we can work with communities to reduce air and water pollution and protect our children from environmental toxins, and never sacrifice science to politics. We will protect Nevada and its communities from the high-level nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, which has not been proven to be safe by sound science. We will restore the \"polluter pays\" principle to fund the cleanup of the most polluted sites, so that those who cause environmental problems pay to fix them.\nFederal Lands\nWe will create a new vision for conservation that works with local communities to conserve our existing publicly-owned lands while dramatically expanding investments in conserving and restoring forests, grasslands, and wetlands across America for generations to come. Unlike the current Administration, we will reinvest in our nation's forests by providing federal agencies with resources to reduce the threat of wildland fires, promote sustainable forest product industries for rural economic development and ensure that national resources are in place to respond to catastrophic wildland fires. We will treat our national parks with the same respect that millions of families show each year when they visit. We will recognize that our parks are national treasures, and will ensure that they are protected as part of the overall natural system so they are here for generations to come. We are committed to conserving the lands used by hunters and anglers, and we will open millions of new acres of land to public hunting and fishing.\nMetropolitan and Urban Policy\nWe believe that strong cities are the building blocks of strong regions, and strong regions are essential for a strong America. To build vibrant and diverse cities and regions, we support equitable development strategies that create opportunities for those traditionally left behind by economic development efforts.\nFor the past eight years, the current Administration has ignored urban areas. We look forward to greater partnership with urban America. We will strengthen federal commitment to cities, including by creating a new White House Office on Urban Policy and fully funding the Community Development Block Grant. We support community-based initiatives, such as micro-loans, business assistance centers, community economic development corporations, and community development financial institutions. To help regional business development we will double federal funding for basic research, expand the deployment of broadband technology, increase access to capital for businesses in underserved areas, create a national network of public-private business incubators, and provide grants to support regional innovation clusters. Since businesses can only function when workers can get to their place of employment, we will invest in public transportation including rail, expand transportation options for low-income communities, and strengthen core infrastructure like our roads and bridges. We will provide cities the support they need to perform public safety and national security functions, reinvest in Community Oriented Policing Services, and keep children off the streets by supporting expanded after-school and summer opportunities. Finally, we will work to make cities greener and more livable by training employees to work in skilled clean technologies industries, improving the environmental efficiency of city buildings, and taking smart growth principles into account when designing transportation.\nFirearms\nWe recognize that the right to bear arms is an important part of the American tradition, and we will preserve Americans' Second Amendment right to own and use firearms. We believe that the right to own firearms is subject to reasonable regulation, but we know that what works in Chicago may not work in Cheyenne. We can work together to enact and enforce commonsense laws and improvements – like closing the gun show loophole, improving our background check system, and reinstating the assault weapons ban, so that guns do not fall into the hands of terrorists or criminals. Acting responsibly and with respect for differing views on this issue, we can both protect the constitutional right to bear arms and keep our communities and our children safe.\nFaith\nWe honor the central place of faith in our lives. Like our Founders, we believe that our nation, our communities, and our lives are made vastly stronger and richer by faith and the countless acts of justice and mercy it inspires. We believe that change comes not from the top-down, but from the bottom-up, and that few are closer to the people than our churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques. To face today's challenges–from saving our planet to ending poverty— we need all hands on deck. Faith-based groups are not a replacement for government or secular non-profit programs; rather, they are yet another sector working to meet the challenges of the 21st Century. We will empower grassroots faith-based and community groups to help meet challenges like poverty, ex-offender reentry, and illiteracy. At the same time, we can ensure that these partnerships do not endanger First Amendment protections – because there is no conflict between supporting faith-based institutions and respecting our Constitution. We will ensure that public funds are not used to proselytize or discriminate. We will also ensure that taxpayer dollars are only used on programs that actually work.\nThe Arts\nInvestment in the arts is an investment in our creativity and cultural heritage, in our diversity, in our communities, and in our humanity. We support art in schools and increased public funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. We support the cultural exchange of artists around the world, spreading democracy and renewing America's status as a cultural and artistic center.\nWe will once again reclaim our role as world leaders in protecting the rights of people with disabilities. We will lead the United States in ratifying the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the first human rights treaty approved in the United Nations in the 21st century. We will ensure there is sufficient funding to empower Americans with disabilities to succeed in school and beyond. We will fully fund and increase staffing for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. We will restore dignity for Americans with disabilities by signing the Community Choice Act into law, which will allow them the choice of living in their communities rather than being warehoused in nursing homes or other institutions.\nChildren and Families\nIf we are to renew America, we must do a better job of investing in the next generation of Americans. For parents, the first and most sacred responsibility is to support our children: setting an example of excellence, turning off the TV, and helping with the homework. But we must also support parents as they strive to raise their children in a new era. We must make it easier for working parents to spend time with their families when they need to. We will make an unprecedented national investment to guarantee that every child has access to high-quality early education, including investments in Pre-K, Head Start, and Early Head Start, and we will help pay for child care. We will ensure that every child has health insurance, invest in playgrounds to promote healthy and active lifestyles, and protect children from lead poisoning in their homes and toys. Improving maternal health also improves children's health, so we will provide access to home visits by medical professionals to low-income expectant first-time mothers. We must protect our most vulnerable children, by supporting and supplementing our struggling foster care system, enhancing adoption programs for all caring parents, and protecting children from violence and neglect. Online and on TV, we will give parents tools to block content they find objectionable. We also must recognize that caring for family members and managing a household is real and valuable work.\nFatherhood\nToo many fathers are missing–missing from too many lives and too many homes. Children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and are more likely to commit crime, drop out of school, abuse drugs, and end up in prison. We need more fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception. We need them to understand that what makes a man is not the ability to have a child–it's the courage to raise one. We will support fathers by providing transitional training to get jobs, removing tax penalties on married families, and expanding maternity and paternity leave. We will reward those who are responsibly supporting their children by giving them a tax credit and we will crack down on men who avoid child support payments and ensure those payments go directly to families instead of bureaucracies.\nSeniors\nWe will protect and strengthen Medicare by cutting costs, protecting seniors from fraud, and fixing Medicare's prescription drug program. We will repeal the prohibition on negotiating prescription drug prices, ban drug companies from paying generic producers to refrain from entering drug markets, and eliminate drug company interference with generic competition–and we will dedicate all of the savings from these measures towards closing the donut hole. We will end special preferences for insurance companies and private plans like Medicare Advantage to force them to compete on a level playing field. We will address the challenges that older Americans who are not yet eligible for Medicare face in finding affordable and quality health insurance.\nWe will take steps to ensure that our seniors have meaningful long-term care options that are consistent with their individual needs, including the option of home care. We believe that we must pay caregivers a fair wage and train more nurses and health care workers so as to improve the availability and quality of long-term care. We must reform the financing of long-term care to ease the burden on seniors and their families. We will safeguard Social Security. We will develop new retirement plans and pension protections that will give Americans a secure, portable way to save for retirement. We will ensure a safe and dignified retirement. We will work to end abuse of the elderly. We will safeguard from discrimination those who choose to work past the age of 65.\nChoice\nThe Democratic Party also strongly supports access to comprehensive affordable family planning services and age-appropriate sex education which empower people to make informed choices and live healthy lives. We also recognize that such health care and education help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and thereby also reduce the need for abortions.\nThe Democratic Party also strongly supports a woman's decision to have a child by ensuring access to and availability of programs for pre- and post-natal health care, parenting skills, income support, and caring adoption programs.\nCriminal Justice\nAs Democrats, we are committed to being smart on crime. That means being tough on violent crime, funding strategic, and effective community policing, and holding offenders accountable, and it means getting tough on the root causes of crime by investing in successful crime prevention, including proven initiatives that get youth and nonviolent offenders back on track. We will support communities as they work to save their residents from the violence that plagues our streets. We will reverse the policy of cutting resources for the brave men and women who protect our communities every day. At a time when our nation's officers are being asked both to provide traditional law enforcement services and to help protect the homeland, taking police off of the street is neither tough nor smart; we reject this disastrous approach. We support and will restore funding to our courageous police officers and will ensure that they are equipped with the best technology, equipment, and innovative strategies to prevent and fight crimes.\nWe will end the dangerous cycle of violence, especially youth violence, with proven community-based law enforcement programs such as the Community Oriented Policing Services. We will reduce recidivism in our neighborhoods by supporting local prison-to-work programs. We will continue to fight inequalities in our criminal justice system. We believe that the death penalty must not be arbitrary. DNA testing should be used in all appropriate circumstances, defendants should have effective assistance of counsel. In all death row cases, and thorough post-conviction reviews should be available.\nWe must help state, local, and tribal law enforcement work together to combat and prevent drug crime and drug and alcohol abuse, which are a blight on our communities. We will restore funding for the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant Program and expand the use of drug courts and rehabilitation programs for first-time, non-violent drug offenders.\nWe support the rights of victims to be respected, to be heard, and to be compensated.\nEnding violence against women must be a top priority. We will create a special advisor to the president regarding violence against women. We will increase funding to domestic violence and sexual assault prevention programs. We will strengthen sexual assault and domestic violence laws, support the Violence Against Women Act, and provide job security to survivors. Our foreign policy will be sensitive to issues of aggression against women around the world.\nA More Perfect Union\nWe believe in the essential American ideal that we are not constrained by the circumstances of birth but can make of our lives what we will. Unfortunately, for too many, that ideal is not a reality. We have more work to do. Democrats will fight to end discrimination based on race, sex, ethnicity, national origin, language, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, and disability in every corner of our country, because that's the America we believe in.\nWe all have to do our part to lift up this country, and that means changing hearts and changing minds, and making sure that every American is treated equally under the law. We will restore professionalism over partisanship at the Department of Justice, and staff the civil rights division with civil rights lawyers, not ideologues. We will restore vigorous federal enforcement of civil rights laws in order to provide every American an equal chance at employment, housing, health, contracts, and pay. We are committed to banning racial, ethnic, and religious profiling and requiring federal, state, and local enforcement agencies to take steps to eliminate the practice.\nWe are committed to ensuring full equality for women: we reaffirm our support for the Equal Rights Amendment, recommit to enforcing Title IX, and will urge passage of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. We will pursue a unified foreign and domestic policy that promotes civil rights and human rights, for women and minorities, at home and abroad. We will pass the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act. We will restore and support the White House Initiative on Asian-American and Pacific Islanders, including enforcement on disaggregation of Census data. We will make the Census more culturally sensitive, including outreach, language assistance, and increased confidentiality protections to ensure accurate counting of the growing Latino and Asian American, and Pacific Islander populations, and continue working on efforts to be more inclusive. We will sign the\nU.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and restore the original intent of the Americans with Disabilities Act. That is the America we believe in.\nIt is not enough to look back in wonder at how far we have come; those who came before us did not strike a blow against injustice only so that we would allow injustice to fester in our time. That means removing the barriers of prejudice and misunderstanding that still exist in America. We support the full inclusion of all families, including same-sex couples, in the life of our nation, and support equal responsibility, benefits, and protections. We will enact a comprehensive bipartisan employment non-discrimination act. We oppose the Defense of Marriage Act and all attempts to use this issue to divide us.\nBut it is no good to be able to ride the bus when you can't afford the bus fare. We will work to provide real opportunities for all Americans suffering from disadvantage; we will pioneer new policies and remedies against poverty and violence that address real human needs and we will close the achievement gap in education and provide every child a world-class education. We support affirmative action, including in federal contracting and higher education, to make sure that those locked out of the doors of opportunity will be able to walk through those doors in the future. As the late Ann Richards said, \"We offer a vision where opportunity knows no race, no gender, no color, a glimpse of what can happen in government if we simply open the doors let the people in.\"\nIV. Renewing American Democracy\nAmericans of every political stripe are hungry for a new kind of government. We want a government that favors common sense over ideology, honesty over spin, that worries less about losing the next election and more about winning the battles we owe to the next generation.\nThe over 30,000 Americans who attended 1645 local platform hearings demonstrated their commitment to reasserting government of, by, and for the people. So too did the millions of Americans who turned out in primaries and caucuses, and the record-breaking number of Americans abroad who participated – including men and the women who serve in our military. Democrats want to continue the momentum of the election. Only by doing so can we bring the change necessary to restore the promise of America.\nThe government we create will open up democracy to the people and protect our civil liberties. We'll invite the service and participation of American citizens, and use the tools of government and technology to lead us into a new era of connectedness, teamwork, and progress. A Barack Obama Administration will make it clear to the special interests that their days of setting the agenda in Washington are over, because the American people are not the problem in the 21st Ccentury—they are the solution. We'll make every vote count, because in America, everyone's voice matters in the political process.\nOpen, Accountable, and Ethical Government\nIn Barack Obama's Administration, we will open up the doors of democracy. We will use technology to make government more transparent, accountable, and inclusive. Rather than obstruct people's use of the Freedom of Information Act, we will require that agencies conduct significant business in public and release all relevant information unless an agency reasonably foresees harm to a protected interest.\nWe will lift the veil of secret deals in Washington by publishing searchable, online information about federal grants, contracts, earmarks, loans, and lobbyist contacts with government officials. We will make government data available online and will have an online video archive of significant agency meetings. We will put all non-emergency bills that Congress has passed online for five days, to allow the American public to review and comment on them before they are signed into law. We will require Cabinet officials to have periodic national online town hall meetings to discuss issues before their agencies.\nImplementing our Party's agenda will require running competent, innovative, and efficient public agencies at all levels of government with the resources necessary to get results. We will develop a comprehensive management agenda to prevent operational breakdowns in government and ensure that government provides the level of service that the American people deserve. Because we understand that good government depends on good people, we will work to rebuild and reengage our federal workforce and encourage state and local governments to do the same. We will make government a more attractive place to work. Our hiring will be based only on qualification and experience, and not on ideology or party affiliation. We will pay for our new spending, eliminate waste in government programs, demand, and measure results, and stop funding programs that don't work. We will not privatize public services for the sake of privatizing. We will use carefully crafted guidelines when determining whether to contract out any government service and whether a function is \"inherently governmental.\" We will provide improved accountability, oversight, and management in the contracting process to protect the public.\nWe are committed to a participatory government. We will use the most current technology available to improve the quality of government decision-making and make government less beholden to special interest groups and lobbyists. We will enhance the flow of information between citizens and government—in both directions—by involving the public in the work of government agencies. We will not simply solicit opinions, but will also use new technology to tap into the vast expertise of the American citizenry, for the benefit of government and our democracy.\nAmericans want real reform that will help them pay their medical bills and put the country on the path to energy independence. They are tired of lobbyists standing in their way. So we'll end the abuse of no-bid contracts by requiring nearly all contract orders over $25,000 to be competitively awarded and tell the drug companies and the oil companies and the insurance industry that, while they may get a seat at the table in Washington, they don't get to buy every chair. We will institute a gift ban so that no lobbyist can curry favor with the Administration. We will close the revolving door that has allowed people to use their position in the Administration as a stepping-stone to further their lobbying careers. We support campaign finance reform to reduce the influence of moneyed special interests, including public financing of campaigns combined with free television and radio time. We will have the wisdom to put the public interest above special interests. As a national party, we will not take any contributions from Political Action Committees during this election.\nReclaiming Our Constitution and Our Liberties\nAs we combat terrorism, we must not sacrifice the American values we are fighting to protect. In recent years, we've seen an Administration put forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand. The Democratic Party rejects this dichotomy. We will restore our constitutional traditions, and recover our nation's founding commitment to liberty under law.\nWe support constitutional protections and judicial oversight on any surveillance program involving Americans. We will review the current Administration's warrantless wiretapping program. We reject illegal wiretapping of American citizens, wherever they live.\nWe reject the use of national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. We reject the tracking of citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. We reject torture. We reject sweeping claims of \"inherent\" presidential power. We will revisit the Patriot Act and overturn unconstitutional executive decisions issued during the past eight years. We will not use signing statements to nullify or undermine duly enacted law. And we will ensure that law-abiding Americans of any origin, including Arab-Americans and Muslim-Americans, do not become the scapegoats of national security fears.\nWe believe that our Constitution, our courts, our institutions, and our traditions work.\nIn its operations overseas, while claiming to spread freedom throughout the world, the current Administration has tragically helped give rise to a new generation of potential adversaries who threaten to make America less secure. We will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools to hunt down and take out terrorists without undermining our Constitution, our freedom, and our privacy.\nTo build a freer and safer world, we will lead in ways that reflect the decency and aspirations of the American people. We will not ship away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far-off countries, or detain without trial or charge prisoners who can and should be brought to justice for their crimes, or maintain a network of secret prisons to jail people beyond the reach of the law. We will respect the time-honored principle of habeas corpus, the seven century-old right of individuals to challenge the terms of their own detention that was recently reaffirmed by our Supreme Court. We will close the detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, the location of so many of the worst constitutional abuses in recent years. With these necessary changes, the attention of the world will be directed where it belongs: on what terrorists have done to us, not on how we treat suspects.\nWe recognize what leaders on the front lines of the struggle against terrorism have long known: to win this fight, we must maintain the moral high ground. When millions around the world see America living up to its highest ideals, we win friends and allies in this struggle for our safety and our lives, and our enemies lose ground.\nFor our Judiciary, we will select and confirm judges who are men and women of unquestionable talent and character, who firmly respect the rule of law, who listen to and are respectful of different points of view, and who represent the diversity of America. We support the appointment of judges who respect our system of checks and balances and the separation of power among the Executive Branch, Congress, and the Judiciary–and who understand that the Constitution protects not only the powerful, but also the disadvantaged and the powerless.\nOur Constitution is not a nuisance. It is the foundation of our democracy. It makes freedom and self-governance possible, and helps to protect our security. The Democratic Party will restore our Constitution to its proper place in our government and return our Nation to our best traditions–including our commitment to government by law.\nVoting Rights\nVoting rights are fundamental rights because they are protective of all other rights. We will work to fully protect and enforce the fundamental Constitutional right of every American vote—to ensure that the Constitution's promise is fully realized. We will fully fund the Help America Vote Act and work to fulfill the promise of election reform, including fighting to end long lines at voting booths and ensuring that all registration materials, voting materials, polling places, and voting machines are truly accessible to seniors, Americans with disabilities, and citizens with limited English proficiency. We will call for a national standard for voting that includes voter-verified paper ballots. We will ensure that absentee ballots are accessible and accurately counted. We will vigorously enforce our voting rights laws instead of making them tools of partisan political agendas; we oppose laws that require identification in order to vote or register to vote, which create discriminatory barriers to the right to vote and disenfranchise many eligible voters; and we oppose tactics which purge eligible voters from voter rolls. We are committed to passing the Count Every Vote Act. Finally, we will enact legislation that establishes harsh penalties for those who engage in voter intimidation and creates a process for providing accurate information to misinformed voters so they can cast their votes in time.\nPartnerships with States\nGiven the economic crisis across the country, states, and territories today face serious difficulties. More than half of our states face a combined billions of dollars in shortfalls. As a result, states have had to innovate and take matters into their own hands—and they have done an extraordinary job. Yet they should not have to do it alone. We will provide significant and immediate temporary funding to state and local governments, as well as territories and tribes. We will give these governmental entities a partner in the federal government, and a president who understand that prosperity comes not only from Wall Street and Washington, but from the perseverance of the American people. County and municipal governments, as well as territories and tribes, are also key partners with the federal government. These partnerships need to be revitalized to address their critical needs.\nPartnership with Civic Institutions\nSocial entrepreneurs and leading nonprofit organizations are assisting schools, lifting families out of poverty, filling health care gaps, and inspiring others to lead change in their own communities. To support these results-oriented innovators, we will create a Social Investment Fund Network that invests in ideas that work, tests their impact, and expands the most successful programs. We will create an office to coordinate government and nonprofit efforts.\nDistrict of Columbia\nOur civil rights leaders and many Americans of every background have sacrificed too much for us to tolerate continuing denial to the nearly 600,000 residents of our nation's capital of the benefits of full citizenship, especially the vote, that are accorded to citizens of every state. We support equal rights to democratic self-government and congressional representation for the citizens of our nation's capital.\nTribal Sovereignty\nAmerican Indian and Alaska Native tribes have always been sovereign, self-governing communities, and we affirm their inherent right to self-government as well as the unique government-to-government relationship they share with the United States. In exchange for millions of acres of land, our nation pledged to provide certain services in perpetuity; we will honor our nation's treaty and trust obligations by increasing resources for economic development, health care, Indian education, and other important services. We will respect American Indian cultural rights and sacred places. We will reexamine the legal framework that allows extreme rates of violent crime in Indian country; we will create a White House advisor on Indian Affairs; and we will host an annual summit with Indian leaders.\nWe support the efforts for self-determination and sovereignty of Native Hawaiians, consistent with principles enumerated in the Apology Resolution and the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act. We will increase federal resources for economic development, education, health, and other important services. We will respect Native Hawaiian culture rights and sacred places.\nPuerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands\nWe recognize and honor the contributions and the sacrifices made in service of our country by the people living in Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. We believe that the people of Puerto Rico have the right to the political status of their choice, obtained through a fair, neutral, and democratic process of self-determination. The White House and Congress will work with all groups in Puerto Rico to enable the question of Puerto Rico's status to be resolved during the next four years. We also believe that economic conditions in Puerto Rico call for effective and equitable programs to maximize job creation and financial investment. Furthermore, in order to provide fair assistance to those in greatest need, the U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico should receive treatment under federal programs that is comparable to that of citizens in the States. We will phase-out the cap on Medicaid funding and phase-in equal participation in other federal health care assistance programs. Moreover, we will provide equitable treatment to the U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico on programs providing refundable tax credits to working families. We believe that U.S. citizens in Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands should receive similar treatment.\nWe support full self-government and self-determination for the people of Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the Virgin Islands, and their right to decide their future status. We will seek input from Guam on relevant military matters and we acknowledge the unique health care challenges that Pacific Island communities face. For all those who live under our flag, we support strong economic development and fair and equitable treatment under federal programs.", "Words" -> 24644, "WordCounts" -> <|"and" -> 1218, "the" -> 1162, "to" -> 909, "of" -> 648, "will" -> 527, "We" -> 507, "in" -> 425, "that" -> 396, "our" -> 365, "a" -> 336, "we" -> 292, "for" -> 265, "are" -> 166, "with" -> 160, "on" -> 149, "is" -> 146, "by" -> 120, "have" -> 114, "their" -> 109, "American" -> 107, "as" -> 103, "not" -> 100, "who" -> 86, "must" -> 86, "work" -> 84, "be" -> 83, "support" -> 82, "from" -> 82, "more" -> 81, "it" -> 80, "all" -> 80, "new" -> 79, "Americans" -> 78, "people" -> 76, "can" -> 72, "this" -> 70, "an" -> 69, "America" -> 69, "they" -> 66, "government" -> 60, "health" -> 59, "ensure" -> 59, "has" -> 57, "The" -> 56, "make" -> 56, "help" -> 56, "or" -> 55, "also" -> 55, "at" -> 54, "security" -> 53, "world" -> 51, "so" -> 51, "provide" -> 50, "need" -> 50, "than" -> 49, "energy" -> 48, "care" -> 48, "workers" -> 47, "every" -> 46, "time" -> 44, "them" -> 44, "rights" -> 44, "families" -> 44, "education" -> 44, "those" -> 43, "but" -> 43, "national" -> 42, "create" -> 42, "its" -> 41, "including" -> 40, "country" -> 40, "believe" -> 40, "programs" -> 39, "jobs" -> 38, "economic" -> 38, "up" -> 37, "other" -> 36, "invest" -> 35, "In" -> 35, "global" -> 35, "do" -> 35, "when" -> 34, "public" -> 34, "economy" -> 34, "should" -> 33, "women" -> 32, "Our" -> 32, "weapons" -> 31, "use" -> 31, "United" -> 31, "these" -> 31, "development" -> 31, "children" -> 31, "protect" -> 30, "poverty" -> 30, "communities" -> 30, "only" -> 29, "us" -> 28, "U.S." -> 28, "nuclear" -> 28, "human" -> 28, "funding" -> 28, "years" -> 27, "States" -> 27, "policies" -> 27, "out" -> 27, "end" -> 27, "strengthen" -> 26, "military" -> 26, "countries" -> 26, "change" -> 26, "challenges" -> 26, "been" -> 26, "which" -> 25, "This" -> 25, "pay" -> 25, "good" -> 25, "build" -> 25, "many" -> 24, "federal" -> 24, "And" -> 24, "working" -> 23, "too" -> 23, "To" -> 23, "take" -> 23, "restore" -> 23, "over" -> 23, "millions" -> 23, "local" -> 23, "like" -> 23, "leadership" -> 23, "increase" -> 23, "future" -> 23, "come" -> 23, "Act" -> 23, "tax" -> 22, "nation" -> 22, "most" -> 22, "law" -> 22, "Iraq" -> 22, "common" -> 22, "citizens" -> 22, "while" -> 21, "technology" -> 21, "service" -> 21, "resources" -> 21, "no" -> 21, "meet" -> 21, "into" -> 21, "institutions" -> 21, "But" -> 21, "well" -> 20, "way" -> 20, "such" -> 20, "right" -> 20, "promote" -> 20, "leaders" -> 20, "democracy" -> 20, "current" -> 20, "against" -> 20, "through" -> 19, "system" -> 19, "reform" -> 19, "program" -> 19, "opportunity" -> 19, "job" -> 19, "It" -> 19, "insurance" -> 19, "get" -> 19, "fight" -> 19, "continue" -> 19, "Administration" -> 19, "access" -> 19, "together" -> 18, "respect" -> 18, "policy" -> 18, "opportunities" -> 18, "lead" -> 18, "international" -> 18, "interests" -> 18, "if" -> 18, "fair" -> 18, "expand" -> 18, "Democrats" -> 18, "community" -> 18, "commitment" -> 18, "assistance" -> 18, "about" -> 18, "21st" -> 18, "what" -> 17, "threats" -> 17, "states" -> 17, "special" -> 17, "Security" -> 17, "secure" -> 17, "National" -> 17, "just" -> 17, "committed" -> 17, "child" -> 17, "better" -> 17, "affordable" -> 17, "A" -> 17, "war" -> 16, "strong" -> 16, "same" -> 16, "reduce" -> 16, "private" -> 16, "next" -> 16, "making" -> 16, "lives" -> 16, "improve" -> 16, "full" -> 16, "family" -> 16, "efforts" -> 16, "comprehensive" -> 16, "between" -> 16, "around" -> 16, "any" -> 16, "trade" -> 15, "They" -> 15, "research" -> 15, "recognize" -> 15, "quality" -> 15, "oil" -> 15, "million" -> 15, "combat" -> 15, "climate" -> 15, "cannot" -> 15, "America's" -> 15, "put" -> 14, "parents" -> 14, "nation's" -> 14, "live" -> 14, "less" -> 14, "keep" -> 14, "infrastructure" -> 14, "housing" -> 14, "home" -> 14, "Democratic" -> 14, "companies" -> 14, "Century" -> 14, "within" -> 13, "violence" -> 13, "training" -> 13, "That" -> 13, "students" -> 13, "standards" -> 13, "services" -> 13, "seek" -> 13, "science" -> 13, "schools" -> 13, "Party" -> 13, "own" -> 13, "laws" -> 13, "free" -> 13, "foreign" -> 13, "forces" -> 13, "first" -> 13, "develop" -> 13, "democratic" -> 13, "century" -> 13, "businesses" -> 13, "benefits" -> 13, "back" -> 13, "agencies" -> 13, "address" -> 13, "was" -> 12, "under" -> 12, "Today" -> 12, "responsibility" -> 12, "require" -> 12, "reject" -> 12, "providing" -> 12, "prevent" -> 12, "power" -> 12, "political" -> 12, "platform" -> 12, "place" -> 12, "partners" -> 12, "open" -> 12, "necessary" -> 12, "know" -> 12, "investment" -> 12, "growth" -> 12, "generation" -> 12, "fully" -> 12, "For" -> 12, "failed" -> 12, "face" -> 12, "dramatically" -> 12, "down" -> 12, "civil" -> 12, "both" -> 12, "because" -> 12, "allies" -> 12, "Afghanistan" -> 12, "across" -> 12, "would" -> 11, "values" -> 11, "today" -> 11, "terrorists" -> 11, "technologies" -> 11, "teachers" -> 11, "supporting" -> 11, "state" -> 11, "skills" -> 11, "sector" -> 11, "school" -> 11, "safety" -> 11, "retirement" -> 11, "promise" -> 11, "process" -> 11, "past" -> 11, "order" -> 11, "needs" -> 11, "men" -> 11, "made" -> 11, "long" -> 11, "key" -> 11, "investments" -> 11, "innovative" -> 11, "innovation" -> 11, "immigration" -> 11, "give" -> 11, "fund" -> 11, "even" -> 11, "drug" -> 11, "crisis" -> 11, "business" -> 11, "best" -> 11, "Asia" -> 11, "As" -> 11, "allow" -> 11, "AIDS" -> 11, "again" -> 11, "you" -> 10, "without" -> 10, "where" -> 10, "We'll" -> 10, "sure" -> 10, "strategy" -> 10, "stand" -> 10, "Social" -> 10, "seniors" -> 10, "rural" -> 10, "renew" -> 10, "protections" -> 10, "peace" -> 10, "one" -> 10, "New" -> 10, "means" -> 10, "Israel" -> 10, "interest" -> 10, "intelligence" -> 10, "information" -> 10, "immediate" -> 10, "HIV" -> 10, "hearings" -> 10, "establish" -> 10, "enforcement" -> 10, "encourage" -> 10, "crime" -> 10, "conflict" -> 10, "clean" -> 10, "capacity" -> 10, "before" -> 10, "become" -> 10, "At" -> 10, "want" -> 9, "understand" -> 9, "Trade" -> 9, "stronger" -> 9, "still" -> 9, "status" -> 9, "serve" -> 9, "safe" -> 9, "Rights" -> 9, "requires" -> 9, "prosperity" -> 9, "priority" -> 9, "personal" -> 9, "part" -> 9, "offer" -> 9, "nations" -> 9, "measures" -> 9, "markets" -> 9, "market" -> 9, "Indian" -> 9, "homes" -> 9, "higher" -> 9, "growing" -> 9, "great" -> 9, "fundamental" -> 9, "freedom" -> 9, "ensuring" -> 9, "enhance" -> 9, "eliminate" -> 9, "eight" -> 9, "effective" -> 9, "disease" -> 9, "critical" -> 9, "created" -> 9, "could" -> 9, "close" -> 9, "clear" -> 9, "challenge" -> 9, "call" -> 9, "whether" -> 8, "vital" -> 8, "U.N." -> 8, "tools" -> 8, "threat" -> 8, "there" -> 8, "themselves" -> 8, "taxes" -> 8, "sustainable" -> 8, "stop" -> 8, "start" -> 8, "small" -> 8, "savings" -> 8, "rule" -> 8, "real" -> 8, "Puerto" -> 8, "prevention" -> 8, "politics" -> 8, "planet" -> 8, "plan" -> 8, "percent" -> 8, "pension" -> 8, "partnerships" -> 8, "others" -> 8, "operations" -> 8, "now" -> 8, "materials" -> 8, "living" -> 8, "life" -> 8, "Islands" -> 8, "important" -> 8, "immigrants" -> 8, "House" -> 8, "hope" -> 8, "history" -> 8, "high" -> 8, "greater" -> 8, "five" -> 8, "financial" -> 8, "especially" -> 8, "enforce" -> 8, "efficient" -> 8, "dollars" -> 8, "discrimination" -> 8, "demand" -> 8, "day" -> 8, "confront" -> 8, "college" -> 8, "capital" -> 8, "bring" -> 8, "beyond" -> 8, "being" -> 8, "Barack" -> 8, "agenda" -> 8, "Africa" -> 8, "advance" -> 8, "willing" -> 7, "White" -> 7, "Washington" -> 7, "wage" -> 7, "veterans" -> 7, "used" -> 7, "two" -> 7, "tough" -> 7, "terrorism" -> 7, "strategic" -> 7, "steps" -> 7, "spread" -> 7, "society" -> 7, "shared" -> 7, "share" -> 7, "rising" -> 7, "Rico" -> 7, "regions" -> 7, "rebuild" -> 7, "reach" -> 7, "practices" -> 7, "plans" -> 7, "pensions" -> 7, "party" -> 7, "partner" -> 7, "off" -> 7, "North" -> 7, "move" -> 7, "moment" -> 7, "modernize" -> 7, "members" -> 7, "low-income" -> 7, "lost" -> 7, "long-term" -> 7, "last" -> 7, "It's" -> 7, "issues" -> 7, "investing" -> 7, "industry" -> 7, "individual" -> 7, "India" -> 7, "incentives" -> 7, "ideas" -> 7, "here" -> 7, "hard" -> 7, "half" -> 7, "governments" -> 7, "Global" -> 7, "Fund" -> 7, "force" -> 7, "food" -> 7, "failures" -> 7, "equitable" -> 7, "environmental" -> 7, "enable" -> 7, "employers" -> 7, "effort" -> 7, "during" -> 7, "diseases" -> 7, "developing" -> 7, "Credit" -> 7, "crack" -> 7, "Constitution" -> 7, "cities" -> 7, "choice" -> 7, "China" -> 7, "can't" -> 7, "Bush" -> 7, "billion" -> 7, "basic" -> 7, "ban" -> 7, "areas" -> 7, "after" -> 7, "additional" -> 7, "achieve" -> 7, "accountability" -> 7, "abroad" -> 7, "able" -> 7, "youth" -> 6, "world-class" -> 6, "When" -> 6, "we'll" -> 6, "ways" -> 6, "water" -> 6, "vulnerable" -> 6, "vote" -> 6, "truly" -> 6, "troops" -> 6, "treat" -> 6, "transparency" -> 6, "Tax" -> 6, "success" -> 6, "succeed" -> 6, "struggling" -> 6, "standing" -> 6, "spend" -> 6, "since" -> 6, "significant" -> 6, "show" -> 6, "sexual" -> 6, "said" -> 6, "Russia" -> 6, "rules" -> 6, "role" -> 6, "return" -> 6, "response" -> 6, "residents" -> 6, "remain" -> 6, "receive" -> 6, "rather" -> 6, "raise" -> 6, "Qaeda" -> 6, "protecting" -> 6, "produce" -> 6, "problem" -> 6, "prices" -> 6, "President" -> 6, "possible" -> 6, "places" -> 6, "personnel" -> 6, "permanent" -> 6, "pass" -> 6, "partnership" -> 6, "ourselves" -> 6, "online" -> 6, "often" -> 6, "Obama" -> 6, "Nuclear" -> 6, "never" -> 6, "natural" -> 6, "makes" -> 6, "majority" -> 6, "leave" -> 6, "Iran" -> 6, "increasing" -> 6, "increased" -> 6, "importance" -> 6, "If" -> 6, "how" -> 6, "Health" -> 6, "had" -> 6, "generations" -> 6, "gap" -> 6, "foundation" -> 6, "Families" -> 6, "Europe" -> 6, "essential" -> 6, "era" -> 6, "equal" -> 6, "ending" -> 6, "employment" -> 6, "employees" -> 6, "efficiency" -> 6, "effectively" -> 6, "each" -> 6, "Dream" -> 6, "double" -> 6, "domestic" -> 6, "diplomatic" -> 6, "Development" -> 6, "Department" -> 6, "debt" -> 6, "cuts" -> 6, "credit" -> 6, "creation" -> 6, "costs" -> 6, "Congress" -> 6, "compete" -> 6, "Community" -> 6, "choose" -> 6, "building" -> 6, "always" -> 6, "All" -> 6, "Al" -> 6, "agreements" -> 6, "Administration's" -> 6, "accountable" -> 6, "Yet" -> 5, "yet" -> 5, "year" -> 5, "Women" -> 5, "why" -> 5, "Weapons" -> 5, "waste" -> 5, "voting" -> 5, "vision" -> 5, "violent" -> 5, "Veterans" -> 5, "trust" -> 5, "tribes" -> 5, "treatment" -> 5, "transportation" -> 5, "transition" -> 5, "times" -> 5, "That's" -> 5, "territories" -> 5, "State" -> 5, "smart" -> 5, "skilled" -> 5, "save" -> 5, "sacrifice" -> 5, "Roosevelt" -> 5, "returning" -> 5, "responsibly" -> 5, "responsible" -> 5, "renewing" -> 5, "relief" -> 5, "recent" -> 5, "pursue" -> 5, "provided" -> 5, "proven" -> 5, "problems" -> 5, "preserve" -> 5, "powers" -> 5, "poor" -> 5, "police" -> 5, "pledge" -> 5, "participation" -> 5, "Pakistan" -> 5, "overseas" -> 5, "organizations" -> 5, "oppose" -> 5, "once" -> 5, "Nations" -> 5, "meeting" -> 5, "maintain" -> 5, "line" -> 5, "lift" -> 5, "liberty" -> 5, "level" -> 5, "legal" -> 5, "led" -> 5, "learning" -> 5, "land" -> 5, "kind" -> 5, "Kennedy" -> 5, "Katrina" -> 5, "Internet" -> 5, "instead" -> 5, "industries" -> 5, "independence" -> 5, "income" -> 5, "includes" -> 5, "implement" -> 5, "Hurricane" -> 5, "honor" -> 5, "he" -> 5, "Guam" -> 5, "groups" -> 5, "governmental" -> 5, "go" -> 5, "getting" -> 5, "fuel" -> 5, "forward" -> 5, "fix" -> 5, "find" -> 5, "fighting" -> 5, "few" -> 5, "Federal" -> 5, "far" -> 5, "extremism" -> 5, "existing" -> 5, "exist" -> 5, "example" -> 5, "ever" -> 5, "English" -> 5, "emerging" -> 5, "eligible" -> 5, "Education" -> 5, "early" -> 5, "doors" -> 5, "direct" -> 5, "diplomacy" -> 5, "cultural" -> 5, "coverage" -> 5, "contributions" -> 5, "contracting" -> 5, "conditions" -> 5, "competitive" -> 5, "commit" -> 5, "combating" -> 5, "colleges" -> 5, "children's" -> 5, "chance" -> 5, "broken" -> 5, "border" -> 5, "bills" -> 5, "Bill" -> 5, "Because" -> 5, "bankruptcy" -> 5, "assist" -> 5, "assault" -> 5, "ask" -> 5, "annual" -> 5, "among" -> 5, "Americas" -> 5, "allowed" -> 5, "aid" -> 5, "age" -> 5, "Afghan" -> 5, "advanced" -> 5, "adequate" -> 5, "active" -> 5, "achievement" -> 5, "abuse" -> 5, "ability" -> 5, "$250,000" -> 4, "worldwide" -> 4, "world's" -> 4, "works" -> 4, "worker" -> 4, "woman" -> 4, "With" -> 4, "were" -> 4, "wealth" -> 4, "War" -> 4, "Virgin" -> 4, "valuable" -> 4, "using" -> 4, "urban" -> 4, "united" -> 4, "unions" -> 4, "Union" -> 4, "turn" -> 4, "tribal" -> 4, "Treaty" -> 4, "treated" -> 4, "train" -> 4, "top" -> 4, "ties" -> 4, "three" -> 4, "threatened" -> 4, "There" -> 4, "that's" -> 4, "terrorist" -> 4, "terror" -> 4, "sustained" -> 4, "successful" -> 4, "strike" -> 4, "strengthened" -> 4, "strategies" -> 4, "story" -> 4, "stem" -> 4, "stay" -> 4, "spur" -> 4, "spending" -> 4, "South" -> 4, "solutions" -> 4, "So" -> 4, "simply" -> 4, "side" -> 4, "shape" -> 4, "seven" -> 4, "set" -> 4, "seen" -> 4, "Samoa" -> 4, "safer" -> 4, "safeguard" -> 4, "sacred" -> 4, "reward" -> 4, "responsibilities" -> 4, "Republican" -> 4, "Renewing" -> 4, "renewable" -> 4, "remains" -> 4, "relationship" -> 4, "regional" -> 4, "region" -> 4, "reducing" -> 4, "Protection" -> 4, "protected" -> 4, "projects" -> 4, "progress" -> 4, "products" -> 4, "productivity" -> 4, "privacy" -> 4, "principles" -> 4, "price" -> 4, "prepared" -> 4, "practice" -> 4, "potential" -> 4, "playing" -> 4, "physical" -> 4, "perform" -> 4, "peaceful" -> 4, "passed" -> 4, "parts" -> 4, "outrage" -> 4, "options" -> 4, "Opportunity" -> 4, "ones" -> 4, "officers" -> 4, "Northern" -> 4, "Nevada" -> 4, "network" -> 4, "needed" -> 4, "nearly" -> 4, "NATO" -> 4, "Native" -> 4, "much" -> 4, "moral" -> 4, "missions" -> 4, "mission" -> 4, "minority" -> 4, "minimum" -> 4, "middle" -> 4, "medical" -> 4, "matters" -> 4, "math" -> 4, "Mariana" -> 4, "manufacturing" -> 4, "management" -> 4, "man" -> 4, "love" -> 4, "losing" -> 4, "longer" -> 4, "loans" -> 4, "likely" -> 4, "least" -> 4, "labor" -> 4, "Korea" -> 4, "Justice" -> 4, "justice" -> 4, "join" -> 4, "John" -> 4, "it's" -> 4, "issue" -> 4, "improved" -> 4, "identify" -> 4, "humanitarian" -> 4, "hours" -> 4, "homeland" -> 4, "hold" -> 4, "highest" -> 4, "healthy" -> 4, "having" -> 4, "Guard" -> 4, "greatest" -> 4, "Grant" -> 4, "Good" -> 4, "goals" -> 4, "goal" -> 4, "genocide" -> 4, "gender" -> 4, "further" -> 4, "Franklin" -> 4, "form" -> 4, "focus" -> 4, "final" -> 4, "fathers" -> 4, "farms" -> 4, "faith" -> 4, "expect" -> 4, "European" -> 4, "environment" -> 4, "Energy" -> 4, "empower" -> 4, "election" -> 4, "easier" -> 4, "Don't" -> 4, "done" -> 4, "doctors" -> 4, "division" -> 4, "Disabilities" -> 4, "disabilities" -> 4, "different" -> 4, "did" -> 4, "deployment" -> 4, "depends" -> 4, "Democracy" -> 4, "defeat" -> 4, "decades" -> 4, "decade" -> 4, "dangers" -> 4, "dangerous" -> 4, "damage" -> 4, "cut" -> 4, "creating" -> 4, "country's" -> 4, "Council" -> 4, "cost" -> 4, "corporate" -> 4, "cooperation" -> 4, "constitutional" -> 4, "consistent" -> 4, "conservation" -> 4, "concerns" -> 4, "competitiveness" -> 4, "competition" -> 4, "Commission" -> 4, "comes" -> 4, "closing" -> 4, "civilian" -> 4, "changing" -> 4, "central" -> 4, "catastrophic" -> 4, "capabilities" -> 4, "came" -> 4, "called" -> 4, "By" -> 4, "burden" -> 4, "built" -> 4, "buildings" -> 4, "brought" -> 4, "broadband" -> 4, "bipartisan" -> 4, "billions" -> 4, "bilateral" -> 4, "belief" -> 4, "bear" -> 4, "based" -> 4, "barriers" -> 4, "available" -> 4, "attacks" -> 4, "Assistance" -> 4, "another" -> 4, "Amendment" -> 4, "alone" -> 4, "agriculture" -> 4, "Agreement" -> 4, "aging" -> 4, "Africa's" -> 4, "addressing" -> 4, "action" -> 4, "act" -> 4, "accurate" -> 4, "accessible" -> 4, "abuses" -> 4, "9-11" -> 4, "40" -> 4, "$50" -> 3, "write" -> 3, "World" -> 3, "workplace" -> 3, "women's" -> 3, "win" -> 3, "whenever" -> 3, "we're" -> 3, "weight" -> 3, "weak" -> 3, "voters" -> 3, "vigorously" -> 3, "victims" -> 3, "verifiable" -> 3, "upon" -> 3, "uphold" -> 3, "unless" -> 3, "unemployment" -> 3, "unemployed" -> 3, "undocumented" -> 3, "undermine" -> 3, "tyranny" -> 3, "TV" -> 3, "transitional" -> 3, "trafficking" -> 3, "toward" -> 3, "tolerate" -> 3, "today's" -> 3, "throughout" -> 3, "These" -> 3, "there's" -> 3, "ten" -> 3, "tell" -> 3, "Technology" -> 3, "technical" -> 3, "taxpayer" -> 3, "taking" -> 3, "sustain" -> 3, "surplus" -> 3, "supports" -> 3, "supply" -> 3, "summer" -> 3, "suffering" -> 3, "subsidies" -> 3, "struggle" -> 3, "strongly" -> 3, "strength" -> 3, "Street" -> 3, "storms" -> 3, "stewardship" -> 3, "step" -> 3, "stands" -> 3, "stability" -> 3, "spectrum" -> 3, "solution" -> 3, "societies" -> 3, "Small" -> 3, "skill" -> 3, "single" -> 3, "ship" -> 3, "shift" -> 3, "she" -> 3, "sex" -> 3, "serving" -> 3, "Service" -> 3, "sent" -> 3, "send" -> 3, "self-government" -> 3, "self-determination" -> 3, "self-defense" -> 3, "see" -> 3, "scale" -> 3, "saving" -> 3, "sanctions" -> 3, "road" -> 3, "risk" -> 3, "Right" -> 3, "rich" -> 3, "results" -> 3, "result" -> 3, "restoring" -> 3, "Responsibility" -> 3, "responders" -> 3, "respond" -> 3, "resourced" -> 3, "reserve" -> 3, "repeal" -> 3, "remove" -> 3, "religious" -> 3, "reliable" -> 3, "relationships" -> 3, "Relations" -> 3, "reinvest" -> 3, "regime" -> 3, "reforms" -> 3, "reflects" -> 3, "reconstruction" -> 3, "recognizing" -> 3, "recently" -> 3, "rebuilding" -> 3, "rate" -> 3, "rail" -> 3, "race" -> 3, "question" -> 3, "qualified" -> 3, "prosperous" -> 3, "promoting" -> 3, "promises" -> 3, "promised" -> 3, "professionals" -> 3, "production" -> 3, "produced" -> 3, "prisoners" -> 3, "priorities" -> 3, "principle" -> 3, "prepare" -> 3, "point" -> 3, "play" -> 3, "per" -> 3, "people's" -> 3, "penalties" -> 3, "Pay" -> 3, "path" -> 3, "patent" -> 3, "pandemic" -> 3, "Palestinian" -> 3, "paid" -> 3, "page" -> 3, "Pacific" -> 3, "oversight" -> 3, "Over" -> 3, "outside" -> 3, "Orleans" -> 3, "orientation" -> 3, "openness" -> 3, "One" -> 3, "older" -> 3, "officials" -> 3, "offenders" -> 3, "obligation" -> 3, "number" -> 3, "non-military" -> 3, "neighbors" -> 3, "neighborhoods" -> 3, "negotiations" -> 3, "negotiate" -> 3, "mutual" -> 3, "multilateral" -> 3, "mothers" -> 3, "More" -> 3, "months" -> 3, "money" -> 3, "Military" -> 3, "Middle" -> 3, "Mexico" -> 3, "Members" -> 3, "Medicare" -> 3, "media" -> 3, "meaningful" -> 3, "may" -> 3, "matter" -> 3, "maternal" -> 3, "material" -> 3, "match" -> 3, "massive" -> 3, "mass" -> 3, "Many" -> 3, "manipulation" -> 3, "major" -> 3, "loopholes" -> 3, "localities" -> 3, "lobbyists" -> 3, "lobbying" -> 3, "lines" -> 3, "light" -> 3, "liberties" -> 3, "leverage" -> 3, "left" -> 3, "leading" -> 3, "Leadership" -> 3, "lasting" -> 3, "languages" -> 3, "language" -> 3, "lands" -> 3, "Labor" -> 3, "knowledge" -> 3, "Just" -> 3, "itself" -> 3, "Iranian" -> 3, "invisible" -> 3, "Investment" -> 3, "integrity" -> 3, "Institutions" -> 3, "Instead" -> 3, "instability" -> 3, "innovators" -> 3, "injustice" -> 3, "initiatives" -> 3, "Infrastructure" -> 3, "indispensable" -> 3, "independent" -> 3, "incomes" -> 3, "Income" -> 3, "inclusive" -> 3, "include" -> 3, "improving" -> 3, "implementing" -> 3, "implemented" -> 3, "implementation" -> 3, "illegally" -> 3, "ideology" -> 3, "Human" -> 3, "homelessness" -> 3, "historic" -> 3, "his" -> 3, "highly" -> 3, "helps" -> 3, "helping" -> 3, "hands" -> 3, "guarantee" -> 3, "ground" -> 3, "greenhouse" -> 3, "green" -> 3, "grants" -> 3, "grant" -> 3, "going" -> 3, "goes" -> 3, "giving" -> 3, "generate" -> 3, "gas" -> 3, "gaps" -> 3, "functions" -> 3, "framework" -> 3, "four" -> 3, "Founders" -> 3, "forge" -> 3, "Forces" -> 3, "flu" -> 3, "fiscal" -> 3, "fires" -> 3, "financing" -> 3, "Finally" -> 3, "favors" -> 3, "farmers" -> 3, "famine" -> 3, "facilities" -> 3, "F" -> 3, "extremists" -> 3, "exports" -> 3, "expanding" -> 3, "expanded" -> 3, "executive" -> 3, "exchange" -> 3, "everywhere" -> 3, "establishing" -> 3, "equipped" -> 3, "Equal" -> 3, "entrepreneurs" -> 3, "enough" -> 3, "engineers" -> 3, "engage" -> 3, "enforcing" -> 3, "ends" -> 3, "Endowment" -> 3, "Ending" -> 3, "enact" -> 3, "emissions" -> 3, "emergencies" -> 3, "edge" -> 3, "East" -> 3, "Earned" -> 3, "doing" -> 3, "does" -> 3, "diversity" -> 3, "diverse" -> 3, "disability" -> 3, "dignity" -> 3, "devote" -> 3, "developed" -> 3, "devastating" -> 3, "deserve" -> 3, "deployments" -> 3, "deny" -> 3, "demands" -> 3, "Defense" -> 3, "deals" -> 3, "deadly" -> 3, "days" -> 3, "daughters" -> 3, "danger" -> 3, "crimes" -> 3, "creativity" -> 3, "counter-terrorism" -> 3, "Convention" -> 3, "contracts" -> 3, "consumer" -> 3, "confronted" -> 3, "components" -> 3, "complete" -> 3, "compensation" -> 3, "company" -> 3, "commitments" -> 3, "collective" -> 3, "Cold" -> 3, "class" -> 3, "city" -> 3, "circumstances" -> 3, "chronic" -> 3, "choices" -> 3, "Choice" -> 3, "changes" -> 3, "cells" -> 3, "caring" -> 3, "Caribbean" -> 3, "careers" -> 3, "cap" -> 3, "Business" -> 3, "budget" -> 3, "bringing" -> 3, "Brazil" -> 3, "borders" -> 3, "Board" -> 3, "benefit" -> 3, "believes" -> 3, "battles" -> 3, "basis" -> 3, "balance" -> 3, "background" -> 3, "away" -> 3, "avoid" -> 3, "asking" -> 3, "asked" -> 3, "appropriate" -> 3, "alternative" -> 3, "agency" -> 3, "after-school" -> 3, "African" -> 3, "afford" -> 3, "Affairs" -> 3, "advisor" -> 3, "adoption" -> 3, "adopt" -> 3, "actually" -> 3, "actively" -> 3, "achieving" -> 3, "account" -> 3, "2030" -> 3, "$50,000" -> 2, "Zimbabwe" -> 2, "young" -> 2, "wrought" -> 2, "worst" -> 2, "worry" -> 2, "Working" -> 2, "workforce" -> 2, "worked" -> 2, "Without" -> 2, "wisdom" -> 2, "wiretapping" -> 2, "wind" -> 2, "wildland" -> 2, "whatever" -> 2, "we've" -> 2, "West" -> 2, "wealthy" -> 2, "warfare" -> 2, "Wall" -> 2, "wages" -> 2, "Voting" -> 2, "voter" -> 2, "Vote" -> 2, "volunteer" -> 2, "voice" -> 2, "vitality" -> 2, "visits" -> 2, "violations" -> 2, "video" -> 2, "vibrant" -> 2, "veteran" -> 2, "very" -> 2, "vehicles" -> 2, "vast" -> 2, "value" -> 2, "urgent" -> 2, "Urban" -> 2, "upgrading" -> 2, "unprecedented" -> 2, "unleash" -> 2, "units" -> 2, "unique" -> 2, "uniform" -> 2, "unfair" -> 2, "undo" -> 2, "undertake" -> 2, "underserved" -> 2, "ultimately" -> 2, "turning" -> 2, "try" -> 2, "trillion" -> 2, "treaty" -> 2, "transformation" -> 2, "traditions" -> 2, "traditional" -> 2, "town" -> 2, "towards" -> 2, "tougher" -> 2, "torture" -> 2, "Too" -> 2, "tomorrow" -> 2, "toll" -> 2, "tolerance" -> 2, "thousands" -> 2, "therefore" -> 2, "thereby" -> 2, "then" -> 2, "Their" -> 2, "tests" -> 2, "Terrorism" -> 2, "term" -> 2, "temporary" -> 2, "Tell" -> 2, "television" -> 2, "teach" -> 2, "targeting" -> 2, "talked" -> 2, "talent" -> 2, "taken" -> 2, "Taiwan" -> 2, "table" -> 2, "swiftly" -> 2, "sweeping" -> 2, "Support" -> 2, "supplies" -> 2, "summit" -> 2, "sufficient" -> 2, "Sudan" -> 2, "Such" -> 2, "successfully" -> 2, "subprime" -> 2, "study" -> 2, "student" -> 2, "strive" -> 2, "streets" -> 2, "stood" -> 2, "stockpiles" -> 2, "Stewardship" -> 2, "start-up" -> 2, "starting" -> 2, "Start" -> 2, "standard" -> 2, "stake" -> 2, "stage" -> 2, "staffed" -> 2, "Staff" -> 2, "stable" -> 2, "stabilization" -> 2, "spreading" -> 2, "spirit" -> 2, "spent" -> 2, "speech" -> 2, "specialized" -> 2, "sovereignty" -> 2, "south" -> 2, "sound" -> 2, "sons" -> 2, "something" -> 2, "some" -> 2, "solve" -> 2, "solar" -> 2, "smaller" -> 2, "size" -> 2, "sites" -> 2, "Since" -> 2, "signing" -> 2, "shot" -> 2, "short-term" -> 2, "shed" -> 2, "sharing" -> 2, "settlement" -> 2, "setting" -> 2, "Services" -> 2, "servicemen" -> 2, "servicemembers" -> 2, "sensitive" -> 2, "sense" -> 2, "secret" -> 2, "second" -> 2, "scientific" -> 2, "Science" -> 2, "sake" -> 2, "safely" -> 2, "Rural" -> 2, "running" -> 2, "run" -> 2, "rooted" -> 2, "root" -> 2, "roles" -> 2, "roads" -> 2, "rise" -> 2, "rigid" -> 2, "rewards" -> 2, "review" -> 2, "reverse" -> 2, "revenues" -> 2, "reunification" -> 2, "retirements" -> 2, "retention" -> 2, "retaining" -> 2, "rest" -> 2, "Response" -> 2, "respected" -> 2, "resolve" -> 2, "reservations" -> 2, "Research" -> 2, "requiring" -> 2, "replacement" -> 2, "renewed" -> 2, "removing" -> 2, "remedies" -> 2, "religion" -> 2, "reliance" -> 2, "relevant" -> 2, "release" -> 2, "relations" -> 2, "reinvigorate" -> 2, "reintegration" -> 2, "regulatory" -> 2, "regulation" -> 2, "regimes" -> 2, "regardless" -> 2, "refugees" -> 2, "Reform" -> 2, "reflect" -> 2, "redeployment" -> 2, "recognizes" -> 2, "realize" -> 2, "reality" -> 2, "realities" -> 2, "reaffirmed" -> 2, "read" -> 2, "Rather" -> 2, "rates" -> 2, "quickly" -> 2, "puts" -> 2, "pursuing" -> 2, "pursued" -> 2, "Pursue" -> 2, "purpose" -> 2, "public-private" -> 2, "provides" -> 2, "protects" -> 2, "protection" -> 2, "prosecution" -> 2, "prosecute" -> 2, "proposed" -> 2, "properly" -> 2, "promotes" -> 2, "proliferation" -> 2, "procurement" -> 2, "privilege" -> 2, "privatize" -> 2, "privatization" -> 2, "principled" -> 2, "primaries" -> 2, "pressure" -> 2, "pressing" -> 2, "press" -> 2, "presidential" -> 2, "president" -> 2, "prescription" -> 2, "practical" -> 2, "powerful" -> 2, "potentially" -> 2, "portion" -> 2, "populations" -> 2, "poorest" -> 2, "Policy" -> 2, "Policing" -> 2, "pockets" -> 2, "plot" -> 2, "plants" -> 2, "Planet" -> 2, "Plan" -> 2, "pillars" -> 2, "Philippines" -> 2, "Persons" -> 2, "persons" -> 2, "peril" -> 2, "penalty" -> 2, "Peace" -> 2, "pays" -> 2, "payments" -> 2, "paying" -> 2, "Party's" -> 2, "Partnerships" -> 2, "Partnership" -> 2, "partisan" -> 2, "parties" -> 2, "particularly" -> 2, "particular" -> 2, "participate" -> 2, "parks" -> 2, "parent-teacher" -> 2, "parenting" -> 2, "Pakistani" -> 2, "pace" -> 2, "ownership" -> 2, "owe" -> 2, "overextended" -> 2, "overall" -> 2, "otherwise" -> 2, "origin" -> 2, "Oriented" -> 2, "organize" -> 2, "Organization" -> 2, "opposed" -> 2, "obligations" -> 2, "objective" -> 2, "Obama's" -> 2, "nurses" -> 2, "Non-Proliferation" -> 2, "nonprofit" -> 2, "No" -> 2, "night" -> 2, "newly" -> 2, "net" -> 2, "neither" -> 2, "neglected" -> 2, "necessity" -> 2, "Nearly" -> 2, "NATO's" -> 2, "mortgage" -> 2, "mortality" -> 2, "moon" -> 2, "monitoring" -> 2, "mitigate" -> 2, "misguided" -> 2, "minorities" -> 2, "minds" -> 2, "Millions" -> 2, "might" -> 2, "middle-income" -> 2, "middle-class" -> 2, "met" -> 2, "mental" -> 2, "member" -> 2, "meetings" -> 2, "medications" -> 2, "Medicaid" -> 2, "mechanism" -> 2, "measure" -> 2, "maximize" -> 2, "market-based" -> 2, "Manufacturing" -> 2, "manufacturers" -> 2, "man-made" -> 2, "malaria" -> 2, "lower" -> 2, "loss" -> 2, "lose" -> 2, "look" -> 2, "long-run" -> 2, "locked" -> 2, "lobbyist" -> 2, "livelihoods" -> 2, "livable" -> 2, "listen" -> 2, "list" -> 2, "Lincoln" -> 2, "limited" -> 2, "Like" -> 2, "licensing" -> 2, "levels" -> 2, "levees" -> 2, "let" -> 2, "lending" -> 2, "lenders" -> 2, "legislation" -> 2, "learned" -> 2, "learn" -> 2, "leads" -> 2, "Lead" -> 2, "lawyers" -> 2, "law-abiding" -> 2, "Latino" -> 2, "Latin" -> 2, "later" -> 2, "late" -> 2, "larger" -> 2, "large" -> 2, "Language" -> 2, "Korean" -> 2, "known" -> 2, "kill" -> 2, "keeping" -> 2, "jurisdictions" -> 2, "jumpstart" -> 2, "judges" -> 2, "Joint" -> 2, "Jobs" -> 2, "Jerusalem" -> 2, "issued" -> 2, "isolate" -> 2, "Iraq's" -> 2, "Iraqis" -> 2, "involving" -> 2, "involved" -> 2, "investors" -> 2, "intolerance" -> 2, "Intelligence" -> 2, "Institutes" -> 2, "inside" -> 2, "insecurity" -> 2, "inherently" -> 2, "inherent" -> 2, "ingenuity" -> 2, "influence" -> 2, "inflation" -> 2, "inequality" -> 2, "ineffective" -> 2, "Indonesia" -> 2, "Individuals" -> 2, "index" -> 2, "incubators" -> 2, "increasingly" -> 2, "inclusion" -> 2, "improves" -> 2, "improvements" -> 2, "imposed" -> 2, "imperative" -> 2, "impacted" -> 2, "impact" -> 2, "illegal" -> 2, "ideal" -> 2, "hurricanes" -> 2, "hunger" -> 2, "humanity" -> 2, "humane" -> 2, "Housing" -> 2, "household" -> 2, "hostile" -> 2, "hospital" -> 2, "honesty" -> 2, "honest" -> 2, "homework" -> 2, "homeowners" -> 2, "Homeland" -> 2, "holding" -> 2, "hit" -> 2, "high-quality" -> 2, "high-level" -> 2, "helped" -> 2, "heating" -> 2, "heard" -> 2, "Head" -> 2, "Hawaiian" -> 2, "haven" -> 2, "harness" -> 2, "harmful" -> 2, "harm" -> 2, "hard-hit" -> 2, "hand" -> 2, "Hamas" -> 2, "halt" -> 2, "Gulf" -> 2, "guaranteed" -> 2, "grown" -> 2, "grow" -> 2, "grid" -> 2, "Great" -> 2, "graduates" -> 2, "government's" -> 2, "Government" -> 2, "gone" -> 2, "gives" -> 2, "Given" -> 2, "girls" -> 2, "George" -> 2, "generous" -> 2, "generic" -> 2, "gasoline" -> 2, "gases" -> 2, "gains" -> 2, "fund's" -> 2, "function" -> 2, "fulfill" -> 2, "front" -> 2, "From" -> 2, "friends" -> 2, "Free" -> 2, "foster" -> 2, "forests" -> 2, "forest" -> 2, "foreclosure" -> 2, "forced" -> 2, "flow" -> 2, "floods" -> 2, "fissile" -> 2, "first-time" -> 2, "First" -> 2, "firmly" -> 2, "firearms" -> 2, "finally" -> 2, "fifty" -> 2, "feet" -> 2, "fears" -> 2, "Family" -> 2, "false" -> 2, "fall" -> 2, "faith-based" -> 2, "Faith" -> 2, "fairness" -> 2, "fairly" -> 2, "Fair" -> 2, "failing" -> 2, "faced" -> 2, "extreme" -> 2, "extraordinary" -> 2, "extend" -> 2, "expressed" -> 2, "export" -> 2, "exploit" -> 2, "expired" -> 2, "experts" -> 2, "expertise" -> 2, "experience" -> 2, "expected" -> 2, "expansion" -> 2, "evidence-based" -> 2, "everyone" -> 2, "Every" -> 2, "equipment" -> 2, "equality" -> 2, "epidemics" -> 2, "entrepreneurship" -> 2, "entire" -> 2, "enter" -> 2, "enlistment" -> 2, "enjoy" -> 2, "engineering" -> 2, "engagement" -> 2, "enforceable" -> 2, "enemies" -> 2, "End" -> 2, "enacted" -> 2, "empowers" -> 2, "empowered" -> 2, "Employment" -> 2, "employer-based" -> 2, "Emergency" -> 2, "emergency" -> 2, "eliminating" -> 2, "elected" -> 2, "elderly" -> 2, "educators" -> 2, "economically" -> 2, "eclipsed" -> 2, "easy" -> 2, "ease" -> 2, "earn" -> 2, "duty" -> 2, "dump" -> 2, "drought" -> 2, "dreams" -> 2, "draws" -> 2, "don't" -> 2, "dollar" -> 2, "districts" -> 2, "displaced" -> 2, "disparities" -> 2, "discriminate" -> 2, "disclosures" -> 2, "disastrous" -> 2, "disasters" -> 2, "disaster" -> 2, "disadvantaged" -> 2, "direction" -> 2, "directed" -> 2, "determining" -> 2, "determine" -> 2, "detention" -> 2, "detect" -> 2, "details" -> 2, "destruction" -> 2, "destroy" -> 2, "designed" -> 2, "deploy" -> 2, "depend" -> 2, "Departments" -> 2, "denied" -> 2, "demonstrated" -> 2, "democratization" -> 2, "democracies" -> 2, "Delano" -> 2, "defining" -> 2, "deficit" -> 2, "defense" -> 2, "defend" -> 2, "defeated" -> 2, "decisions" -> 2, "decision-making" -> 2, "debilitating" -> 2, "debate" -> 2, "death" -> 2, "Deal" -> 2, "Day" -> 2, "Davis-Bacon" -> 2, "data" -> 2, "Darfur" -> 2, "cyber" -> 2, "cutting" -> 2, "cultures" -> 2, "culture" -> 2, "Cuba" -> 2, "crucial" -> 2, "creates" -> 2, "covering" -> 2, "courts" -> 2, "courage" -> 2, "couple" -> 2, "countless" -> 2, "counter-insurgency" -> 2, "count" -> 2, "counsel" -> 2, "corruption" -> 2, "Corps" -> 2, "corps" -> 2, "cornerstone" -> 2, "core" -> 2, "convert" -> 2, "control" -> 2, "contribute" -> 2, "contractors" -> 2, "contract" -> 2, "continuing" -> 2, "content" -> 2, "consistently" -> 2, "conserving" -> 2, "consequences" -> 2, "connectedness" -> 2, "congressional" -> 2, "confidence" -> 2, "concrete" -> 2, "concern" -> 2, "Comprehensive" -> 2, "competing" -> 2, "compassionate" -> 2, "community-based" -> 2, "communications" -> 2, "communication" -> 2, "Common" -> 2, "commanders" -> 2, "combined" -> 2, "Combat" -> 2, "color" -> 2, "code" -> 2, "Coast" -> 2, "claims" -> 2, "Civilian" -> 2, "civic" -> 2, "citizenship" -> 2, "citizen" -> 2, "choosing" -> 2, "Children" -> 2, "childhood" -> 2, "Child" -> 2, "Chiefs" -> 2, "Chief" -> 2, "Chicago" -> 2, "Chemical" -> 2, "checks" -> 2, "checking" -> 2, "check" -> 2, "character" -> 2, "champion" -> 2, "certain" -> 2, "century's" -> 2, "cents" -> 2, "centers" -> 2, "Census" -> 2, "cell" -> 2, "causes" -> 2, "cause" -> 2, "case" -> 2, "cargo" -> 2, "Care" -> 2, "Card" -> 2, "carbon" -> 2, "capacities" -> 2, "capable" -> 2, "Canada" -> 2, "campaigns" -> 2, "campaign" -> 2, "calamity" -> 2, "buy" -> 2, "bus" -> 2, "bureaucracy" -> 2, "broad" -> 2, "brigades" -> 2, "bridges" -> 2, "bridge" -> 2, "breaks" -> 2, "brave" -> 2, "box" -> 2, "bottom-up" -> 2, "bottom" -> 2, "Block" -> 2, "blank" -> 2, "biomedical" -> 2, "biological" -> 2, "biggest" -> 2, "behind" -> 2, "beginning" -> 2, "begin" -> 2, "bargaining" -> 2, "bankrupt" -> 2, "ballots" -> 2, "avian" -> 2, "availability" -> 2, "attend" -> 2, "attacked" -> 2, "assessments" -> 2, "assembly" -> 2, "Ask" -> 2, "Arts" -> 2, "arms" -> 2, "Armed" -> 2, "armed" -> 2, "area" -> 2, "approach" -> 2, "anything" -> 2, "answer" -> 2, "amount" -> 2, "alongside" -> 2, "along" -> 2, "almost" -> 2, "ally" -> 2, "allowing" -> 2, "alliances" -> 2, "alliance" -> 2, "ahead" -> 2, "agricultural" -> 2, "ago" -> 2, "Agency" -> 2, "Against" -> 2, "After" -> 2, "Affordable" -> 2, "advocate" -> 2, "advising" -> 2, "advantage" -> 2, "advancing" -> 2, "adults" -> 2, "administration" -> 2, "Adjustment" -> 2, "addiction" -> 2, "acts" -> 2, "actions" -> 2, "acres" -> 2, "acquiring" -> 2, "acknowledge" -> 2, "Accountable" -> 2, "above" -> 2, "abandon" -> 2, "2050" -> 2, "2008" -> 2, "$500" -> 1, "$4,000" -> 1, "$4" -> 1, "$360" -> 1, "$30" -> 1, "$25,000" -> 1, "$2" -> 1, "$1000" -> 1, "$1" -> 1, "Zone" -> 1, "Yucca" -> 1, "your" -> 1, "York" -> 1, "yields" -> 1, "year–including" -> 1, "wrongly" -> 1, "wrong" -> 1, "wracked" -> 1, "would-be" -> 1, "worthy" -> 1, "worthwhile" -> 1, "worthless" -> 1, "worth" -> 1, "worship" -> 1, "Worse" -> 1, "worse" -> 1, "worrying" -> 1, "worries" -> 1, "world–that" -> 1, "workforce—lack" -> 1, "workable" -> 1, "Work" -> 1, "won't" -> 1, "wonder" -> 1, "women-owned" -> 1, "woman's" -> 1, "wishes" -> 1, "wisely" -> 1, "wireless" -> 1, "winning" -> 1, "winds" -> 1, "Win" -> 1, "wild" -> 1, "whose" -> 1, "whom" -> 1, "white" -> 1, "whistle" -> 1, "While" -> 1, "wherever" -> 1, "what's" -> 1, "What" -> 1, "wetlands" -> 1, "went" -> 1, "wellness" -> 1, "well-being" -> 1, "welcoming" -> 1, "welcomed" -> 1, "weekend" -> 1, "week" -> 1, "Web" -> 1, "weatherization" -> 1, "weather" -> 1, "weary" -> 1, "wave" -> 1, "watchdog" -> 1, "watch" -> 1, "wasn't" -> 1, "wars" -> 1, "warrantless" -> 1, "warned" -> 1, "warming" -> 1, "Warmer" -> 1, "warehoused" -> 1, "want–and" -> 1, "Walter" -> 1, "walls" -> 1, "walking" -> 1, "walk" -> 1, "waiting" -> 1, "waited" -> 1, "vote—to" -> 1, "votes" -> 1, "voter-verified" -> 1, "volunteers" -> 1, "voluntarily" -> 1, "volatile" -> 1, "voices" -> 1, "visit" -> 1, "visions" -> 1, "visionary" -> 1, "visas" -> 1, "Violence" -> 1, "villages" -> 1, "vii" -> 1, "vigorous" -> 1, "views" -> 1, "viewpoints" -> 1, "view" -> 1, "viable" -> 1, "viability" -> 1, "vi" -> 1, "verify" -> 1, "verification" -> 1, "verifiably" -> 1, "Venezuela" -> 1, "veil" -> 1, "vastly" -> 1, "vanquished" -> 1, "valued" -> 1, "Valley" -> 1, "vaccines" -> 1, "vacant" -> 1, "(v)" -> 1, "Use" -> 1, "urgently" -> 1, "urge" -> 1, "update" -> 1, "untold" -> 1, "until" -> 1, "unstable" -> 1, "unsecured" -> 1, "unsafe" -> 1, "unrivaled" -> 1, "unrealistic" -> 1, "unquestionable" -> 1, "unpaid" -> 1, "unnecessary" -> 1, "unlocking" -> 1, "unlimited" -> 1, "Unlike" -> 1, "Universities" -> 1, "universities" -> 1, "uniting" -> 1, "unites" -> 1, "unite" -> 1, "unit" -> 1, "uniquely" -> 1, "unintended" -> 1, "uninsured" -> 1, "unilaterally" -> 1, "unilateral" -> 1, "uniforms" -> 1, "Uniformed" -> 1, "unified" -> 1, "UNFPA" -> 1, "Unfortunately" -> 1, "undivided" -> 1, "undetected" -> 1, "understanding" -> 1, "underpins" -> 1, "underpayments" -> 1, "undermining" -> 1, "underemployment" -> 1, "under-employed" -> 1, "undercut" -> 1, "Under" -> 1, "undemocratic" -> 1, "unconstitutional" -> 1, "unconditional" -> 1, "unchecked" -> 1, "uncertain" -> 1, "uncensored" -> 1, "unavailable" -> 1, "unaffordable" -> 1, "unacceptable" -> 1, "ultimate" -> 1, "Ukraine" -> 1, "two-front" -> 1, "turned" -> 1, "Turkey" -> 1, "turbines" -> 1, "tuberculosis" -> 1, "trustworthy" -> 1, "Trust" -> 1, "Truman" -> 1, "trucks" -> 1, "tropical" -> 1, "Troops" -> 1, "tries" -> 1, "Tribal" -> 1, "trial" -> 1, "trend" -> 1, "tremendous" -> 1, "treating" -> 1, "treatable" -> 1, "treasures—such" -> 1, "treasures" -> 1, "travelers" -> 1, "Traumatic" -> 1, "trapped" -> 1, "transparent" -> 1, "transnational" -> 1, "translators" -> 1, "translate" -> 1, "transit" -> 1, "transforming" -> 1, "transformative" -> 1, "transform" -> 1, "transferred" -> 1, "transcontinental" -> 1, "Transatlantic" -> 1, "trained" -> 1, "trailers" -> 1, "tragically" -> 1, "tragedy" -> 1, "trafficking—both" -> 1, "trafficking–through" -> 1, "Trafficking" -> 1, "traffickers" -> 1, "traditions–including" -> 1, "traditionally" -> 1, "tradition" -> 1, "trading" -> 1, "tracking" -> 1, "track" -> 1, "toys" -> 1, "toxins" -> 1, "toughen" -> 1, "tortured" -> 1, "tornadoes" -> 1, "top-down" -> 1, "took" -> 1, "told" -> 1, "Title" -> 1, "tired" -> 1, "time-honored" -> 1, "Ties" -> 1, "tied" -> 1, "Tibetans" -> 1, "thumbs" -> 1, "thrust" -> 1, "throwing" -> 1, "Throughout" -> 1, "thriving" -> 1, "threatens" -> 1, "threaten" -> 1, "thorough" -> 1, "Thomas" -> 1, "thirteen" -> 1, "third" -> 1, "thinking" -> 1, "things" -> 1, "thing" -> 1, "thereafter" -> 1, "themes" -> 1, "Thankfully" -> 1, "Thailand" -> 1, "testing" -> 1, "Test" -> 1, "terrorists–one" -> 1, "territory" -> 1, "territorial" -> 1, "terrible" -> 1, "terms" -> 1, "tens" -> 1, "Tennessee" -> 1, "temples" -> 1, "temperatures" -> 1, "Teddy" -> 1, "technology-rich" -> 1, "technologies—such" -> 1, "technological" -> 1, "tear" -> 1, "teamwork" -> 1, "Teams" -> 1, "teaching" -> 1, "teacher" -> 1, "tax-paying" -> 1, "taught" -> 1, "Tasks" -> 1, "targets" -> 1, "targeted" -> 1, "target" -> 1, "tap" -> 1, "tangible" -> 1, "talks" -> 1, "talking" -> 1, "Taliban" -> 1, "Taking" -> 1, "takes" -> 1, "tailspin" -> 1, "tailored" -> 1, "tag" -> 1, "tactics" -> 1, "tackle" -> 1, "table–to" -> 1, "TAA's" -> 1, "System" -> 1, "synagogues" -> 1, "swept" -> 1, "sweatshop" -> 1, "Sustained" -> 1, "suspension" -> 1, "Suspending" -> 1, "suspects" -> 1, "suspected" -> 1, "Susan" -> 1, "survivors" -> 1, "surveillance" -> 1, "surroundings" -> 1, "surge" -> 1, "Supreme" -> 1, "Supporting" -> 1, "suppliers" -> 1, "supplementing" -> 1, "summoned" -> 1, "summon" -> 1, "summits" -> 1, "sum" -> 1, "successive" -> 1, "succeed–in" -> 1, "succeeding" -> 1, "suburbs" -> 1, "substitute" -> 1, "sub-prime" -> 1, "subjecting" -> 1, "subject" -> 1, "struggled" -> 1, "structures" -> 1, "structure" -> 1, "struck" -> 1, "strongest" -> 1, "Stronger" -> 1, "Strong" -> 1, "stripe" -> 1, "striking" -> 1, "strides" -> 1, "Stress" -> 1, "strengths" -> 1, "strengthens" -> 1, "Strengthen" -> 1, "street" -> 1, "streamlined" -> 1, "streamline" -> 1, "Straits" -> 1, "strained" -> 1, "strain" -> 1, "straight" -> 1, "stories" -> 1, "store" -> 1, "stop-loss" -> 1, "Stop" -> 1, "stirred" -> 1, "stifling" -> 1, "stifle–but" -> 1, "stewards" -> 1, "stepping-stone" -> 1, "stemming" -> 1, "steady" -> 1, "steadily" -> 1, "steadfastly" -> 1, "stays" -> 1, "station" -> 1, "state-of-the-art" -> 1, "statements" -> 1, "startup" -> 1, "starts" -> 1, "started" -> 1, "START" -> 1, "stark" -> 1, "Stand" -> 1, "staffing" -> 1, "staff" -> 1, "stability–to" -> 1, "Stability" -> 1, "St." -> 1, "squeezing" -> 1, "squandered" -> 1, "spy" -> 1, "Spread" -> 1, "spouses" -> 1, "spin" -> 1, "spending–it" -> 1, "speeds" -> 1, "speed" -> 1, "speculators" -> 1, "specific" -> 1, "species" -> 1, "specialists" -> 1, "Speaking" -> 1, "Speaker" -> 1, "spawn" -> 1, "Spain" -> 1, "space" -> 1, "Soviet" -> 1, "Sovereignty" -> 1, "sovereign" -> 1, "Southern" -> 1, "Southeast" -> 1, "sources" -> 1, "sounded" -> 1, "sought" -> 1, "sorely" -> 1, "Sometimes" -> 1, "sometimes" -> 1, "someone" -> 1, "solved" -> 1, "solicit" -> 1, "soldiers" -> 1, "soil" -> 1, "smuggling" -> 1, "smarter" -> 1, "Smart" -> 1, "slavery" -> 1, "skyrocketing" -> 1, "sixth" -> 1, "sixteen" -> 1, "six-party" -> 1, "situations" -> 1, "sit" -> 1, "simplify" -> 1, "Similarly" -> 1, "similar" -> 1, "significantly" -> 1, "significance" -> 1, "signed" -> 1, "signal" -> 1, "sign" -> 1, "sidelines" -> 1, "sicker" -> 1, "sick" -> 1, "shuts" -> 1, "shut" -> 1, "Shultz" -> 1, "shows" -> 1, "shouldn't" -> 1, "shortfalls" -> 1, "short-change" -> 1, "short" -> 1, "shores" -> 1, "shipped" -> 1, "shine" -> 1, "shelters" -> 1, "shareholders" -> 1, "Shared" -> 1, "shaping" -> 1, "shame—and" -> 1, "shameful" -> 1, "shame" -> 1, "shadows" -> 1, "shacks" -> 1, "sexism" -> 1, "several" -> 1, "settle" -> 1, "sets" -> 1, "servicemember" -> 1, "service-learning" -> 1, "serves" -> 1, "Serve" -> 1, "serious" -> 1, "September" -> 1, "separation" -> 1, "separate" -> 1, "Seniors" -> 1, "senior" -> 1, "sending" -> 1, "Senators" -> 1, "Senate" -> 1, "self-interest" -> 1, "self-governing" -> 1, "self-governance" -> 1, "self-employed" -> 1, "select" -> 1, "Seizing" -> 1, "seize" -> 1, "seeks" -> 1, "seeing" -> 1, "security–and" -> 1, "securing" -> 1, "securely" -> 1, "secured" -> 1, "Secure" -> 1, "secular" -> 1, "Secretary" -> 1, "Secretariat's" -> 1, "Second" -> 1, "seat" -> 1, "searchable" -> 1, "sea" -> 1, "screening" -> 1, "screened" -> 1, "screen" -> 1, "scourge" -> 1, "score" -> 1, "sclerosis" -> 1, "scientists" -> 1, "Sciences" -> 1, "schools–because" -> 1, "scholarships" -> 1, "scapegoats" -> 1, "scales" -> 1, "say" -> 1, "saw" -> 1, "Savings" -> 1, "Saving" -> 1, "satellites" -> 1, "sat" -> 1, "sandwich" -> 1, "sanctuary" -> 1, "same-sex" -> 1, "Sam" -> 1, "saga" -> 1, "Safety" -> 1, "safeguards" -> 1, "sacrificing" -> 1, "sacrifices" -> 1, "sacrificed" -> 1, "Ryan" -> 1, "Russian" -> 1, "rushing" -> 1, "rushed" -> 1, "rules-based" -> 1, "rug" -> 1, "row" -> 1, "roundtables" -> 1, "Round" -> 1, "rots" -> 1, "Rosa" -> 1, "room" -> 1, "rooftops" -> 1, "rolls" -> 1, "rolling" -> 1, "rogue" -> 1, "Rodham" -> 1, "risk-takers" -> 1, "risks" -> 1, "risen" -> 1, "rigors" -> 1, "Right-to-Work" -> 1, "rights-respecting" -> 1, "rigged" -> 1, "ride" -> 1, "Rico's" -> 1, "riches" -> 1, "richer" -> 1, "Richards" -> 1, "rewarded" -> 1, "revolving" -> 1, "Revitalizing" -> 1, "revitalizing" -> 1, "revitalized" -> 1, "Revitalize" -> 1, "revitalize" -> 1, "revitalization" -> 1, "revisit" -> 1, "reviews" -> 1, "Review" -> 1, "revenue" -> 1, "retrain" -> 1, "retooling" -> 1, "Retirement" -> 1, "retirees" -> 1, "retired" -> 1, "retire" -> 1, "retains" -> 1, "Retain" -> 1, "retain" -> 1, "resurgent" -> 1, "resurgence" -> 1, "results-oriented" -> 1, "restrictions–from" -> 1, "Restoring" -> 1, "restoration" -> 1, "respecting" -> 1, "respectful" -> 1, "Respect" -> 1, "Resources" -> 1, "resourcefulness" -> 1, "resolves" -> 1, "resolved" -> 1, "Resolution" -> 1, "resolution" -> 1, "resilient" -> 1, "residual" -> 1, "reside" -> 1, "reservists" -> 1, "Reserve" -> 1, "rescue" -> 1, "requirements" -> 1, "required" -> 1, "reputation" -> 1, "Republicans" -> 1, "repressive" -> 1, "Representatives" -> 1, "representative" -> 1, "representation" -> 1, "represent" -> 1, "reports" -> 1, "replenish" -> 1, "replaced" -> 1, "replace" -> 1, "repair" -> 1, "repaid" -> 1, "Reorganization" -> 1, "rental" -> 1, "rent" -> 1, "renounces" -> 1, "RENEWING" -> 1, "remittances" -> 1, "remaining" -> 1, "rely" -> 1, "relieve" -> 1, "Relief" -> 1, "relentless" -> 1, "releasing" -> 1, "relatives" -> 1, "rejects" -> 1, "reinvigoration" -> 1, "Reinvestment" -> 1, "reinstating" -> 1, "reinstate" -> 1, "reinforced" -> 1, "rehabilitation" -> 1, "Regulation" -> 1, "regularly" -> 1, "regularity" -> 1, "registration" -> 1, "register" -> 1, "region–a" -> 1, "regards" -> 1, "regarding" -> 1, "refusing" -> 1, "refuse" -> 1, "refundable" -> 1, "refrain" -> 1, "Reforming" -> 1, "reforming" -> 1, "reformers" -> 1, "refocusing" -> 1, "reflective" -> 1, "refit" -> 1, "reexamine" -> 1, "re-equip" -> 1, "reentry" -> 1, "reengage" -> 1, "Reed" -> 1, "reductions" -> 1, "reduction" -> 1, "reduces" -> 1, "redeploying" -> 1, "rededicates" -> 1, "rededicate" -> 1, "recurring" -> 1, "Recruitment" -> 1, "recruiting" -> 1, "Recruit" -> 1, "recover" -> 1, "record-breaking" -> 1, "record" -> 1, "Reconstruction" -> 1, "Recommit" -> 1, "recommit" -> 1, "recommendations" -> 1, "Reclaiming" -> 1, "reclaim" -> 1, "reckless" -> 1, "recipe" -> 1, "recidivism" -> 1, "recession" -> 1, "re-center" -> 1, "receives" -> 1, "recall" -> 1, "Rebuilding" -> 1, "Rebuild" -> 1, "rebate" -> 1, "reasserting" -> 1, "reasonably" -> 1, "reasonable" -> 1, "reason" -> 1, "reap" -> 1, "real-time" -> 1, "realized" -> 1, "Real" -> 1, "reaffirms" -> 1, "reaffirm" -> 1, "Readjustment" -> 1, "Readiness" -> 1, "reaching" -> 1, "R&D" -> 1, "Rating" -> 1, "ratifying" -> 1, "ratify" -> 1, "ratification" -> 1, "ratchet" -> 1, "rare" -> 1, "ranked" -> 1, "range" -> 1, "raising" -> 1, "rainfall" -> 1, "railroad" -> 1, "raids" -> 1, "radio" -> 1, "radiation" -> 1, "racial" -> 1, "quick-launch" -> 1, "Quartet" -> 1, "Quality" -> 1, "qualitative" -> 1, "qualification" -> 1, "Quadrennial" -> 1, "pushed" -> 1, "purposeful" -> 1, "purge" -> 1, "purchasing" -> 1, "pump" -> 1, "pull" -> 1, "publishing" -> 1, "publicly-owned" -> 1, "pro-worker" -> 1, "provisions" -> 1, "Provincial" -> 1, "proud" -> 1, "protocols" -> 1, "protest" -> 1, "protective" -> 1, "Protecting" -> 1, "prostitution" -> 1, "prosper" -> 1, "proselytize" -> 1, "proposals" -> 1, "proper" -> 1, "propelled" -> 1, "promotions" -> 1, "Promote" -> 1, "promising" -> 1, "PROMISE" -> 1, "Project-level" -> 1, "project" -> 1, "Prohibition" -> 1, "prohibition" -> 1, "progressing" -> 1, "Program" -> 1, "profiling" -> 1, "Proficient" -> 1, "proficiency" -> 1, "professionalism" -> 1, "productive" -> 1, "Production" -> 1, "product" -> 1, "producing" -> 1, "produces" -> 1, "producers" -> 1, "processes" -> 1, "problem-solving" -> 1, "probable" -> 1, "prizes" -> 1, "privatizing" -> 1, "prison-to-work" -> 1, "prisons" -> 1, "prison" -> 1, "primary" -> 1, "prevents" -> 1, "preventive" -> 1, "Prevention" -> 1, "Preventing" -> 1, "preventing" -> 1, "Prevent" -> 1, "prevail" -> 1, "pre-trained" -> 1, "presumptive" -> 1, "pressed" -> 1, "Presidential" -> 1, "preserving" -> 1, "preservation" -> 1, "presents" -> 1, "presenting" -> 1, "present" -> 1, "preparing" -> 1, "premiums" -> 1, "Pre-K" -> 1, "prejudice" -> 1, "pregnancies" -> 1, "preferences" -> 1, "predatory" -> 1, "predator" -> 1, "preconditions" -> 1, "precious" -> 1, "Preamble" -> 1, "pre" -> 1, "practices–including" -> 1, "Practices" -> 1, "power—to" -> 1, "powers–including" -> 1, "Powers" -> 1, "powerless" -> 1, "Poverty" -> 1, "Postures" -> 1, "Post-Traumatic" -> 1, "postsecondary" -> 1, "post-natal" -> 1, "post-conviction" -> 1, "possess" -> 1, "position" -> 1, "pose" -> 1, "ports" -> 1, "portrayals" -> 1, "portable" -> 1, "port" -> 1, "pork" -> 1, "Population" -> 1, "population" -> 1, "poppy-growing" -> 1, "poorly" -> 1, "poorer" -> 1, "pool" -> 1, "pollution" -> 1, "polluters" -> 1, "polluter" -> 1, "polluted" -> 1, "pollute" -> 1, "polling" -> 1, "Political" -> 1, "policing" -> 1, "policies–many" -> 1, "Policies" -> 1, "poisoning" -> 1, "points" -> 1, "plunge" -> 1, "plug-in" -> 1, "pledge–a" -> 1, "pledges" -> 1, "pledged" -> 1, "playgrounds" -> 1, "played" -> 1, "plant" -> 1, "planning" -> 1, "planners" -> 1, "planet's" -> 1, "plagues" -> 1, "pioneered" -> 1, "pioneer" -> 1, "pilots" -> 1, "piecemeal" -> 1, "pictures" -> 1, "philanthropic" -> 1, "Philadelphia" -> 1, "phase-out" -> 1, "phase-in" -> 1, "perspective" -> 1, "persists" -> 1, "persistent" -> 1, "persistence" -> 1, "persist" -> 1, "perseverance" -> 1, "Perry" -> 1, "perpetuity" -> 1, "Permanent" -> 1, "periodic" -> 1, "performing" -> 1, "performed" -> 1, "performance" -> 1, "perfection" -> 1, "Perfect" -> 1, "perceived" -> 1, "people–lies" -> 1, "people–in" -> 1, "people–and" -> 1, "peoples" -> 1, "People" -> 1, "Pennsylvania" -> 1, "peninsula" -> 1, "Pell" -> 1, "peers" -> 1, "Peacekeeping" -> 1, "paycheck" -> 1, "pay-as-you-go" -> 1, "patterns" -> 1, "Patriot" -> 1, "patriot" -> 1, "patient" -> 1, "patience" -> 1, "paternity" -> 1, "passing" -> 1, "passengers" -> 1, "passenger" -> 1, "passage" -> 1, "Pashtun" -> 1, "partisanship" -> 1, "participatory" -> 1, "participating" -> 1, "participated" -> 1, "Parks" -> 1, "Parkinson's" -> 1, "parity" -> 1, "parent" -> 1, "paper" -> 1, "Palestinians" -> 1, "pages" -> 1, "packages" -> 1, "overturning" -> 1, "overturn" -> 1, "overtime" -> 1, "overpayments" -> 1, "overcome" -> 1, "outweighs" -> 1, "outsourced" -> 1, "outreach" -> 1, "outlets" -> 1, "out-educate" -> 1, "out-compete" -> 1, "outcomes" -> 1, "outcome" -> 1, "original" -> 1, "organs" -> 1, "organization" -> 1, "orders" -> 1, "Or" -> 1, "option" -> 1, "optimism" -> 1, "optimal" -> 1, "opt" -> 1, "oppressed" -> 1, "opposition" -> 1, "opposite" -> 1, "opportunity–access" -> 1, "opinions" -> 1, "operatives" -> 1, "operational" -> 1, "operating" -> 1, "opens" -> 1, "openly" -> 1, "Open" -> 1, "OPEC" -> 1, "Only" -> 1, "Online" -> 1, "Ongoing" -> 1, "one–who" -> 1, "old" -> 1, "offset" -> 1, "Officer" -> 1, "Office" -> 1, "office" -> 1, "offered" -> 1, "occurring" -> 1, "occupy" -> 1, "occupations" -> 1, "Occupational" -> 1, "occasional" -> 1, "obtained" -> 1, "obtain" -> 1, "obstruction" -> 1, "obstruct" -> 1, "observed" -> 1, "objectively" -> 1, "objectionable" -> 1, "obesity" -> 1, "nutrition" -> 1, "nurtured" -> 1, "nurture" -> 1, "nursing" -> 1, "Nunn" -> 1, "numbers" -> 1, "nullify" -> 1, "nuisance" -> 1, "nuclear-free" -> 1, "nuclear-armed" -> 1, "NPT" -> 1, "notion" -> 1, "nothing" -> 1, "Not" -> 1, "normalizing" -> 1, "nor" -> 1, "nonviolent" -> 1, "non-violent" -> 1, "non-traditional" -> 1, "non-tariff" -> 1, "non-profit" -> 1, "non-home-based" -> 1, "Nonetheless" -> 1, "non-emergency" -> 1, "none" -> 1, "non-discrimination" -> 1, "non-democratic" -> 1, "nominee" -> 1, "no-bid" -> 1, "NMB's" -> 1, "NLRB's" -> 1, "nine" -> 1, "Nigeria" -> 1, "nexus" -> 1, "news" -> 1, "Never" -> 1, "neutral" -> 1, "Network" -> 1, "negotiators" -> 1, "negotiating" -> 1, "neglect" -> 1, "Needed" -> 1, "necessities" -> 1, "nature" -> 1, "naturalization" -> 1, "Natural" -> 1, "NATO–including" -> 1, "nationwide" -> 1, "Nation's" -> 1, "Nation" -> 1, "narco-terrorism–or" -> 1, "name" -> 1, "Muslims" -> 1, "Muslim-Americans" -> 1, "municipal" -> 1, "multiple" -> 1, "multi-ethnic" -> 1, "moving" -> 1, "mounting" -> 1, "Mountain" -> 1, "mountain" -> 1, "mother" -> 1, "Most" -> 1, "mosques" -> 1, "Moreover" -> 1, "morally" -> 1, "month" -> 1, "monstrosity" -> 1, "moneyed" -> 1, "momentum" -> 1, "moments" -> 1, "moderation" -> 1, "moderates" -> 1, "models" -> 1, "mixed-income" -> 1, "misunderstanding" -> 1, "Mississippi" -> 1, "missing–missing" -> 1, "missed" -> 1, "misinformed" -> 1, "misclassifying" -> 1, "minutes" -> 1, "Minorities" -> 1, "mining" -> 1, "Millennium" -> 1, "mile" -> 1, "migrant-sending" -> 1, "micro-loans" -> 1, "microcredit" -> 1, "Michigan" -> 1, "Metropolitan" -> 1, "methodologies" -> 1, "method" -> 1, "message" -> 1, "mercy" -> 1, "mentoring" -> 1, "memory" -> 1, "Memorial" -> 1, "memorandum" -> 1, "Meeting" -> 1, "medicines" -> 1, "medicine" -> 1, "Medicare's" -> 1, "Medical" -> 1, "Mediation" -> 1, "meant" -> 1, "mean" -> 1, "maternity" -> 1, "Material" -> 1, "matching" -> 1, "Mass" -> 1, "Martin" -> 1, "married" -> 1, "Marriage" -> 1, "market's" -> 1, "marketplace" -> 1, "Marines" -> 1, "manufacture" -> 1, "Manhattan" -> 1, "mandate" -> 1, "managing" -> 1, "Management" -> 1, "managed" -> 1, "manage" -> 1, "Make" -> 1, "maintenance" -> 1, "Maintaining" -> 1, "maintaining" -> 1, "maintained" -> 1, "Main" -> 1, "mail" -> 1, "macroeconomic" -> 1, "machines" -> 1, "Luther" -> 1, "low-interest" -> 1, "lowest" -> 1, "Lower" -> 1, "low-carbon" -> 1, "low" -> 1, "loved" -> 1, "loud" -> 1, "Loss" -> 1, "loophole" -> 1, "looks" -> 1, "looked" -> 1, "long-time" -> 1, "longstanding" -> 1, "longer-term" -> 1, "location" -> 1, "Local" -> 1, "loan" -> 1, "little" -> 1, "literacy" -> 1, "lists" -> 1, "linked" -> 1, "Limited" -> 1, "Lilly" -> 1, "lifting" -> 1, "lifted" -> 1, "Lift" -> 1, "lifestyles" -> 1, "life-saving" -> 1, "lies" -> 1, "license" -> 1, "library" -> 1, "Liberties" -> 1, "liberalization" -> 1, "liberal" -> 1, "letting" -> 1, "letters" -> 1, "letter" -> 1, "lethal" -> 1, "lesson" -> 1, "lender" -> 1, "legitimate" -> 1, "legislatures" -> 1, "legislative" -> 1, "legendary" -> 1, "legally" -> 1, "Left" -> 1, "Ledbetter" -> 1, "leaves" -> 1, "Leave" -> 1, "Learners" -> 1, "Learner" -> 1, "leapfrog" -> 1, "lead-safe" -> 1, "leader" -> 1, "laying" -> 1, "lay" -> 1, "lax" -> 1, "Laws" -> 1, "Law" -> 1, "launching" -> 1, "launch" -> 1, "largest" -> 1, "large-scale" -> 1, "largely" -> 1, "Lands" -> 1, "Lakes" -> 1, "ladder" -> 1, "lacking" -> 1, "lack" -> 1, "labor-management" -> 1, "labeling" -> 1, "Korea's" -> 1, "knows" -> 1, "knowledge-based" -> 1, "know-how" -> 1, "Kissinger" -> 1, "King" -> 1, "kinds" -> 1, "killing" -> 1, "kids" -> 1, "kept" -> 1, "Keeping" -> 1, "Karachi" -> 1, "Kandahar" -> 1, "jumpstarting" -> 1, "Judiciary–and" -> 1, "Judiciary" -> 1, "judiciaries" -> 1, "judicial" -> 1, "Jr." -> 1, "joint" -> 1, "joining" -> 1, "job-holders" -> 1, "Jewish" -> 1, "jeopardy" -> 1, "Jefferson–self-interest" -> 1, "Japan" -> 1, "jail" -> 1, "IX" -> 1, "IV" -> 1, "iv" -> 1, "IT" -> 1, "Israel's" -> 1, "Israelis" -> 1, "Israeli-Palestinian" -> 1, "isolation" -> 1, "isolating" -> 1, "Islanders" -> 1, "Islander" -> 1, "Island" -> 1, "island" -> 1, "Islam" -> 1, "Irish" -> 1, "Iraqi" -> 1, "Iowa" -> 1, "IOU's" -> 1, "involve" -> 1, "invited" -> 1, "invite" -> 1, "invests" -> 1, "Investing" -> 1, "investigate" -> 1, "invested" -> 1, "Invest" -> 1, "intimidation" -> 1, "intervention" -> 1, "intertwined" -> 1, "interoperable" -> 1, "internships" -> 1, "Internet's" -> 1, "internet" -> 1, "International" -> 1, "internally" -> 1, "interim" -> 1, "interference" -> 1, "interest–above" -> 1, "interdict" -> 1, "intent" -> 1, "intend" -> 1, "integrated" -> 1, "integrate" -> 1, "integral" -> 1, "insurgents" -> 1, "insurers" -> 1, "insurer" -> 1, "Insurance" -> 1, "instruments" -> 1, "instruct" -> 1, "institutionalize" -> 1, "institutional" -> 1, "institute" -> 1, "instincts" -> 1, "instigated" -> 1, "install" -> 1, "inspiring" -> 1, "inspires" -> 1, "inspirational" -> 1, "insists" -> 1, "insistent" -> 1, "insist" -> 1, "input" -> 1, "Innovation" -> 1, "innovate" -> 1, "inner-cities" -> 1, "Injury" -> 1, "injuries" -> 1, "Initiative" -> 1, "initiative" -> 1, "initial" -> 1, "ingredient" -> 1, "infrastructures" -> 1, "informed" -> 1, "Information" -> 1, "inflict" -> 1, "inflated" -> 1, "infectious" -> 1, "infected" -> 1, "inequalities" -> 1, "inept" -> 1, "industries-risk" -> 1, "industrialized" -> 1, "industrial" -> 1, "individuals" -> 1, "individualism" -> 1, "indiscriminate" -> 1, "Independents" -> 1, "incumbent" -> 1, "Increasing" -> 1, "increases" -> 1, "incorporated" -> 1, "inconsistent" -> 1, "incompetent" -> 1, "Incomes" -> 1, "incentivize" -> 1, "incentive" -> 1, "inadequate" -> 1, "inaction" -> 1, "impunity" -> 1, "Improving" -> 1, "Improve" -> 1, "import" -> 1, "Implementing" -> 1, "impacts" -> 1, "imminently" -> 1, "immeasurably" -> 1, "imagine" -> 1, "imagination" -> 1, "ILO's" -> 1, "illusions" -> 1, "illiteracy" -> 1, "ill-considered" -> 1, "ill" -> 1, "III" -> 1, "iii" -> 1, "II" -> 1, "ii" -> 1, "ignored" -> 1, "ideologues" -> 1, "ideological" -> 1, "identity" -> 1, "identification" -> 1, "ideals" -> 1, "IAEA-controlled" -> 1, "I" -> 1, "(i)" -> 1, "hybrids" -> 1, "hurts" -> 1, "hurt" -> 1, "hunting" -> 1, "hunters" -> 1, "hunt" -> 1, "hungry" -> 1, "hung" -> 1, "hundreds" -> 1, "Humanity" -> 1, "Humanities" -> 1, "huge" -> 1, "However" -> 1, "however" -> 1, "How" -> 1, "house" -> 1, "hour" -> 1, "hostility" -> 1, "host" -> 1, "hospitals" -> 1, "horrific" -> 1, "hopes" -> 1, "hopelessness" -> 1, "hopefully" -> 1, "Hoover" -> 1, "Homestead" -> 1, "homeowner" -> 1, "homeless" -> 1, "Homebuyers" -> 1, "hole" -> 1, "hoc" -> 1, "HIV-positive" -> 1, "Historically" -> 1, "Hispanic" -> 1, "hiring" -> 1, "hire" -> 1, "Hillary" -> 1, "highway" -> 1, "high-value-added" -> 1, "highspeed" -> 1, "high-speed" -> 1, "high-schoolers" -> 1, "high-risk" -> 1, "high-priced" -> 1, "high-paying" -> 1, "Higher" -> 1, "high-demand" -> 1, "Hezbollah" -> 1, "hesitate" -> 1, "heroically" -> 1, "heroic" -> 1, "heroes" -> 1, "hero" -> 1, "heritage" -> 1, "hereby" -> 1, "Here" -> 1, "her" -> 1, "Henry" -> 1, "Help" -> 1, "held" -> 1, "hearts" -> 1, "heart" -> 1, "hear" -> 1, "healthcare" -> 1, "health-care" -> 1, "headlines–and" -> 1, "head" -> 1, "Hawaiians" -> 1, "havens" -> 1, "Hate" -> 1, "hate" -> 1, "harsh" -> 1, "Harry" -> 1, "harm's" -> 1, "Harlem" -> 1, "hard—in" -> 1, "hardworking" -> 1, "hardest" -> 1, "happens" -> 1, "happen" -> 1, "hands—and" -> 1, "hampers" -> 1, "Hamilton" -> 1, "halls" -> 1, "hall" -> 1, "Half" -> 1, "Haiti" -> 1, "habitats" -> 1, "habeas" -> 1, "guns" -> 1, "gun" -> 1, "guise" -> 1, "guidelines" -> 1, "guided" -> 1, "guard" -> 1, "Guantanamo" -> 1, "Group" -> 1, "grounds" -> 1, "grounded" -> 1, "grew" -> 1, "greener" -> 1, "green-collar" -> 1, "Green" -> 1, "grave" -> 1, "gratitude" -> 1, "grassroots" -> 1, "grasslands" -> 1, "grandmother" -> 1, "grandchildren" -> 1, "graduation" -> 1, "Governors" -> 1, "governors" -> 1, "government—in" -> 1, "government-to-government" -> 1, "government-funded" -> 1, "Governance" -> 1, "God-given" -> 1, "Goals" -> 1, "globe" -> 1, "glimpse" -> 1, "glass" -> 1, "gift" -> 1, "GI" -> 1, "Getting" -> 1, "Germany" -> 1, "geothermal" -> 1, "Georgia" -> 1, "generating" -> 1, "generated" -> 1, "gave" -> 1, "gatherings" -> 1, "Gas" -> 1, "garner" -> 1, "games" -> 1, "gain" -> 1, "gag" -> 1, "G-8—so" -> 1, "futures" -> 1, "Furthermore" -> 1, "funds" -> 1, "funded" -> 1, "fundamentally" -> 1, "fundamentalist" -> 1, "functioning" -> 1, "fuel-efficient" -> 1, "frontiers" -> 1, "Frontier" -> 1, "Friday" -> 1, "frequently" -> 1, "freer" -> 1, "freedoms" -> 1, "Freedom" -> 1, "fraudulent" -> 1, "fraud" -> 1, "fragility" -> 1, "four-dollar-a-gallon" -> 1, "founding" -> 1, "founded" -> 1, "Foundation" -> 1, "fought" -> 1, "Forum" -> 1, "Forty" -> 1, "Forms" -> 1, "forgotten" -> 1, "forgiveness" -> 1, "forgetting" -> 1, "forever–for" -> 1, "foresight" -> 1, "foresees" -> 1, "foreclosures" -> 1, "following" -> 1, "follow" -> 1, "foes" -> 1, "focuses" -> 1, "flowing" -> 1, "floodwaters" -> 1, "flood" -> 1, "flexible" -> 1, "flag" -> 1, "fixing" -> 1, "fixed" -> 1, "Fissile" -> 1, "fishing" -> 1, "Fiscal" -> 1, "firm" -> 1, "Firearms" -> 1, "finishing" -> 1, "finish" -> 1, "fine" -> 1, "finding" -> 1, "Financial" -> 1, "finance" -> 1, "filling" -> 1, "fill" -> 1, "Filipino" -> 1, "filings" -> 1, "fifteen" -> 1, "fields" -> 1, "field" -> 1, "fiber" -> 1, "fewer" -> 1, "fester" -> 1, "fellow" -> 1, "feel" -> 1, "feed" -> 1, "federal-local" -> 1, "fear" -> 1, "favor" -> 1, "fatten" -> 1, "Fatherhood" -> 1, "fatherhood" -> 1, "father" -> 1, "fast-tracked" -> 1, "fast-track" -> 1, "faster" -> 1, "fast" -> 1, "fascism" -> 1, "far-reaching" -> 1, "far-off" -> 1, "farmers–just" -> 1, "fare" -> 1, "famous" -> 1, "falls" -> 1, "faiths" -> 1, "faithful" -> 1, "Faith-based" -> 1, "Fairness" -> 1, "failure" -> 1, "fail" -> 1, "factory" -> 1, "factories" -> 1, "facing" -> 1, "faces" -> 1, "extremely" -> 1, "extra" -> 1, "Extension" -> 1, "extends" -> 1, "expression" -> 1, "exposed" -> 1, "exporting" -> 1, "exporters" -> 1, "exploration" -> 1, "exploitative" -> 1, "experiment" -> 1, "experienced" -> 1, "expenses" -> 1, "expending" -> 1, "expectations" -> 1, "expectant" -> 1, "expectancy" -> 1, "expansions" -> 1, "expands" -> 1, "Expand" -> 1, "ex-offender" -> 1, "exists" -> 1, "exempt" -> 1, "Executive" -> 1, "excessive" -> 1, "excellence" -> 1, "excel" -> 1, "evils" -> 1, "everything" -> 1, "everyone's" -> 1, "Everglades" -> 1, "events" -> 1, "evaluate" -> 1, "ethnicity" -> 1, "ethnic" -> 1, "Ethical" -> 1, "ethic" -> 1, "ethanol" -> 1, "estimated" -> 1, "establishes" -> 1, "established" -> 1, "Establish" -> 1, "essence" -> 1, "era–have" -> 1, "Eradicating" -> 1, "Era" -> 1, "equity" -> 1, "equitably" -> 1, "equipping" -> 1, "equally" -> 1, "epochal" -> 1, "epidemic" -> 1, "epicenters" -> 1, "envy" -> 1, "environmentally-friendly" -> 1, "Environmental" -> 1, "enumerated" -> 1, "entry" -> 1, "Entrepreneurship" -> 1, "entrepreneurial" -> 1, "entities" -> 1, "entering" -> 1, "Ensuring" -> 1, "ensured" -> 1, "enroll" -> 1, "enrichment" -> 1, "enrich" -> 1, "enhancing" -> 1, "enhanced" -> 1, "engines" -> 1, "engine" -> 1, "Enforcement" -> 1, "energy-focused" -> 1, "energetic" -> 1, "endemic" -> 1, "endanger" -> 1, "Encouraging" -> 1, "encouraging" -> 1, "encouragement" -> 1, "enables" -> 1, "Empowering" -> 1, "employer" -> 1, "Employee" -> 1, "employee" -> 1, "employ" -> 1, "emphasize" -> 1, "emphasis" -> 1, "empathy" -> 1, "emotional" -> 1, "emitting" -> 1, "emitter" -> 1, "Emerging" -> 1, "emergence" -> 1, "emerged" -> 1, "embryonic" -> 1, "embraced" -> 1, "embrace" -> 1, "embassy" -> 1, "emanate" -> 1, "else" -> 1, "Elko" -> 1, "Elimination" -> 1, "eliminates" -> 1, "elevated" -> 1, "elevate" -> 1, "elements" -> 1, "element" -> 1, "electrifying" -> 1, "electricity" -> 1, "eighteen" -> 1, "e.g" -> 1, "efficiently" -> 1, "effects" -> 1, "educational" -> 1, "educated" -> 1, "educate" -> 1, "economy-wide" -> 1, "Economic" -> 1, "easily" -> 1, "earth's" -> 1, "earthquakes" -> 1, "earth" -> 1, "earns" -> 1, "earning" -> 1, "earned" -> 1, "earmarks" -> 1, "Early" -> 1, "eager" -> 1, "Each" -> 1, "dysfunctional" -> 1, "dynamism" -> 1, "dynamic" -> 1, "duly" -> 1, "due" -> 1, "dual" -> 1, "drugs" -> 1, "dropout" -> 1, "drop-out" -> 1, "drop" -> 1, "drones–to" -> 1, "driving" -> 1, "driven" -> 1, "drill" -> 1, "dramatic" -> 1, "doorstep" -> 1, "door" -> 1, "donut" -> 1, "dominated" -> 1, "doling" -> 1, "Doing" -> 1, "Doha" -> 1, "doesn't" -> 1, "Do" -> 1, "DNA" -> 1, "divisive" -> 1, "divides" -> 1, "divide" -> 1, "diversion" -> 1, "District" -> 1, "district" -> 1, "distribution" -> 1, "distance" -> 1, "disrespect" -> 1, "disproportionately" -> 1, "displace" -> 1, "disparate" -> 1, "disorders" -> 1, "Disorder" -> 1, "dismissed" -> 1, "dismay" -> 1, "dismantle" -> 1, "dislocation" -> 1, "disgrace" -> 1, "disenfranchise" -> 1, "discuss" -> 1, "discriminatory" -> 1, "Discrimination" -> 1, "discredited" -> 1, "discovery" -> 1, "disclosure" -> 1, "disciplines" -> 1, "discharged" -> 1, "discarded" -> 1, "disappointed" -> 1, "disappearance" -> 1, "disagree" -> 1, "disaggregation" -> 1, "disadvantage" -> 1, "Director" -> 1, "directly" -> 1, "directions—by" -> 1, "Diplomacy" -> 1, "diminish" -> 1, "dimensions" -> 1, "diligence" -> 1, "dignified" -> 1, "digital" -> 1, "difficulties" -> 1, "differing" -> 1, "differences" -> 1, "difference" -> 1, "die" -> 1, "dictators" -> 1, "dichotomy" -> 1, "diabetes" -> 1, "Develop" -> 1, "devastation" -> 1, "deterrent" -> 1, "determined" -> 1, "determination" -> 1, "detained" -> 1, "detain" -> 1, "destructive" -> 1, "Destruction" -> 1, "destroyed" -> 1, "destinies" -> 1, "Despite" -> 1, "despite" -> 1, "designing" -> 1, "deserves" -> 1, "Depression" -> 1, "depoliticize" -> 1, "departments" -> 1, "Department's" -> 1, "De-Nuclearize" -> 1, "denials" -> 1, "denial" -> 1, "demonstrate" -> 1, "Democracies" -> 1, "Demeaning" -> 1, "demanding" -> 1, "Delta" -> 1, "delivery" -> 1, "delivers" -> 1, "deforestation" -> 1, "define" -> 1, "deficits" -> 1, "defendants" -> 1, "Defeating" -> 1, "defeating" -> 1, "deepest" -> 1, "deeper" -> 1, "deepening" -> 1, "Deepen" -> 1, "deep" -> 1, "deeds" -> 1, "deed" -> 1, "dedicating" -> 1, "dedicated" -> 1, "dedicate" -> 1, "decrease" -> 1, "declining" -> 1, "Declassification" -> 1, "declare" -> 1, "deck" -> 1, "decision" -> 1, "decide" -> 1, "decent" -> 1, "decency" -> 1, "debates" -> 1, "debacle" -> 1, "deal" -> 1, "dead" -> 1, "date" -> 1, "dams" -> 1, "dampen" -> 1, "Cyprus" -> 1, "cycle" -> 1, "Cyber-Security" -> 1, "cyber-infrastructure" -> 1, "cutting-edge" -> 1, "Customs" -> 1, "curry" -> 1, "curricula" -> 1, "Currently" -> 1, "currently" -> 1, "currency" -> 1, "curb" -> 1, "culturally" -> 1, "Cuban" -> 1, "crossroads" -> 1, "cross-border" -> 1, "cross" -> 1, "crop" -> 1, "crisis–particularly" -> 1, "crises" -> 1, "crippling" -> 1, "criminals" -> 1, "Criminal" -> 1, "criminal" -> 1, "Crimes" -> 1, "credits" -> 1, "creators" -> 1, "creative" -> 1, "Creating" -> 1, "crafts" -> 1, "crafted" -> 1, "craft" -> 1, "cracks" -> 1, "covered" -> 1, "Coverage" -> 1, "cover" -> 1, "courthouses" -> 1, "Court" -> 1, "course" -> 1, "courageous" -> 1, "coups" -> 1, "couples" -> 1, "County" -> 1, "county" -> 1, "country–in" -> 1, "counting" -> 1, "counties" -> 1, "counted" -> 1, "Count" -> 1, "cost-shifting" -> 1, "cost-effective" -> 1, "corpus" -> 1, "corporations" -> 1, "Corporate" -> 1, "corners" -> 1, "corner" -> 1, "coordination" -> 1, "coordinate" -> 1, "convince" -> 1, "conventional" -> 1, "convene" -> 1, "contributions–with" -> 1, "contribution" -> 1, "contributing" -> 1, "contributed" -> 1, "contrast" -> 1, "Contractors" -> 1, "contractor" -> 1, "Contracting" -> 1, "contracted" -> 1, "context" -> 1, "contest" -> 1, "contends" -> 1, "contend" -> 1, "contacts" -> 1, "consumption" -> 1, "consumers" -> 1, "Consumer" -> 1, "Consultative" -> 1, "constructive" -> 1, "construction" -> 1, "construct" -> 1, "constrained" -> 1, "Constitution's" -> 1, "Constitutional" -> 1, "consolidated" -> 1, "consider" -> 1, "conserve" -> 1, "conservatives" -> 1, "consensus" -> 1, "connectivity" -> 1, "connection" -> 1, "Connected" -> 1, "connected" -> 1, "connect" -> 1, "conjures" -> 1, "confronting" -> 1, "conflicts" -> 1, "confirm" -> 1, "confidentiality" -> 1, "conferences" -> 1, "conference" -> 1, "conduct" -> 1, "conception" -> 1, "concentration" -> 1, "concentrated" -> 1, "comprehensively" -> 1, "compounds" -> 1, "compounded" -> 1, "compound" -> 1, "component" -> 1, "complex" -> 1, "completion" -> 1, "completely" -> 1, "competitors" -> 1, "Competitiveness" -> 1, "competitively" -> 1, "competition–and" -> 1, "compete–and" -> 1, "Competes" -> 1, "competent" -> 1, "compensated" -> 1, "compassion" -> 1, "comparable" -> 1, "communism" -> 1, "communicate" -> 1, "commonsense" -> 1, "commodity" -> 1, "Committees" -> 1, "comment" -> 1, "coming" -> 1, "Combating" -> 1, "Columbia" -> 1, "Colombia" -> 1, "Colleges" -> 1, "collectively" -> 1, "collection" -> 1, "collect" -> 1, "Collar" -> 1, "collapses" -> 1, "collapse" -> 1, "collaboration" -> 1, "coherent" -> 1, "Code" -> 1, "coastline" -> 1, "coastal" -> 1, "coal" -> 1, "coaches" -> 1, "clusters" -> 1, "closer" -> 1, "clock" -> 1, "Clinton's" -> 1, "Clinton" -> 1, "climate-friendly" -> 1, "Climate" -> 1, "clearly" -> 1, "cleanup" -> 1, "clean-energy" -> 1, "Clean" -> 1, "classroom" -> 1, "classes" -> 1, "Class" -> 1, "clarify" -> 1, "claiming" -> 1, "civilians" -> 1, "Civil" -> 1, "Civic" -> 1, "City" -> 1, "citizenry" -> 1, "churches" -> 1, "Chinese" -> 1, "child–not" -> 1, "child–it's" -> 1, "children–without" -> 1, "Children's" -> 1, "childrearing" -> 1, "childcare" -> 1, "Cheyenne" -> 1, "Chesapeake" -> 1, "cherish" -> 1, "chemical" -> 1, "cheapen" -> 1, "Chavez" -> 1, "charter" -> 1, "charging" -> 1, "charge" -> 1, "chapter" -> 1, "chaotic" -> 1, "chaos" -> 1, "changed" -> 1, "Change" -> 1, "challenges—whether" -> 1, "challenges–from" -> 1, "Chairman" -> 1, "chair" -> 1, "Cesar" -> 1, "certifications" -> 1, "certification" -> 1, "CEOs" -> 1, "century-old" -> 1, "centerpiece" -> 1, "Center" -> 1, "center" -> 1, "cellulosic" -> 1, "ceiling" -> 1, "Ccentury—they" -> 1, "caused" -> 1, "caucuses" -> 1, "catch" -> 1, "Catastrophic" -> 1, "catastrophes" -> 1, "catalyze" -> 1, "cast" -> 1, "cases" -> 1, "cars" -> 1, "carry" -> 1, "carried" -> 1, "Careless" -> 1, "careless" -> 1, "caregiving" -> 1, "caregivers" -> 1, "carefully" -> 1, "careful" -> 1, "card" -> 1, "carbon-energy-intensive" -> 1, "capitalism" -> 1, "Capacity" -> 1, "candor" -> 1, "candid" -> 1, "Cancer" -> 1, "cancer" -> 1, "camps" -> 1, "camp" -> 1, "calendar" -> 1, "Cabinet" -> 1, "Byrne" -> 1, "businesses–for" -> 1, "Bush's" -> 1, "Burma" -> 1, "bureaucratic" -> 1, "bureaucracies" -> 1, "Burdens" -> 1, "burdens" -> 1, "bullying" -> 1, "bullies" -> 1, "build–or" -> 1, "builds" -> 1, "building–a" -> 1, "Building" -> 1, "Build" -> 1, "budgets" -> 1, "budgeting" -> 1, "brokers" -> 1, "broker" -> 1, "broaden" -> 1, "broadcasters" -> 1, "broadcast" -> 1, "brink" -> 1, "brighter" -> 1, "breeding" -> 1, "breast" -> 1, "breakdowns" -> 1, "break" -> 1, "breach" -> 1, "Brasilia" -> 1, "Branch" -> 1, "Brain" -> 1, "bountiful" -> 1, "borrowers" -> 1, "Border" -> 1, "booths" -> 1, "bonuses" -> 1, "bombast" -> 1, "bolster" -> 1, "boldness" -> 1, "bold" -> 1, "Bobby" -> 1, "blunder" -> 1, "blower" -> 1, "blow" -> 1, "blocks" -> 1, "block" -> 1, "blight" -> 1, "blew" -> 1, "Black" -> 1, "bit" -> 1, "birthright" -> 1, "birth" -> 1, "bioterrorists" -> 1, "bioterrorism" -> 1, "bio-terror" -> 1, "Biological" -> 1, "biofuels" -> 1, "biodiversity" -> 1, "binding" -> 1, "bill" -> 1, "bilingual" -> 1, "biased" -> 1, "Beyond" -> 1, "Berlin" -> 1, "benefited" -> 1, "benchmarks" -> 1, "belongs" -> 1, "belittled" -> 1, "belated" -> 1, "Beijing" -> 1, "beholden" -> 1, "Behind–while" -> 1, "begins" -> 1, "began" -> 1, "bedrock" -> 1, "beacon" -> 1, "Bay—including" -> 1, "Bay" -> 1, "battle" -> 1, "batteries" -> 1, "bases" -> 1, "barrels" -> 1, "barrel" -> 1, "bargains" -> 1, "bargain" -> 1, "banning" -> 1, 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This November, the choice we face as Americans may have more impact on our people and our place in the world than any in our lifetimes. We approach this task with a seriousness that matches the challenges before us, but also with a profound optimism about our future – an optimism that springs from our great faith in America, and our great pride in what it means to be Americans.\nWe know the stakes are immeasurably high.\nFor the first time in generations, we have been attacked on our own shores. Our brave men and women in uniform are still in harm's way in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the war against terror. Our alliances are frayed, our credibility in doubt.\nOur great middle class is hard-pressed. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, and millions more are struggling under the mounting burden of life's everyday costs.\nIn Washington, the President and his allies stubbornly press on, without regard to the needs of our people or the challenges of our times.\nIt is time for a new direction.\nJohn Kerry, John Edwards and the Democratic Party bring a new vision for America – strong at home, respected abroad. An America that offers opportunity, rewards responsibility, and rejoices in diversity.\nWe have a plan to build a strong, respected America: protecting our people, rebuilding our alliances, and leading the way to a more peaceful and prosperous world.\nWe have a plan to build a strong, growing economy: creating good jobs, rewarding hard work, and restoring fiscal discipline.\nWe have a plan to help our people build strong, healthy families: securing quality health care, offering world-class education, and ensuring clean air and water.\nAnd we will honor the values of a strong American community: widening the circle of equality, protecting the sanctity of freedom, and deepening our commitment to this country.\nIn offering this vision, we affirm our faith in the greatness of America. We recommit to the ideal of a people united in helping one another, an ideal as old as the faiths we follow and as great as the country we love. To those who are threatened, we pledge protection; to those who are victims, we promise justice; to those who are hopeless, we offer hope. And to all Americans who seek a better future for themselves, for their loved ones, and for our country, we say: your cause is our own.\nThat is the America we believe in. That is the America we are fighting for. That is the America we will build together – one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.\nA STRONG, RESPECTED AMERICA\n\nAlone among nations, America was born in pursuit of an idea – that a free people with diverse beliefs could govern themselves in peace. For more than a century, America has spared no effort to defend and promote that idea around the world. And over and over, that effort has been marked by the exercise of American leadership to forge powerful alliances based on mutual respect with longtime allies and reluctant friends; with nations already living in the light of democracy and with peoples struggling to join them.\nThe might of our alliances, coupled with the strength of our democratic ideals, has been a driving force in the survival and success of freedom – in two World Wars, in the Korean War, in the Cold War, in the Gulf War and in Kosovo. America led instead of going it alone. We extended a hand, not a fist. We respected the world – and the world respected us.\nAs Americans, we respect and honor our veterans. We are indebted to all those courageous men and women who have answered our country's call to duty. Their service and sacrifice, their dedication and love of country advance our cause of freedom and uphold our finest traditions as a nation.\nThat is the America we believe in. That is the America we are fighting for. And that is the America we can be.\nBut the Bush Administration has walked away from more than a hundred years of American leadership in the world to embrace a new – and dangerously ineffective – disregard for the world.\nThey rush to force before exhausting diplomacy. They bully rather than persuade. They act alone when they could assemble a team. They hope for the best when they should prepare for the worst. Time and again, this Administration confuses leadership with going it alone and engagement with compromise of principle. They do not understand that real leadership means standing by your principles and rallying others to join you.\nJohn Kerry, John Edwards and the Democratic Party believe in a better, stronger America – an America that is respected, not just feared, and an America that listens and leads. Our vision has deep roots in our Declaration of Independence and Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Four Freedoms, and in the tough-minded tradition of engagement and leadership—a tradition forged by Wilson and Roosevelt in two world wars, then championed by Truman and Kennedy during the Cold War. We believe in an America that people around the world admire, because they know we cherish not just our freedom, but theirs. Not just our democracy, but their hope for it. Not just our peace and security, but the world's. We believe in an America that cherishes freedom, safeguards our people, forges alliances, and commands respect. That is the America we are going to build.\nOur overriding goals are the same as ever: to protect our people and our way of life; and to help build a safer, more peaceful, more prosperous, more democratic world. Today, we face three great challenges above all others – first, to win the global war against terror; second, to stop the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons; and third, to promote democracy and freedom around the world, starting with a peaceful and stable Iraq.\nTo meet these challenges, we need a new national security policy guided by four new imperatives: First, America must launch and lead a new era of alliances for the post-September 11 world. Second, we must modernize the world's most powerful military to meet the new threats. Third, in addition to our military might, we must deploy all that is in America's arsenal – our diplomacy, our intelligence system, our economic power, and the appeal of our values and ideas. Fourth and finally, to safeguard our freedom and ensure our nation's future, we must end our dependence on Mideast oil.\nToday, the Bush Administration is waging a war against a global terrorist movement committed to our destruction with insufficient understanding of our enemy or effort to address the underlying factors that can give rise to new recruits. This war isn't just a manhunt. We cannot rest until Osama bin Laden is captured or killed, but that day will mark only a victory in the war on terror, not its end. Terrorists like al Qaeda and its affiliates are unlike any adversary our nation has ever known. We face a global terrorist movement of many groups, funded from different sources with separate agendas, but all committed to assaulting the United States and free and open societies around the globe. Despite his tough talk, President Bush's actions against terrorism have fallen far short. He still has no comprehensive strategy for victory. After allowing bin Laden to escape from our grasp at Tora Bora, he diverted crucial resources from the effort to destroy al Qaeda in Afghanistan. His doctrine of unilateral preemption has driven away our allies and cost us the support of other nations.\nWe must put in place a strategy to win – an approach that recognizes and addresses the many facets of this mortal challenge, from the terrorists themselves to the root causes that give rise to new recruits, and uses all the tools at our disposal. Agents of terrorism work in the shadows of more than 60 nations, on every continent. The only possible path to victory will be found in the company of others, not walking alone. With John Kerry as Commander-in-Chief, we will never wait for a green light from abroad when our safety is at stake, but we must enlist those whose support we need for ultimate victory.\nVictory in the war on terror requires a combination of American determination and international cooperation on all fronts. It requires the ability and willingness to direct immediate, effective military action when the capture or destruction of terrorist groups and their leaders is possible; a massive improvement in intelligence gathering and analysis coupled with vigorous law enforcement; a relentless effort to shut down the flow of terrorist funds; a global effort to prevent failed or failing states that can become sanctuaries for terrorists; a sustained effort to deny terrorists any more recruits by conducting effective public diplomacy; and a sustained political and economic effort to improve education, work for peace, support democracy and extend hope.\nWe must also improve our intelligence here at home. From the failure to uncover the September 11th plot to the deeply misguided reports about Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction, we have experienced unprecedented intelligence failures in recent years. We must do what President Bush has refused to do – reform our intelligence system by creating a true Director of National Intelligence with real control of intelligence personnel and budgets. We must train more analysts in languages spoken by terrorists. And we must break down the old communications barriers between national intelligence and local law enforcement, taking care to fully preserve our liberties.\nWe must expand NATO forces outside Kabul. We must accelerate training for the Afghan army and police. The program to disarm and reintegrate warlord militias into society must be expedited and expanded into a mainstream strategy. We will attack the exploding opium trade ignored by the Bush Administration by doubling our counter-narcotics assistance to the Karzai Government and reinvigorating the regional drug control program.\nBeyond Afghanistan, terrorist attacks from Saudi Arabia and Indonesia to Kenya, Morocco, and Turkey point to a widening network of terrorists targeting this country and our friends. Failed and failing states like Somalia or countries with large areas of limited government control like the Philippines and Indonesia need international help to close down terrorist havens.\nAmerica needs a major initiative in public diplomacy to support the many voices of freedom in the Arab and Muslim world. To improve education for the next generation of Islamic youth, we need a cooperative international effort to compete with radical Madrassas. And we must support human rights groups, independent media, and labor unions dedicated to building a democratic culture from the grassroots up. Democracy will not blossom overnight, but America should speed its growth by sustaining the forces of democracy against repressive regimes and by rewarding governments that work toward this end.\nThere is no greater threat to American security than the possibility of terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction. Preventing terrorists from gaining access to these weapons must be our number one security goal.\nContaining this massive threat requires American leadership of the highest order – leadership that brings our allies, friends, and partners to greater collaboration and participation – and compels problem states to join and comply with international agreements and abandon their weapons programs. Unfortunately, this Administration's policies have moved America in the opposite direction. They have weakened international agreements and efforts to enforce non­proliferation instead of strengthening them. They have not done nearly enough to secure existing stockpiles and bomb-making materials. They have failed to take effective steps to stop the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs. We must change course now.\nMore than a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Russia still has nearly 20,000 nuclear weapons and enough nuclear material to produce 50,000 more. For most of these weapons and materials, cooperative security upgrades have not been completed. The world is relying on whatever measures Russia has taken on its own. At the current pace, it will take 13 years to secure potential bomb material in the former Soviet Union. We cannot wait that long. We will do it in four years.\nWe should maintain the six-party talks, but we must also be prepared to talk directly with North Korea to negotiate a comprehensive agreement that addresses the full range of issues for ourselves and our allies. But we should have no illusions about Kim Jong Il. Any agreement must have rigorous verification and lead to complete and irreversible elimination of North Korea's nuclear weapons program.\nEven as we have scoured Iraq for signs of weapons of mass destruction, Iran has reportedly been working to develop them next door. A nuclear-armed Iran is an unacceptable risk to us and our allies.\nThe same is true for other countries that may be seeking nuclear weapons. This is why strengthening the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is so critical. We must close the loophole that lets countries develop nuclear weapons capabilities under the guise of a peaceful, civilian nuclear power program. We also need to strengthen enforcement and verification and make rigorous inspection protocols mandatory.\nWe must work with every country to tighten export controls, stiffen penalties, and beef up law enforcement and intelligence sharing. That way we can make absolutely sure that a disaster like the AQ Khan black market network, which grew out of Pakistan's nuclear program, can never happen again. We must also take steps to reduce tension between India and Pakistan and guard against the possibility of their nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands.\nWe know that promoting democracy, human rights, and the rule of law is vital to our long-term security. Americans will be safer in a world of democracies. We will work with people and non­governmental organizations around the world struggling for freedom, even as we work with their governments to protect our security from weapons of terror. We will restore America's credibility and commitment as a force for democracy and human rights, starting in Iraq.\nWe believe that upholding international standards for the treatment of prisoners, wherever they may be held, advances America's national security, the security of our troops, and the values of our people. And we believe torture is unacceptable. America should abide by its own laws and the treaties it has ratified, including the Geneva Conventions. We will also support international efforts to address the problem of landmines, while at the same time ensuring that our troops are protected.\nPeople of good will disagree about whether America should have gone to war in Iraq, but this much is clear: this Administration badly exaggerated its case, particularly with respect to weapons of mass destruction and the connection between Saddam's government and al Qaeda. This Administration did not build a true international coalition. This Administration disdained the United Nations weapons inspection process and rushed to war without exhausting diplomatic alternatives. Ignoring the advice of military leaders, this Administration did not send sufficient forces into Iraq to accomplish the mission. And this Administration went into Iraq without a plan to win the peace.\nNow this Administration has been forced to change course in order to correct this fundamental mistake. They are now taking up the suggestions that many Democrats have been making for over a year. And they must – because having gone to war, we cannot afford to fail at peace. We cannot allow a failed state in Iraq that inevitably would become a haven for terrorists and a destabilizing force in the Middle East. And we must secure more help from an international community that shares a huge stake in helping Iraq become a responsible member of that community, not a breeding ground for terror and intolerance.\nAs a first step, we must create a stable and secure environment in Iraq. To do this right, we must truly internationalize both politically and militarily: we cannot depend on a US-only presence. Other nations have a vital interest in the outcome, and we must bring them in to commit troops and resources. The Bush Administration has missed three great opportunities to do that. First, the President broke his promise to build a legitimate coalition in Iraq by exhausting diplomacy before resorting to the use of military force. Second, when the statue fell in Baghdad, Kofi Annan invited the United States to come to the table to discuss international support – but we rejected his offer. Third, when the President addressed the United Nations last fall, he once again refused to acknowledge the difficulties we faced in Iraq and failed to elicit support from other nations.\nThe President has not given our troops the clarity of mission, the equipment or the international support they need and deserve. We have a different approach based on a simple commitment: Troops come first. Our helicopter pilots have flown battlefield missions without the best anti­missile systems. In a Democratic Administration, that will change. Too many of our nation's finest troops have died in attacks, because tens of thousands were deployed to Iraq without the best bulletproof vests, and there is a shortage of armored vehicles on the ground. In a Democratic Administration, that will change. Thousands of National Guardsmen and reservists have been forced to leave their families and jobs for more than a year – with no end in sight – because this Administration ignored the pressing need for a true coalition. In a Democratic Administration, that will change.\nTo succeed, America must do the hard work of engaging the world's major political powers in this mission. We must build a coalition of countries, including the other permanent members of the UN Security Council, to share the political, economic, and military responsibilities of Iraq with the United States.\nTo win over allies, we must share responsibility with those nations that answer our call, and treat them with respect. We must lead, but we must listen. The rewards of respect are enormous. We must convince NATO to take on a more significant role and contribute additional military forces. As other countries, including Muslim majority countries, contribute troops, the United States will be able to reduce its military presence in Iraq, and we intend to do this when appropriate so that the military support needed by a sovereign Iraqi government will no longer be seen as the direct continuation of an American military presence.\nSecond, we need to create an international High Commissioner to serve as the senior international representative working with the Iraqi government. This Commissioner should be backed by a newly broadened security coalition and charged with overseeing elections, assisting with drafting a constitution, and coordinating reconstruction. The Commissioner should be highly regarded by the international community, have the credibility to talk to all the Iraqi people, and work directly with Iraq's interim government, the new U.S. Ambassador, and the international community.\nAt the same time, U.S. and international policies must take into consideration the best interests of the Iraqi people. The Iraqi people desperately need financial and technical assistance that is not swallowed up by bureaucracy and no-bid contracts, but instead goes directly into grassroots organizations. They need to see the tangible benefits of reconstruction: jobs, infrastructure, and services. They should also receive the full benefits of their own oil production as quickly as possible, so as to rebuild their country and help themselves as individuals, while also reducing the costs of security and reconstruction on the American taxpayer and the cost of gasoline to American consumers. And they need to be able to communicate their concerns to international authorities without feeling they are being disrespected in their own country.\nAmerica also needs a massive training effort to build Iraqi security forces that can actually provide security for the Iraqi people. It must be done in the field and on the job as well as in the classroom. Units cannot be put on the street without backup from international security forces. This is a task we must do in partnership with other nations, not just on our own. And this is a task in which we must succeed. If we fail to create viable Iraqi security forces – military and police – there is no successful exit for us and other nations.\nThe challenges in Iraq are great, but the opportunity is also significant. Under John Kerry and John Edwards, we will meet those challenges, win the peace in Iraq, and help to create new hope and opportunity for the entire Middle East.\nThe Democratic Party is committed to revitalizing the Atlantic partnership. The international goals that the United States pursues will be easier to attain if Europe and America are working together. We will ensure that NATO remains strong, continuing to consolidate peace in Europe even as the alliance takes on new tasks in Afghanistan and Iraq. We look forward to the evolution of the European Union and to a prosperous and unified Europe that joins the United States in meeting today's security challenges and expanding the global economy.\nUnder a Democratic Administration, the United States will demonstrate the kind of resolve to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that President Clinton showed. We will work to transform the Palestinian Authority by promoting new and responsible leadership, committed to fighting terror and promoting democracy. We support the creation of a democratic Palestinian state dedicated to living in peace and security side by side with the Jewish State of Israel. The creation of a Palestinian state should resolve the issue of Palestinian refugees by allowing them to settle there, rather than in Israel. Furthermore, all understand that it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949. And we understand that all final status negotiations must be mutually agreed.\nWe need a new military to meet the new threats of the 21st Century. Today's American military is the best in the world, but tomorrow's military must be even better. It must be stronger, faster, better armed, and never again stretched so thin.\nJohn Kerry, John Edwards and the Democratic Party will send a clear message to every man and woman in our armed forces: We guarantee that you will always be the best-led, best-equipped and most respected fighting force in the world. You will be armed with the right weapons, schooled in the right skills, and fully prepared to win on the battlefield. You will never be sent into harm's way without enough troops for the task, and never asked to fight a war without a plan to win the peace. You will never be given assignments which have not been clearly defined and for which you are not professionally trained.\nThe Bush Administration was right to call for the \"transformation\" of the military. But their version of transformation neglected to consider that the dangers we face have also been transformed. The Administration was concerned with fighting classic conventional wars, instead of the asymmetrical threats we now face in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the war against al Qaeda. To rise to those challenges, we must strengthen our military, including our Special Forces, improve our technology, and task our National Guard with homeland security.\nTo pick up the slack, we've called up our Guard and Reserves at historic levels. Some have been on the ground in Iraq for as many as 15 months, much longer than was expected or promised. Many of these units are being pushed to the limit and stretched far too thin. The Administration's answer has just been to stretch further. They have extended tours of duty, delayed retirements, and prevented enlisted personnel from leaving the service – effectively using a stop-loss policy and recall of Individual Ready Reserve members as a back-door draft.\nWe will add 40,000 new soldiers – not to increase the number of soldiers in Iraq, but to sustain our overseas deployments and prevent and prepare for other possible conflicts. This will help relieve the strain on our troops and bring back more of our soldiers, guardsmen and reservists. We are dedicated to keeping our military operating on a volunteer basis. We are committed to management reform both to ensure that our defense funding is spent effectively and to help pay for these new forces.\nWe will increase our civil affairs personnel – those who arrive on the scene after the major conflict ends to work with local leaders and officials to get the schools back in shape, the hospitals reopened, and the banks up and running. We also need more military police, because public order is critical to establishing the conditions that allow peace to take hold.\nAnd we will build and train new forces equipped with the most-sophisticated technology to specialize in finding, securing, and destroying weapons of mass destruction and the facilities that build them.\nNo strategy for American security is complete without a plan to end America's dependence on Mideast oil. Today, the American economy depends on oil controlled by some of the world's most repressive regimes. This leaves our economy dangerously vulnerable to nations that do not share our interests. America too often is silent about the practices of some governments because we depend on oil they control.\nJohn Kerry, John Edwards and the Democratic Party believe a strong America must no longer rely on the cooperation of regimes that do not share our values. We believe a strong America must move toward energy independence.\nIn the Bush Administration, energy independence doesn't get a thought. Their energy policy is simple: government by big oil, of big oil, and for big oil. This Administration let oil industry lobbyists and executives write our nation's energy policy in secret. They even went to the Supreme Court to stop the public from learning what they were doing. They've done nothing as gas prices have soared to record levels. Even the Administration's own economists have found that their energy plan will do nothing to reduce gas prices. This President's approach to energy policy leaves America shackled to foreign oil, dependent, vulnerable, and exposed.\nJohn Kerry, John Edwards and the Democratic Party believe in a better, stronger, more independent America. We are committed to achieving energy independence, and we know we can do it. Our ingenuity and determination built the cars we drive and the bridges we use. It electrified rural America in the 1930s, and took us to the moon in the 1960s. Our resolve helped conquer polio.\nIt's this simple: When we see a problem, we roll up our sleeves and solve it. And that's what we pledge to do now.\nAchieving energy independence will improve our ability to protect our values and interests in the world. It will reduce energy costs for our families. It will create high-paying new jobs. And it will improve our environment and make our people healthier.\nWith sixty-five percent of the world's oil reserves in the Middle East, we cannot drill our way to energy independence. But we can create, think, imagine, and invent our way there. And we will create jobs, help our environment, and build a stronger country as we do.\nThe first and foremost responsibility of government is to protect its citizens from harm. Unfortunately, Washington today is not doing enough to make America safe.\nWe have made some progress since the terrible attacks of September 11th. We have taken steps to secure our airports. After resisting Democratic efforts for months, the Administration finally agreed to create the Department of Homeland Security.\nBut we have not done nearly enough. Our intelligence services remain fragmented and lack coordination. Millions of massive shipping containers arrive at American ports every year without being searched and without even a reliable list of their contents. Our borders are full of holes. Our chemical plants are vulnerable to attack. Across America, police officers, firefighters, and other first responders still lack the information, protective gear, and communications equipment to do their jobs safely and successfully.\nThe Bush Administration, full of tough talk about terror, has no coherent plan for domestic defense. John Kerry, John Edwards and the Democratic Party believe America can do better. We believe America must do better. We believe America will do better.\nWe will ensure that our watch lists are accessible when and where they are needed. We will also give security clearances to appropriate state and local officials so they can get critical information at the critical times. Our intelligence apparatus needs significant reform, and so creating a true Director of National Intelligence is critical.\nWe will put an end to political delays in adopting tighter controls on air cargo, tons of which goes uninspected every day. We will increase perimeter inspections at U.S. airports and work with international aviation authorities to make sure the same standards are in place overseas. Working with our Northern and Southern neighbors, we will strengthen controls at border crossings, and use modern technology and better staffing to improve the quality of border inspections while enhancing commerce.\nThere are more than 100 chemical plants where an attack could endanger more than one million people, and the FBI has warned that al Qaeda may target our chemical industry. The Bush Administration was actually moving toward a commonsense solution that would set minimum standards for safety at chemical plants. But dangerously true to form, after heavy lobbying by the chemical industry, they backed down. We will make these plants secure; by requiring more guards, more fencing, and the use of less dangerous chemicals when possible.\nOur first responders are the first ones up the stairs in the event of the emergency, and it is wrong that today they are last in line when it comes to this administration's budgets. Under the Bush Administration, police departments in small cities have lost more than 15 percent of their full-time paid police and employees. And today, two-thirds of our nation's fire departments are not fully staffed. We can do more for the heroes of 9/11 and we can do more for our fellow citizens. And we will. We will provide direct assistance to our police officers and firefighters on the frontlines. They'll have the equipment and manpower they need to protect us. We will also ensure that front line workers throughout our transportation system receive the security training necessary to respond to terrorist threats. We also need to modernize our emergency warning system to provide localized warnings, treat the fighters on the frontlines as partners, and give families all the information they need. This Administration may think that homeland security is about changing the alert from yellow to orange. They're wrong; the colors of safety are firefighter red, EMT white, and police officer blue.\nWe will dramatically improve our ability to respond to a biological attack. We will appoint one individual to oversee all bioterrorism programs, budgets and strategic priorities. We will set national benchmarks for state and local preparedness so community leaders aren't flying blind. We will harness America's bioscience genius to increase drug and vaccine development. We will revitalize our public health system, improving monitoring capabilities and coordination. And we will strengthen hospitals, which today cannot prepare for a bio-terrorism emergency because they are overwhelmed by the everyday emergencies of people without insurance.\nWe also will encourage all Americans to do their part to make America safer. We support the development of a new community defense service grounded in neighborhoods and comprised of ordinary Americans from across the country. Like a 21st Century Neighborhood Watch, members would work within their communities to make a contribution—helping health professionals, assisting with evacuation plans, and standing ready in emergency.\nTogether, we can make America safer, stronger, and more respected. We can do it in a way that safeguards all the greatness of America by protecting our people, securing our homeland, and reinforcing our values – faith and family, duty and service, individual freedom and a common purpose to build one nation under God. We can do it in a way that keeps faith with the best measures of American leadership around the world – the builder of alliances, the defender of freedom, the champion of human rights. We can do it, and we will.\nA STRONG, GROWING ECONOMY\n\nThe great promise of America is simple: a better life for all who work for it. No matter who you are, where you come from, or what you believe, as an American, you live in a land that offers you all the possibilities your hard work and God-given talent can bring.\nThe opportunity to build a better future starts with a good job. It has always been that way. From the time when most people worked in the fields, through the Industrial Revolution and into the Information Age, the opportunity for work, the rewards from work, and the dignity of work have made Americans successful and America strong.\nWe offer America a new economic plan that will put jobs first. We will renew American competitiveness, make honest budget choices, and invest in our future.\nA strong America keeps the promise of opportunity for all and heeds the warning of special privileges for none. That's the America we believe in. That's the America we're fighting for. And that's the America we can build together.\nIn President George Bush's America, unfortunately, too often you need special privileges if you want opportunity. This White House values wealth over hard work, lavishes special treatment upon a fortunate few at the expense of most businesses and working people, and defends policies that weaken America's competitive position and destroy American jobs. Instead of meeting the challenge of globalization by strengthening our workers' ability to compete and win, this Administration uses globalization as an excuse not to fight for American jobs.\nJohn Kerry, John Edwards and the Democratic Party believe in a better America—a strong America.\nWe believe that a strong America begins at home, with good jobs that support families and an equal chance for all our people.\nWe believe in progress that brings prosperity for all Americans, not just for those who are already successful. We believe that good jobs will help strengthen and expand the strongest middle class the world has ever known.\nWe believe the private sector, not government, is the engine of economic growth and job creation. Government's responsibility is to create an environment that will promote private sector investment, foster vigorous competition, and strengthen the foundations of an innovative economy.\nWe believe Americans are the smartest, toughest competitors in the world. Our products and ideas can compete and win anywhere, as long as we're given a fair chance. And our companies can keep and create jobs in America without sacrificing competitiveness.\nWe will fight for American jobs and we will fight for American workers. Under John Kerry and John Edwards, we will revive America's manufacturing sector, create new jobs and protect existing ones by ending tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas and cutting taxes for companies that create jobs here at home; by fighting for free, fair and balanced trade; by encouraging investment in small businesses and helping companies deal with rising health care costs; by promoting new technologies, like energy, that will lead to the companies and jobs of tomorrow; and by ensuring that people of every age learn the skills to succeed in today's economy.\nWe will stand up for American workers and consumers by building on President Clinton's progress in including enforceable, internationally recognized labor and environmental standards in trade agreements. We will aggressively enforce our trade agreements with a real plan that includes a complete review of all existing agreements; immediate investigation into China's workers' rights abuses and currency manipulation; increased funding for efforts to protect workers' rights and stop child labor abuse; new reforms to protect the innovations of high-tech companies; and vigorous enforcement of U.S. trade laws. We will use all the tools we have to create new opportunities for American workers, farmers, and businesses, and break down barriers in key export markets, like the Japanese auto market and the Chinese high-technology market. We will effectively enforce our trade laws protecting against dumping, illegal subsidies, and import surges that threaten American jobs.\nNew trade agreements must protect internationally recognized workers' rights and environmental standards as vigorously as they now protect commercial concerns. We will build on and strengthen the progress made in the Jordan agreement to include strong and enforceable labor and environmental standards in the core of new free trade agreements. And no trade agreement should stop government from protecting the environment, food safety or the health of its citizens. Nor should an agreement give greater rights to foreign investors than to U.S. investors, require the privatization of our vital public services, or limit our government's ability to create good jobs in our communities.\nWe will help businesses cope with the skyrocketing cost of health care by reforming our health care system and cutting taxes to help small businesses pay for health insurance. Retiree health costs impose major burdens on many employers, particularly manufacturers, and we will push for reform so that companies are not forced to choose among retirees, current workers, and their own ability to compete.\nUnlike the Bush administration, we will always stand by workers who lose their jobs as the economy changes. We will require companies to give employees at least three months notice before a planned shutdown. We will expand efforts to help manufacturers, workers, the long-term unemployed, and communities hurt by imports, including extending trade adjustment assistance to workers in the service sectors and making health insurance more affordable for workers who lose their jobs due to trade. Through our jobs plan, we will bring hope and jobs back to the cities and small towns devastated by the shuttering of factories.\nThe heart of the American promise has always been the middle class, the greatest engine of economic growth the world has ever known. When the middle class grows in size and security, our country gets stronger. And when more American families save and invest in their children's future, America grows stronger still.\nBut in President George Bush's America, where everyday costs are soaring and ordinary incomes are sinking, the middle class is struggling, and our economy is suffering.\nToday, the average American family is earning $1,500 less than in 2000. At the same time, health care costs are up by nearly one-half, college tuition has increased by more than one-third, gas and oil prices have gone through the roof, and housing costs have soared. Life literally costs more than ever before – and our families have less money to pay for it. Three million more Americans have fallen into poverty since 2000. Average family debt is higher than ever. And as they lose the struggle to make ends meet, one out of every seven middle class families may be bankrupt by the end of the decade.\nPresident Bush and the Republicans in Congress have ignored the middle class since day one of this Administration. They have catered to the wealth of the richest instead of honoring the work of the rest of us. They have promised almost everything and paid for almost nothing. And the middle class is shouldering more taxes, earning less money, and bearing higher costs. The bottom line for the middle class under President Bush and the Republican Party is this: Instead of working hard to get ahead, the middle class is working hard just to get by.\nJohn Kerry, John Edwards and the Democratic Party believe in a stronger, more prosperous America for all our people. We believe in an America where the great American promise of upward mobility is alive and well. We believe in an America where the middle class is growing, our economy is thriving, and America is strong. And we have a plan to build that America.\nToday, thousands of businesses that would otherwise provide raises are using that money to pay climbing health care premiums. That is cutting wages for working people. Reforming health care, offering tax credits to pay for it, and cutting health costs will raise wages for working people.\nCollege tuitions rose by 35 percent between 2000 and 2003, and this year, 220,000 Americans were priced out of college by its high costs. We will make college affordable for every qualified student with a tax credit for four years of college.\nChild care costs are rising twice as fast as inflation, and millions of working parents worry desperately how to care for their children between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. each day. Other families must care not only for their children, but also for loved ones who are older or have disabilities. We will increase tax credits to pay for child care and eldercare, and make sure those credits are available to lower-income families and stay-at-home parents. We will expand after-school opportunities, help schools stay open until 6 p.m., and offer good transportation so young people can take advantage of it. We support expanding family and medical leave to help parents meet the growing challenge of balancing work and family responsibilities.\nThe price of gas is at an all time-high, placing an enormous burden on millions of Americans who have no choice but to drive to work. We will help cut costs in the short-run by halting additional stockpiling of oil reserves and working more effectively to ensure that OPEC increases production. For the long-run, we offer a detailed plan for energy independence.\nWe are absolutely committed to preserving Social Security. It is a compact across the generations that has helped tens of millions of Americans live their retirement years in dignity instead of poverty. Democrats believe in the progressive, guaranteed benefit that has ensured that seniors and people with disabilities receive a benefit not subject to the whims of the market or the economy. We oppose privatizing Social Security or raising the retirement age. We oppose reducing the benefits earned by workers just because they have also earned a benefit from certain public retirement plans. We will repeal discriminatory laws that penalize some retired workers and their families while allowing others to receive full benefits. Because the massive deficits under the Bush Administration have raided hundreds of billions of dollars from Social Security, the most important step we can take to strengthen Social Security is to restore fiscal responsibility. Social Security matters to all Americans, Democrats and Republicans, and strengthening Social Security should be a common cause.\nFiscal discipline helped create 23 million new jobs in the 1990s. Fiscal discipline frees up money for productive investment. And over time, fiscal discipline saves families thousands of dollars on their mortgages and credit cards.\nWe will roll back the Bush tax cuts for those making more than $200,000. We will restore commonsense budget rules that this Administration has abandoned, like \"Pay-As-You-Go\" rules that require the government to pay for new initiatives. We will commit to living within tough budget caps—real and enforceable limits on what the government can spend. We will enact a Constitutional version of the line-item veto to make it easier to root out pork-barrel spending. And we will make our government more efficient by cutting the waste of taxpayer dollars in the federal budget, from unneeded travel budgets to crony contracting. We are committed to cutting the deficit in half over the next four years.\nThe Democratic Party understands that working people built modern America. We understand that today's global economy requires new rules, new skills, and new approaches, and we believe that the time-honored values of equal opportunity, fair play, and good rewards for hard work still apply. That's how we give all our people the chance to succeed. That's how we keep on building the America we believe in. That's how we keep the promise of America.\nSTRONG, HEALTHY FAMILIES\n\nFamily is the center of everyday American life. Our parents are our first protectors, first teachers, first role models, and first friends. Parents know that America's great reward is the quiet but incomparable satisfaction that comes from building their families a better life. Strong families, blessed with opportunity, guided by faith, and filled with dreams are the heart of a strong America.\nToday, a family's ability to ensure that all its members get the quality health care they deserve is challenged like never before. For the most fortunate, America offers the best health care in the world. But tens of millions of Americans pay too much and get too little from our health care system, and tens of millions more have no health insurance at all.\nSkyrocketing health care costs not only hurt our families; they hurt our economy. American businesses pay more than their competitors for health care, reducing their competitiveness. American incomes suffer because raises are stifled by rising insurance premiums.\nWe will attack the health care crisis with a comprehensive approach. Our goal is straightforward: quality, affordable health coverage for all Americans to keep our families healthy, our businesses competitive, and our country strong.\nIn President George Bush's America, drug company and HMO profits count for more than family and small business health costs. Health care costs increased four times as fast as wages in the last year alone. Prescription drug spending has more than doubled during the past five years. Nearly 82 million Americans went without health care coverage at some point in the last two years. And the President has done nothing to bring costs down or lift these burdens. The few small proposals he has offered would further divide our health system between one that is affordable for the healthy and wealthy, and one that is unaffordable for the elderly, the sick, and increasingly, for America's broad middle class.\nJohn Kerry, John Edwards and the Democratic Party believe in a better, stronger, healthier America. Our resolve to fix the health crisis is stronger than ever. In the wealthiest country in the world, every expectant mother should get quality prenatal care; every child should get regular check-ups; every senior should be able to get safe, affordable prescription drugs; and no hard­working family should ever lose everything because illness strikes a loved one.\n8.5 million children still lack health insurance. We will strengthen Medicaid for our families and expand the children's health program created under President Clinton so no child goes without medical care.\nWe will improve the quality of care and the efficiency of the medical system by using American technological know-how to cut billions of dollars wasted in administrative processing and paperwork. Today, about a quarter of all health-related spending is not even medical. We can do better. We will ensure that all Americans have secure, private electronic medical records by 2008, and we will give medical providers incentives and resources to simplify their paperwork so patients spend more time with doctors and less time filling out forms. We recognize that our health care system is substantially strengthened by the daily efforts of the men and women in a variety of health professions and we support fair treatment for all health professionals.\nWe will enact a real Patient's Bill of Rights to put doctors and nurses back in charge of making medical decisions with their patients – instead of allowing HMO bureaucrats to decide what a patient needs.\nWe will ensure that seniors across the country, particularly in small-town and rural America, no longer suffer from geographic discrimination.\nWe will end the disgrace of seniors being forced to choose between meals and medication. Today, our seniors are paying too much for prescription drugs, while options abroad are far cheaper and just as safe. We will allow the safe reimportation of drugs from other countries.\nThe current Medicare drug program serves drug companies more than seniors. It allows these companies to change the price of prescriptions more frequently than seniors can change their plans. It does virtually nothing to bring down prescription drug costs. It forces seniors into HMOs. Elderly Americans deserve a real prescription drug benefit – one that uses the government's purchasing power to lower costs and ensures access to new therapies for their illnesses.\nWe will cut the waste and abuse that cost Medicare billions each year, using competitive bidding to lower the costs of buying medical equipment, educating providers to file claims more efficiently, and increasing penalties for those who bilk the system.\nPresident Bush has rejected the calls from Nancy Reagan, Christopher Reeve and Americans across the land for assistance with embryonic stem cell research. We will reverse his wrongheaded policy. Stem cell therapy offers hope to more than 100 million Americans who have serious illnesses – from Alzheimer's to heart disease to juvenile diabetes to Parkinson's. We will pursue this research under the strictest ethical guidelines, but we will not walk away from the chance to save lives and reduce human suffering.\nWe believe in an America where health care is available and affordable. Where every family looks to the future with hope and excitement, without worry that the cost of health care is becoming too great to bear. Where strong, healthy families build a stronger America.\nThe simple bargain at the heart of the American Dream offers opportunity to every American who takes the responsibility to make the most of it. That bargain is the great source of American strength, because it unleashes the amazing talent and determination of our people. And as our people seize the opportunity to build a better life, they build a stronger country.\nToday, our people compete with workers on every continent. Information flows across oceans. High-wage jobs are more dependent than ever on high-level skills.\nNow, as never before, education is the key to opportunity, essential to a strong America. So we believe in an America that offers the best education to all our children – wherever they live, whatever their background. Period.\nWe believe in an America where every child comes to school ready to learn. Where every student is held to high standards, and every school has the resources and responsibility to meet those standards. Where every classroom has a great teacher, and every student gets enough personal attention to foster a talent or overcome a difficulty. We believe in an America where every teenager completes a rigorous high school curriculum. Where every qualified young person who wants to go to college can afford it. And where every adult who needs additional job training can get it.\nIn President George Bush's America, our government ignores the shameful truth that the quality of a child's education depends on the wealth of that child's neighborhood. Our best public schools are the best schools in the world, but too many children go to schools that just don't work. Too many children who beat the odds and succeed in school can't afford to go on to college. And too many adults who need added training aren't able to get it.\nFor this White House, education is an easy promise – easy come, and easy go. When President Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act, he said the right things – asking more from our schools and pledging to give them the resources to get the job done. And then he promptly broke his word, providing schools $27 billion less than he had promised, literally leaving millions of children behind.\nThe President also gets a failing grade for higher education. Over the last three years, college tuitions have risen by 35 percent, pricing 220,000 students out of college. Yet while then-Governor Bush promised to increase college aid, President Bush tried to charge more for student loans and eliminate Pell Grants for 84,000 students.\nJohn Kerry, John Edwards and the Democratic Party believe that a strong America begins at home with strong families, and that strong families need the best schools. We believe schools must teach fundamental skills like math and science, and fundamental values like citizenship and responsibility. We believe providing resources without reform is a waste of money, and reform without resources is a waste of time. And we believe politicians who expect students to learn responsibility should start by keeping their own promises.\nParents are our children's first and most important teachers, and they have a responsibility to participate in their children's education. We will help them do so by offering information and resources to better teach their children, whether reminding them about homework or attending a parent-teacher conference.\nThe promise of America is the promise of opportunity. If we are going to keep that promise, every child should have a great teacher and every high school graduate should have the chance to go to college. Nothing less is good enough for America.\nFor generations, Americans of all political beliefs have understood that the protection of our environment and the stewardship of our land are vital to the strength of our nation. God gave America extraordinary natural gifts; it is our responsibility to protect them. The health of our families, the strength of our economy, and the well-being of our world all depend upon a clean environment.\nBut in President George Bush's government, where polluters actually write environmental laws and oil company profits matter more than hard science and cold facts, protecting the environment doesn't matter at all.\nEven though 133 million Americans already live with unhealthy air, the Bush Administration bowed to energy industry lobbying and rewrote rules to allow 20,000 facilities to spew more smog, soot, and mercury into the air. Even though public water systems in many cities are polluted, they have taken environmental cops off the beat and pushed to allow more arsenic in our water. Even though the President promised more than five billion dollars for our national parks, he has delivered a fraction of that, leaving trails closed, historic structures collapsing, and our parks losing luster. And even though overwhelming scientific evidence shows that global climate change is a scientific fact, this administration has rewritten government reports to hide that fact.\nJohn Kerry, John Edwards and the Democratic Party believe in a stronger, safer, healthier America. A strong America depends on healthy families, and healthy families depend on fresh air, pure water, and clean neighborhoods.\nThese are our commitments: we will make our air cleaner and our water purer. We will ensure our children can safely play in our neighborhoods, our families can enjoy our national parks, and our sportsmen can hunt and fish in our lakes and forests. We will foster a healthy economy and a healthy environment by promoting new technologies that create good jobs and improve our world. And we will work with our allies to achieve these goals and to protect the global environment, for this generation and future generations.\nWe reject the false choice between a healthy economy and a healthy environment. We know instead that farming, fishing, tourism, and other industries require a healthy environment. We know new technologies that protect the environment can create new high-paying jobs. We know a cleaner environment means a stronger economy.\nWe will conserve and restore the habitats where wildlife flourish, expanding use of voluntary, incentive-based programs that target private landowners.\nThis great land has been placed in our hands for safekeeping. It is our responsibility to protect it. We will exercise that responsibility with the courage to take on special interests, the creativity to promote new technologies, the determination to reassert our global leadership, and the commitment to achieve real results. That is how we will ensure that God's gifts of nature bless all of God's children for generations to come.\nA STRONG AMERICAN COMMUNITY\n\nAmerican history is the story of a diverse people striving – sometimes fitfully, but in the end, faithfully – to realize our ideals: a common dream of equality, and opportunity, freedom and community. Each step along that path has made us stronger.\nThis year we recall two of our country's greatest steps toward equality and inclusion – fifty years ago, Brown v. Board of Education, and forty years ago, the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Those great achievements of the civil rights movement strengthened America immeasurably—by breaking down the legal barriers to equal citizenship for African-Americans and expanding the circle of equal opportunity for all. This year, as we celebrate these anniversaries, we recommit to the spirit of service that secured these breakthroughs and the values they embody: all of our people should have the opportunity to fulfill all of their potential, and each of us should be as equal in the eyes of the law as we are in the eyes of God.\nThat is the America we believe in. That is the America we are fighting for. That is the America we will build together.\nPresident Bush has a different vision – instead of searching for common ground to bring our people together, he has sought political advantage in driving our people apart. He has neglected the opportunity of most Americans, choosing instead to lavish resources on those who need them least. He has rejected the American vision of greater equality, appointing judges more interested in rolling back rights than protecting them. Perhaps most striking of all, in a time of war, he has abandoned our great tradition of asking Americans to meet shared challenges in a spirit of shared sacrifice. This President has regularly governed for the benefit of special interests, not the public interest.\nOur commitment to civil rights is ironclad. We will restore vigorous federal enforcement of our civil rights laws for all our people, from fair housing to equal employment opportunity, from Title IX to the Americans with Disabilities Act. We support affirmative action to redress discrimination and to achieve the diversity from which all Americans benefit. We believe a day's work is worth a day's pay, and at a time when women still earn 77 cents for every dollar earned by men, we need stronger equal pay laws and stronger enforcement of them. We will enact the bipartisan legislation barring workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation. We are committed to equal treatment of all service members and believe all patriotic Americans should be allowed to serve our country without discrimination, persecution, or violence. We support the appointment of judges who will uphold our laws and constitutional rights, not their own narrow agendas.\nVoting is the foundation of democracy, a central act of civic engagement, and an expression of equal citizenship. Voting rights are important precisely because they are protective of all other rights. We will call for legislative action that will fully protect and enforce the fundamental Constitutional right of every American to vote -- to ensure that the Constitution's promise is fully realized and that, in disputed elections, every vote is counted fully and fairly.\nTo advance these goals, and to guarantee the integrity of our elections and to increase voter confidence, we will seek action to ensure that voting systems are accessible, independently auditable, accurate, and secure. We will support the full funding of programs to realize this goal. Finally, it is the priority of the Democratic Party to fulfill the promise of election reform, reauthorize the expiring provisions of the Voting Rights Act, and vigorously enforce all our voting rights laws.\nOur voting procedures are observed by people and nations around the world. Every vote must count and every vote must be counted, including absentee ballots. To achieve all of our goals, we support moving toward a census that duly counts every American. And we support the election of candidates who express the many voices of America.\nBecause our democracy thrives on public access to diverse sources of information from multiple sources, we support measures to ensure diversity, competition, and localism in media ownership.\nWe will defend the dignity of all Americans against those who would undermine it. Because we believe in the privacy and equality of women, we stand proudly for a woman's right to choose, consistent with Roe v. Wade, and regardless of her ability to pay. We stand firmly against Republican efforts to undermine that right. At the same time, we strongly support family planning and adoption incentives. Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.\nRacial and religious profiling is wrong and we will work to stamp it out. Hate crimes desecrate sacred spaces and demean good people, and we support a strong national law to punish them.\nWe will extend the promise of citizenship to those still struggling for freedom. Today's immigration laws do not reflect our values or serve our security, and we will work for real reform. The solution is not to establish a massive new status of second-class workers; that betrays our values and hurts all working people. Undocumented immigrants within our borders who clear a background check, work hard and pay taxes should have a path to earn full participation in America. We will hasten family reunification for parents and children, husbands and wives, and offer more English-language and civic education classes so immigrants can assume all the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. As we undertake these steps, we will work with our neighbors to strengthen our security so we are safer from those who would come here to harm us. We are a nation of immigrants, and from Arab-Americans in California to Latinos in Florida, we share the dream of a better life in the country we love.\nWe support full inclusion of gay and lesbian families in the life of our nation and seek equal responsibilities, benefits, and protections for these families. In our country, marriage has been defined at the state level for 200 years, and we believe it should continue to be defined there. We repudiate President Bush's divisive effort to politicize the Constitution by pursuing a \"Federal Marriage Amendment.\" Our goal is to bring Americans together, not drive them apart.\nAs we encourage democracy around the world, we must extend democracy here at home. We support equal rights to democratic self-government and Congressional representation for the citizens of our nation's capital.\nWe believe that four million disenfranchised American citizens residing in Puerto Rico have the right to the permanent and fully democratic status of their choice. The White House and Congress will clarify the realistic status options for Puerto Rico and enable Puerto Ricans to choose among them.\nWe support full self-government for the people of Guam, American Samoa, and the Virgin Islands, and their right to decide their future status.\nFor all those who live under our flag, we support strong economic development and fair and equitable treatment under federal programs.\nWe honor the sovereignty of American Indians and reaffirm our commitment to respectful and meaningful government-to-government relations. We must renew the trust obligations that this Administration has disregarded, and must improve the education, health, and job opportunities for American Indians who too often face terrible poverty.\nWe honor the central place of faith in the lives of our people. Like our Founders, we believe that our nation, our communities, and our lives are made vastly stronger and richer by faith and the countless acts of justice and mercy it inspires. We will strengthen the role of faith-based organizations in meeting challenges like homelessness, youth violence, and other social problems. At the same time, we will honor First Amendment protections and not allow public funds to be used to proselytize or discriminate. Throughout history, communities of faith have brought comfort to the afflicted and shaped great movements for justice. We know they will continue to do so, and we will always protect all Americans' freedom to worship.\nWe pledge to stand up for our beliefs and rally Americans to our cause. But we recognize that disagreements will remain, and we believe disagreement should not mean disrespect. Members of our party have deeply held and differing views on some matters of conscience and faith. We view diversity of views as a source of strength, and we welcome into our ranks all Americans who seek to build a stronger America. We are committed to resolving our differences in a spirit of civility, hope and mutual respect.\nThat's the America we believe in.", "Words" -> 10638, "WordCounts" -> <|"the" -> 505, "and" -> 448, "to" -> 352, "of" -> 289, "our" -> 199, "a" -> 192, "in" -> 175, "We" -> 160, "we" -> 139, "that" -> 134, "will" -> 129, "for" -> 129, "is" -> 98, "America" -> 90, "are" -> 73, "with" -> 65, "have" -> 64, "by" -> 60, "more" -> 54, "all" -> 54, "must" -> 51, "on" -> 50, "believe" -> 46, "as" -> 46, "their" -> 45, "has" -> 45, "people" -> 43, "American" -> 42, "not" -> 39, "from" -> 39, "new" -> 38, "And" -> 38, "health" -> 35, "Americans" -> 35, "The" -> 34, "be" -> 34, "this" -> 33, "it" -> 33, "can" -> 32, "than" -> 31, "Administration" -> 31, "world" -> 30, "work" -> 30, "who" -> 30, "an" -> 30, "they" -> 29, "every" -> 29, "do" -> 29, "jobs" -> 28, "support" -> 27, "should" -> 27, "John" -> 27, "families" -> 26, "care" -> 26, "at" -> 26, "security" -> 25, "President" -> 25, "strong" -> 24, "build" -> 23, "but" -> 22, "Our" -> 21, "need" -> 21, "Iraq" -> 21, "costs" -> 21, "Bush" -> 21, "without" -> 20, "or" -> 20, "international" -> 20, "those" -> 19, "stronger" -> 19, "Democratic" -> 19, "also" -> 19, "rights" -> 18, "opportunity" -> 18, "military" -> 18, "great" -> 18, "country" -> 18, "better" -> 18, "workers" -> 17, "weapons" -> 17, "This" -> 17, "them" -> 17, "make" -> 17, "help" -> 17, "create" -> 17, "protect" -> 16, "economy" -> 16, "been" -> 16, "They" -> 15, "so" -> 15, "Party" -> 15, "no" -> 15, "government" -> 15, "time" -> 14, "these" -> 14, "promise" -> 14, "oil" -> 14, "Kerry" -> 14, "into" -> 14, "freedom" -> 14, "first" -> 14, "environment" -> 14, "ensure" -> 14, "years" -> 13, "when" -> 13, "up" -> 13, "That" -> 13, "responsibility" -> 13, "plan" -> 13, "pay" -> 13, "other" -> 13, "It" -> 13, "get" -> 13, "energy" -> 13, "Edwards" -> 13, "working" -> 12, "where" -> 12, "war" -> 12, "values" -> 12, "public" -> 12, "one" -> 12, "most" -> 12, "middle" -> 12, "many" -> 12, "just" -> 12, "democracy" -> 12, "class" -> 12, "because" -> 12, "us" -> 11, "trade" -> 11, "system" -> 11, "strengthen" -> 11, "own" -> 11, "nations" -> 11, "like" -> 11, "its" -> 11, "In" -> 11, "improve" -> 11, "healthy" -> 11, "good" -> 11, "forces" -> 11, "equal" -> 11, "effort" -> 11, "education" -> 11, "children" -> 11, "challenges" -> 11, "best" -> 11, "you" -> 10, "way" -> 10, "under" -> 10, "too" -> 10, "To" -> 10, "right" -> 10, "peace" -> 10, "nuclear" -> 10, "laws" -> 10, "intelligence" -> 10, "instead" -> 10, "full" -> 10, "family" -> 10, "end" -> 10, "companies" -> 10, "committed" -> 10, "college" -> 10, "But" -> 10, "against" -> 10, "win" -> 9, "United" -> 9, "Today" -> 9, "take" -> 9, "still" -> 9, "schools" -> 9, "resources" -> 9, "leadership" -> 9, "know" -> 9, "hope" -> 9, "he" -> 9, "hard" -> 9, "global" -> 9, "give" -> 9, "future" -> 9, "faith" -> 9, "ever" -> 9, "bring" -> 9, "America's" -> 9, "about" -> 9, "year" -> 8, "troops" -> 8, "terrorists" -> 8, "terror" -> 8, "standards" -> 8, "Security" -> 8, "secure" -> 8, "same" -> 8, "reform" -> 8, "police" -> 8, "never" -> 8, "nation" -> 8, "million" -> 8, "meet" -> 8, "medical" -> 8, "Iraqi" -> 8, "For" -> 8, "fighting" -> 8, "drug" -> 8, "down" -> 8, "community" -> 8, "change" -> 8, "cannot" -> 8, "businesses" -> 8, "between" -> 8, "around" -> 8, "allies" -> 8, "ability" -> 8, "would" -> 7, "which" -> 7, "what" -> 7, "together" -> 7, "terrorist" -> 7, "States" -> 7, "service" -> 7, "seniors" -> 7, "respected" -> 7, "respect" -> 7, "real" -> 7, "quality" -> 7, "protecting" -> 7, "program" -> 7, "over" -> 7, "out" -> 7, "national" -> 7, "millions" -> 7, "life" -> 7, "less" -> 7, "increase" -> 7, "including" -> 7, "fully" -> 7, "even" -> 7, "enough" -> 7, "enforcement" -> 7, "efforts" -> 7, "economic" -> 7, "destruction" -> 7, "countries" -> 7, "come" -> 7, "Bush's" -> 7, "before" -> 7, "alliances" -> 7, "agreements" -> 7, "while" -> 6, "vision" -> 6, "use" -> 6, "true" -> 6, "That's" -> 6, "status" -> 6, "state" -> 6, "some" -> 6, "Social" -> 6, "small" -> 6, "safer" -> 6, "programs" -> 6, "political" -> 6, "policy" -> 6, "offers" -> 6, "offer" -> 6, "needs" -> 6, "may" -> 6, "massive" -> 6, "law" -> 6, "job" -> 6, "insurance" -> 6, "independence" -> 6, "home" -> 6, "his" -> 6, "four" -> 6, "force" -> 6, "fair" -> 6, "face" -> 6, "done" -> 6, "democratic" -> 6, "cutting" -> 6, "commitment" -> 6, "child" -> 6, "chemical" -> 6, "benefit" -> 6, "back" -> 6, "As" -> 6, "allow" -> 6, "air" -> 6, "affordable" -> 6, "A" -> 6, "world's" -> 5, "women" -> 5, "Where" -> 5, "water" -> 5, "was" -> 5, "U.S." -> 5, "treatment" -> 5, "training" -> 5, "toward" -> 5, "there" -> 5, "tax" -> 5, "task" -> 5, "succeed" -> 5, "struggling" -> 5, "strength" -> 5, "stop" -> 5, "steps" -> 5, "stand" -> 5, "special" -> 5, "skills" -> 5, "simple" -> 5, "share" -> 5, "school" -> 5, "safe" -> 5, "restore" -> 5, "reduce" -> 5, "Qaeda" -> 5, "put" -> 5, "promoting" -> 5, "promised" -> 5, "possible" -> 5, "parents" -> 5, "now" -> 5, "nothing" -> 5, "nation's" -> 5, "money" -> 5, "members" -> 5, "mass" -> 5, "made" -> 5, "live" -> 5, "last" -> 5, "keep" -> 5, "interests" -> 5, "information" -> 5, "human" -> 5, "how" -> 5, "honor" -> 5, "high" -> 5, "goals" -> 5, "go" -> 5, "George" -> 5, "generations" -> 5, "expand" -> 5, "Even" -> 5, "equality" -> 5, "environmental" -> 5, "enforce" -> 5, "dollars" -> 5, "diplomacy" -> 5, "critical" -> 5, "cost" -> 5, "compete" -> 5, "communities" -> 5, "coalition" -> 5, "citizenship" -> 5, "citizens" -> 5, "chance" -> 5, "benefits" -> 5, "attack" -> 5, "At" -> 5, "assistance" -> 5, "approach" -> 5, "always" -> 5, "alone" -> 5, "al" -> 5, "agreement" -> 5, "Afghanistan" -> 5, "across" -> 5, "wrong" -> 4, "waste" -> 4, "War" -> 4, "vote" -> 4, "vital" -> 4, "vigorous" -> 4, "victory" -> 4, "using" -> 4, "understand" -> 4, "Under" -> 4, "two" -> 4, "today" -> 4, "times" -> 4, "three" -> 4, "threats" -> 4, "though" -> 4, "themselves" -> 4, "tens" -> 4, "technologies" -> 4, "taxes" -> 4, "talk" -> 4, "student" -> 4, "STRONG" -> 4, "strengthening" -> 4, "strategy" -> 4, "seek" -> 4, "safety" -> 4, "rules" -> 4, "rewards" -> 4, "responsibilities" -> 4, "resolve" -> 4, "requires" -> 4, "require" -> 4, "receive" -> 4, "provide" -> 4, "prosperous" -> 4, "promote" -> 4, "progress" -> 4, "private" -> 4, "prescription" -> 4, "plants" -> 4, "place" -> 4, "percent" -> 4, "peaceful" -> 4, "Palestinian" -> 4, "others" -> 4, "opportunities" -> 4, "only" -> 4, "ones" -> 4, "offering" -> 4, "nearly" -> 4, "National" -> 4, "much" -> 4, "men" -> 4, "market" -> 4, "making" -> 4, "major" -> 4, "lose" -> 4, "longer" -> 4, "local" -> 4, "leaders" -> 4, "lead" -> 4, "land" -> 4, "labor" -> 4, "justice" -> 4, "industry" -> 4, "here" -> 4, "heart" -> 4, "ground" -> 4, "greater" -> 4, "going" -> 4, "God" -> 4, "goal" -> 4, "gas" -> 4, "fundamental" -> 4, "friends" -> 4, "free" -> 4, "forced" -> 4, "fight" -> 4, "failed" -> 4, "expanding" -> 4, "everyday" -> 4, "equipment" -> 4, "emergency" -> 4, "effectively" -> 4, "diversity" -> 4, "discrimination" -> 4, "discipline" -> 4, "determination" -> 4, "depend" -> 4, "Democrats" -> 4, "day" -> 4, "control" -> 4, "complete" -> 4, "common" -> 4, "civil" -> 4, "choose" -> 4, "choice" -> 4, "children's" -> 4, "cause" -> 4, "call" -> 4, "building" -> 4, "budgets" -> 4, "budget" -> 4, "being" -> 4, "armed" -> 4, "allowing" -> 4, "again" -> 4, "action" -> 4, "Act" -> 4, "achieve" -> 4, "able" -> 4, "your" -> 3, "You" -> 3, "within" -> 3, "White" -> 3, "When" -> 3, "were" -> 3, "went" -> 3, "wealth" -> 3, "wages" -> 3, "vulnerable" -> 3, "Voting" -> 3, "voting" -> 3, "uses" -> 3, "tradition" -> 3, "tough" -> 3, "today's" -> 3, "thousands" -> 3, "technology" -> 3, "talent" -> 3, "taken" -> 3, "systems" -> 3, "sure" -> 3, "successful" -> 3, "students" -> 3, "step" -> 3, "states" -> 3, "spirit" -> 3, "spending" -> 3, "sources" -> 3, "soldiers" -> 3, "since" -> 3, "significant" -> 3, "services" -> 3, "serve" -> 3, "securing" -> 3, "sector" -> 3, "Second" -> 3, "role" -> 3, "rising" -> 3, "rise" -> 3, "rigorous" -> 3, "Rights" -> 3, "retirement" -> 3, "rejected" -> 3, "regimes" -> 3, "reducing" -> 3, "recruits" -> 3, "reconstruction" -> 3, "Puerto" -> 3, "problem" -> 3, "prices" -> 3, "presence" -> 3, "prepare" -> 3, "power" -> 3, "poverty" -> 3, "policies" -> 3, "p.m." -> 3, "pledge" -> 3, "plans" -> 3, "personnel" -> 3, "path" -> 3, "particularly" -> 3, "parks" -> 3, "overseas" -> 3, "organizations" -> 3, "order" -> 3, "often" -> 3, "North" -> 3, "No" -> 3, "next" -> 3, "neighborhoods" -> 3, "NATO" -> 3, "movement" -> 3, "months" -> 3, "mission" -> 3, "Middle" -> 3, "meeting" -> 3, "measures" -> 3, "means" -> 3, "matter" -> 3, "loved" -> 3, "love" -> 3, "living" -> 3, "lives" -> 3, "line" -> 3, "leaving" -> 3, "learn" -> 3, "lack" -> 3, "known" -> 3, "join" -> 3, "investment" -> 3, "increased" -> 3, "important" -> 3, "immigrants" -> 3, "ignored" -> 3, "hurt" -> 3, "House" -> 3, "homeland" -> 3, "higher" -> 3, "helping" -> 3, "helped" -> 3, "held" -> 3, "healthier" -> 3, "He" -> 3, "growth" -> 3, "growing" -> 3, "groups" -> 3, "governments" -> 3, "gone" -> 3, "goes" -> 3, "given" -> 3, "gets" -> 3, "funding" -> 3, "foster" -> 3, "fiscal" -> 3, "First" -> 3, "federal" -> 3, "far" -> 3, "failing" -> 3, "extend" -> 3, "existing" -> 3, "exhausting" -> 3, "Europe" -> 3, "ensuring" -> 3, "engagement" -> 3, "enforceable" -> 3, "enact" -> 3, "elections" -> 3, "effective" -> 3, "easy" -> 3, "East" -> 3, "earned" -> 3, "each" -> 3, "duty" -> 3, "drugs" -> 3, "drive" -> 3, "diverse" -> 3, "directly" -> 3, "direct" -> 3, "dignity" -> 3, "different" -> 3, "development" -> 3, "deserve" -> 3, "depends" -> 3, "defined" -> 3, "defense" -> 3, "dedicated" -> 3, "dangerously" -> 3, "cut" -> 3, "current" -> 3, "credits" -> 3, "credibility" -> 3, "creation" -> 3, "creating" -> 3, "could" -> 3, "controls" -> 3, "comprehensive" -> 3, "competitiveness" -> 3, "competitive" -> 3, "company" -> 3, "Commissioner" -> 3, "comes" -> 3, "clear" -> 3, "clean" -> 3, "cities" -> 3, "challenge" -> 3, "billions" -> 3, "big" -> 3, "beliefs" -> 3, "become" -> 3, "Because" -> 3, "based" -> 3, "barriers" -> 3, "away" -> 3, "attacks" -> 3, "any" -> 3, "among" -> 3, "already" -> 3, "after" -> 3, "afford" -> 3, "Administration's" -> 3, "additional" -> 3, "actually" -> 3, "access" -> 3, "abroad" -> 3, "2000" -> 3, "youth" -> 2, "young" -> 2, "write" -> 2, "worry" -> 2, "With" -> 2, "widening" -> 2, "whether" -> 2, "wherever" -> 2, "whatever" -> 2, "we're" -> 2, "well" -> 2, "Washington" -> 2, "wars" -> 2, "warning" -> 2, "wait" -> 2, "voices" -> 2, "violence" -> 2, "vigorously" -> 2, "views" -> 2, "version" -> 2, "verification" -> 2, "v." -> 2, "upon" -> 2, "uphold" -> 2, "until" -> 2, "Union" -> 2, "Unfortunately" -> 2, "undermine" -> 2, "unacceptable" -> 2, "tuitions" -> 2, "treat" -> 2, "transportation" -> 2, "transformation" -> 2, "train" -> 2, "tools" -> 2, "Too" -> 2, "Today's" -> 2, "through" -> 2, "threat" -> 2, "Third" -> 2, "think" -> 2, "thin" -> 2, "There" -> 2, "then" -> 2, "Their" -> 2, "that's" -> 2, "terrorism" -> 2, "terrible" -> 2, "teachers" -> 2, "teacher" -> 2, "teach" -> 2, "taxpayer" -> 2, "target" -> 2, "taking" -> 2, "takes" -> 2, "sustained" -> 2, "suffering" -> 2, "suffer" -> 2, "stretched" -> 2, "strengthened" -> 2, "starting" -> 2, "standing" -> 2, "stake" -> 2, "stable" -> 2, "spend" -> 2, "source" -> 2, "solution" -> 2, "soared" -> 2, "side" -> 2, "shared" -> 2, "set" -> 2, "September" -> 2, "senior" -> 2, "send" -> 2, "self-government" -> 2, "see" -> 2, "scientific" -> 2, "science" -> 2, "save" -> 2, "safely" -> 2, "safeguards" -> 2, "sacrifice" -> 2, "Russia" -> 2, "rural" -> 2, "root" -> 2, "roll" -> 2, "Rico" -> 2, "rewarding" -> 2, "rest" -> 2, "responsible" -> 2, "responders" -> 2, "respond" -> 2, "reservists" -> 2, "reserves" -> 2, "research" -> 2, "Republicans" -> 2, "Republican" -> 2, "repressive" -> 2, "reports" -> 2, "renew" -> 2, "remain" -> 2, "refused" -> 2, "recommit" -> 2, "recognized" -> 2, "recognize" -> 2, "recall" -> 2, "realize" -> 2, "ready" -> 2, "rather" -> 2, "raises" -> 2, "qualified" -> 2, "pushed" -> 2, "providing" -> 2, "providers" -> 2, "protective" -> 2, "protections" -> 2, "protection" -> 2, "profound" -> 2, "profits" -> 2, "professionals" -> 2, "production" -> 2, "privileges" -> 2, "price" -> 2, "prevent" -> 2, "prepared" -> 2, "premiums" -> 2, "powerful" -> 2, "potential" -> 2, "possibility" -> 2, "point" -> 2, "play" -> 2, "permanent" -> 2, "penalties" -> 2, "patients" -> 2, "partnership" -> 2, "partners" -> 2, "participation" -> 2, "Parents" -> 2, "paperwork" -> 2, "paid" -> 2, "outcome" -> 2, "Other" -> 2, "ordinary" -> 2, "options" -> 2, "optimism" -> 2, "oppose" -> 2, "open" -> 2, "old" -> 2, "officials" -> 2, "officers" -> 2, "number" -> 2, "Now" -> 2, "Not" -> 2, "network" -> 2, "neighbors" -> 2, "negotiations" -> 2, "neglected" -> 2, "needed" -> 2, "Nations" -> 2, "mutual" -> 2, "Muslim" -> 2, "moving" -> 2, "modernize" -> 2, "modern" -> 2, "Millions" -> 2, "might" -> 2, "Mideast" -> 2, "Medicare" -> 2, "media" -> 2, "matters" -> 2, "materials" -> 2, "material" -> 2, "manufacturers" -> 2, "lower" -> 2, "lost" -> 2, "long-term" -> 2, "long" -> 2, "lobbying" -> 2, "literally" -> 2, "limit" -> 2, "Like" -> 2, "light" -> 2, "levels" -> 2, "legal" -> 2, "leaves" -> 2, "leave" -> 2, "least" -> 2, "Laden" -> 2, "Korean" -> 2, "key" -> 2, "keeps" -> 2, "keeping" -> 2, "judges" -> 2, "Israel" -> 2, "Iraq's" -> 2, "Iran" -> 2, "investors" -> 2, "invest" -> 2, "internationally" -> 2, "interest" -> 2, "Intelligence" -> 2, "Instead" -> 2, "inspections" -> 2, "inspection" -> 2, "Information" -> 2, "Indonesia" -> 2, "individual" -> 2, "Indians" -> 2, "independent" -> 2, "incomes" -> 2, "inclusion" -> 2, "incentives" -> 2, "immediate" -> 2, "illnesses" -> 2, "If" -> 2, "if" -> 2, "ideas" -> 2, "ideals" -> 2, "ideal" -> 2, "idea" -> 2, "housing" -> 2, "hospitals" -> 2, "HMO" -> 2, "history" -> 2, "historic" -> 2, "high-paying" -> 2, "harm's" -> 2, "harm" -> 2, "hands" -> 2, "guided" -> 2, "Guard" -> 2, "guarantee" -> 2, "grows" -> 2, "greatness" -> 2, "greatest" -> 2, "grassroots" -> 2, "government's" -> 2, "God's" -> 2, "globalization" -> 2, "gifts" -> 2, "generation" -> 2, "further" -> 2, "funds" -> 2, "fulfill" -> 2, "frontlines" -> 2, "From" -> 2, "found" -> 2, "fortunate" -> 2, "foreign" -> 2, "five" -> 2, "Fiscal" -> 2, "firefighters" -> 2, "finest" -> 2, "finally" -> 2, "final" -> 2, "few" -> 2, "fast" -> 2, "fallen" -> 2, "fall" -> 2, "fail" -> 2, "fact" -> 2, "facilities" -> 2, "eyes" -> 2, "extended" -> 2, "export" -> 2, "expect" -> 2, "exercise" -> 2, "everything" -> 2, "enormous" -> 2, "engine" -> 2, "ends" -> 2, "encourage" -> 2, "employees" -> 2, "election" -> 2, "easier" -> 2, "earning" -> 2, "earn" -> 2, "during" -> 2, "driving" -> 2, "dream" -> 2, "doing" -> 2, "doesn't" -> 2, "doctors" -> 2, "disabilities" -> 2, "Director" -> 2, "direction" -> 2, "did" -> 2, "develop" -> 2, "destroy" -> 2, "desperately" -> 2, "dependent" -> 2, "dependence" -> 2, "departments" -> 2, "defend" -> 2, "deeply" -> 2, "decide" -> 2, "decade" -> 2, "day's" -> 2, "crisis" -> 2, "credit" -> 2, "coverage" -> 2, "course" -> 2, "coupled" -> 2, "country's" -> 2, "counted" -> 2, "count" -> 2, "coordination" -> 2, "cooperative" -> 2, "cooperation" -> 2, "contribute" -> 2, "continue" -> 2, "continent" -> 2, "consumers" -> 2, "Constitutional" -> 2, "Congress" -> 2, "conflict" -> 2, "concerns" -> 2, "competitors" -> 2, "competition" -> 2, "communications" -> 2, "commonsense" -> 2, "commit" -> 2, "Cold" -> 2, "close" -> 2, "Clinton" -> 2, "cleaner" -> 2, "classroom" -> 2, "civic" -> 2, "circle" -> 2, "child's" -> 2, "Child" -> 2, "charge" -> 2, "Century" -> 2, "central" -> 2, "cell" -> 2, "capabilities" -> 2, "burdens" -> 2, "burden" -> 2, "built" -> 2, "broke" -> 2, "brings" -> 2, "break" -> 2, "both" -> 2, "borders" -> 2, "border" -> 2, "biological" -> 2, "bin" -> 2, "billion" -> 2, "begins" -> 2, "beat" -> 2, "battlefield" -> 2, "bargain" -> 2, "background" -> 2, "backed" -> 2, "available" -> 2, "authorities" -> 2, "assisting" -> 2, "asking" -> 2, "arrive" -> 2, "aren't" -> 2, "appropriate" -> 2, "apart" -> 2, "answer" -> 2, "Amendment" -> 2, "almost" -> 2, "airports" -> 2, "agreed" -> 2, "ago" -> 2, "agendas" -> 2, "age" -> 2, "After" -> 2, "advantage" -> 2, "advance" -> 2, "administration" -> 2, "addresses" -> 2, "address" -> 2, "act" -> 2, "accessible" -> 2, "abuse" -> 2, "absolutely" -> 2, "abandoned" -> 2, "6" -> 2, "35" -> 2, "220,000" -> 2, "21st" -> 2, "20,000" -> 2, "15" -> 2, "11th" -> 2, "100" -> 2, "$27" -> 1, "$200,000" -> 1, "$1,500" -> 1, "Yet" -> 1, "yellow" -> 1, "wrongheaded" -> 1, "worth" -> 1, "worst" -> 1, "worship" -> 1, "world-class" -> 1, "World" -> 1, "workplace" -> 1, "Working" -> 1, "worked" -> 1, "word" -> 1, "woman's" -> 1, "woman" -> 1, "wives" -> 1, "Wilson" -> 1, "willingness" -> 1, "wildlife" -> 1, "why" -> 1, "whose" -> 1, "white" -> 1, "whims" -> 1, "we've" -> 1, "well-being" -> 1, "welcome" -> 1, "wealthy" -> 1, "wealthiest" -> 1, "weakened" -> 1, "weaken" -> 1, "Watch" -> 1, "watch" -> 1, "wasted" -> 1, "Wars" -> 1, "warnings" -> 1, "warned" -> 1, "warlord" -> 1, "wants" -> 1, "want" -> 1, "Wall" -> 1, "walking" -> 1, "walked" -> 1, "walk" -> 1, "waging" -> 1, "Wade" -> 1, "voter" -> 1, "volunteer" -> 1, "voluntary" -> 1, "virtually" -> 1, "Virgin" -> 1, "view" -> 1, "Victory" -> 1, "victims" -> 1, "viable" -> 1, "veto" -> 1, "veterans" -> 1, "vests" -> 1, "vehicles" -> 1, "vastly" -> 1, "variety" -> 1, "vaccine" -> 1, "US-only" -> 1, "used" -> 1, "upward" -> 1, "upholding" -> 1, "upgrades" -> 1, "unrealistic" -> 1, "unprecedented" -> 1, "unneeded" -> 1, "Unlike" -> 1, "unlike" -> 1, "unleashes" -> 1, "Units" -> 1, "units" -> 1, "united" -> 1, "unions" -> 1, "uninspected" -> 1, "unilateral" -> 1, "uniform" -> 1, "unified" -> 1, "unhealthy" -> 1, "unfortunately" -> 1, "unemployed" -> 1, "Undocumented" -> 1, "undertake" -> 1, "understood" -> 1, "understands" -> 1, "understanding" -> 1, "underlying" -> 1, "uncover" -> 1, "unaffordable" -> 1, "UN" -> 1, "ultimate" -> 1, "two-thirds" -> 1, "twice" -> 1, "Turkey" -> 1, "tuition" -> 1, "truth" -> 1, "trust" -> 1, "Truman" -> 1, "truly" -> 1, "Troops" -> 1, "tried" -> 1, "Treaty" -> 1, "treaties" -> 1, "travel" -> 1, "transformed" -> 1, "transform" -> 1, "trained" -> 1, "trails" -> 1, "traditions" -> 1, "towns" -> 1, "tours" -> 1, "tourism" -> 1, "tough-minded" -> 1, "toughest" -> 1, "torture" -> 1, "Tora" -> 1, "took" -> 1, "tons" -> 1, "tomorrow's" -> 1, "tomorrow" -> 1, "Together" -> 1, "Title" -> 1, "time-honored" -> 1, "time-high" -> 1, "Time" -> 1, "tighter" -> 1, "tighten" -> 1, "Throughout" -> 1, "throughout" -> 1, "Through" -> 1, "thriving" -> 1, "thrives" -> 1, "Three" -> 1, "threatened" -> 1, "threaten" -> 1, "Thousands" -> 1, "thought" -> 1, "Those" -> 1, "third" -> 1, "things" -> 1, "They've" -> 1, "They're" -> 1, "They'll" -> 1, "These" -> 1, "therapy" -> 1, "therapies" -> 1, "then-Governor" -> 1, "theirs" -> 1, "Terrorists" -> 1, "tension" -> 1, "teenager" -> 1, "technological" -> 1, "technical" -> 1, "team" -> 1, "tasks" -> 1, "targeting" -> 1, "tangible" -> 1, "talks" -> 1, "table" -> 1, "swallowed" -> 1, "sustaining" -> 1, "sustain" -> 1, "survival" -> 1, "surges" -> 1, "Supreme" -> 1, "supposed" -> 1, "suggestions" -> 1, "sufficient" -> 1, "successfully" -> 1, "success" -> 1, "substantially" -> 1, "subsidies" -> 1, "subject" -> 1, "stubbornly" -> 1, "struggle" -> 1, "structures" -> 1, "strongly" -> 1, "strongest" -> 1, "Strong" -> 1, "striving" -> 1, "striking" -> 1, "strikes" -> 1, "strictest" -> 1, "stretch" -> 1, "street" -> 1, "strategic" -> 1, "strain" -> 1, "straightforward" -> 1, "story" -> 1, "stop-loss" -> 1, "stockpiling" -> 1, "stockpiles" -> 1, "stifled" -> 1, "stiffen" -> 1, "stewardship" -> 1, "Stem" -> 1, "stem" -> 1, 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"shores" -> 1, "shipping" -> 1, "ship" -> 1, "sharing" -> 1, "shares" -> 1, "shaped" -> 1, "shape" -> 1, "shameful" -> 1, "shadows" -> 1, "shackled" -> 1, "sexual" -> 1, "seven" -> 1, "settle" -> 1, "serves" -> 1, "seriousness" -> 1, "serious" -> 1, "separate" -> 1, "sent" -> 1, "seize" -> 1, "seen" -> 1, "seeking" -> 1, "secured" -> 1, "sectors" -> 1, "secret" -> 1, "second-class" -> 1, "second" -> 1, "searching" -> 1, "searched" -> 1, "scoured" -> 1, "schooled" -> 1, "scene" -> 1, "say" -> 1, "saves" -> 1, "Saudi" -> 1, "satisfaction" -> 1, "sanctuaries" -> 1, "sanctity" -> 1, "Samoa" -> 1, "said" -> 1, "safekeeping" -> 1, "safeguard" -> 1, "Saddam's" -> 1, "sacrificing" -> 1, "sacred" -> 1, "rushed" -> 1, "rush" -> 1, "running" -> 1, "rule" -> 1, "rose" -> 1, "roots" -> 1, "Roosevelt's" -> 1, "Roosevelt" -> 1, "roof" -> 1, "rolling" -> 1, "Roe" -> 1, "risk" -> 1, "risen" -> 1, "richest" -> 1, "richer" -> 1, "Ricans" -> 1, "rewrote" -> 1, "rewritten" -> 1, "reward" -> 1, "Revolution" 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"redress" -> 1, "red" -> 1, "records" -> 1, "record" -> 1, "recognizes" -> 1, "recent" -> 1, "rebuilding" -> 1, "rebuild" -> 1, "reauthorize" -> 1, "reassert" -> 1, "realized" -> 1, "realistic" -> 1, "Reagan" -> 1, "reaffirm" -> 1, "Ready" -> 1, "ratified" -> 1, "rare" -> 1, "ranks" -> 1, "range" -> 1, "rallying" -> 1, "rally" -> 1, "raising" -> 1, "raise" -> 1, "raided" -> 1, "radical" -> 1, "Racial" -> 1, "quiet" -> 1, "quickly" -> 1, "quarter" -> 1, "push" -> 1, "pursuit" -> 1, "pursuing" -> 1, "pursues" -> 1, "pursue" -> 1, "purpose" -> 1, "purer" -> 1, "pure" -> 1, "purchasing" -> 1, "punish" -> 1, "provisions" -> 1, "proudly" -> 1, "protocols" -> 1, "protectors" -> 1, "protected" -> 1, "prosperity" -> 1, "proselytize" -> 1, "proposals" -> 1, "promptly" -> 1, "promises" -> 1, "progressive" -> 1, "profiling" -> 1, "professions" -> 1, "professionally" -> 1, "products" -> 1, "productive" -> 1, "produce" -> 1, "processing" -> 1, "process" -> 1, "procedures" -> 1, "problems" -> 1, 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"Pell" -> 1, "paying" -> 1, "Pay-As-You-Go" -> 1, "patriotic" -> 1, "Patient's" -> 1, "patient" -> 1, "past" -> 1, "party" -> 1, "participate" -> 1, "part" -> 1, "Parkinson's" -> 1, "parent-teacher" -> 1, "Pakistan's" -> 1, "Pakistan" -> 1, "pace" -> 1, "ownership" -> 1, "overwhelming" -> 1, "overwhelmed" -> 1, "overseeing" -> 1, "oversee" -> 1, "overriding" -> 1, "overnight" -> 1, "overcome" -> 1, "Over" -> 1, "outside" -> 1, "ourselves" -> 1, "otherwise" -> 1, "Osama" -> 1, "orientation" -> 1, "orange" -> 1, "opposite" -> 1, "opium" -> 1, "operating" -> 1, "OPEC" -> 1, "one-third" -> 1, "one-half" -> 1, "once" -> 1, "older" -> 1, "officer" -> 1, "offered" -> 1, "off" -> 1, "odds" -> 1, "oceans" -> 1, "observed" -> 1, "obligations" -> 1, "nurses" -> 1, "nuclear-armed" -> 1, "Nuclear" -> 1, "November" -> 1, "notice" -> 1, "Nothing" -> 1, "Northern" -> 1, "Nor" -> 1, "non­proliferation" -> 1, "non­governmental" -> 1, "Nonproliferation" -> 1, "none" -> 1, "no-bid" -> 1, "newly" -> 1, "New" -> 1, "Neighborhood" -> 1, "neighborhood" -> 1, "negotiate" -> 1, "necessary" -> 1, "Nearly" -> 1, "nature" -> 1, "natural" -> 1, "narrow" -> 1, "Nancy" -> 1, "mutually" -> 1, "multiple" -> 1, "movements" -> 1, "moved" -> 1, "move" -> 1, "mounting" -> 1, "mother" -> 1, "most-sophisticated" -> 1, "mortgages" -> 1, "mortal" -> 1, "Morocco" -> 1, "More" -> 1, "moon" -> 1, "monitoring" -> 1, "models" -> 1, "mobility" -> 1, "mistake" -> 1, "missions" -> 1, "missed" -> 1, "misguided" -> 1, "minimum" -> 1, "mindful" -> 1, "militias" -> 1, "militarily" -> 1, "message" -> 1, "mercy" -> 1, "mercury" -> 1, "Members" -> 1, "member" -> 1, "medication" -> 1, "Medicaid" -> 1, "meaningful" -> 1, "mean" -> 1, "meals" -> 1, "math" -> 1, "matches" -> 1, "Marriage" -> 1, "marriage" -> 1, "markets" -> 1, "marked" -> 1, "mark" -> 1, "Many" -> 1, "manufacturing" -> 1, "manpower" -> 1, "manipulation" -> 1, "manhunt" -> 1, "mandatory" -> 1, "management" -> 1, "man" -> 1, "majority" -> 1, "maintain" -> 1, "mainstream" -> 1, "Madrassas" -> 1, "luster" -> 1, "lower-income" -> 1, "losing" -> 1, "loophole" -> 1, "looks" -> 1, "look" -> 1, "longtime" -> 1, "long-run" -> 1, "localized" -> 1, "localism" -> 1, "lobbyists" -> 1, "loans" -> 1, "little" -> 1, "lists" -> 1, "listens" -> 1, "listen" -> 1, "list" -> 1, "lines" -> 1, "line-item" -> 1, "limits" -> 1, "limited" -> 1, "lift" -> 1, "lifetimes" -> 1, "life's" -> 1, "Life" -> 1, "liberty" -> 1, "liberties" -> 1, "level" -> 1, "lets" -> 1, "let" -> 1, "lesbian" -> 1, "legitimate" -> 1, "legislative" -> 1, "legislation" -> 1, "Left" -> 1, "led" -> 1, "learning" -> 1, "leads" -> 1, "leading" -> 1, "leadership—a" -> 1, "lavishes" -> 1, "lavish" -> 1, "launch" -> 1, "Latinos" -> 1, "large" -> 1, "languages" -> 1, "landowners" -> 1, "landmines" -> 1, "lakes" -> 1, "Kosovo" -> 1, "Korea's" -> 1, "Korea" -> 1, "Kofi" -> 1, "know-how" -> 1, "kind" -> 1, "Kim" -> 1, "killed" -> 1, "Khan" -> 1, "Kenya" -> 1, "Kennedy" -> 1, "Karzai" -> 1, "Kabul" -> 1, "juvenile" -> 1, "Jordan" -> 1, "Jong" -> 1, "joins" -> 1, "Jewish" -> 1, "Japanese" -> 1, "IX" -> 1, "It's" -> 1, "issues" -> 1, "issue" -> 1, "Israeli-Palestinian" -> 1, "isn't" -> 1, "Islands" -> 1, "Islamic" -> 1, "irreversible" -> 1, "ironclad" -> 1, "Iranian" -> 1, "invited" -> 1, "investigation" -> 1, "invent" -> 1, "intolerance" -> 1, "internationalize" -> 1, "interim" -> 1, "interested" -> 1, "intend" -> 1, "integrity" -> 1, "insufficient" -> 1, "inspires" -> 1, "innovative" -> 1, "innovations" -> 1, "initiatives" -> 1, "initiative" -> 1, "ingenuity" -> 1, "infrastructure" -> 1, "inflation" -> 1, "inevitably" -> 1, "ineffective" -> 1, "industries" -> 1, "Industrial" -> 1, "indivisible" -> 1, "individuals" -> 1, "Individual" -> 1, "India" -> 1, "independently" -> 1, "Independence" -> 1, "indebted" -> 1, "increasingly" -> 1, "increasing" -> 1, "increases" -> 1, "incomparable" -> 1, "includes" -> 1, "include" -> 1, "incentive-based" -> 1, "improving" -> 1, "improvement" -> 1, "impose" -> 1, "imports" -> 1, "import" -> 1, "imperatives" -> 1, "impact" -> 1, "immigration" -> 1, "immeasurably—by" -> 1, "immeasurably" -> 1, "imagine" -> 1, "illusions" -> 1, "illness" -> 1, "illegal" -> 1, "Il" -> 1, "Ignoring" -> 1, "ignores" -> 1, "husbands" -> 1, "hurts" -> 1, "hunt" -> 1, "hundreds" -> 1, "hundred" -> 1, "huge" -> 1, "hopeless" -> 1, "honoring" -> 1, "honest" -> 1, "homework" -> 1, "homelessness" -> 1, "Homeland" -> 1, "holes" -> 1, "hold" -> 1, "HMOs" -> 1, "His" -> 1, "High-wage" -> 1, "high-technology" -> 1, "high-tech" -> 1, "highly" -> 1, "high-level" -> 1, "highest" -> 1, "High" -> 1, "hide" -> 1, "heroes" -> 1, "her" -> 1, "helicopter" -> 1, "heeds" -> 1, "heavy" -> 1, "HEALTHY" -> 1, "health-related" -> 1, "Health" -> 1, "having" -> 1, "havens" -> 1, "haven" -> 1, "Hate" -> 1, "hasten" -> 1, "harness" -> 1, "hard­working" -> 1, "hard-pressed" -> 1, "happen" -> 1, "hand" -> 1, "halting" -> 1, "half" -> 1, "had" -> 1, "habitats" -> 1, "Gulf" -> 1, "guise" -> 1, "guidelines" -> 1, "Guardsmen" -> 1, "guardsmen" -> 1, "guards" -> 1, "guard" -> 1, "guaranteed" -> 1, "Guam" -> 1, "GROWING" -> 1, "grounded" -> 1, "grew" -> 1, "green" -> 1, "grasp" -> 1, "Grants" -> 1, "graduate" -> 1, "grade" -> 1, "government-to-government" -> 1, "Government's" -> 1, "Government" -> 1, "governed" -> 1, "govern" -> 1, "God-given" -> 1, "globe" -> 1, "geographic" -> 1, "genius" -> 1, "Geneva" -> 1, "gear" -> 1, "gay" -> 1, "gave" -> 1, "gathering" -> 1, "gasoline" -> 1, "gaining" -> 1, "Furthermore" -> 1, "funded" -> 1, "full-time" -> 1, "fronts" -> 1, "front" -> 1, "fresh" -> 1, "frequently" -> 1, "frees" -> 1, "Freedoms" -> 1, "frayed" -> 1, "Franklin" -> 1, "fragmented" -> 1, "fraction" -> 1, "Fourth" -> 1, "Four" -> 1, "Founders" -> 1, "foundations" -> 1, "foundation" -> 1, "forward" -> 1, "forty" -> 1, "forms" -> 1, "former" -> 1, "form" -> 1, "forges" -> 1, "forged" -> 1, "forge" -> 1, "forests" -> 1, "foremost" -> 1, "Forces" -> 1, "food" -> 1, "follow" -> 1, "flying" -> 1, "flows" -> 1, "flown" -> 1, "flow" -> 1, "flourish" -> 1, "Florida" -> 1, "flag" -> 1, "fix" -> 1, "fitfully" -> 1, "fist" -> 1, "fishing" -> 1, "fish" -> 1, "firmly" -> 1, "firefighter" -> 1, "fire" -> 1, "finding" -> 1, "financial" -> 1, "Finally" -> 1, "filling" -> 1, "filled" -> 1, "file" -> 1, "fighters" -> 1, "fifty" -> 1, "fields" -> 1, "field" -> 1, "fencing" -> 1, "fellow" -> 1, "fell" -> 1, "feeling" -> 1, "Federal" -> 1, "feared" -> 1, "FBI" -> 1, "faster" -> 1, "farming" -> 1, "farmers" -> 1, "family's" -> 1, "Family" -> 1, "FAMILIES" -> 1, "false" -> 1, "falling" -> 1, "faiths" -> 1, "faithfully" -> 1, "faith-based" -> 1, "fairly" -> 1, "failures" -> 1, "failure" -> 1, "Failed" -> 1, "facts" -> 1, "factors" -> 1, "factories" -> 1, "facets" -> 1, "faced" -> 1, "extraordinary" -> 1, "extending" -> 1, "expression" -> 1, "express" -> 1, "exposed" -> 1, "exploding" -> 1, "expiring" -> 1, "experienced" -> 1, "expense" -> 1, "expedited" -> 1, "expected" -> 1, "expectant" -> 1, "expanded" -> 1, "exit" -> 1, "executives" -> 1, "excuse" -> 1, "excitement" -> 1, "exaggerated" -> 1, "evolution" -> 1, "evidence" -> 1, "Every" -> 1, "event" -> 1, "evacuation" -> 1, "European" -> 1, "ethical" -> 1, "establishing" -> 1, "establish" -> 1, "essential" -> 1, "escape" -> 1, "era" -> 1, "equitable" -> 1, "equipped" -> 1, "entire" -> 1, "ensures" -> 1, "ensured" -> 1, "enlisted" -> 1, "enlist" -> 1, "enjoy" -> 1, "enhancing" -> 1, "English-language" -> 1, "engaging" -> 1, "enemy" -> 1, "ending" -> 1, "endanger" -> 1, "encouraging" -> 1, "enable" -> 1, "EMT" -> 1, "employment" -> 1, "employers" -> 1, "emergencies" -> 1, "embryonic" -> 1, "embrace" -> 1, "embody" -> 1, "elimination" -> 1, "eliminate" -> 1, "elicit" -> 1, "electronic" -> 1, "electrified" -> 1, "Elderly" -> 1, "elderly" -> 1, "eldercare" -> 1, "efficiently" -> 1, "efficient" -> 1, "efficiency" -> 1, "Education" -> 1, "educating" -> 1, "ECONOMY" -> 1, "economists" -> 1, "Each" -> 1, "dumping" -> 1, "duly" -> 1, "due" -> 1, "driven" -> 1, "drill" -> 1, "dreams" -> 1, "Dream" -> 1, "dramatically" -> 1, "drafting" -> 1, "draft" -> 1, "doubt" -> 1, "doubling" -> 1, "doubled" -> 1, "door" -> 1, "don't" -> 1, "domestic" -> 1, "dollar" -> 1, "does" -> 1, "doctrine" -> 1, "divisive" -> 1, "divide" -> 1, "diverted" -> 1, "disrespected" -> 1, "disrespect" -> 1, "disregarded" -> 1, "disregard" -> 1, "disputed" -> 1, "disposal" -> 1, "disgrace" -> 1, "disenfranchised" -> 1, "disease" -> 1, "disdained" -> 1, "discuss" -> 1, "discriminatory" -> 1, "discriminate" -> 1, "disaster" -> 1, "disarm" -> 1, "disagreements" -> 1, "disagreement" -> 1, "disagree" -> 1, "Disabilities" -> 1, "diplomatic" -> 1, "difficulty" -> 1, "difficulties" -> 1, "differing" -> 1, "differences" -> 1, "died" -> 1, "diabetes" -> 1, "devastated" -> 1, "detailed" -> 1, "destroying" -> 1, "destabilizing" -> 1, "Despite" -> 1, "desecrate" -> 1, "deployments" -> 1, "deployed" -> 1, "deploy" -> 1, "Department" -> 1, "deny" -> 1, "demonstrate" -> 1, "Democracy" -> 1, "democracies" -> 1, "demean" -> 1, "delivered" -> 1, "delays" -> 1, "delayed" -> 1, "Delano" -> 1, "deficits" -> 1, "deficit" -> 1, "defends" -> 1, "defender" -> 1, "deepening" -> 1, "deep" -> 1, "dedication" -> 1, "declare" -> 1, "Declaration" -> 1, "decisions" -> 1, "debt" -> 1, "deal" -> 1, "dangers" -> 1, "dangerous" -> 1, "daily" -> 1, "cuts" -> 1, "curriculum" -> 1, "currency" -> 1, "culture" -> 1, "crucial" -> 1, "crossings" -> 1, "crony" -> 1, "crimes" -> 1, "creativity" -> 1, "created" -> 1, "Court" -> 1, "courageous" -> 1, "courage" -> 1, "counts" -> 1, "countless" -> 1, "counter-narcotics" -> 1, "Council" -> 1, "correct" -> 1, "core" -> 1, "cops" -> 1, "cope" -> 1, "coordinating" -> 1, "convince" -> 1, "Conventions" -> 1, "conventional" -> 1, "controlled" -> 1, "contribution—helping" -> 1, "contracts" -> 1, "contracting" -> 1, "continuing" -> 1, "continuation" -> 1, "contents" -> 1, "Containing" -> 1, 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We have arrived at this moment because of the hard work of the American people. This election will be about the big choices we have to make to secure prosperity that is broadly shared and progress that reaches all families in this new American century. In the year 2000, the Democratic Party stands ready to meet that challenge and to build on our achievements.\nWhen Thomas Jefferson was elected as our Party's first president in 1800, America was a young country trying to find its place in the world. Two hundred years later, Democrats gather at a moment of vast possibility to nominate Al Gore as America's next president. A new economy founded on the force of new technologies and traditional values of work is giving rise to new industries and transforming old ones. Biological breakthroughs give us the chance to unlock the mysteries of humanity's deadliest plagues. While the globe is still beset with tragedies and difficulties, more people live under governments of freedom, liberty, and democracy than ever before in history. America enjoys unparalleled affluence at home and influence abroad.\nYet this moment is clearly one of possibility, not absolute guarantees. We must remember that our achievements were accomplished only with creativity, courage, and conscience; with a willingness to innovate and imagine; and with a recommitment to our basic American values of hard work, community, embracing diversity, faith, family, and personal responsibility. And all of it can be imperiled again.\nLet us not forget that America's future did not always seem so bright. Under the Bush-Quayle administration, America was suffering through economic stagnation. Businesses were failing. Jobs were disappearing. The welfare rolls swelled. Crime exploded in the streets. Hope and optimism were scarce. Most Americans felt that the American Dream was endangered - if not extinct.\nBut in 1992, Americans elected Bill Clinton and Al Gore with a mandate to turn America around. And that's just what they did. They took on the old thinking that had come to dominate politics and offered new ideas - new ideas that met the challenges of the day, new ideas that kept faith with America's oldest values, new ideas that worked.\nEight years later the record is clear: the longest economic expansion in American history. The most jobs ever created under a single administration. The first real wage growth in 20 years. The highest home ownership rate ever. The lowest African-American and Hispanic-American unemployment rates in American history. The lowest crime rate in 25 years. The lowest number of people on welfare since the 1960's. The largest drop in poverty in nearly 30 years. The lowest level of child poverty in 20 years. And after 15 painful years when the rich were getting richer and the poor were getting poorer, America is finally growing together instead of growing apart.\nThese are accomplishments, not accidents. They came about because Democrats - from the White House, to the Congress, to State Houses all across America - brought new thinking and new action to our most pressing challenges. We used government as a catalyst to engage the best ideas and energies of the American people. We asked citizens to get involved and they did. They tutored in their children's schools, patrolled on neighborhood crime watches, volunteered in local hospitals, and voiced their opinion on every issue. They shaped effective solutions to real problems. It will take more of this brand of new thinking if we are to build on this record of achievement.\nDuring our nation's darkest hours, Americans have strived mightily and succeeded in meeting the challenges of their times. The question before us is whether we will do the same during this bright moment; whether we will seize this moment to bring more prosperity and progress to more Americans than ever before; whether, having finally conquered our financial deficits, we will have the courage to conquer the other deficits - in health care, in education, in the environment - that challenge us today.\nIn this Platform, today's Democratic Party lays out its plans to do just that. This platform was not written in a dark backroom, but in the light of day; in an open, democratic process that was interactive and inclusive. It was developed both with the guidance of the brightest Democratic leaders and with the voices of thousands of ordinary Americans around the country who contributed their thoughts, ideas, beliefs, and dreams to this platform in person, on paper, and over the Internet. This is a 21st century platform for the 21st century's party. A people's platform for the people's party.\nIf one theme runs through this 2000 Democratic platform, it is this: if America is to secure prosperity, progress, peace and security for all, we cannot afford to go back. We must move forward together and we must not leave anyone behind.\nI. PROSPERITY\n\nEight years ago, America was facing a big challenge. Under the Bush-Quayle Administration, the American economy was floundering. Slow growth had turned into no growth and into a jobless recovery. Americans in all walks of life were facing a future of less prosperity and more resignation. In 1992, Bill Clinton and Al Gore were elected to turn the American economy around and point upward toward the future.\nThey took office with a new set of ideas about how to get the economy moving again. They knew that the private sector is the engine of economic growth, but they also knew that, in Franklin Roosevelt's phrase, \"the national community\" - acting through government - can make a big difference.\nToday, the success of these new ideas is clear. After a generation of stagnation for many and decline for some, real wages for all working families have started to rise again. America has the lowest unemployment and fastest economic growth in more than 30 years. The American people have created 22 million new jobs. We have the lowest inflation rate in decades. More Americans own their home than ever before. Looking back on 1992, this much is clear: Americans are better off than we were eight years ago.\nBut ours is a record to build on, not to rest on. That's because eight years later, we face a new challenge: how to keep prosperity alive - and how to deepen it - in a fast-moving, fast-changing economy. We can never take our economic prosperity for granted nor can we afford to go back to either tax-and-spend or cut-and-run - the failed policies of the past. It took innovative, new Democratic policies to create the environment where prosperity could bloom. It will take more such policies to allow prosperity to blossom - to forge a prosperity that does not leave anyone out and does not leave anyone behind.\nDuring the past decade, the birth of the global, information-based new economy has changed most every aspect of Americans' lives. As we move inexorably from the Industrial Age to the Information Age, the transition will be difficult for some. In the decade to come, Democrats must lead the way in equipping all Americans with new tools for economic success and security. This is the only sure means of ensuring that America's prosperity is one that is broadly shared.\nTime after time, Republicans opposed the ideas that brought prosperity to America. Time after time, they have been proven wrong. But their sorry record does not give them pause, it does not even slow them down. Despite a Democratic record of success, the Republicans now propose to rewind to the policies that brought America the days of deficits, doubt, debt, and decline; a retreat to the thinking of the era of recessions, repossessions, and retrenchment.\nDemocrats believe that to further our prosperity and make sure all Americans are ready to reap the rewards of the new economy we need thinking as innovative as the moment in which we live. First, we must continue the fiscal discipline that has been the hallmark of the past eight years - that means paying down the debt and offering the right kind of tax cuts. Second, we must use our unprecedented prosperity to secure Social Security and Medicare for future generations. Third, we must invest in the most precious resource we have - the American people and their skills and ability to innovate. Fourth, we must continue to reinvent government so that it works better and costs less and is in line with the on-line world. Fifth, we must open new markets to American products at home and around the world. Finally, we must reinforce the basic American bargain of requiring and rewarding hard work and we must provide Americans with the opportunity to participate in key decisions at work and in their communities.\nFiscal Discipline\n\nFor the 12 years before Bill Clinton and Al Gore took office, Republicans talked about fiscal discipline while they quadrupled the national debt. They ran up monstrous yearly deficits and nearly ran the American economy into the ground. In 1992, Democrats promised to cut the deficit in half in four years. They did - and went even further. It took Al Gore's tie-breaking vote in the Senate to overcome unanimous Republican opposition to deficit reduction. Today, America has gone from the biggest deficits in history to the biggest surpluses in history. Fiscal discipline keeps interest rates low and investment rates high - and it has helped fuel America's remarkable prosperity.\nWe must not go back. That's why Democrats now vow to balance the budget every year, barring a national emergency. But even this is not enough. In the 160 years since the very first Democratic Platform, America has always struggled under a national debt. Today's Democrats believe we should pay down the debt every year until we can give our children the independence, self-sufficiency, and prosperity that will come from an America that is debt-free. In 12 years of rule, Republicans quadrupled the national debt. In the next 12 years, Democrats vow to wipe out the publicly-held national debt.\nToday, because of the success of the Clinton-Gore Administration, a debt-free America is within reach. This would free businesses to invest and innovate, it would provide an ever more sturdy foundation for future economic growth, and it would create good jobs. That's why Al Gore is determined to completely eliminate the publicly-held national debt by the year 2012.\nThe Right Kind of Tax Cuts.\n\nThe road to long term prosperity starts with embracing fiscal discipline. Unfortunately, the Republicans eschew fiscal discipline and offer up nothing less than fiscal disaster. They would squander the surplus on a more than trillion-dollar federal government tax giveaway for the well-off and well-connected, while failing to eliminate the national debt, neglecting to shore up Social Security and Medicare, and shirking the need to invest in the education of America's children and the skills of her workers.\nFor the past eight years, Democrats have been working to offer tax relief to the Americans who need it the most where they need it the most. We cut taxes for working parents who were struggling to make ends meet. We cut taxes for parents who were working hard and trying to raise good kids. We cut taxes for Americans who had studied hard and made it to college. We cut taxes for Americans who were continuing their educations and gaining new skills to stay on the cutting-edge of the economy. We cut taxes for companies that were helping Americans make the transition from welfare to work. We cut taxes for more than 90% of America's dynamic small businesses. Today, for most families, the federal tax burden is the lowest it has been in twenty years.\nThe Bush tax slash takes a different course. It is bigger than any cut Newt Gingrich ever dreamed of. It would let the richest one percent of Americans afford a new sports car and middle class Americans afford a warm soda. It is so out-of-step with reality that the Republican Congress refused to enact it. It would undermine the American economy and undercut our prosperity. Under the leadership of Al Gore, Democrats want to give middle class families tax cuts they can use - tax cuts that will put their own values into action and that will not injure the economic vitality they rely on. Democrats seek the right kind of tax relief - tax cuts that are specifically targeted to help those who need them the most. These tax cuts would let families live their values by helping them save for college, invest in their job skills and lifelong learning, pay for health insurance, afford child care, eliminate the marriage penalty for working families, care for elderly or disabled loved ones, invest in clean cars and clean homes, and build additional security for their retirement.\nRetirement Security\n\nAmericans' golden years should be times of calm and security, not concern and stress. Few achievements testify more to the ability of government to do good than Social Security. It has lifted millions of elderly Americans out of poverty and helped them make ends meet. Social Security is more than a government program. It is a solemn compact between the generations. It is our nation's most important family protection. The choice for Americans on this vital part of our national heritage has never been more clear: Democrats believe in using our prosperity to save Social Security; the Republicans' tax cut would prevent America from ensuring our senior citizens have a secure retirement. We owe it to America's children and their children to make the strength and solvency of Social Security a major national priority.\nThat's why Al Gore is committed to making Social Security safe and secure for more than half a century by using the savings from our current unprecedented prosperity to strengthen the Social Security Trust Fund in preparation for the retirement of the Baby Boom generation. We now have an extraordinary opportunity to maintain Social Security. In addition, we can reform it - not the wrong way, with proposals such as raising the retirement age, but the right way - with fiscal discipline and by making it fairer for widows, widowers, and mothers.\nRetirement security comes on many fronts. Democrats have successfully passed reforms to simplify the pension process for small businesses, expand pension portability, and protect employee pension funds. Democrats believe that workers' pensions should be protected and more portable. We also believe that changes in every American's pension rights should be fully disclosed. This is becoming increasingly important today, as pensions are progressively being shifted from a workers' benefit plan to a workers' contribution plan. We believe these changes need to be carefully examined by independent agencies to make sure they abide by current federal law. Democrats support President Clinton's veto of the Republican tax scheme that would have diminished anti-discrimination protections for middle-class and lower-income workers.\nTo build on the success of Social Security, Al Gore has proposed the creation of Retirement Savings Plus - voluntary, tax-free, personally-controlled, privately-managed savings accounts with a government match that would help couples build a nest egg of up to $400,000. Separate from Social Security, Retirement Savings Plus accounts would let Americans save and invest on top of the foundation of Social Security's guaranteed benefit. Under this plan, the federal government would match individual contributions with tax credits, with the hardest-pressed working families getting the most assistance.\nThe Republicans have a far different idea - a scheme that would come not in addition to Social Security but at the expense of it. Their Social Security privatization plot would siphon $1 trillion in payroll taxes away from the Social Security trust fund, take 14 years off the life of Social Security, eliminate the fundamental guarantee of retirement security, and raise the specter of massive government bail-outs. And, according to independent analyses, the Republicans' privatization plan would cut the guaranteed benefits for young workers by as much as 54 percent. It would take the \"security\" out of Social Security.\nRetirement Savings Plus does not threaten Social Security's guaranteed benefit. Social Security may be 65 years old - but it is not ready to be retired. Taken together George W. Bush's $2 trillion tax cut, his campaign-season spending proposals, his support for an unspecified but unprecedented missile defense system, and his support for privatizing Social Security add up to an assault on the surplus - causing Americans to have to choose between drastic cuts in education and health care or a return to the days of deficit spending. This is not a choice Americans should have to make. With fiscal discipline and a commitment to honoring our values, we can both save Social Security and give Americans the ability to create a nest egg without turning back the clock on our prosperity.\nInvesting in Americans\n\nDemocrats know that today, more than ever before, we need the right kinds of investments - in education, lifelong learning, skill development, and research and development - to take advantage of the vast opportunities of the Information Age. We need to make sure Americans have the skills and tools they need to compete and win in the new knowledge-based, global economy.\nA Revolution in American Education\n\nDemocrats understand that ensuring every child the highest quality education is essential if America is to remain strong and competitive in today's economy. That's why Al Gore's very first campaign speech was about education and that's why Al Gore will make education his top domestic priority.\nNine out of every ten children in this country attend a public school. Public education already allows the United States to have one of the highest standards of living in the world, providing equality of opportunity for all regardless of socioeconomic status.\nThe success stories coming from public schools are greater than at any time in their history: higher graduation rates, increasing test scores, and higher student achievement - with especially substantial gains among our neediest students. We must continue to build on this record of success that Democrats have compiled in the last eight years. We have helped states and communities set high academic standards for students and called for an end to social promotion. We have started hiring 100,000 qualified teachers. We have increased accountability. We have opened the gates of college to millions of Americans.\nNow we must do more. Democrats understand that America will not long remain first in the world economically unless we become first in the world educationally. We cannot continue to generate a fifth of the world's economic output if a third of our students do not meet basic reading standards. We cannot stay number one in high technology jobs if we remain last in the percentage of degrees awarded in science. In today's knowledge-based economy, it's just that simple. Education leads to the future success and security of our country and citizenry.\nAmericans have been told they must choose between investing in education and demanding accountability. This is the type of false choice that drives our government into stalemate and drives Americans up the wall. Americans believe that we need to invest more in our children's educations - and they're right. Americans also believe that we should not be pouring more money into a system that is producing bad results - and they're right about that too. We should do more of what we're doing right and less of what we're doing wrong.\nAl Gore and the Democratic Party know that investments without accountability are a waste of money and that accountability without investments are a waste of time. George W. Bush and the Republican Party offer neither real accountability nor reasonable investment. What they do offer are soothing sound-bites and bite-sized solutions. They refuse to invest in America's crumbling schools and crowded classrooms - spending 100 times more on tax cuts than on education. They don't help pay teachers like professionals nor do they insist on higher standards for teachers. They propose blank check block grants without accountability. Their version of accountability relies on private school vouchers that would offer too few dollars to too few children to escape their failing schools. These vouchers would pass the buck on accountability while pulling bucks out of the schools that need them most. When it comes to education, Democrats want to invest more and aim higher, the Republicans invest too little and aim too low.\nWe cannot afford - materially or morally - to let another generation of American children pass through inadequate schools before we make needed changes that will save them from a lifetime of frustration and limited horizons. The time for action is now.\nBy the end of the next presidential term, we should have a fully qualified, well trained teacher in every classroom in every school in every part of this country - and every teacher should pass a rigorous test to get there.\nBy the end of the next presidential term, every failing school in America should be turned around - or shut down and reopened under new public leadership.\nBy the end of the next presidential term, we should ensure that no high school student graduates unless they have mastered the basics of reading and math - so that the diploma they receive really means something.\nBy the end of the next presidential term, parents across the nation ought to be able to choose the best public school for their children.\nBy the end of the next presidential term, every eighth grader in America should be computer literate.\nBy the end of the next presidential term, high-quality, affordable preschool should be fully available to every family, for every child, in every community in America.\nBy the end of the next presidential term, every child should learn in a safe, modern classroom with the most up-to-date technology.\nBy the end of the next presidential term, the achievement gap between students of color and the rest of America's students should be eliminated.\nAll this we pledge - and more. The time for tinkering around the edges has long passed. We need revolutionary improvements in our public schools. This requires a major national investment; a demand of accountability from all; a genuine expansion of public school choice; and a renewed focus on discipline, character, and safety in our schools.\nDiscipline, Character, and Safety.\n\nEducation is not just about test scores, but about passing on our values to the next generation of American citizens. Our children and teachers deserve schools of safety and classrooms free of fear. We should have a zero-tolerance policy towards guns in schools. Each school should institute strict, firm, and fair discipline policies that are agreed upon on the first day of the school year at a meeting of teachers, parents, and students. We should expand the Family Leave Law to make sure parents can attend these meetings and all parent-teacher conferences without being scared they will lose their jobs.\nWe must do all we can to encourage active parental involvement in our schools - after all, parents are a child's first and best teachers. A parent's job does not end when they drop their child off at the schools front door. They have a responsibility to actively participate in their childrens' education, to read to their children, and to help their children with their homework. Schools need to do their part by welcoming parents into the education process and giving them a voice in the education of their children.\nDemocrats believe in \"second-chance schools\" where kids expelled from school and those headed for trouble can get the concentrated help, services, and guidance they need to get back on the path to success.\nIf we are serious about fighting school violence, we need a dramatic increase in after-school care for America's children. The average two-parent family works 500 more hours a year than they did a generation ago. Children often come home from school to empty houses. We know that the most dangerous hours for children are those between the end of the school day and the end of the work day. It is in these afternoon hours that children are most likely to get into trouble and fall under bad influences. Democrats have increased after-school assistance 500 times over in the last four years. Al Gore believes in expanding after-school programs and providing Americans with an after-school tax credit so that children have a safe, supervised after-school environment where they can continue to learn and learn right from wrong.\nToo often, our culture offers our children a virtual crash course in violence and degradation. It is sometimes a culture of too much meanness and not enough meaning. That's why character education is so important in our schools. Education should not be a morals-free zone. Schools can teach our kids about honesty, hard work, openness to new information, strong discipline, willingness to reason, personal responsibility, and tolerance for different points of view. Teachers can help children develop the values and the character - as well as the intellectual tools - it takes to succeed and contribute to their communities. The traditional three R's are not enough. Schools need to make sure they teach kids respect, reliability, and responsibility as well.\nWe must also remember that our schools are not just training the next generation of workers, they are also educating the next generation of citizens. That's why Democrats support democracy education, civic education, and service requirements in our schools.\nStrict Accountability for Results, Strong Incentives for Success.\n\nDemocrats believe that everyone involved in the education system should be held accountable. Accountability means we will no longer tolerate mediocrity and no longer allow failure. Accountability applies to states, school districts, schools, teachers, students, and parents. Everyone must do their part. Nobody can shirk their responsibility.\nConsistently bad schools should be shut down. No excuses. No exceptions. Every state and school district should identify failing schools and turn them around with all necessary measures and all necessary resources. Students in those schools should get first priority in transferring to a better-performing public school in the district and getting intensive after-school academic help to make sure they are not left behind while their school is being turned around. Failing schools that do not improve should be quickly shut down and reopened with a new principal and new teachers.\nStates should be held accountable for reducing dropout rates, increasing graduation rates, and raising student achievement. Working together with teachers, school principals should be able to hire on the basis of qualifications and fit, not just on the basis of seniority.\nTeachers should be answerable for what goes on in their classroom. New teachers who answer the call to join this honorable profession should get the mentors and professional support they need to make the transition into teaching - and then should have to pass a rigorous and fair test before they step foot into a classroom.\nTeaching is no easy job and we should not expect that everyone is able to make it in the classroom. New teachers should receive ongoing support and mentoring from their more experienced colleagues. Current teachers should receive continuing quality professional development to ensure that their skills and knowledge reflect the most up-to-date information and research.\nThose teachers who do not meet the highest quality standards should not be allowed to sully the reputation of the teaching profession. That's why teachers who are not teaching well should receive help in getting up to standards. At its best, teaching is the job of a lifetime. But teaching contracts and licenses should not be an automatic lifetime job guarantee. That's why we need regular evaluations to determine whether a teacher's license should be renewed. Democrats urge faster but fair ways, with due process, to identify, help - and when necessary - speedily remove low performing teachers.\nEvery student must be given the opportunity to learn. But students have to take responsibility and be accountable for their own educations, as well. We need measurements to make sure students are getting the preparation they require - including voluntary national tests in 4th grade reading and 8th grade math. Democrats insist that no student should graduate with a diploma they cannot read.\nThe federal government needs to be held accountable, too. In states that do not make progress in improving student performance, the federal government should redirect money from state bureaucrats and transfer it directly to schools that need it. States that do succeed in raising student success should receive bonuses - and schools that are making a positive difference should receive bonuses, as well. In addition, teachers who earn a National Board Certification should be especially rewarded.\nInvesting in Our Schools.\n\nWe cannot expect our children to learn all that they need to know in classrooms that are overcrowded, with teachers that are overburdened, and with textbooks and technology that are out-of-date. We need to invest in our schools and our childrens' futures.\nHigh-quality preschool should no longer be a luxury. Research - and the experience of path breaking states such as North Carolina and Georgia - shows that giving kids a smart start can lead to higher reading and achievement levels, higher graduation rates, and greater success in the workplace.\nWe need an aggressive national campaign to put one million new well-trained teachers in our classrooms. We must start reducing class size by finishing the job of hiring 100,000 new qualified teachers. In addition, Al Gore has proposed the creation of a new 21st Century Teacher Corps - open to talented people around the country who agree to teach in a school that needs their help. In return, they would get help paying their college tuition, assistance in paying off their student loans, or a hiring bonus for those willing to switch careers. And we need alternative certification so that those who choose to switch into teaching don't have to start their education all over again.\nFar too many teachers are overstressed and overworked, underpaid and underappreciated. We need to treat teachers like professionals - pay them like professionals and hold them to professional standards. All qualified teachers should get a raise and master teachers should get the biggest raise. We need to provide professional development, training, and support so that all teachers can succeed.\nWe should rebuild and modernize our school buildings to assure students can attend schools that are modern, safe, and well-equipped for learning. And we need to construct more new schools to meet the needs of the largest generation of students in American history. We cannot convince our children to value education when they are packed into crammed classrooms like sardines in a can and when their facilities are falling down. Al Gore and the Democrats believe we need smaller classes, smaller schools, and \"schools within schools\" so that impressionable children do not get lost in the shuffle.\nWe must ensure that children with disabilities are not blocked from having access to free, appropriate education and that the doors to our public schools are not closed to children with special needs. We must, finally, live up to the Federal government's promise to communities to help them defray the expenses of educating children with special needs.\nWe must assure that schools have the resources to meet the challenges of an increasingly diverse student population with programs for English language learners, including bilingual education, to close the achievement gap. We oppose language-based discrimination in all its forms, including in the provision of education services, and encourage so-called English-plus initiatives because multilingualism is increasingly valuable in the global economy.\nWe should create new Opportunity Academies around the nation between high school and college where disadvantaged students can get the intensive academic preparation in math, reading, writing, and study skills that will improve their likelihood for success in college and beyond.\nSupporting Schools of Innovation.\n\nIn order to create a world-class educational system for all our students, we must allow experimentation in our public schools to find out what works. The Democratic Party supports expansion of charter schools, magnet schools, site-based schools, year-round schools, and other nontraditional public school options.\nCharter schools and other nontraditional public school options can free school leaders, teachers, parents, and community leaders to use their creativity and innovation to help all students meet the highest academic standards. The Democratic Party will triple the number of charter schools in the nation. And, we will ensure that these charter schools are fully accountable - financially and academically - to students and the communities they serve, and that they are indeed making progress in maximizing student achievement. All public schools should have the freedom to design their curriculum within high standards and all public schools should compete for students - and we should start by bringing universal public school choice and competition to our lowest-performing public schools.\nLet there be no mistake: what America needs are public schools that compete with one another and are held accountable for results, not private school vouchers that drain resources from public schools and hand over the public's hard-earned tax dollars to private schools with no accountability.\nClosing the Opportunity Gap\n\nForty years ago, the Democratic platform discussed a Missile Gap as a measurement of America's competitiveness around the world and our security here at home. Today, too many Americans face an Opportunity Gap - a lack of the skills they need to be competitive in the global economy and have career security in the workplace. The Opportunity Gap is also a chasm created by income disparity, discrimination by race and gender, and the abandonment of our inner cities.\nMany of today's workers will need retraining over the next decade. Nearly ninety percent of companies say they already face a shortage of skilled workers. The Opportunity Gap is costing American workers good jobs at good wages - and it must be closed. Al Gore has proposed a broad set of initiatives to provide college education, lifelong learning, and ongoing skill development for all Americans.\nCollege Education and Lifelong Learning for All.\n\nWith Democratic leadership over the past eight years, the percentage of young people who are entering college has gone up by nearly 20 percent. In the Information Age, it is clear that a college education is more important than ever. The HOPE Scholarship and Lifetime Learning Tax Credit have opened the gates of college wider than ever before. Pell grants are at their highest level ever.\nNow we need to do more. We should make a college education as universal as high school is today. Al Gore has proposed a new National Tuition Savings program to tie together state tuition savings programs in more than 30 states so that parents can save for college tax-free and inflation-free. We propose a tax cut for tuition and fees for post-high school education and training that allows families to choose either a $10,000 a year tax deduction or a $2,800 tax credit.\nIn today's economy, education should not be a time in a person's life but a way of life. To keep up with the fast-moving, fast-changing economy, workers must have the ability to continue learning and upgrading their skills for a lifetime. The next great frontier in American education is dramatically expanding opportunities for lifelong learning, skill development, and training.\nDemocrats believe that every hardworking American should have the chance to use their best talents. That is why we support a major new commitment to expanding worker training and skill development, including the creation of national skills standards. Al Gore has called on companies and workers to build more partnerships for skill development. He has proposed incentives for states and employers to expand worker training. We should fund partnerships of employers, colleges, unions, and others that will connect workers to the training they need. We should create a new tax credit for employers who train their workers in the skills needed in the New Economy. We must also give new training allowances that will extend unemployment insurance for those who need time to finish their training courses. Al Gore has called for new 401(j) accounts - like the 401(k)'s which so many Americans use - that would let employers help their employees save tax free and use those savings for the lifelong learning for the employee or their spouse, or their children's college education. Al Gore has also called for a permanent tax exemption to encourage employers to provide tuition assistance benefits to their workers, and for expanding this exemption so that entire families can benefit from these tuition benefits as well.\nBridging the Digital Divide.\n\nDemocrats believe that every American - regardless of income, geography, race, or disability - should be able to reach across a computer keyboard, and reach the vast new worlds of knowledge, commerce, and communication that are available at the touch of a fingertip.\nThat is why Democrats fought for the e-rate to wire every classroom and library to the Internet. In the next four years, we must finish connecting the job and then go further.\nWe must launch a new crusade - calling on the resources of government, employers, the high-tech industry, community organizations, and unions - to move toward full Internet access in every home, for every family, all across the United States. We must make sure that no family or community is left out. We must not rest until Internet access is universal.\nWe must also launch a new national effort to provide basic skills in the newest technology. Al Gore has proposed a major initiative to set and achieve a national goal of computer literacy for every child by the time they finish the eighth grade. He has also called for expanded technology training for workers, and supports incentives for employers to provide home computers and Internet access to their workers. And we must do more than merely teaching technology in the classroom and the workplace. We must dramatically expand teacher training in how to use the power of the Internet. We should also use our AmeriCorps national service corps members to teach and promote the Internet in the schools, libraries, and technology centers that need them the most. America was the pioneer of universal education; now America must become the pioneer of universal computer literacy.\nInvesting in Innovation\n\nTechnology is no longer just wondrous gadgets, it is an ever more integral part of our economy - and an enormous part of what has been driving economic growth. We need to harness technology's power and make sure America stays on the cutting-edge.\nThat means continuing to invest in experimentation, exploration, and innovation. Democrats recognize that a sustained public investment in long term basic research has been the foundation for America's scientific and technological leadership. That's why both public and private investment in research and development is crucial to sustaining our prosperity.\nOn the public side, Democrats believe in doubling the current levels of investment in information technology research and biomedical research and supporting the continued development of the Next Generation Internet - moving 1,000 times faster than today's Internet. We believe in helping universities and federal laboratories become centers of innovation that support and catalyze private sector growth. We also believe in the use of creative public-private partnerships that will, when appropriate, help bring new products to market faster. We continue to support technology transfer - forming partnerships between industry and government that can help ensure that American companies and workers develop the technological tools needed to compete in tomorrow's global markets.\nIn the private sector, Democrats believe in supporting the startups, the small businesses, and the entrepreneurs that are making the New Economy go. This means making permanent the Research and Experimentation tax credit and expanding it to make it partially refundable so that small businesses can use it more easily. It also means keeping cyberspace a duty-free zone so that American companies can sell goods around the world and insist that other countries refrain from actions that impede commerce. To expand technology's worldwide potential as a force for good, Al Gore has advanced a bold vision for a new Global Information Infrastructure - a network of networks that sends messages and images at the speed of light, across every continent - to expand access to phone service and communications, further improve the delivery of education and health care, and create new jobs and industries.\nStrengthening small business is a vital component of economic innovation, job creation, and supporting entrepreneurship. Small businesses have accounted for more than 90 percent of the 22 million new jobs created with Democratic leadership. The Democratic Party is committed to sustaining and adding to that level of growth of small businesses, including home based businesses. Democrats believe that strengthening small businesses is a vital component of strategies to create opportunity and community economic development. We will build on the tremendous progress of the Clinton-Gore Administration in modernizing the Small Business Administration and improving access to the Federal marketplace. We will fight to reform and strengthen programs to combat discrimination against women and minority entrepreneurs, including federal procurement, because the playing field is still not level.\nAmericans generate more new technologies, new inventions, and more creative works of software and entertainment than the citizens of any other country in the world. American creativity contributes greatly to improving the quality of daily life, helps us work more efficiently, and enriches our national culture. America's laws and policies must be tailored and equipped to nurture and advance this unique aspect of our national character. This means we must ensure that sound patent and copyright laws motivate our inventors and creators to pursue their vision. Internationally, we must work to build support for strong intellectual property laws among the community of nations, including in trade agreements. We must take all steps necessary to secure effective enforcement of those laws - at home and abroad - to ensure that others do not steal intellectual property through piracy and other forms of theft.\nDemocrats know that technological innovation is critical to maintaining a strong manufacturing sector as we enter the Information Age. Manufacturing is a principal engine of productivity growth, a provider of jobs that pay family-supportive wages, and a significant source of exports for paying our way in the world economy. Al Gore and the Democratic Party will fight to keep America's basic industries the most competitive in the world.\nProtecting American Consumers\n\nAs our science and technology advance we must work hard to protect our oldest and most cherished values. That's why Al Gore, while supporting the completion of the Human Genome Project, has championed legislation to ban genetic discrimination. While fighting to expand Internet access, he has led the Administration's efforts to give parents, schools, and communities effective tools to protect children from inappropriate content on-line. In particular, Al Gore has focused on the challenge of protecting Americans' personal privacy on-line as well as the medical and financial information that can all too easily be intercepted and abused by others.\nAl Gore has called for an Electronic Bill of Rights for this electronic age - including the right to choose whether personal information is disclosed; the right to know how, when, and how much of that information is being used; the right to see it yourself; and the right to know if is accurate.\nWe must protect not only our privacy, but the food we eat, the air we breathe, and the water we drink. That's why Democrats believe we ought to have a modern, science-based food safety system, including meaningful food labeling that also discloses where our food comes from, and that communities should have the right to know about toxins that are released into the air and water.\nInvesting in Communities\n\nDemocrats believe that in building upon the record-breaking prosperity and growth achieved in the past eight years, we must not leave any community behind. Under the leadership of Al Gore, the Empowerment Zones and Enterprise Communities programs have brought new hope to cities and rural areas all across America. Now we need a new round of Empowerment Zones to spread prosperity even further. The Clinton-Gore New Markets Initiative is shining a spotlight on the untapped potential for commerce, tourism, and investment in many communities, and Al Gore will extend these efforts to see that the prosperity of the mainstream economy flows to the Main Streets everywhere. The Clinton-Gore Administration fought to strengthen the Community Reinvestment Act and to create a network of Community Development Banks, and Al Gore will continue that fight. Democrats are committed to building an America in which no neighborhood or town see joblessness and shuttered businesses commonplace or inevitable, and where no families or young adults surrender their God-given right to work hard and live the American dream.\nPart of that dream is home ownership. Under Democratic leadership, we have achieved an all-time high in home ownership, including among groups that have historically been left out. We are committed to continuing this progress, because home ownership is a foundation for building wealth and economic security for families, and it provides a vital anchor enabling neighborhoods to thrive. In too many communities, however, owning or renting an affordable home seems an impossible dream. Al Gore and Democrats have long defended the mortgage interest deduction and the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, and believe we must reinvigorate our communities and support our families through partnerships and targeted investments and eliminating community redlining by lenders that will better harness the power of markets to create the housing we need. We must pay down the debt to keep interest rates low. We need to create a continuum of care for homeless people so that they get help in getting themselves off the streets and back on their feet. We must ensure that housing costs in thriving communities do not outpace the income of middle class families. We must expand the supply of life cycle housing. We must encourage the renovation and construction of affordable housing closer to places of work and to mass transit so workers can get to their jobs without being tied up in traffic for hours.\nIn rural America, we have the opportunity to create a rural renewal on our nation's farms with improved transportation and infrastructure, better access to capital and technology, reduced concentration in agribusiness, and an expansion of new markets for our crops, and strengthening our ability to compete in world markets. The Internet can break down barriers of geography and isolation and bring the rural economy into the new economy. Farmers should receive incentives to conserve soil and improving farming and forestry techniques. The Republican Freedom to Farm Act has resulted in years of low prices and necessitated billion dollar bailouts. It is misguided and must be changed. Family farmers who work hard and smart should be able not only to survive but to thrive. Democrats will strengthen, not shred, the safety net for family farmers; we will open markets abroad for them. And we will not turn our backs on rural communities; we will work to ensure that they share in the new prosperity we are building for all of America.\nLivable Communities.\n\nAcross America a new movement is emerging as citizens work together to build more livable communities. These are communities where the streets are safe and schools are good, where high wage jobs are not hours away from home, where people can get to work and run their errands without spending hours stuck in traffic, where they can breathe clean air and drink clean water, where the spirit of community reigns.\nDemocrats believe communities know best and that they should have the resources and tools they need to act on their decisions, to have the ability to create communities of which families can be proud. We want to transform out-of-control sprawl to well-planned smart growth.\nThat is why we support the \"Better America Bonds\" - tax credits for state and local bonds to build more livable communities. We must help communities reconnect to the land around them, preserve open spaces, build parks, improve water quality, and redevelop rusty old brown fields. We need to help save farms from being turned into strip malls and parks from being paved over. We should acquire new lands for urban and suburban forests and recreation sites and set aside wetlands, coastal and wildlife preserves. And it is time we enhanced our quality of life by unclogging our nation's roads and airports.\nAl Gore and the Democratic Party support the building of high-speed rail systems in major transportation corridors across the nation. High-speed rail reduces highway and airport congestion, improves air quality, stimulates the economy, and broadens the scope of personal choice for traveling between our communities. We support new grants to Amtrak and the states for improving and expanding passenger rail routes and corridors.\nOpening Markets Around the World\n\nExports sustain about 1 in 5 American factory jobs - jobs that pay more than jobs not tied to the global economy. Open markets spur innovation, speed the growth of new industries, and make our businesses more competitive. We must work to knock down barriers to fair trade so other nation's markets are as open as our own.\nTrade has been an important part of our economic expansion - about a third of our economic growth in recent years has come from selling American goods and services overseas. There is no doubt that with trade - and with investments in giving American workers the skills they need - we can out-compete workers anywhere in the world.\nIt's clear we live in a globalized world - and that there is no turning back. But globalization is neither good nor evil. It is a fact - and we have to deal with it. Democrats believe we must be leaders in the new global economy, not followers. We believe that globalization will work for all Americans only if there are rules of the road, as in the domestic economy, that promote both a strong economy and our basic American values.\nWe need to make the global economy work for all. That means making sure that all trade agreements contain provisions that will protect the environment and labor standards, as well as open markets in other countries. Al Gore will insist on and use the authority to enforce worker rights, human rights, and environmental protections in those agreements. We should use trade to lift up standards around the world not drag down standards here at home.\nTrue open trade is not just about profits, but about people; not a race to the bottom, but a dash to the top; about a rising tide lifting the boats of workers here and abroad; about reinforcing the values of freedom and liberty and the rule of law in the hearts and minds of people everywhere. The test of open trade in the years ahead is whether it empowers the many and not just the few, whether its blessings are widely shared, whether it helps to lift the poor out of poverty; and whether it works for working people.\nDemocrats know that to build a new consensus for more open trade, we must give workers the tools they need to compete in the global economy and support rules that will protect workers' rights, human rights, and environmental protections. That's why our lifelong learning and skill development proposals are so important. American workers need access to ongoing skills development so that they have the tools they need to succeed in the New Economy. In addition, our trade adjustment assistance programs should be improved so that all affected workers receive timely and adequate assistance, including measures to address health care coverage and pension protections.\nWith the leadership of Al Gore, Democrats helped America's steel industry weather the effects of the Asian financial crisis. As President, Al Gore will move aggressively to reduce our overall trade deficit and stop the erosion of good paying manufacturing jobs. This includes negotiating tough agreements to reduce our persistent automotive trade imbalances with our major trading partners. We must continue to monitor imports and, consistent with the World Trade Organization, ensure that the United States utilizes all of its trade laws and other mechanisms, including product specific safeguards, to stop quickly and effectively any import surges when they threaten our workers and communities.\nThe President should be able to negotiate trade agreements with the nations of the world and should include worker rights, human rights, and environmental protections in those agreements, as well as market opening initiatives. At the same time, Al Gore will challenge American companies to ensure labor protections and worker safety at their overseas operations. And U.S. representatives at the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank should also seek to advance fair treatment for workers internationally. We should create an environment in which electronic commerce can flourish globally as it has here in America. We are committed to supporting the rights of workers around the world. And we should vigorously monitor trade agreements to make sure other nations are not shirking their responsibilities.\nDemocrats are committed to addressing the problem of manipulative corporate tax shelters, including in the international context, that undermine the public's faith in the fairness of our voluntary tax system. At the same time, we must ensure no tax provision has the effect of encouraging corporations to locate in other countries at the expense of American workers.\nBuilding a 21st Century Government\n\nSince he took office, Al Gore has led the way in reinventing government - making government more effective in its mission of service to the public. Under his leadership the federal workforce has been cut by 377,000, making it the smallest government since Dwight D. Eisenhower was president. This has been accomplished through cooperation and partnership. Sixteen thousand pages of regulations were scrapped. From tea testers to mohair subsidies to the Navy's own dairy farm, over 200 outdated and unnecessary government programs have been eliminated. As a percentage of the workforce, the federal government is the smallest it has been since the New Deal.\nWe have saved over $135 billion - contributing to the surplus and our prosperity. But we have saved something much more precious as well. We have begun to earn back the faith and trust of the American people in their democratic institutions. Trust in government has almost doubled. The first customer survey ever taken of American's satisfaction with the services government delivers found that fully 60 percent felt service had improved in the last two years and rated government services at levels almost as high as services in the private sector.\nToday, our government is focused on emphasizing results over red tape, offering Americans quality service, old-fashioned common sense, and working in partnership with the private sector to achieve common goals. Republicans attack public workers and tear down public services. We have empowered government workers and improved public services.\nNow we need to go much further. We have ended the era of big government; its time to end the era of old government. We need to create a government where Americans can easily find the services they need; one that is on-line all the time with no need to wait in line, an open\nGovernment that's always open. On the Internet, citizens will be able to help cut crime in their neighborhood, notify government of potentially dangerous environmental hazards, or sign up for a clinical trial of the latest advances in medicine. And all of this will be done while protecting everyone's personal privacy and with the highest levels of universal access and security. This new e-government will break down barriers to service, reduce costs, and make government accessible for all.\nWe must forge partnerships between labor and management that recognize the interests of both sides while uniting both front-line government workers and managers in a common crusade to improve government performance.\nWe must ensure that government has the tools and expertise necessary to provide high-quality services. Democrats do not believe that privatization is a panacea. Some services are inherently public. Democrats also believe that, to ensure government works better and costs less, public employees must be allowed to compete both for their current work and for new work. When government work is contracted out to private companies, they should adhere to same level of accountability as public agencies and those arrangements must incorporate labor, safety, health, civil rights, and other important safeguards.\nWe must also continue to decentralize our government, to make it more flexible and responsive towards communities and individuals, and to turn its focus towards empowering Americans to take charge of their own lives.\nFaith-based and community-based organizations have always been at the forefront in combating the hardships facing families and communities. Democrats believe it is time that government found ways to harness the power of faith-based organizations in tackling social ills such as drug addiction, juvenile violence, and homelessness. However, in contrast to the Republicans, Democrats believe that partnerships with faith-based organizations should augment - not replace - government programs, should respect First Amendment protections, and should never use taxpayer funds to proselytize or to support discrimination.\nValuing Work\n\nDemocrats believe in hard work and we believe that work must pay. It is what has made America great. There is a basic bargain at the heart of the American story - hard work should be both required and rewarded. Democrats also believe that those who do work hard should not be stuck in place - they should get ahead. And those who work hard should have a voice in their workplace.\nSupporting Working Families.\n\nDemocrats know that workers' freedom to choose a voice at work is a fundamental American right that must never be threatened, never be obstructed, never be taken away. From the Industrial Age to the Information Age, unions have given working people the chance to improve their living standards and have a voice on the job. The Clinton-Gore Administration stopped the Team Act, defeated a national right-to-work law, and fought for the resources to enforce worker protections. Al Gore will protect our wage and hour laws, including the forty-hour workweek and overtime requirements, and stand firm in support of the Davis-Bacon act and the Service Contract act. He has also proposed reforming government contracting rules to ensure that taxpayer dollars do not go to companies that break basic labor laws. Democrats have always believed in making work pay.\nWe are fighting for a new ergonomic standard and whistle-blower protections. We have stood up for the National Labor Relations Board and fought to protect the right of working families to participate in the political process when it was under attack.\nNow we must go further - not just playing defense against misguided Republican attempts to set back the cause of worker's rights, but moving the ball forward. We need a new national law banning permanent striker replacement workers - so that workers' right to organize into a union and bargain with their employers are never compromised. While we have made the workplace the safest ever, we need to further increase workplace safety. We should stiffen penalties for employer interference with the right to organize and violations of other worker rights. We must also reform labor laws to protect workers' rights to exercise their voices and organize into unions by providing for a more level playing field between management and labor during organizing drives, and facilitating the ability of workers to organize and to bargain collectively.\nRewarding Work for All.\n\nDemocrats believe in an economy that works for everyone and gives everyone a chance to work. We have made a good start by fighting for the Earned Income Tax Credit which has helped millions of American families work their way out of poverty. We won the battle for increasing the minimum wage.\nNow we must do more. We must bring all Americans who are willing to work hard into the circle of prosperity by more fully extend the benefit of the Earned Income Tax Credit to working families, again raising the minimum wage, and giving American workers the skills they need to make it in today's economy. We will vigorously enforce protections against on-the-job discrimination, reassert our belief in an equal day's pay for an equal day's work, seek to prevent the exploitation of workers, and ensure that the nation's worker protection laws are enforced.\nDemocrats believe that one way we value and reward hard work is to modernize, strengthen, and sustain the nation's unemployment compensation system - a bedrock protection against poverty for millions of workers and their families. Today, the system serves far fewer working families than in the past and many especially vulnerable workers - such as low wage workers, seasonal employees, contingent workers, and women - are especially likely to fall outside the system's protective safety net. Democrats believe we must fight to update and upgrade the nation's unemployment system, to stabilize its funding, extend eligibility to more workers, and improve benefits.\nWe know that even as the economy changes and expands, millions of workers will continue to labor in jobs that pay low wages and may not require significant education or skills. Many of these workers are women, people of color, or recent immigrants. These workers provide invaluable services to American society and their work has great dignity. Democrats are committed to ensuring that these workers - no less than their counterparts in more highly-skilled, better paid positions - are treated with dignity, respect, and fairness on the job. Democrats also believe that workers in temporary, part-time, and contract jobs should be treated fairly and earn the wages and benefits they deserve because of the jobs they do.\nRequiring Work from All.\n\nWith Bill Clinton and Al Gore in the White House, we changed the nation's welfare system - transforming the program into one that encourages and promotes work. Since 1993, the welfare rolls have fallen to their lowest levels in over 30 years. Today, millions of parents now have the dignity of a paycheck, rather than the stigma of a welfare check. The next step is to help these new workers move into the economic mainstream so that they can support their families. It is part of our vision of abolishing poverty. Al Gore is committed to helping new workers and those still on the rolls get help with childcare, transportation and other supports to ensure that anyone who can work, does work. Democrats also believe that we must continue the fight to restore fairness to legal immigrants - these Americans also deserve access to the American dream.\nOur fundamental mission is to expand prosperity, not government. But the choices government makes can help or hurt prosperity. For the past eight years, Americans have counted on Democrats to make the right choices. The resulting prosperity is clear. Now, in another moment of big choices, Democrats stand ready to lead again - with a record of results and a vision for the future.\nPROGRESS\n\nEight years ago, many citizens had come to accept the idea that America's best days were behind her: that crime, welfare, teen births, divisiveness and irresponsibility would continue to rise; that our air and water would keep getting dirtier; and that our essential social safety net programs were fated to go broke.\nInstead, with the leadership of today's Democratic Party, the past decade has seen not just a rebirth of American prosperity, but a new season of progress in meeting our challenges and living up to our obligations. Crime is down to its lowest levels in a generation - the longest decline on record, teen births are down seven years in a row, adoptions are up by 30 percent, millions of Americans have moved off the welfare rolls and onto the payrolls. America is not just better off, it is better.\nBut Democrats know that it must be better still. So we want to use this moment to bring even more progress to America. To make America safer, healthier, more secure. To clean up our environment and our politics. To make the job of parents easier and to bring us together as one America.\nFighting Crime\n\nDemocrats believe government's most basic duty is to establish law, order, and freedom and keep citizens safe from crime. When crime is rampant, families are forced off the streets and behind closed doors. When children are ducking for cover, they have a hard time reaching for their dreams. When people are afraid to walk in their own neighborhood, communities are robbed of the basic sense of decency and togetherness. When an overburdened justice system lets thugs off easy, good parents have a harder time teaching their children right from wrong.\nBill Clinton and Al Gore took office determined to turn the tide in the battle against crime, drugs, and disorder in our communities. They put in place a tougher more comprehensive strategy than anything tried before, a strategy to fight crime on every single front: more police on the streets to thicken the thin blue line between order and disorder, tougher punishments - including the death penalty - for those that dare to terrorize the innocent, and smarter prevention to stop crime before it even starts.\nThey stood up to the gun lobby, to pass the Brady Bill and ban deadly assault weapons - and stopped nearly half a million felons, fugitives, and stalkers from buying guns. They fought for and won the biggest anti-drug budgets in history, every single year. They funded new prison cells, and expanded the death penalty for cop killers and terrorists.\nHere are the results of that strategy: serious crime is down seven years in a row, to its lowest level in a quarter-century. Violent crime is down by 24 percent. The murder rate is down to levels unseen since the mid-1960's. The number of juveniles committing homicides with guns is down by nearly 60 percent.\nBut we have just begun to fight the forces of lawlessness and violence. We cannot go back to the finger-pointing and failed strategies that led to that steep rise in crime in the Bush-Quayle years. We can't surrender to the right-wing Republicans who threatened funding for new police, who tried to gut crime prevention, and who would invite the NRA into the Oval Office. Nor will we go back to the old approach which was tough on the causes of crime, but not tough enough on crime itself.\nWith Al Gore as President, America won't go back. We will move forward. We will fight to increase the number of community police on our streets. We will fight to give police the high-tech tools and the training they need to keep our streets safe and our families secure. We will toughen the laws against serious and violent crime to restore the sense of order that says to children as well as to criminals: don't even think about committing a crime here. We will reform a justice system that spills half a million prisoners back onto our streets each year - many of them addicted to drugs, unrehabilitated, and just waiting to commit another crime. We will make schools safe havens for students to learn and teachers to teach. We believe that in death penalty cases, DNA testing should be used in all appropriate circumstances, and defendants should have effective assistance of counsel. In all death row cases, we encourage thorough post-conviction reviews. We will put the rights of victims and families first again. And we will push for more crime prevention, to stop the next generation of crime before it's too late.\nVictims' Rights.\n\nWe need a criminal justice system that both upholds our Constitution and reflects our values. Too often, we bend over backward to protect the right of criminals, but pay no attention to those who are hurt the most. Al Gore believes in a Victims' Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution - one that is consistent with fundamental Constitutional protections. Victims must have a voice in trial and other proceedings, their safety must be a factor in the sentencing and release of their attackers, they must be notified when an offender is released back into their community, they must have a right to compensation from their attacker. Our justice system should place victims and their families in their rightful place.\nEnding the Revolving Door.\n\nWe have to test prisoners for drugs while they are in jail, treat them for addictions, and break up the drug rings inside our prison system. Drug and alcohol abuse are implicated in the crimes of 80 percent of the criminals behind bars. Al Gore believes we should make prisoners a simple deal: get clean to get out, stay clean to stay out. And this deal should be non-negotiable.\nWe should do even more to make sure that when criminals leave jail, they leave a life of crime behind. We should impose strict supervision of those who have just been released on parole - and insist that they obey the law and stay off drugs. In return, we should help them make it in the workplace. Al Gore believes that ending the revolving door, in combination with more determined efforts at prevention, will both combat crime and ultimately reduce rates of incarceration that are so tragically high in many communities.\nFighting the Scourge of Drugs and Gangs.\n\nWe should send a strong message to every American child: drugs are wrong, and drugs can kill you. We need to dry up drug demand, hold up drugs at the border, and break up the drug rings that are spreading poison on our streets. We should open more drug courts, to speed justice for drug-related crimes; double the number of drug hot-spots where we aggressively target our enforcement efforts; expand drug treatment for at-risk youth; and make sure that all of our school zones are drug-free zones - by stiffening the penalties to those who would use children to peddle drugs, and those who would sell drugs anywhere near our schools. We know that to dry up drug demand, we must provide drug treatment upon demand. To empower communities protect themselves from organized criminal conduct, the Democrats support giving communities relief against gang related crimes. We should be tough on drugs no matter which form they take and should not discriminate in sentencing.\nStrong and Sensible Gun Laws.\n\nA shocking level of gun violence on our streets and in our schools has shown America the need to keep guns away from those who shouldn't have them - in ways that respect the rights of hunters, sportsmen, and legitimate gun owners. The Columbine tragedy struck America's heart, but in its wake Republicans have done nothing to keep guns away from those who should not have them.\nDemocrats believe that we should fight gun crime on all fronts - with stronger laws and stronger enforcement. That's why Democrats fought and passed the Brady Law and the Assault Weapons Ban. We increased federal, state, and local gun crime prosecution by 22 percent since 1992. Now gun crime is down by 35 percent.\nNow we must do even more. We need mandatory child safety locks, to protect our children. We should require a photo license I.D., a full background check, and a gun safety test to buy a new handgun in America. We support more federal gun prosecutors, ATF agents and inspectors, and giving states and communities another 10,000 prosecutors to fight gun crime.\nEnding Racial Profiling.\n\nGood policing demands mutual trust and respect between the community and the police. We shouldn't let the acts of a few rogue officers undermine that trust or the reputation of the outstanding work of the vast majority of our dedicated men and women in blue. That is why we need to end the unjust practice of racial profiling in America - because it's not only unfair, it is inconsistent with America's community policing success, it is a violation of the basic American principle of innocent until proven guilty, it views Americans as members of groups instead of as individuals, and it is just plain shoddy policing. We believe that all law enforcement agencies in America should adopt a zero-tolerance policy toward racial profiling.\nHate Crimes.\n\nThe very purpose of hate crimes is to dehumanize and stigmatize - not only to wound the victim, but also to distort the American conscience. Every crime is a danger to Americans' lives and liberty. Hate crimes are more than assaults on people, they are assaults on the very idea of America. They should be punished with extra force. Protections should include hate violence based on gender, disability or sexual orientation. And the Republican Congress should stop standing in the way of this pro-civil rights, anti-crime legislation.\nProtecting Our Most Vulnerable Citizens.\n\nOur most vulnerable deserve special protections. We need tougher penalties against all sex offenders. We should raise the penalties for those who commit crimes against the elderly. We should give federal prosecutors new tools to fight fraud and abuse. We should move aggressively to shut down fraudulent telemarketers who target the elderly. We believe that we must overcome constitutional objections and reenact a strong new law to combat violence against women. And if you commit any violent crime in front of a child, you should pay an even higher price for it: more time in jail.\nEnding Domestic Violence.\n\nViolence in the home is an often silent terror in the lives of millions. We have to make sure that all battered women have the legal protection and the support they need to be safe in their own communities, and to keep their attackers away. By stopping domestic violence, we can also break the generational cycle of violence. We know that when children grow up in abusive families, they are more likely to become abusers themselves.\nStopping Crime Before it Starts.\n\nDemocrats also know that all Americans are better off if we stop crime before it claims new victims, rather than focusing single-mindedly on pursuing perpetrators after the harm is done. That is why we are firmly committed to sound and proven crime-prevention strategies that are good for all Americans. Solid investments in children and youth, in job creation, and in skills development are powerful antidotes to crime.\nJudges and the Supreme Court.\n\nWe will fight to fill the vacancies on the federal bench to make sure we have enough judges to promptly decide all cases and to end Republican delays in the Senate that have kept qualified nominees, especially women and minorities, waiting literally for years for a Senate vote. Democrats oppose efforts to strip the federal courts of jurisdiction to decide critical issues affecting workers, immigrants, veterans and others of access to justice. And, unlike Republicans, Al Gore will appoint justices to the Supreme Court who have a demonstrated concern for and commitment to the individual rights protected by our Constitution, including the right to privacy.\nValuing Our Families\n\nGovernment does not raise children, families do. But government can help make the hardest job in the world - being a parent - a little easier. Today, families come in all different shapes and sizes, but they all face similar challenges. Government should be on the side of parents - making it easier for them to raise their children and pass down their values. With Democrats in the White House, we have passed the Family and Medical Leave law, which has been used by 20 million Americans to care for a newborn baby or a sick loved one. Al Gore led efforts to create the voluntary TV ratings system, to put the V-chip in all new TV sets sold in America so that parents can stop the assault of graphic images in their children's lives, and to insist on a quick and easy way for all Internet users to be able to make offensive web sites off limits to their children.\nBalancing Work and Family.\n\nIf we are to value our families, we have to make much more progress. Strengthening America's families means helping parents make time for their children. We need to find new ways to help parents balance work and family so that they will have time to pass on the right values to their children. Already millions of Americans have benefited from the Family and Medical Leave law, now we need to expand it so that it covers parent-teacher visits and children's routine medical appointments. And we will extend the law to cover more employers so that more working families enjoy this vital protection during times of family and medical need. We should urge employers to make workplaces more parent-friendly; explore strategies, including voluntary initiatives and policy reforms, that can provide income support for workers during periods of family and medical leave; call on parents to be more involved in their children's learning; and fix the \"marriage penalty\" so that parents can spend more time at home and less time trying to make ends meet. We should not penalize families by forcing couples to pay more in taxes just because they have made the sacred commitment of marriage to one another. We should also provide grants to community and faith-based organizations to help couples prepare for and strengthen their marriage and relationships, become better parents, and reduce domestic violence.\nChild Care and Early Childhood Education.\n\nDemocrats believe in making child care more affordable through targeted tax cuts and other investments, in improving the safety and quality of child care centers, in ensuring that children start school ready to read, and in giving a helping hand to parents who decided to stay at home with their children. We need both higher pay and higher standards for child care workers - and they need to get training so that they can do their jobs well. It is a priority of the Democratic Party to fully fund Head Start.\nEldercare.\n\nThe Baby Boomers are the first generation with more parents than children. Many families are doing all they can to help for and care for their elderly parents. These families are doing the right thing - and America must be on their side. We must do more to support the families and individuals who are caring for relatives suffering from long-term illnesses at home or at institutions. We should provide Americans with long-term care needs and their caregivers a $3,000 tax credit. We should hold those who care for our nation's elderly to the highest standards and improve these workers' wages, benefits, training, and working conditions. We should make sure that every community in the country has a program to offer caregivers critical information, referrals, and respite from the difficult work of caring for a loved one.\nFatherhood.\n\nPromoting responsible fatherhood is the critical next phase of welfare reform and one of the most important things we can do to reduce child poverty. Three times more men acknowledged paternity in 1998 than in 1993. This is a first step toward giving to a child the emotional and financial support a father must give to merit the name.\nDemocrats believe in cracking down on deadbeats who abandon their children. So we must require all fathers who owe child support to pay or go to work; strengthen child support enforcement, including increasing the amount of child support that gets paid directly to poor families; and make it harder for parents who owe child support to get new credit cards. However, we also recognize that, in addition to dead beat dads there are dead broke dads. Thus Democrats support helping those men who want to reconnect with their families and who want to become a positive force in the lives of their children.\nResponsible Entertainment.\n\nParents are struggling to pass on the right values in a culture that sometimes seems to practically scream that chaos and cruelty are cool. Democrats have worked to give parents the tools to have more control over the images their children are exposed to. Parents and the entertainment industry must accept more responsibility. Many parents are not aware of the resources available to them, such as the V-chip technology in television sets and Internet filtering devices, that can help them shield children from violent entertainment. The entertainment industry must accept more responsibility and exercise more self-restraint, by strictly enforcing movie ratings, by taking a close look at violence in its own advertising, and by determining whether the ratings systems are allowing too many children to be exposed to too much violence and cruelty.\nDemocrats call for the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine by the Federal Communications Commission. We believe in public support for the arts, including the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Public and private investment in creativity and cultural heritage - the arts and humanities - is an investment in the education of our children, in the well being of our communities, in the strength of our economy, and in spreading the dream of democracy throughout the world.\nAccessible, Affordable, Quality Health Care\n\nFor fifty years, the Democratic Party has been engaged in a battle to provide the kind of health care a great nation owes its people. We reaffirm our commitment to take concrete, specific, realistic steps to move toward the day when every American has affordable health coverage. And we will not rest until the job is done.\nDuring the past eight years, Democrats have helped Americans keep their doctor when they lose or change jobs. We passed the Child Health Insurance Program to help states provide health coverage to millions of uninsured children - the largest single investment in children's health in a 35 years. We kept solvent a Medicare system that was scheduled to go bankrupt this year. We brought immunization rates to an all-time high.\nIn contrast, the Republican Party has refused to use one penny of the surplus to secure the solvency of Medicare and has supported plans that would increase Medicare premiums, force elderly patients into HMOs and raise the eligibility age for Medicare to 67. They have adamantly opposed the Patients' Bill of Rights and proposed instead a mirage \"Patient's Bill of Goods\" that would leave out a real guarantee of the right to see a specialist and assurances that you can go to the nearest emergency room - and leave out 135 million Americans in the cold.\nInstead of the guaranteed, universal prescription drug benefit that Democrats believe should be added to Medicare, Republicans are proposing to leave to insurance companies the decisions about whether and where a drug benefit might be offered, what it would include, and how much it would cost. Studies suggest that less than half of seniors will be able to use this benefit.\nUniversal Health Coverage.\n\nThere is much more left to do. We must redouble our efforts to bring the uninsured into coverage step-by-step and as soon as possible. We should guarantee access to affordable health care for every child in America. We should expand coverage to working families, including more Medicaid assistance to help with the transition from welfare to work. And we should also seek to ensure that dislocated workers are provided affordable health care. We should make health care accessible and affordable for small businesses. In addition, Americans aged 55 to 65 - the fastest growing group of uninsured - should be allowed to buy into the Medicare program to get the coverage they need. By taking these steps, we can move our nation closer to the goal of providing universal health coverage for all Americans.\nA Real Patients' Bill of Rights.\n\nMedical decisions should be made by patients and their doctors and nurses, not accountants and bureaucrats at the end of a phone line a thousand miles away. It is time we meaningfully addressed concerns about the quality of care and about the decline of patient, access, trust, and satisfaction. People need to get the health care they need, when they need it, without having to leap endless hurdles. Americans need a real, enforceable Patients' Bill of Rights with the right to see a specialist, the right to appeal decisions to an outside board, guaranteed coverage of emergency room care, and the right to sue when they are unfairly denied coverage.\nAl Gore will work with a wide range of stakeholders to develop a national strategy to reduce medical errors, including appropriate public reporting, analysis of root causes, and development of error prevention models. Democrats also believe that doctors, nurses, and other health care practitioners must be allowed to advocate freely on behalf of their patients.\nProtecting and Strengthening Medicare.\n\nIt is time we ended the tragedy of elderly Americans being forced to choose between meals and medication. It is time we modernized Medicare with a new prescription drug benefit. This is an essential step in making sure that the best new cures and therapies are available to our seniors and disabled Americans. We cannot afford to permit our seniors to receive only part of the medical care they need.\nDemocrats believe Medicare is worth fighting for - and worth saving. With the number of Americans on Medicare expected to double in the next 35 years, Al Gore has stepped up and taken responsibility by proposing a Medicare Lock Box that would insure Medicare surpluses are used for Medicare - and not for pork barrel spending or tax giveaways. We should also modernize Medicare by promoting competitive prices and remain vigilant against Medicare fraud.\nFighting Diseases.\n\nOur newest medical miracles give us the chance to make significant progress in battling some of the most dreaded diseases. Democrats believe that we must invest in biomedical research and continue to fight and conquer everything from AIDS to Alzheimers to Diabetes to Parkinsons to spinal cord injuries. We must speed up the development of new drugs and get them to patients sooner while maintaining essential health and safety standards. We should allow stem cell research to make important new discoveries. We should expand prevention and widen access to clinical trials. And we should devote more resources to eliminating disease disparities among racial and ethnic groups.\nOur nation must do all it can to focus its efforts on fighting HIV and AIDS. A top priority for Democrats will be the continued investment in research, prevention, care, treatment, and we are deeply committed to the search for a cure. Democrats continue to support important programs such as the Ryan White CARE Act, the Housing Opportunities for People with AIDS program, and incentives to return Americans with HIV/AIDS to work.\nFor a generation, America has been waging a war on cancer. Al Gore believes it is time we started winning it. Because of astonishing scientific breakthroughs, the day that America is cancer-free is within reach. With the completion of the draft of the Human Genome, we are on the verge of cracking cancer's secret code. Democrats believe in taking advantage of this progress by doubling federal cancer research.\nFighting Teen Smoking.\n\nAl Gore is committed to dramatically reducing teen smoking in America. It is time we treated underage tobacco use like the health crisis it is. That's why we need to give the FDA full authority to keep cigarettes away from children. We must match the power of big tobacco's advertising dollars with a counter-campaign that tells kids the truth about the dangers of smoking and the risks of cancer to themselves and to others through second-hand smoke. And we should double our investment in efforts to prevent teen smoking and break the deadly grip of nicotine addiction.\nState attorneys general across America have recovered billions of dollars from the tobacco industry for damages caused by tobaccos' advertising directed at our children and for the death and disease created by cigarettes. Now Republicans are trying to stop the United States Justice Department from pursuing similar litigation to hold the tobacco companies accountable for the damages they have caused to American taxpayers. We believe it is wrong to insulate the tobacco companies from liability for their wrongdoing.\nMental Health.\n\nMental illness has long been concealed behind a shroud of silence and shame. Mental illness affects nearly one in five Americans each year, but nearly two-thirds of those Americans affected by mental disorders do not receive help. When mental illness goes untreated, undiagnosed, and unmentioned, people are denied the opportunity to live full lives and our nation is denied their full contribution. Democrats believe in supporting families caring for loved ones with mental illness by strengthening our community mental health system, providing access to full mental health coverage for every child in America, giving teachers and schools more mental health resources, and ensuring that mental illness and physical illness are treated equally by our nation's health plans.\nDisabilities.\n\nDemocrats believe that we must fight to ensure that people with disabilities can meet their full potential and participate fully in the American dream. For people with disabilities accessing affordable health insurance is the greatest barrier to returning to work. That is why we fought to assure that people with disabilities do not lose their health care when they return to work. Democrats also support tax credits and grants to pay for rehabilitation and work-related expenses for people with disabilities. And we support all efforts to implement the Supreme Court's Olmstead decision and to make personal assistance services and supports available to people with disabilities in their homes and communities - because no one should be kept in a nursing home or institution if they prefer to live in the community with the necessary supports.\nChoice\n\nThe Democratic Party stands behind the right of every woman to choose, consistent with Roe v. Wade, and regardless of ability to pay. We believe it is a fundamental constitutional liberty that individual Americans - not government - can best take responsibility for making the most difficult and intensely personal decisions regarding reproduction. This year's Supreme Court rulings show to us all that eliminating a woman's right to choose is only one justice away. That's why the stakes in this election are as high as ever.\nOur goal is to make abortion less necessary and more rare, not more difficult and more dangerous. We support contraceptive research, family planning, comprehensive family life education, and policies that support healthy childbearing. The abortion rate is dropping. Now we must continue to support efforts to reduce unintended pregnancies, and we call on all Americans to take personal responsibility to meet this important goal.\nThe Democratic Party is a party of inclusion. We respect the individual conscience of each American on this difficult issue, and we welcome all our members to participate at every level of our party. This is why we are proud to put into our platform the very words which Republicans refused to let Bob Dole put into their 1996 platform and which they refused to even consider putting in their platform in 2000: \"While the party remains steadfast in its commitment to advancing its historic principles and ideals, we also recognize that members of our party have deeply held and sometimes differing views on issues of personal conscience like abortion and capital punishment. We view this diversity of views as a source of strength, not as a sign of weakness, and we welcome into our ranks all Americans who may hold differing positions on these and other issues. Recognizing that tolerance is a virtue, we are committed to resolving our differences in a spirit of civility, hope and mutual respect.\"\nProtecting Our Environment\n\nDemocrats know that for all of us there is no more solemn responsibility than that of stewards of God's creation. That is why we have worked for eight years to produce the cleanest environment in decades: with cleaner air, cleaner water, and a safer food supply; a record number of toxic waste dumps cleaned up; new smog and soot standards so that children with asthma and the elderly would be able to live better lives; and a strong international treaty to begin combating global warming - in a way that is market-based and realistic, and does not lead to economic cooling.\nFrom the Redwood forests to the Florida Everglades, from the Grand Canyon to Yellowstone to Yosemite, we have protected millions of acres of our precious natural lands. We stopped development in America's last wild places. Teddy Roosevelt saw our national parks as the playground of the people - there for average families to enjoy with camping and hiking. Today's Republicans see them as the playground of the powerful - there for big businesses to exploit with drilling and mining. The Republicans have tried to sell off national parks; gut air, water, and endangered species protections; let polluters off the hook; and put the special interests ahead of the people's interest. They are wrong. Out natural environment is too precious and too important to waste.\nAl Gore is committed to restoring the Everglades; protecting the coasts of California and Florida and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil and gas drilling; and preserving our untouched forests, including the Tongass, from logging and development. With regard to public lands, Democrats believe that communities, environmental interests, and government agencies should work together to protect our public resources, critical habitat areas, and wildlands while ensuring the vitality of local economies. We will work together to find land-based alternatives and decontamination technologies that will permanently end the ocean disposal of contaminated dredge spoils.\nOnce Americans were led to believe they had to make a choice between the economy and the environment. They now know that this is a false choice. But there is a real choice to make in 2000: whether we will protect our environment in ways that are practical and achievable or go back to the policies that led to generations of environmental devastation and degradation.\nWe have to do what's right for our Earth because it is the moral thing to do. It involves all of our lives - from the simple security of having clean safe, reliable, affordable electricity for your home; to America's ability to build and sell the best new clean cars, trucks, and technology to the world; to guarding our children from the summer smog that is made worse by global warming, and securing for our grandchildren the expectation of a joyful array of seasons that we took for granted when we grew up ourselves.\nDemocrats believe we must give Americans incentives to invest in driving more fuel-efficient cars, trucks, and sport utility vehicles; living in more energy-efficient homes, and using more environmentally-sound appliances and equipment. We need to clean up aging power plants. We must invest in rebuilding and improving our transportation infrastructure and ensure that we adequately maintain these systems for the future. Americans need and rely on diverse transportation sources, and our public infrastructure priorities should reflect that diversity.\nWe should invest in roads, bridges, light rail systems, cleaner buses, the aviation system, our national passenger railroad, Amtrak, and high-speed trains that would give Americans choices - freeing them from traffic, smog-choked cities, and being held hostage to foreign oil. We should ensure that urban communities affected by the presence of airports which create increased levels of noise and pollution be provided mitigation support to address these concerns. We must also ensure that we maintain adequate public funding and public administration of publicly operated and delivered transportation services, without gutting collective bargaining agreements or long-standing worker-protections. In these and other areas, we will encourage project labor agreements, fostering labor-management cooperation, quality development, and efficient use of public monies. Today, technology has advanced to the point that we can drive the kind of cars we like and live in the kind of houses we like - while being kind to the earth. We should use some of our budget surplus to help Americans take advantage of these new opportunities. With the right investments, these new environmentally-friendly technologies can create new jobs for American workers.\nAmerica is blessed with abundant low-cost sources of coal, petroleum, and natural gas, but we must use them wisely and ensure that changes in the energy sector promote a workforce whose skills are expanded, utilized, and rewarded. Democrats believe that with the right incentives to encourage the development and deployment of clean energy technologies, we can make all our energy sources cleaner, safer, and healthier for our children. This responsibility includes disposing of nuclear waste in a scientifically-sound manner in accordance with standards designed to protect human health and the environment.\nAnd we must dramatically reduce climate-disrupting and health-threatening pollution in this country, while making sure that all nations of the world participate in this effort. Environmental standards should be raised throughout the world in order to preserve the Earth and to prevent a destructive race to the bottom wherein countries compete for production and jobs based on who can do the least to protect the environment. There will be no new bureaucracies, no new agencies, no new organizations. But there will be action and there will be progress. The Earth truly is in the balance - and we are the guardians of that harmony.\nEight of the ten hottest years ever recorded have occurred during the past ten years. Scientists predict a daunting range of likely effects from global warming. Much of Florida and Louisiana submerged underwater. More record floods, droughts, heat waves, and wildfires. Diseases and pests spreading to new areas. Crop failures and famines. Melting glaciers, stronger storms, and rising seas. These are not Biblical plagues. They are the predicted result of human actions. They can be prevented only with a new set of human actions - big choices and new thinking.\nWorking with the America's great automakers, Al Gore has led the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles which has helped spur the development of high-performing cars that get far better gas mileage while meeting emissions standards. Now we need to give Americans help in being able to afford these new cars - getting them out of the showrooms, onto the streets, and into our driveways. At the same time, we are committed to improving fuel economy in a way that preserves and creates jobs for American workers, and delivers products that consumers want to buy. To further this kind of progress, we now need the oil industry to join us in producing much cleaner fuels that will allow automotive environmental equipment to achieve the maximum possible reductions in emissions.\nWe have also created a new 21st Century Truck Initiative to build highly-efficient heavy duty pick-up and delivery trucks, even long-haul 18-wheelers. Now we need to work in partnership with industry to create a new generation of mass transit and a new generation of cleaner, more reliable power systems. Al Gore wants to swap every dirty, smoke-belching city bus for a cleaner, less polluting one.\nRenewing Our Democracy and Campaign Finance Reform\n\nIn the year 2000, along with all the other big choices they have to make, Americans will be making a choice about who's running their country: the people or the special interests, the voters or the lobbyists, the many or the few. We must restore American's faith in their own democracy by providing real and comprehensive campaign finance reform, creating fairer and more open elections, and breaking the link between special interests and political influence.\nThe Republicans will have none of this. Instead of limiting the influence of the powerful on our politics, they want to raise contribution limits so even more special interest money can flow into campaigns. The big-time lobbyists and special interest were so eager to invest in George W. Bush and deliver campaign cash to him hand-over-fist that he became the first major party nominee to pull out of the primary election financing structure and refuse to abide by campaign spending limits.\nIn this year's presidential primaries it became clear that the Republican establishment is violently opposed to John McCain's call for reforming our democracy. Al Gore supports John McCain's campaign for political reform. In fact, the McCain-Feingold bill is the very first piece of legislation that a President Al Gore will submit to Congress - and he will fight for it until it becomes the law of the land.\nThen he will go even further - much further. He will insist on tough new lobbying reform, publicly-guaranteed TV time for debates and advocacy by candidates, and a crackdown on special interest issue ads. Most boldly of all, Al Gore has proposed a public-private, non-partisan Democracy Endowment which will raise money from Americans and finance Congressional elections - with no other contributions allowed to candidates who accept the funding. This will let our politics be free from the influence of special interests and let Americans believe in their own democracy again.\nJust as our country has been the chief apostle of democracy in the world, we must lead by example at home. This begins with our nation's capital. The citizens of the District of Columbia are entitled to autonomy in the conduct of their civic affairs, full political representation as Americans who are fully taxed, and statehood. Puerto Rico has been under U.S. sovereignty for over a century and Puerto Ricans have been U.S. Citizens since 1917, but the island's ultimate status still has not been determined and its 3.9 million residents still do not have voting representation in their national government. These disenfranchised Citizens - who have contributed greatly to our country in war and peace - are entitled to the permanent and fully democratic status of their choice. Democrats will continue to work in the White House and Congress to clarify the options and enable them to choose and to obtain such a status from among all realistic options. Democrats believe the people of Guam, American Samoa, and the Virgin Islands have a right to be fully self-governing. We are committed to fair treatment in economic and social policies as well as improvement in federal-territorial relations in accordance with the needs of each area. Elected representatives of these areas will be regularly consulted on policies, laws, and treaties that affect the areas and we will ensure fair treatment for our fellow Citizens in the territories.\nBuilding One America\n\nDemocrats believe that God has given the people of our nation not only a chance, but a mission to prove to men and women throughout this world that people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds, of all faiths and creeds, can not only work and live together, but can enrich and ennoble both themselves and our purpose. America's diversity is expanding, yet amidst important signs of progress, there is widespread evidence of persistent discrimination, growing racial segregation of our schools and neighborhoods, and dream-crushing barriers to opportunity. We cannot - we dare not - remain a nation divided. Our vision is of an America healed of hatreds and misunderstanding, with equality and opportunity so rich that legacies of discrimination and exclusion will be found only in history books, and not in our communities. To that end, Democrats support creation of a commission of distinguished scholars and civic leaders to examine the history of slavery, discrimination, and exclusion suffered by all minorities; to report on the continuing effects of those tragic chapters in our history; and to make appropriate recommendations on behalf of the American people.\nWelcoming Our Newest Americans.\n\nImmigrants enrich the tapestry of American life, making our economy more vibrant, our workplaces more productive, and our nation stronger. We believe that all levels of government, in partnership with the private and voluntary sectors, must devise and pursue a comprehensive immigrant integration agenda that will make the newest Americans full participants in the nation's mainstream. That's why Democrats support reforming the INS to provide better services, and investing the resources needed to reduce the backlog of citizenship applications from nearly two years to three months. Democrats also support increased resources for English language courses, which not only help newcomers learn our common language but also help us promote our common values. And, we believe that family reunification should continue to be the cornerstone of our legal immigration system.\nDemocrats believe in an effective immigration system that balances a strong enforcement of our laws with fair and evenhanded treatment of immigrants and their families. The Clinton-Gore administration provided long overdue leadership in dramatically improving border management and law enforcement, including a major expansion of the Border Patrol and curbs on abuses of the asylum process. We also recognize that the current system fails to effectively control illegal immigration, has serious adverse impacts on state and local services, and on many communities and workers, and has led to an alarming number of deaths of migrants on the border. Democrats are committed to reexamining and fixing these failed policies.\nWe must punish employers who engage in a pattern and practice of recruiting undocumented workers in order to intimidate and exploit them, and provide strengthened protections for immigrant workers, including whistleblower protections. Doing so enhances conditions for everyone in the workplace. We believe that any increases in H1-B visas must be temporary, must address only genuine shortages of highly skilled workers, and mist include worker protections. They must also be accompanied by other immigration fairness measures and by increased fees to train American workers for high skill jobs. The Democratic Party is committed to assuring an adequate, predictable supply of agricultural labor while protecting American farm workers who are among the poorest and more vulnerable in our society. We reject calls for guest worker programs that lead to exploitation, and instead call for adjusting the status of immigrants with deep roots in the country. We should have equitable asylum policies that treat people the same whether they have fled violence from the Right and Left. And we support restoration of basic due process protections and essential benefits for legal immigrants, so that immigrants are no longer subject to deportation for minor offenses, often committed decades ago without opportunity for any judicial review, and are eligible to receive safety net services supported by their tax dollars.\nFighting for Civil Rights and Inclusion.\n\nPassage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was one of the proudest moments of our nation's history and a sterling testament to our aspirations as a people. Yet, despite undeniable progress over the last several decades, inequality and polarization nevertheless persist in far too many American workplaces, schools, and communities. Over the last eight years, we have fought hard to end discrimination. We have increased funding for civil rights enforcement - so that the laws on our books are not just pleasant words, but pledges of justice. Al Gore has strongly opposed efforts to roll back affirmative action programs. He knows that the way to lift this nation up is not by pulling the weakest down, but by continuing to expand opportunities for everyone who wants to achieve. The Clinton-Gore Administration has appointed the most diverse administration in American history, demonstrating that pursuing excellence means including the all of the best that our nation has to offer.\nAl Gore and the Democratic Party know that much remains to be done. We must remember we do not have an American to waste. We continue to lead the fight to end discrimination on the basis of race, gender, religion, age, ethnicity, disability, and sexual orientation. The Democratic Party has always supported the Equal Rights Amendment and will continue to do so, and we are committed to ensuring full equality for women and to vigorously enforcing the Americans with Disabilities Act. We support continuation of the White House initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Because every American counts, we will continue to work toward a census that counts every American. We support continued efforts, like the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, to end workplace discrimination against gay men and lesbians. We support the full inclusion of gay and lesbian families in the life of the nation. This would include an equitable alignment of benefits. We recognize the importance of new battles against forms of discrimination and disadvantage that stand as barriers to communities and families, such as environmental injustices and predatory lending practices. And we will fight for full funding and full staffing of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and other civil rights enforcement agencies so they can do their job of ensuring that America lives up to its creed of equal rights and equal opportunity for all.\nThe Democratic Party proudly upholds its tradition of support for the first Americans. The sovereignty of the American Indians and Native Alaskans and a strong affirmation of the government-to-government relationship are basic to our approach to the tribal governments. As we move into the 21st century, we have to renew our trust obligations and work to improve the lives of the many Indians who live in terrible poverty. The Democratic Party pledges to continue our work to make a difference in the lives of those who occupied this land before us. We affirm the legal and political relationship between the United States and Native Hawaiians as an important step in the continuing process of reconciliation. We will work to pass legislation establishing a process for Native Hawaiians to reorganize a governing body, freely chosen, expressing their rights to self-determination. The justice we provide the first Americans is a measure of our nation's character, and Democrats believe we should build on the progress of the last eight years.\nForging Common Ground.\n\nAmerican citizenship entails both rights and responsibilities and we need to ask every American - from every walk of life - to give something back to their communities and their country. We are committed to expanding AmeriCorps so that more Americans both serve their country and further their educations.\nAmerica will become much more diverse in the coming century. But while much is changing, much remains. Our common civic culture - one grounded in the values most Americans share: work, family, personal responsibility, individual liberty, and faith - ties us together. Our common ground - our shared civic institutions - makes us whole. In the years to come, we must celebrate our diversity and focus on strengthening the common values and beliefs that make us one America - one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.\nPEACE\n\nEight years ago, Americans found themselves between two worlds. After half a century in which we stood up for peace and security all over the globe - taking on the forces of tyranny and terror that imperiled our interests and assaulted our values - the Cold War was over and a new Global Age was beginning. We needed new ideas and new leadership.\nDemocrats have provided them. Under the leadership of Bill Clinton and Al Gore, the first light of the 21st Century finds America at peace. More of the world's citizens live in freedom than ever before, and our people and our values are protected by the greatest military force the world has ever known.\nDemocratic leadership has brought peace and security to Americans and to millions of freedom-loving people around the globe. We achieved victory and ended ethnic cleansing in Kosovo - allowing hundreds of thousands of refugees to return to their homes in safety. We helped achieve historic breakthroughs in the Middle East peace process. We led the efforts that produced the Good Friday Accord in Northern Ireland - offering the best hope yet of ending decades of bloodshed. We are working to build a self-sustaining peace in Bosnia through the implementation of the Dayton Peace accords. We have ended the military dictatorship and given democracy a chance in Haiti. We have made Americans safer by reducing Russian nuclear arsenals. We strengthened and expanded NATO for a new century.\nBut now is not the time to sound the trumpets of triumph. In the wake of the Cold War, America has entered a new Global Age that is altering our security challenges and creating entirely new issues. Globalization is transforming the international order that defined the 20th century. Today, for both good and ill, our destiny and the destinies of billions of people around the world are increasingly intertwined, and our domestic and international challenges are bound together as never before.\nThe Democratic Party recognizes that globalization will continue shaping our future. We also believe that the United States has the means and the responsibility to shape globalization so that it reflects the needs and the values of the American people.\nAl Gore and the Democratic Party know that we must be able to meet any military challenge from a position of dominance. But Al Gore and the Democratic Party also recognize that there is a new security agenda - threats that affect the entire world and transcend political borders.\nDuring the past century, we have learned that if we wish to avoid war, we must be strong enough to deter aggression, but also farsighted enough to invest in peace. Now it is time to apply this lesson to the new global challenges we face - to shape a new strategy of Forward Engagement to guide our conduct around the world.\nForward Engagement means addressing problems early in their development before they become crises, addressing them as close to the source of the problem as possible, and having the forces and resources to deal with these threats as soon after their emergence as possible.\nWhile we must always stand prepared to use our military power when all other options fail, Forward Engagement also means addressing societal and political problems before they evolve into threats to our national security and values - before armed conflict becomes the only way to achieve our goals. And Forward Engagement means drawing on all three main sources of American power - military strength, a vibrant, growing economy, and a free and democratic political system - to advance our objectives around the world.\nThe Democratic Party believes that America's peace and security depend on our unflagging leadership and engagement in global affairs-and that Forward Engagement is the strategy that must guide us. We must maintain America's economic and military strength. We must also form partnerships to help solve global problems and take advantage of new global opportunities. That means we must deepen our key alliances, develop more constructive relationships with former enemies, and bring together diverse coalitions of nations to deal with new problems. America has a responsibility to lead - and should lead from within the international community.\nAt a time when new conditions require new thinking, the Republican Party offers little more than outdated positions and a narrow worldview that lets international problems fester.\nSome Republicans believe America should turn away from the world. They oppose using our armed forces as part of international solutions, even when regional conflicts threaten our interests and our values.\nOther Republicans want America to act unilaterally. They attack the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty - even at the risk of precipitating a new nuclear arms race. They voted down the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, threatening both our security and our global leadership. They have attempted to sabotage the Clinton-Gore administration's efforts to negotiate with other nations by declaring that any arms control agreement - regardless of content - would be \"dead on arrival.\"\nMired in the past, the Republican Party fails to realize that ensuring peace and security for Americans today does not just mean guarding against armies on the march. It means investing in building the global peace. It means addressing the fact that more than 1 billion of the Earth's inhabitants live on less than $1 a day - inviting social dislocation, violence, and war. It means meeting new challenges such as international crime and terrorism, environmental degradation, and pandemic diseases head-on. And it means that Forward Engagement must be the new pole-star of our global strategy.\nNeutralizing the Forces That Cause Chaos and Instability\n\nThe questions of war and peace among sovereign states are as important to our security as ever. But today America also faces a new set of international issues. Technology's unprecedented power means that lawlessness, diseases, and ecological disruptions - which once were localized - now land on America's doorstep even as they also threaten the stability and security of nations all over the world.\nDisruption of the World's Ecological System.\n\nThe disruption of the world's ecological systems - from the rise of global warming and the consequent damage to our climate balance, to the loss of living species and the depletion of ocean fisheries and forest habitats - continues at a frightening rate. We must act now to protect our Earth while preserving and creating jobs for our people. In 1997, we negotiated the historic Kyoto Protocols, an international treaty that will establish a strong, realistic, and effective framework to reduce greenhouse emissions in an environmentally strong and economically sound way. We are working to develop a broad international effort to take action to meet this threat. Al Gore and the Democratic Party believe we must now ratify those Protocols.\nGlobal Epidemics.\n\nGlobal epidemics constitute another major security threat. Malaria is running out of control in Africa, and antibiotic-resistant strains of tuberculosis are ravaging Russia and other countries.\nBut the most severe global epidemic is HIV/AIDS. It is more than a health tragedy, it is a threat to global security. AIDS now grips 20 million Africans. Fourteen million have already died, a quarter of them children. Each day, 11,000 more men, women, and children become infected. Diseases like AIDS threaten not just individual citizens, but the very institutions that define and defend the character of society. The Democratic Party believes we can and must do more to prevent transmission, care for those who are ill, and lead in knitting. together the scores of AIDS-fighting initiatives into a global campaign to defeat this threat.\nFighting Drugs and Organized Crime.\n\nInternational drug networks and other organized crime syndicates represent a growing threat to the survival of democratic governance. They breed corruption and lawlessness and they erode the institutions that maintain societal order.\nDrug producing nations like Colombia have seen their societies torn apart by the intersection of criminal activity, political discord, and terrorism. And our nation is also afflicted with the violence and hopelessness of drugs. We must continue to combat narco-traffickers, increasing our budget to do so. We must continue to have a strong Drug Czar who can bring together the considerable resources of the U.S. Government in this effort. We must continue to fight those who make the financing of this effort possible such as the money launderers who facilitate the drug trade. We must continue to work with our friends and allies and international organizations to fight the blood money of the drug trade by getting a handle on those nations who turn a blind eye to the financial end of this problem.\nWe must remember that the drug trade, like other criminal enterprises, fundamentally reflects the economics of hopelessness. Farmers have been drawn to cultivate these crops as a means for economic survival in the absence of other viable alternatives. Al Gore and the Democratic Party understand that no policy of interdiction and prosecution will succeed unless it is combined with robust investment in alternative ways to make a living. We must also build on our efforts to expand the rule of law, fight corruption, and improve democratic governance.\nTransforming Our Military\n\nA strong, flexible, and modern military force is the ultimate guarantor of our physical survival and the protection of our interests and values. Today, America's military is the best-trained, best-equipped, most capable, and most ready fighting force in the world. With Bill Clinton and Al Gore in the White House, Democrats reversed a decline in defense spending that began under President Bush, boosted pay and allowances, and provided the funding for a new generation of weapons.\nThe Democratic Party understands that, good as they are, the armed forces must continue to evolve. They must not only remain prepared for conventional military action, but must sharpen their ability to deal with new missions and new kinds of threats. They must become more agile, more versatile, and must more completely incorporate the revolutionary implications and advantages of American supremacy in information technology.\nRecruiting, Training, and Retaining Our Troops.\n\nA high-tech fighting force must recruit, train, and retain a professional all-volunteer force of the highest caliber. The Democratic Party understands that in order to do this, military pay must continue to increase. We enacted the largest military pay increase in twenty years - and we must raise pay even more. We need to further reform the military retirement system and improve housing, health care, and childcare benefits to support the general competitiveness of military careers during a period of unprecedented prosperity in the civilian economy. While the number of soldiers and families on food stamps is down by two-thirds over the past decade, it is unacceptable that any member of our armed forces should have to rely on food stamps. Al Gore is committed to equal treatment of all service members and believes all patriotic Americans be allowed to serve their country without discrimination, persecution, and violence.\nThe Democratic Party honors America's veterans for their selfless willingness to defend the United States and promote our values around the world. We must always remember the debt this nation owes its defenders. Al Gore will expand access to health care for all eligible veterans; pursue the causes of illness suffered by Vietnam and Gulf War veterans; press for more research on diseases caused by exposure to toxic battlefields and treat fairly veterans suffering from those ailments; back research efforts to screen and treat hepatitis C; and expand programs in the areas of mental health, spinal cord injury, and vision impairment. We will streamline the disability claims process to ensure that this nation continues to live up to its sacred commitment to the men and women who served in uniform. We support efforts of the Filipino American Veterans who fought in World War II to obtain equity.\nDeploying America's Technological Edge.\n\nIt is imperative that aging weapons systems - which are now the backbone of our military - be replaced by the oncoming generation of advanced, high-tech weapons which are designed to make sure that our armed forces face any future conflict from a posture of dominance. Al Gore and the Democratic Party will make sure that the military has the most advanced weaponry, sophisticated intelligence, and information systems and, in addition, continues to invest in research and development for future supremacy. By contrast, George W. Bush has talked about \"skipping\" this generation of weapons - which could mean skipping our responsibility to give our fighting men and women the weapons they need. We must also ensure that investment in the infrastructure needed to support the military, including our maritime capability, is not ignored. And we must ensure a competitive workforce maintaining high-skilled workers and training programs that will ensure the capability to respond to national security emergencies and defense readiness.\nProtecting Our Interests and Securing Our Values.\n\nThe lessons of the past eight years show that the nation must be prepared to use force when American interests and values are truly at stake. We cannot be the world's policeman, and we must be discriminating in our approach. But where the stakes are high, when we can assure ourselves that nothing short of military engagement can secure our national interest, when we know that we have the military forces available for the task, when we have made our best efforts to join with allies, and when the cost is proportionate to the objective, we must be ready to act.\nClosing the Gates of War\n\nIn areas where conflict has raged, comprehensive peace agreements are the foundation for lasting security. Bill Clinton and Al Gore have actively pursued peaceful resolutions to conflicts across the world and have been prepared to go the extra mile on behalf of negotiators seeking peace. Al Gore and the Democratic Party are fundamentally committed to the security of our ally, Israel, and the creation of a comprehensive, just, and lasting peace between Israel and its neighbors. We helped broker the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty, the Wye River accords, and the Sharm el-Sheik Memorandum, and will continue to work with all parties to make progress towards peace. Our special relationship with Israel is based on the unshakable foundation of shared values and a mutual commitment to democracy, and we will ensure that under all circumstances, Israel retains the qualitative military edge for its national security. Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and should remain an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths. In view of the government of Israel's courageous decision to withdraw from Lebanon, we believe special responsibility now resides with Syria to make a contribution toward peace. The recently-held Camp David summit, while failing to bridge all the gaps between Israel and the Palestinians, demonstrated President Clinton's resolve to do all the United States could do to bring an end to that long conflict. Al Gore, as president, will demonstrate the same resolve. We call on both parties to avoid unilateral actions, such as a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood, that will prejudge the outcome of negotiations, and we urge the parties to adhere to their joint pledge to resolve all differences only by good faith negotiations.\nIn Northern Ireland, we helped facilitate multi-party talks and played an instrumental role in brokering the historic Good Friday Accord, which has greatly enhanced the prospect for peace. We will continue to work toward implementation of the Accord and provide continued political and economic support for the new institutions involving Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, and Great Britain. Our goal is not merely the laying down of arms, but the joining together of hands in a new political relationship that enables former rivals to govern and thrive together.\nWe have worked hard and successfully to calm dangerous tensions between our allies Greece and Turkey over issues of sovereignty in the Aegean, and we have never ceased our efforts to facilitate a resolution of tensions between the Greek and Turkish communities on Cyprus. This work must continue.\nIn the Balkans, the Clinton-Gore Administration ended ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo by the resolute use of military power and vigorous diplomacy. The Republican Party, having first opposed the Administration's efforts to restore peace in the region, now tries to impede the Administration's efforts to rebuild these shattered societies. We look forward to the day when Serbia will be free from the grip of Slobodan Milosevic, and we will work to make that happen. America did right in the Balkans, and now we must finish the job.\nRemembering the historic suffering of the people of Armenia, and recognizing the need of the modern Armenian state for security and economic growth, Al Gore and the Democratic Party are committed to continuing our efforts to bring a permanent end to tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, along with the restoration of diplomatic, commercial, and economic ties between Armenia and her neighbors, including Turkey. Al Gore helped bring about a special task force to intensify economic cooperation between the United States and Armenia.\nWe have helped close the gates of war in other parts of the world as well, and our work continues. We helped settle the Peru-Ecuador border dispute and end the civil war in Guatemala. We have worked for peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, Sierra Leone, and on the Ethiopia-Eritrea border. And we helped end the violence and protect democracy in East Timor by leading diplomatic efforts and supporting an international peacekeeping mission.\nWe helped facilitate the dialogue between North and South Korea, without which the recent summit could not have occurred. We continue to work with China and Taiwan to resolve their differences by peaceful means. And we continue our work with India and Pakistan to dampen down a nuclear arms race on the sub-continent and continue to urge them to deal with their differences over their conflict in Kashmir with peaceful means. President Clinton's historic trip to India and Pakistan has created new possibilities for dialogue with these countries, and under a Gore Administration these will be continued vigorously.\nEngaging Former Enemies\n\nDemocrats understand that we must engage former enemies. This Administration's efforts to design new relationships with the Russian Federation and China have been continuously subjected to every form of harassment and attack by the Republicans - but they have been in America's national interest and they have been the right thing to do.\nWe recognize that Russia's historic transition to a market democracy is difficult - all the more reason we must continue to engage Russia. We recognize that Russian democracy is challenged by corruption that deeply penetrates her society - all the more reason to engage Russia on behalf of reform. We recognize that Russia has her own self-interest and concerns that can and do run contrary to ours - all the more reason to search for constructive forms of cooperation. We deeply disagree with what Russia is doing in Chechnya and remain concerned about signs of Russian efforts to intimidate the press - all the more reason to step up our discussions with them on those issues. The Democratic Party is prepared to pursue American objectives as needed even at the cost of friction with Russia. But it is also of tremendous potential benefit to us if we can nurture a sense of common purpose and trust. Al Gore and the Democratic Party will continue that effort.\nSimilarly, we must continue to engage China - a nation with 1.3 billion people, a nuclear arsenal, and a role in the 21st Century that is destined to be one of the basic facts of international life. We must search out ways to cooperate across a broad range of issues, such as the environment and trade, while at the same time, insisting on adherence to international standards on human rights, freedom, the persecution of religions, the suppression of Tibet, and bellicose threats directed at Taiwan. China cannot be ignored, and these issues cannot - and must not - be marginalized. A deterioration of the U.S.-China relationship would harm, not help, American national security interests and the promotion of our values. A Gore Administration will fulfill its responsibilities under the Taiwan Relations Act. A Gore Administration will also remain committed to a \"One China\" policy. We support a resolution of cross-Straits issues that is both peaceful and consistent with the wishes of the people of Taiwan.\nEnhancing Existing Alliances\n\nThe security and stability of Europe is critical to America's national security interests. We will continue to partner with the European Union to address global issues that could benefit from our combined capabilities. Under a Gore Administration, the U.S. will continue to work with our transatlantic allies to make the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) even stronger, thereby enhancing stability, promoting prosperity, and fostering democracy throughout Europe. The Democratic Party strongly supported the accession of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary as a milestone in building a stronger NATO and a more democratic and unified Europe. We look forward to bringing in additional qualified members in the future who share our values and are willing to take on the responsibilities of membership. A Gore Administration will ensure that the issue of NATO's future enlargement is part of the Alliance's agenda at the next summit in 2002 and that no non-NATO member has a veto over NATO decisions in this regard.\nWe must strengthen our alliances and partnerships in Asia, with Japan and with South Korea. We must intensify our strategic cooperation with our ally Japan, building on our Joint Security Declaration, while finding more avenues to deal with Japan on a range of issues, from supporting democracy in Asia to promoting fair trade. And we remain committed to the defense of South Korea. The Democratic Party views our warm relationship with Australia as an anchor for our security interests in Southeast Asia, and we commend Australia for its leadership, and we applaud other nations for their participation with us in the peacekeeping operation in East Timor.\nWe also are committed to enhancing our alliance with the countries of Latin America. We must build on the work that we began when we hosted the first Summit of the Americas, and we must accelerate implementation of the Plan of Action that will promote hemispheric cooperation on a full spectrum of political, economic, security and social issues.\nPreventing New Physical Threats\n\nPreventing Proliferation.\n\nWe must strengthen our defense against the proliferation of conventional and unconventional weapons that threaten America. Our first priority must be to continue the work we have begun in cutting stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, halting testing, and ensuring that weapons and weapons-grade material do not fall into the wrong hands. Working with the government of the Russian Federation, we have helped safeguard nuclear material against the danger of theft. We have made it possible for thousands of Russia's nuclear scientists and weapons experts to find peaceful pursuits. And we have helped deactivate nearly 5,000 nuclear warheads.\nWe are also equipping our military and continuously preparing our defenses for an unconventional attack. We have been an active player in international efforts to strengthen compliance with the Biological Weapons Convention. We renewed and made permanent the Non-Proliferation Treaty and ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention, but our effort to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was derailed by Senate Republicans. As President, Al Gore will promptly resubmit this treaty to the Senate with a demand from the American people for its ratification.\nAl Gore and the Democratic Party recognize the possibility of change in Iran, but we remain focused on the realities. Even as elements in Iran press for reform, the country still supports international terrorism, strives to acquire weapons of mass destruction, and represses its citizens, as evidenced by the immoral trial of 13 Jews in Shiraz. Ultimately, we must judge Iran by its actions. Al Gore will make an all-out effort to halt Iran's acquisition of weapons of mass destruction and delivery systems.\nIn Iraq, we are committed to working with our international partners to keep Saddam Hussein boxed in, and we will work to see him out of power. Bill Clinton and Al Gore have stood up to Saddam Hussein time and time again. As President, Al Gore will not hesitate to use America's military might against Iraq when and where it is necessary.\nIn light of the possibility that U.S. Forces or our allies will have to contend with hostile tactical range ballistic missiles, we have been working rapidly to develop anti-tactical ballistic missile systems. We are working successfully with Israel on developing and deploying the Arrow anti-tactical ballistic missile system and the Tactical High Energy Laser.\nOur diplomacy has helped to halt North Korea's push for nuclear weapons. We got North Korea to stop testing long-range ballistic missiles and are also engaged in continuing negotiations regarding their testing and export of long-range ballistic missiles. The tight coordination between the United States, South Korea, and Japan is critical to our success, and we will maintain it as the two Koreas continue the dialogue began at the recent summit.\nWe reject Republican plans to endanger our security with massive unilateral cuts in our arsenal and to construct an unproven, expensive, and ill-conceived missile defense system that would plunge us into a new arms race. Al Gore and the Democratic Party support the development of the technology for a limited national missile defense system that will be able to defend the U.S. against a missile attack from a state that has acquired weapons of mass destruction despite our efforts to block their proliferation. A decision to deploy such a system should be made based on four criteria: the nature of the threat, the feasibility of the technology, the cost, and the overall impact on our national security, including arms control. The Democratic Party places a high value on ensuring that any such system is compatible with the Antiballistic Missile Treaty. We also support continued work in significantly reducing strategic and other nuclear weapons, recognizing that the goal is strategic nuclear stability at progressively lower levels.\nBattling Terrorism.\n\nWhether terrorism is sponsored by a foreign nation or inspired by a single fanatic individual, such as Osama Bin Laden, Forward Engagement requires trying to disrupt terrorist networks, even before they are ready to attack. We must improve coordination internationally and domestically to share intelligence and develop operational plans. We must continue the comprehensive approach that has resulted in the development of a national counter-terrorism strategy involving all arms and levels of our government. We must continue to target terrorist finances, break up support cells, and disrupt training. And we must close avenues of cyber-attack by improving the security of the Internet and the computers upon which our digital economy exists.\nAs President, Al Gore will tolerate no attack against American interests at home or abroad: terrorists must know that if they attack America, we will never forget. We will scour the world to hunt them down and bring them to justice.\nWhile fighting terrorism, we will protect the civil liberties of all Americans. Our justice system must guarantee fairness with procedures that protect the rights of the accused, even under the unusual circumstances of the investigation of threats to our national security. We must avoid stereotyping, for it defeats the highest purposes of our country if citizens feel automatically suspect by virtue of their ethnic origin. The purpose of terrorism is not only to intimidate, but also to divide and fracture, and we cannot permit that to happen.\nSeizing Opportunities\n\nForward Engagement requires investment. But while international assistance and government aid are important - we should do more. There is no way to donate enough money to the parts of the world that are most deeply affected by war, lawlessness, disease, or disorder. What applies to us, applies to them: the only way for them to make real progress is to encourage investment by promoting growth that is sustainable and broadly shared.\nLatin America and the Caribbean must continue to be a focal point of our efforts. We believe that increased cooperation and trade with our partners in this hemisphere can reduce poverty and the reliance on the drug trade, and ultimately lead to economic development, stability, and prosperity. We have made great strides by helping avert a financial crisis in Mexico. Mexico's ongoing shift to a mature democracy, as demonstrated by her recent election, makes it increasingly possible for us to visualize even stronger relations and more effective relationships between ourselves, Mexico, and Canada, building on our growing economic ties to address environmental and social issues of common concern. A Gore Administration will build on this possibility in order to assure ourselves and the people of the Americas a future of democracy, prosperity, and security built on mutual trust and respect. At the same time, we should continue to safeguard environmental standards, food safety, and worker protections by refusing to allow cross-border trucking and bus operations until appropriate safety and worker fairness standards have been met.\nProsperity and peace in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa will only be possible when those regions are fully integrated into the global economy. In Asia, we are working to promote fair trade with Japan and China. In the Middle East, we are promoting regional trade, particularly among Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. We must continue our work to reach out to moderate Arab states and we must intensify our effort to foster closer ties to the Islamic World.\nWith respect to sub-Saharan Africa, the Democratic Party believes in supporting what South African President Thabo Mbeki has called \"an African renaissance.\" Notwithstanding this region's many problems, we see the example of South Africa as a great beacon of hope. We are encouraged by the restoration of democracy in Nigeria, the long-term continuation of a stable democratic system in Botswana, and Mozambique's courageous efforts of recovery after years of civil war. Even in the midst of her continuing problems, we see in Zimbabwe's recent election hope for the survival of the ideal of a multi-ethnic society. We regard the recently enacted African Growth and Opportunity Act as a major contribution toward the future.\nWe believe that the United Nations can play an integral role in our policy of Forward Engagement. We understand that the institution needs both resources and reform if it is to play that role, and we pledge to take the lead on both fronts.\nProsperity Abroad.\n\nGlobalization must be a tide that lifts all boats, not a wave that overwhelms the most vulnerable among us. We support increasing our investment in the International Labor Organization and expanding the use of trade preferences that are tied to improvement in core labor standards. We also want to reverse the widening gap between rich and poor and nations, which is why Al Gore and the Democratic Party back debt forgiveness for the world's poorest nations.\nWe must seek to reform international institutions such as the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank so that core labor standards, human rights, and protections of the environment are integral to their policies and practices. These institutions must also improve their transparency, accountability, and level of consultation with civil society so that citizens around the world can both understand the basis for their decisions and contribute to them. We should use our influence in multilateral development institutions to not only provide emergency assistance for stabilizing economies and to create social safety nets, including unemployment insurance and health care, but also to give people the skills, education, and training they need to compete in the New Economy.\nWe must make a special effort to help women and children in societies that are devastated by war, disease and poverty. Women are traditionally the backbone of the family. We must also make a special effort to hear women when they rise up courageously to resist or end war in their communities. They are in a sense the front lines - the first affected - by the horrors of war and the misery of disease and poverty. We demand the United States Congress pass the Convention to Eliminate all forms of Discrimination Against Women which has been consistently blocked by the Republican Senate. And children represent the future. When we lose our children, we lose the promise of a future. Our investment programs must be more targeted toward women. And we must end the scourge of child labor by helping societies create educational opportunities for children and, more importantly, economic alternatives to employing the young.\nPromoting Democracy, Human Rights, Rule of Law, and Civil Society.\n\nAmerican values and freedoms are a beacon unto nations, and we should use the power of our ideals to foster democracy, human rights, rule of law, and civil society throughout the world. The Democratic Party believes that America must continue to work closely with other nations, as well as non-governmental organizations to promote these goals. We aim to rededicate ourselves to the defense of democracy in the Americas at a moment when it is being brought into question in Peru and absent on the island of Cuba. We will continue to work with Haiti to deepen the roots of democracy that we helped replant. We will continue to press for human rights, the rule of law, and political freedom. We will continue to support the spread of democracy across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East and the development of judiciary, legal systems, media and civil society organizations.\nTo accomplish this, we need the right tools. Al Gore and the Democratic Party support continued funding for the National Endowment for Democracy, Radio Liberty, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, Radio Marti, and other efforts to promote democracy and the free flow of ideas. We will build on our successful Reinventing Government program, led by Al Gore, to help other nations make their governments more responsive, more open, and more effective. We strongly support international educational exchanges. The students who come to America to study here - at the best academic institutions in the world - learn about our democratic values and institutions, our entrepreneurial skills, and our culture. They learn that Americans are noble dreamers remaining ever inclusive.\nForty years ago, John F. Kennedy came to Los Angeles to accept the Democratic Party's nomination for president. In doing so, he pointed America towards new frontiers at home and abroad. In the year 2000, Al Gore comes to Los Angeles to accept that same nomination and renew our party's determination to accept big challenges and make bold choices. At the edge of a new century, Democrats stand united in our determination to offer prosperity to all who are willing to work for it, to provide progress to all who are willing to live by the values that have made America great, and to bring peace to all those willing to embrace democracy all over the world.\nFor eight years, the Democratic Party's new thinking has helped America reach unparalleled heights of prosperity, progress, and peace. Now, we say that this is the time to move forward - not to go back. Now, we say that Democrats have just yet begun to fight for a better America and a brighter future. 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-> 3, "sovereignty" -> 3, "source" -> 3, "sometimes" -> 3, "something" -> 3, "solutions" -> 3, "smoking" -> 3, "smart" -> 3, "simple" -> 3, "significant" -> 3, "side" -> 3, "serve" -> 3, "seniors" -> 3, "seen" -> 3, "search" -> 3, "scores" -> 3, "rules" -> 3, "row" -> 3, "rich" -> 3, "rewarded" -> 3, "restoration" -> 3, "requires" -> 3, "renewed" -> 3, "remains" -> 3, "rely" -> 3, "relief" -> 3, "released" -> 3, "regard" -> 3, "reforming" -> 3, "reflects" -> 3, "read" -> 3, "ratings" -> 3, "pursuing" -> 3, "proven" -> 3, "prosecutors" -> 3, "propose" -> 3, "proposals" -> 3, "professionals" -> 3, "products" -> 3, "producing" -> 3, "problem" -> 3, "privatization" -> 3, "prisoners" -> 3, "preparation" -> 3, "powerful" -> 3, "positions" -> 3, "policing" -> 3, "point" -> 3, "Plus" -> 3, "pledge" -> 3, "playing" -> 3, "places" -> 3, "percentage" -> 3, "people's" -> 3, "Patients" -> 3, "Party's" -> 3, "partners" -> 3, "parties" -> 3, "owe" -> 3, "oppose" -> 3, "onto" -> 3, "ones" -> 3, "oil" -> 3, "offering" -> 3, "Northern" -> 3, "newest" -> 3, "networks" -> 3, "negotiations" -> 3, "natural" -> 3, "Native" -> 3, "moving" -> 3, "Most" -> 3, "More" -> 3, "modernize" -> 3, "missiles" -> 3, "Missile" -> 3, "middle" -> 3, "Mental" -> 3, "Medical" -> 3, "measures" -> 3, "may" -> 3, "math" -> 3, "match" -> 3, "market" -> 3, "management" -> 3, "makes" -> 3, "maintaining" -> 3, "mainstream" -> 3, "look" -> 3, "long-term" -> 3, "little" -> 3, "limits" -> 3, "lift" -> 3, "Leave" -> 3, "Law" -> 3, "later" -> 3, "language" -> 3, "lands" -> 3, "join" -> 3, "John" -> 3, "jail" -> 3, "it's" -> 3, "Iran" -> 3, "involved" -> 3, "investing" -> 3, "intimidate" -> 3, "intensify" -> 3, "intellectual" -> 3, "integral" -> 3, "Instead" -> 3, "innovate" -> 3, "individuals" -> 3, "Income" -> 3, "implementation" -> 3, "images" -> 3, "If" -> 3, "idea" -> 3, "Human" -> 3, "HIV" -> 3, "hiring" -> 3, "harness" -> 3, "groups" -> 3, "greatly" -> 3, "graduation" -> 3, "grade" -> 3, "governments" -> 3, "Good" -> 3, "goals" -> 3, "globe" -> 3, "generations" -> 3, "gender" -> 3, "gates" -> 3, "gas" -> 3, "gap" -> 3, "Fund" -> 3, "fund" -> 3, "fronts" -> 3, "From" -> 3, "former" -> 3, "form" -> 3, "forests" -> 3, "focused" -> 3, "Florida" -> 3, "finally" -> 3, "Federal" -> 3, "faster" -> 3, "fall" -> 3, "faith-based" -> 3, "failed" -> 3, "fact" -> 3, "facing" -> 3, "Every" -> 3, "era" -> 3, "equality" -> 3, "enforce" -> 3, "energy" -> 3, "ends" -> 3, "Ending" -> 3, "employees" -> 3, "emissions" -> 3, "eliminating" -> 3, "elected" -> 3, "effects" -> 3, "educational" -> 3, "easy" -> 3, "easily" -> 3, "easier" -> 3, "earn" -> 3, "Drug" -> 3, "drives" -> 3, "double" -> 3, "don't" -> 3, "disorder" -> 3, "Diseases" -> 3, "dignity" -> 3, "difference" -> 3, "dialogue" -> 3, "denied" -> 3, "demonstrated" -> 3, "delivery" -> 3, "degradation" -> 3, "defend" -> 3, "deepen" -> 3, "decision" -> 3, "dead" -> 3, "days" -> 3, "crisis" -> 3, "credits" -> 3, "creating" -> 3, "Court" -> 3, "couples" -> 3, "corruption" -> 3, "Convention" -> 3, "contrast" -> 3, "Constitution" -> 3, "conduct" -> 3, "conditions" -> 3, "concerns" -> 3, "concern" -> 3, "Communities" -> 3, "commit" -> 3, "closer" -> 3, "closed" -> 3, "Clinton's" -> 3, "Civil" -> 3, "cities" -> 3, "circumstances" -> 3, "check" -> 3, "charter" -> 3, "changed" -> 3, "centers" -> 3, "causes" -> 3, "caused" -> 3, "cases" -> 3, "caring" -> 3, "cancer" -> 3, "buy" -> 3, "Bush-Quayle" -> 3, "budget" -> 3, "broadly" -> 3, "broad" -> 3, "breakthroughs" -> 3, "began" -> 3, "battle" -> 3, "Ban" -> 3, "bad" -> 3, "avoid" -> 3, "attend" -> 3, "assault" -> 3, "applies" -> 3, "Americas" -> 3, "American's" -> 3, "Amendment" -> 3, "alternatives" -> 3, "already" -> 3, "aim" -> 3, "ahead" -> 3, "aggressively" -> 3, "agenda" -> 3, "advertising" -> 3, "adequate" -> 3, "achievements" -> 3, "achieved" -> 3, "accounts" -> 3, "Accountability" -> 3, "Accord" -> 3, "accessible" -> 3, "abortion" -> 3, "35" -> 3, "22" -> 3, "12" -> 3, "$1" -> 2, "Zones" -> 2, "zones" -> 2, "zone" -> 2, "zero-tolerance" -> 2, "youth" -> 2, "Yet" -> 2, "year's" -> 2, "worth" -> 2, "worlds" -> 2, "words" -> 2, "won" -> 2, "Women" -> 2, "What" -> 2, "we're" -> 2, "welcome" -> 2, "warm" -> 2, "wants" -> 2, "walk" -> 2, "wake" -> 2, "waiting" -> 2, "vow" -> 2, "vote" -> 2, "voices" -> 2, "vitality" -> 2, "virtue" -> 2, "Violence" -> 2, "vibrant" -> 2, "veto" -> 2, "V-chip" -> 2, "Valuing" -> 2, "urban" -> 2, "up-to-date" -> 2, "upholds" -> 2, "unparalleled" -> 2, "understands" -> 2, "unconventional" -> 2, "ultimately" -> 2, "ultimate" -> 2, "two-thirds" -> 2, "twenty" -> 2, "turning" -> 2, "Turkey" -> 2, "Trust" -> 2, "truly" -> 2, "trouble" -> 2, "trillion" -> 2, "tremendous" -> 2, "transit" -> 2, "transfer" -> 2, "traditional" -> 2, "toxic" -> 2, "Too" -> 2, "tolerate" -> 2, "tolerance" -> 2, "Today's" -> 2, "Timor" -> 2, "Time" -> 2, "threatened" -> 2, "thousand" -> 2, "third" -> 2, "they're" -> 2, "then" -> 2, "Their" -> 2, "theft" -> 2, "Test" -> 2, "terrorists" -> 2, "terrorist" -> 2, "terror" -> 2, "temporary" -> 2, "technology's" -> 2, "Teachers" -> 2, "taxpayer" -> 2, "tax-free" -> 2, "task" -> 2, "talked" -> 2, "takes" -> 2, "switch" -> 2, "sustaining" -> 2, "sustain" -> 2, "surrender" -> 2, "surpluses" -> 2, "supremacy" -> 2, "Supporting" -> 2, "suffered" -> 2, "study" -> 2, "stuck" -> 2, "struggling" -> 2, "Strong" -> 2, "strip" -> 2, "strict" -> 2, "strengthened" -> 2, "statehood" -> 2, "State" -> 2, "starts" -> 2, "stands" -> 2, "stamps" -> 2, "stakes" -> 2, "stagnation" -> 2, "spur" -> 2, "spread" -> 2, "spirit" -> 2, "spinal" -> 2, "specific" -> 2, "species" -> 2, "specialist" -> 2, "soon" -> 2, "Some" -> 2, "solvency" -> 2, "solemn" -> 2, "societal" -> 2, "So" -> 2, "smog" -> 2, "smallest" -> 2, "smaller" -> 2, "Small" -> 2, "skipping" -> 2, "skilled" -> 2, "sites" -> 2, "Since" -> 2, "similar" -> 2, "signs" -> 2, "sign" -> 2, "show" -> 2, "shouldn't" -> 2, "shirking" -> 2, "shape" -> 2, "sexual" -> 2, "seven" -> 2, "sets" -> 2, "sentencing" -> 2, "seems" -> 2, "Security's" -> 2, "scientific" -> 2, "science" -> 2, "scheme" -> 2, "saved" -> 2, "satisfaction" -> 2, "safeguards" -> 2, "safeguard" -> 2, "Saddam" -> 2, "sacred" -> 2, "Russia's" -> 2, "running" -> 2, "run" -> 2, "roots" -> 2, "room" -> 2, "roads" -> 2, "road" -> 2, "rising" -> 2, "rings" -> 2, "rigorous" -> 2, "Right" -> 2, "revolutionary" -> 2, "resulted" -> 2, "responsive" -> 2, "resolution" -> 2, "Research" -> 2, "requirements" -> 2, "reputation" -> 2, "representatives" -> 2, "representation" -> 2, "represent" -> 2, "reopened" -> 2, "renew" -> 2, "reliable" -> 2, "Relations" -> 2, "relations" -> 2, "reject" -> 2, "regional" -> 2, "regarding" -> 2, "refuse" -> 2, "reforms" -> 2, "reflect" -> 2, "recovery" -> 2, "reconnect" -> 2, "recognizing" -> 2, "rebuild" -> 2, "ratify" -> 2, "rather" -> 2, "ran" -> 2, "quickly" -> 2, "question" -> 2, "quadrupled" -> 2, "push" -> 2, "pulling" -> 2, "Puerto" -> 2, "public's" -> 2, "public-private" -> 2, "publicly-held" -> 2, "Public" -> 2, "provision" -> 2, "proud" -> 2, "Protocols" -> 2, "Prosperity" -> 2, "prosecution" -> 2, "proposing" -> 2, "property" -> 2, "promptly" -> 2, "promotion" -> 2, "Promoting" -> 2, "promise" -> 2, "proliferation" -> 2, "progressively" -> 2, "profiling" -> 2, "profession" -> 2, "prison" -> 2, "principal" -> 2, "prices" -> 2, "Preventing" -> 2, "preserving" -> 2, "preserves" -> 2, "preserve" -> 2, "prescription" -> 2, "preschool" -> 2, "practices" -> 2, "practice" -> 2, "positive" -> 2, "poorest" -> 2, "pollution" -> 2, "pledges" -> 2, "playground" -> 2, "play" -> 2, "Platform" -> 2, "plagues" -> 2, "pioneer" -> 2, "physical" -> 2, "phone" -> 2, "persistent" -> 2, "persecution" -> 2, "permit" -> 2, "performance" -> 2, "People" -> 2, "pensions" -> 2, "peacekeeping" -> 2, "Peace" -> 2, "path" -> 2, "passenger" -> 2, "parts" -> 2, "parent-teacher" -> 2, "Parents" -> 2, "Pakistan" -> 2, "paid" -> 2, "owes" -> 2, "overseas" -> 2, "overcome" -> 2, "overburdened" -> 2, "overall" -> 2, "outside" -> 2, "outdated" -> 2, "ours" -> 2, "ought" -> 2, "orientation" -> 2, "organized" -> 2, "Opportunities" -> 2, "operations" -> 2, "opened" -> 2, "One" -> 2, "On" -> 2, "oldest" -> 2, "offers" -> 2, "offered" -> 2, "ocean" -> 2, "occurred" -> 2, "obtain" -> 2, "obligations" -> 2, "objectives" -> 2, "nurture" -> 2, "nurses" -> 2, "nontraditional" -> 2, "nomination" -> 2, "No" -> 2, "network" -> 2, "nest" -> 2, "neither" -> 2, "neighbors" -> 2, "neighborhoods" -> 2, "negotiate" -> 2, "monitor" -> 2, "Monetary" -> 2, "misguided" -> 2, "minorities" -> 2, "minimum" -> 2, "might" -> 2, "midst" -> 2, "Mexico" -> 2, "met" -> 2, "merely" -> 2, "member" -> 2, "mean" -> 2, "McCain's" -> 2, "material" -> 2, "massive" -> 2, "Markets" -> 2, "manufacturing" -> 2, "Los" -> 2, "long-range" -> 2, "longest" -> 2, "lobbyists" -> 2, "livable" -> 2, "literacy" -> 2, "limited" -> 2, "license" -> 2, "lets" -> 2, "Let" -> 2, "Learning" -> 2, "launch" -> 2, "Latin" -> 2, "lasting" -> 2, "Labor" -> 2, "Kosovo" -> 2, "knowledge-based" -> 2, "knowledge" -> 2, "knew" -> 2, "kinds" -> 2, "key" -> 2, "itself" -> 2, "Iraq" -> 2, "involving" -> 2, "internationally" -> 2, "intensive" -> 2, "intelligence" -> 2, "institution" -> 2, "innovative" -> 2, "Innovation" -> 2, "innocent" -> 2, "Initiative" -> 2, "initiative" -> 2, "Industrial" -> 2, "Indians" -> 2, "India" -> 2, "independent" -> 2, "incorporate" -> 2, "inclusive" -> 2, "inclusion" -> 2, "includes" -> 2, "improvement" -> 2, "imperiled" -> 2, "impede" -> 2, "immigrant" -> 2, "ill" -> 2, "ignored" -> 2, "identify" -> 2, "ideals" -> 2, "Hussein" -> 2, "hurt" -> 2, "However" -> 2, "Housing" -> 2, "houses" -> 2, "hopelessness" -> 2, "him" -> 2, "high-speed" -> 2, "high-quality" -> 2, "heritage" -> 2, "helps" -> 2, "heart" -> 2, "healthier" -> 2, "Hawaiians" -> 2, "Hate" -> 2, "hate" -> 2, "harm" -> 2, "harder" -> 2, "happen" -> 2, "hands" -> 2, "hand" -> 2, "halt" -> 2, "Haiti" -> 2, "gut" -> 2, "guide" -> 2, "guidance" -> 2, "guarding" -> 2, "ground" -> 2, "grip" -> 2, "greatest" -> 2, "greater" -> 2, "granted" -> 2, "government's" -> 2, "governance" -> 2, "Gore's" -> 2, "goods" -> 2, "gone" -> 2, "goes" -> 2, "God" -> 2, "Globalization" -> 2, "geography" -> 2, "genuine" -> 2, "Genome" -> 2, "Generation" -> 2, "generate" -> 2, "general" -> 2, "gay" -> 2, "funds" -> 2, "fundamentally" -> 2, "fuel" -> 2, "Friday" -> 2, "freely" -> 2, "Free" -> 2, "fraud" -> 2, "fostering" -> 2, "foster" -> 2, "Forty" -> 2, "forget" -> 2, "forge" -> 2, "foreign" -> 2, "Forces" -> 2, "forced" -> 2, "flow" -> 2, "flexible" -> 2, "Fiscal" -> 2, "First" -> 2, "firm" -> 2, "finds" -> 2, "financing" -> 2, "finance" -> 2, "field" -> 2, "felt" -> 2, "fees" -> 2, "Federation" -> 2, "fast-moving" -> 2, "fastest" -> 2, "fast-changing" -> 2, "farms" -> 2, "Farmers" -> 2, "farmers" -> 2, "farm" -> 2, "Families" -> 2, "false" -> 2, "faiths" -> 2, "fairly" -> 2, "fairer" -> 2, "fails" -> 2, "extra" -> 2, "exposed" -> 2, "exploitation" -> 2, "exploit" -> 2, "experimentation" -> 2, "expenses" -> 2, "expense" -> 2, "expect" -> 2, "exercise" -> 2, "exemption" -> 2, "exclusion" -> 2, "example" -> 2, "evolve" -> 2, "everywhere" -> 2, "Everglades" -> 2, "Even" -> 2, "establish" -> 2, "equitable" -> 2, "equipping" -> 2, "equipment" -> 2, "Equal" -> 2, "entrepreneurs" -> 2, "entitled" -> 2, "entire" -> 2, "enrich" -> 2, "enjoy" -> 2, "enhancing" -> 2, "enhanced" -> 2, "English" -> 2, "engine" -> 2, "engagement" -> 2, "engaged" -> 2, "enforcing" -> 2, "enemies" -> 2, "ending" -> 2, "endangered" -> 2, "enacted" -> 2, "Empowerment" -> 2, "Employment" -> 2, "employee" -> 2, "embracing" -> 2, "eliminated" -> 2, "eligible" -> 2, "eligibility" -> 2, "electronic" -> 2, "elections" -> 2, "either" -> 2, "eighth" -> 2, "egg" -> 2, "effectively" -> 2, "educating" -> 2, "edge" -> 2, "economies" -> 2, "economically" -> 2, "ecological" -> 2, "Earned" -> 2, "Each" -> 2, "duty" -> 2, "due" -> 2, "dry" -> 2, "Drugs" -> 2, "drop" -> 2, "driving" -> 2, "drink" -> 2, "drilling" -> 2, "dreams" -> 2, "doubt" -> 2, "doubling" -> 2, "doors" -> 2, "door" -> 2, "dominance" -> 2, "doctors" -> 2, "district" -> 2, "disrupt" -> 2, "disclosed" -> 2, "Discipline" -> 2, "disabled" -> 2, "Disabilities" -> 2, "directly" -> 2, "directed" -> 2, "diplomatic" -> 2, "diplomacy" -> 2, "diploma" -> 2, "differing" -> 2, "determination" -> 2, "despite" -> 2, "designed" -> 2, "design" -> 2, "delivers" -> 2, "deduction" -> 2, "decide" -> 2, "debt-free" -> 2, "deadly" -> 2, "day's" -> 2, "dare" -> 2, "danger" -> 2, "damages" -> 2, "dads" -> 2, "cycle" -> 2, "cutting-edge" -> 2, "crusade" -> 2, "cruelty" -> 2, "crops" -> 2, "creative" -> 2, "cracking" -> 2, "cover" -> 2, "courts" -> 2, "courses" -> 2, "course" -> 2, "courageous" -> 2, "courage" -> 2, "counts" -> 2, "corridors" -> 2, "core" -> 2, "cord" -> 2, "coordination" -> 2, "conventional" -> 2, "contributions" -> 2, "contributed" -> 2, "contribute" -> 2, "continuously" -> 2, "continuation" -> 2, "content" -> 2, "constructive" -> 2, "construct" -> 2, "constitutional" -> 2, "conquer" -> 2, "conflicts" -> 2, "computers" -> 2, "Comprehensive" -> 2, "component" -> 2, "completion" -> 2, "completely" -> 2, "competitiveness" -> 2, "compensation" -> 2, "Community" -> 2, "committing" -> 2, "Commission" -> 2, "coming" -> 2, "combined" -> 2, "combating" -> 2, "color" -> 2, "Cold" -> 2, "Closing" -> 2, "clinical" -> 2, "cleansing" -> 2, "claims" -> 2, "city" -> 2, "citizenship" -> 2, "cigarettes" -> 2, "childrens" -> 2, "childcare" -> 2, "Child" -> 2, "change" -> 2, "cells" -> 2, "caregivers" -> 2, "careers" -> 2, "Care" -> 2, "capability" -> 2, "candidates" -> 2, "came" -> 2, "calm" -> 2, "bus" -> 2, "bureaucrats" -> 2, "Building" -> 2, "broke" -> 2, "bringing" -> 2, "bright" -> 2, "breathe" -> 2, "breaking" -> 2, "Brady" -> 2, "bottom" -> 2, "Bosnia" -> 2, "books" -> 2, "bonuses" -> 2, "bold" -> 2, "boats" -> 2, "Board" -> 2, "blue" -> 2, "blocked" -> 2, "block" -> 2, "births" -> 2, "biomedical" -> 2, "Biological" -> 2, "billions" -> 2, "beliefs" -> 2, "becomes" -> 2, "Because" -> 2, "became" -> 2, "beacon" -> 2, "Bank" -> 2, "ban" -> 2, "Balkans" -> 2, "backbone" -> 2, "Baby" -> 2, "average" -> 2, "avenues" -> 2, "automotive" -> 2, "authority" -> 2, "Australia" -> 2, "attackers" -> 2, "asylum" -> 2, "assaults" -> 2, "aspect" -> 2, "Asian" -> 2, "arts" -> 2, "arsenal" -> 2, "apart" -> 2, "anywhere" -> 2, "anti-tactical" -> 2, "Angeles" -> 2, "anchor" -> 2, "Amtrak" -> 2, "AmeriCorps" -> 2, "alternative" -> 2, "along" -> 2, "almost" -> 2, "ally" -> 2, "all-time" -> 2, "allows" -> 2, "allowing" -> 2, "allowances" -> 2, "alliances" -> 2, "airports" -> 2, "aging" -> 2, "After" -> 2, "affect" -> 2, "adhere" -> 2, "additional" -> 2, "addiction" -> 2, "actively" -> 2, "active" -> 2, "acquire" -> 2, "accords" -> 2, "accordance" -> 2, "accomplished" -> 2, "abuse" -> 2, "abide" -> 2, "65" -> 2, "60" -> 2, "500" -> 2, "1993" -> 2, "100,000" -> 2, "1" -> 2, "$400,000" -> 1, "$3,000" -> 1, "$2,800" -> 1, "$2" -> 1, "$135" -> 1, "$10,000" -> 1, "Zimbabwe's" -> 1, "yourself" -> 1, "your" -> 1, "You" -> 1, "Yosemite" -> 1, "Yellowstone" -> 1, "year-round" -> 1, "yearly" -> 1, "Wye" -> 1, "wrongdoing" -> 1, "written" -> 1, "writing" -> 1, "wound" -> 1, "worse" -> 1, "worldwide" -> 1, "worldview" -> 1, "World's" -> 1, "world-class" -> 1, "workweek" -> 1, "work-related" -> 1, "worker's" -> 1, "worker-protections" -> 1, "won't" -> 1, "wondrous" -> 1, "woman's" -> 1, "woman" -> 1, "withdraw" -> 1, "wishes" -> 1, "wish" -> 1, "wisely" -> 1, "wire" -> 1, "wipe" -> 1, "winning" -> 1, "win" -> 1, "Wildlife" -> 1, "wildlife" -> 1, "wildlands" -> 1, "wildfires" -> 1, "wild" -> 1, "widows" -> 1, "widowers" -> 1, "widespread" -> 1, "wider" -> 1, "widening" -> 1, "widen" -> 1, "widely" -> 1, "wide" -> 1, "whose" -> 1, "who's" -> 1, "whole" -> 1, "whistleblower" -> 1, "whistle-blower" -> 1, "Whether" -> 1, "wherein" -> 1, "what's" -> 1, "wetlands" -> 1, "went" -> 1, "well-trained" -> 1, "well-planned" -> 1, "well-off" -> 1, "well-equipped" -> 1, "well-connected" -> 1, "Welcoming" -> 1, "welcoming" -> 1, "web" -> 1, "weather" -> 1, "weapons-grade" -> 1, "weaponry" -> 1, "wealth" -> 1, "weakness" -> 1, "weakest" -> 1, "waves" -> 1, "wave" -> 1, "watches" -> 1, "warheads" -> 1, "wall" -> 1, "walks" -> 1, "wait" -> 1, "waging" -> 1, "Wade" -> 1, "Vulnerable" -> 1, "voting" -> 1, "voters" -> 1, "voted" -> 1, "volunteered" -> 1, "voiced" -> 1, "visualize" -> 1, "visits" -> 1, "visas" -> 1, "virtual" -> 1, "Virgin" -> 1, "violently" -> 1, "Violent" -> 1, "violations" -> 1, "violation" -> 1, "vigorous" -> 1, "vigilant" -> 1, "Vietnam" -> 1, "victory" -> 1, "victim" -> 1, "viable" -> 1, "Veterans" -> 1, "version" -> 1, "versatile" -> 1, "verge" -> 1, "Vehicles" -> 1, "vehicles" -> 1, "Values" -> 1, "valuable" -> 1, "vacancies" -> 1, "v." -> 1, "utilizes" -> 1, "utilized" -> 1, "utility" -> 1, "users" -> 1, "U.S.-China" -> 1, "upward" -> 1, "upgrading" -> 1, "upgrade" -> 1, "update" -> 1, "unusual" -> 1, "untreated" -> 1, "untouched" -> 1, "unto" -> 1, "untapped" -> 1, "unspecified" -> 1, "unshakable" -> 1, "unseen" -> 1, "unrehabilitated" -> 1, "unproven" -> 1, "unnecessary" -> 1, "unmentioned" -> 1, "unlock" -> 1, "unlike" -> 1, "unjust" -> 1, "universities" -> 1, "Universal" -> 1, "uniting" -> 1, "united" -> 1, "unique" -> 1, "Union" -> 1, "union" -> 1, "unintended" -> 1, "unilaterally" -> 1, "uniform" -> 1, "unified" -> 1, "Unfortunately" -> 1, "unflagging" -> 1, "unfairly" -> 1, "unfair" -> 1, "undocumented" -> 1, "undivided" -> 1, "undiagnosed" -> 1, "underwater" -> 1, "underpaid" -> 1, "undercut" -> 1, "underappreciated" -> 1, "underage" -> 1, "undeniable" -> 1, "unclogging" -> 1, "unanimous" -> 1, "unacceptable" -> 1, "Ultimately" -> 1, "tyranny" -> 1, "type" -> 1, "two-parent" -> 1, "Two" -> 1, "tutored" -> 1, "Turkish" -> 1, "Tuition" -> 1, "tuberculosis" -> 1, "truth" -> 1, "trumpets" -> 1, "True" -> 1, "trucking" -> 1, "Truck" -> 1, "Troops" -> 1, "triumph" -> 1, "triple" -> 1, "trip" -> 1, "trillion-dollar" -> 1, "tries" -> 1, "tribal" -> 1, "trials" -> 1, "treaties" -> 1, "traveling" -> 1, "transparency" -> 1, "transmission" -> 1, "Transforming" -> 1, "transform" -> 1, "transferring" -> 1, "transcend" -> 1, "transatlantic" -> 1, "trains" -> 1, "Training" -> 1, "trained" -> 1, "tragically" -> 1, "tragic" -> 1, "tragedies" -> 1, "traditionally" -> 1, "tradition" -> 1, "trading" -> 1, "toxins" -> 1, "town" -> 1, "tourism" -> 1, "toughen" -> 1, "touch" -> 1, "torn" -> 1, "Tongass" -> 1, "tomorrow's" -> 1, "told" -> 1, "togetherness" -> 1, "tobaccos" -> 1, "tobacco's" -> 1, "tinkering" -> 1, "timely" -> 1, "tight" -> 1, "tie-breaking" -> 1, "tie" -> 1, "Tibet" -> 1, "Thus" -> 1, "thugs" -> 1, "thriving" -> 1, "Three" -> 1, "Threats" -> 1, "threatening" -> 1, "thoughts" -> 1, "Those" -> 1, "thorough" -> 1, "Thomas" -> 1, "Third" -> 1, "think" -> 1, "things" -> 1, "thin" -> 1, "thicken" -> 1, "thereby" -> 1, "therapies" -> 1, "Then" -> 1, "theme" -> 1, "Thabo" -> 1, "textbooks" -> 1, "tests" -> 1, "testify" -> 1, "testers" -> 1, "testament" -> 1, "terrorize" -> 1, "Terrorism" -> 1, "territories" -> 1, "terrible" -> 1, "tells" -> 1, "television" -> 1, "telemarketers" -> 1, "Teen" -> 1, "Teddy" -> 1, "Technology's" -> 1, "Technology" -> 1, "Technological" -> 1, "techniques" -> 1, "tear" -> 1, "Team" -> 1, "Teaching" -> 1, "teacher's" -> 1, "Teacher" -> 1, "tea" -> 1, "taxpayers" -> 1, "taxed" -> 1, "tax-and-spend" -> 1, "tapestry" -> 1, "tape" -> 1, "talks" -> 1, "talents" -> 1, "talented" -> 1, "Taken" -> 1, "tailored" -> 1, "Tactical" -> 1, "tactical" -> 1, "tackling" -> 1, "system's" -> 1, "System" -> 1, "Syria" -> 1, "syndicates" -> 1, "swelled" -> 1, "swap" -> 1, "sustained" -> 1, "sustainable" -> 1, "suspect" -> 1, "survive" -> 1, "survey" -> 1, "surges" -> 1, "suppression" -> 1, "supervision" -> 1, "supervised" -> 1, "Summit" -> 1, "summer" -> 1, "sully" -> 1, "suggest" -> 1, "sue" -> 1, "successful" -> 1, "Success" -> 1, "succeeded" -> 1, "suburban" -> 1, "substantial" -> 1, "subsidies" -> 1, "sub-Saharan" -> 1, "submit" -> 1, "submerged" -> 1, "subjected" -> 1, "subject" -> 1, "sub-continent" -> 1, "sturdy" -> 1, "Studies" -> 1, "studied" -> 1, "Students" -> 1, "struggled" -> 1, "structure" -> 1, "struck" -> 1, "strives" -> 1, "strived" -> 1, "striker" -> 1, "strides" -> 1, "strictly" -> 1, "Strict" -> 1, "stress" -> 1, "Streets" -> 1, "streamline" -> 1, "strains" -> 1, "story" -> 1, "storms" -> 1, "stories" -> 1, "Stopping" -> 1, "stopping" -> 1, "stockpiles" -> 1, "stimulates" -> 1, "stigmatize" -> 1, "stigma" -> 1, "stiffening" -> 1, "stiffen" -> 1, "stewards" -> 1, "sterling" -> 1, "stereotyping" -> 1, "stepped" -> 1, "step-by-step" -> 1, "stem" -> 1, "steep" -> 1, "steel" -> 1, "steal" -> 1, "steadfast" -> 1, "stays" -> 1, "startups" -> 1, "Starts" -> 1, "Start" -> 1, "standing" -> 1, "standard" -> 1, "stalkers" -> 1, "stalemate" -> 1, "stakeholders" -> 1, "stake" -> 1, "staffing" -> 1, "stable" -> 1, "stabilizing" -> 1, "stabilize" -> 1, "squander" -> 1, "sprawl" -> 1, "spouse" -> 1, "spotlight" -> 1, "sportsmen" -> 1, "sports" -> 1, "sport" -> 1, "sponsored" -> 1, "spoils" -> 1, "spills" -> 1, "spend" -> 1, "speedily" -> 1, "speech" -> 1, "spectrum" -> 1, "specter" -> 1, "specifically" -> 1, "spaces" -> 1, "sovereign" -> 1, "Southeast" -> 1, "sound-bites" -> 1, "sorry" -> 1, "sophisticated" -> 1, "soothing" -> 1, "soot" -> 1, "sooner" -> 1, "solvent" -> 1, "solve" -> 1, "Solid" -> 1, "soldiers" -> 1, "sold" -> 1, "soil" -> 1, "software" -> 1, "soda" -> 1, "socioeconomic" -> 1, "Society" -> 1, "so-called" -> 1, "Smoking" -> 1, "smoke-belching" -> 1, "smoke" -> 1, "smog-choked" -> 1, "smarter" -> 1, "Slow" -> 1, "slow" -> 1, "Slobodan" -> 1, "slavery" -> 1, "slash" -> 1, "sizes" -> 1, "size" -> 1, "Sixteen" -> 1, "site-based" -> 1, "siphon" -> 1, "single-mindedly" -> 1, "simplify" -> 1, "Similarly" -> 1, "silent" -> 1, "silence" -> 1, "significantly" -> 1, "Sierra" -> 1, "sides" -> 1, "sick" -> 1, "shuttered" -> 1, "shuffle" -> 1, "shroud" -> 1, "shred" -> 1, "shows" -> 1, "showrooms" -> 1, "shown" -> 1, "shortages" -> 1, "shortage" -> 1, "short" -> 1, "shore" -> 1, "shoddy" -> 1, "shocking" -> 1, "shirk" -> 1, "Shiraz" -> 1, "shining" -> 1, "shifted" -> 1, "shift" -> 1, "shield" -> 1, "shelters" -> 1, "shattered" -> 1, "sharpen" -> 1, "Sharm" -> 1, "shaping" -> 1, "shapes" -> 1, "shaped" -> 1, "shame" -> 1, "sex" -> 1, "severe" -> 1, "several" -> 1, "settle" -> 1, "Service" -> 1, "serves" -> 1, "served" -> 1, "Serbia" -> 1, "Separate" -> 1, "Sensible" -> 1, "seniority" -> 1, "senior" -> 1, "sends" -> 1, "send" -> 1, "selling" -> 1, "self-sustaining" -> 1, "self-sufficiency" -> 1, "self-restraint" -> 1, "selfless" -> 1, "self-interest" -> 1, "self-governing" -> 1, "self-determination" -> 1, "Seizing" -> 1, "seize" -> 1, "segregation" -> 1, "seem" -> 1, "seeking" -> 1, "Securing" -> 1, "securing" -> 1, "sectors" -> 1, "secret" -> 1, "second-hand" -> 1, "second-chance" -> 1, "Second" -> 1, "seasons" -> 1, "seasonal" -> 1, "season" -> 1, "seas" -> 1, "screen" -> 1, "scream" -> 1, "scrapped" -> 1, "Scourge" -> 1, "scourge" -> 1, "scour" -> 1, "scope" -> 1, "Scientists" -> 1, "scientists" -> 1, "scientifically-sound" -> 1, "science-based" -> 1, "Scholarship" -> 1, "scholars" -> 1, "scheduled" -> 1, "scared" -> 1, "scarce" -> 1, "says" -> 1, "saw" -> 1, "saving" -> 1, "sardines" -> 1, "Samoa" -> 1, "Safety" -> 1, "safest" -> 1, "sabotage" -> 1, "Ryan" -> 1, "rusty" -> 1, "runs" -> 1, "rulings" -> 1, "Rule" -> 1, "R's" -> 1, "routine" -> 1, "routes" -> 1, "round" -> 1, "root" -> 1, "Roosevelt's" -> 1, "Roosevelt" -> 1, "roll" -> 1, "rogue" -> 1, "Roe" -> 1, "robust" -> 1, "robbed" -> 1, "River" -> 1, "rivals" -> 1, "risks" -> 1, "risk" -> 1, "right-wing" -> 1, "right-to-work" -> 1, "rightful" -> 1, "Rico" -> 1, "richest" -> 1, "richer" -> 1, "Ricans" -> 1, "rewind" -> 1, "rewards" -> 1, "Rewarding" -> 1, "rewarding" -> 1, "reward" -> 1, "Revolving" -> 1, "revolving" -> 1, "Revolution" -> 1, "reviews" -> 1, "review" -> 1, "reversed" -> 1, "reverse" -> 1, "reunification" -> 1, "returning" -> 1, "retrenchment" -> 1, "retreat" -> 1, "retraining" -> 1, "retired" -> 1, "retains" -> 1, "Retaining" -> 1, "retain" -> 1, "Results" -> 1, "resulting" -> 1, "result" -> 1, "resubmit" -> 1, "restoring" -> 1, "Responsible" -> 1, "responsible" -> 1, "respond" -> 1, "respite" -> 1, "resource" -> 1, "resolving" -> 1, "resolutions" -> 1, "resolute" -> 1, "resist" -> 1, "resignation" -> 1, "resides" -> 1, "residents" -> 1, "Requiring" -> 1, "requiring" -> 1, "required" -> 1, "reproduction" -> 1, "represses" -> 1, "repossessions" -> 1, "reporting" -> 1, "report" -> 1, "replant" -> 1, "replacement" -> 1, "replaced" -> 1, "replace" -> 1, "reorganize" -> 1, "renting" -> 1, "renovation" -> 1, "Renewing" -> 1, "renewal" -> 1, "renaissance" -> 1, "remove" -> 1, "Remembering" -> 1, "remarkable" -> 1, "remaining" -> 1, "religions" -> 1, "religion" -> 1, "relies" -> 1, "reliance" -> 1, "reliability" -> 1, "release" -> 1, "relatives" -> 1, "related" -> 1, "reinvigorate" -> 1, "Reinvestment" -> 1, "Reinventing" -> 1, "reinventing" -> 1, "reinvent" -> 1, "reinstatement" -> 1, "reinforcing" -> 1, "reinforce" -> 1, "reigns" -> 1, "rehabilitation" -> 1, "regulations" -> 1, "regularly" -> 1, "regular" -> 1, "regions" -> 1, "region's" -> 1, "region" -> 1, "refusing" -> 1, "refundable" -> 1, "refugees" -> 1, "Refuge" -> 1, "refrain" -> 1, "Reform" -> 1, "referrals" -> 1, "reexamining" -> 1, "reenact" -> 1, "Redwood" -> 1, "reductions" -> 1, "reduction" -> 1, "reduces" -> 1, "reduced" -> 1, "redouble" -> 1, "redlining" -> 1, "redirect" -> 1, "redevelop" -> 1, "rededicate" -> 1, "red" -> 1, "Recruiting" -> 1, "recruiting" -> 1, "recruit" -> 1, "recreation" -> 1, "recovered" -> 1, "recorded" -> 1, "record-breaking" -> 1, "reconciliation" -> 1, "recommitment" -> 1, "recommendations" -> 1, "Recognizing" -> 1, "recognizes" -> 1, "recessions" -> 1, "recently-held" -> 1, "recently" -> 1, "rebuilding" -> 1, "rebirth" -> 1, "reassert" -> 1, "reasonable" -> 1, "reap" -> 1, "really" -> 1, "realize" -> 1, "reality" -> 1, "realities" -> 1, "Real" -> 1, "reaffirm" -> 1, "readiness" -> 1, "reaching" -> 1, "reaches" -> 1, "ravaging" -> 1, "ratified" -> 1, "ratification" -> 1, "rated" -> 1, "rare" -> 1, "rapidly" -> 1, "ranks" -> 1, "rampant" -> 1, "raised" -> 1, "railroad" -> 1, "raged" -> 1, "Racial" -> 1, "quick" -> 1, "questions" -> 1, "quarter-century" -> 1, "quarter" -> 1, "Quality" -> 1, "qualitative" -> 1, "qualifications" -> 1, "putting" -> 1, "pursuits" -> 1, "pursued" -> 1, "purposes" -> 1, "punishments" -> 1, "punishment" -> 1, "punished" -> 1, "punish" -> 1, "pull" -> 1, "publicly-guaranteed" -> 1, "publicly" -> 1, "provisions" -> 1, "provides" -> 1, "provider" -> 1, "prove" -> 1, "proudly" -> 1, "proudest" -> 1, "protective" -> 1, "Protections" -> 1, "PROSPERITY" -> 1, "prospect" -> 1, "proselytize" -> 1, "proportionate" -> 1, "promotes" -> 1, "promised" -> 1, "Proliferation" -> 1, "Project" -> 1, "project" -> 1, "PROGRESS" -> 1, "Program" -> 1, "profits" -> 1, "Profiling" -> 1, "productivity" -> 1, "productive" -> 1, "production" -> 1, "product" -> 1, "produced" -> 1, "produce" -> 1, "procurement" -> 1, "pro-civil" -> 1, "proceedings" -> 1, "procedures" -> 1, "privatizing" -> 1, "privately-managed" -> 1, "priorities" -> 1, "principles" -> 1, "principle" -> 1, "principals" -> 1, "primary" -> 1, "primaries" -> 1, "price" -> 1, "prevented" -> 1, "pressing" -> 1, "presence" -> 1, "preparing" -> 1, "prepare" -> 1, "premiums" -> 1, "prejudge" -> 1, "pregnancies" -> 1, "preferences" -> 1, "prefer" -> 1, "predicted" -> 1, "predictable" -> 1, "predict" -> 1, "predatory" -> 1, "precipitating" -> 1, "practitioners" -> 1, "practically" -> 1, "practical" -> 1, "pouring" -> 1, "potentially" -> 1, "posture" -> 1, "post-high" -> 1, "post-conviction" -> 1, "possibilities" -> 1, "position" -> 1, "portable" -> 1, "portability" -> 1, "pork" -> 1, "population" -> 1, "poorer" -> 1, "polluting" -> 1, "polluters" -> 1, "policeman" -> 1, "pole-star" -> 1, "polarization" -> 1, "Poland" -> 1, "poison" -> 1, "points" -> 1, "pointed" -> 1, "plunge" -> 1, "plot" -> 1, "pleasant" -> 1, "player" -> 1, "played" -> 1, "plants" -> 1, "planning" -> 1, "Plan" -> 1, "plain" -> 1, "piracy" -> 1, "piece" -> 1, "pick-up" -> 1, "Physical" -> 1, "phrase" -> 1, "photo" -> 1, "phase" -> 1, "petroleum" -> 1, "pests" -> 1, "Peru-Ecuador" -> 1, "Peru" -> 1, "person's" -> 1, "personally-controlled" -> 1, "person" -> 1, "persist" -> 1, "perpetrators" -> 1, "permanently" -> 1, "periods" -> 1, "period" -> 1, "performing" -> 1, "penny" -> 1, "penetrates" -> 1, "penalize" -> 1, "Pell" -> 1, "peddle" -> 1, "PEACE" -> 1, "payrolls" -> 1, "payroll" -> 1, "paycheck" -> 1, "paved" -> 1, "pause" -> 1, "pattern" -> 1, "patrolled" -> 1, "Patrol" -> 1, "patriotic" -> 1, "Patient's" -> 1, "patient" -> 1, "paternity" -> 1, "patent" -> 1, "passing" -> 1, "Passage" -> 1, "party's" -> 1, "part-time" -> 1, "Partnership" -> 1, "partner" -> 1, "particularly" -> 1, "particular" -> 1, "participation" -> 1, "participants" -> 1, "partially" -> 1, "Part" -> 1, "parole" -> 1, "Parkinsons" -> 1, "parent's" -> 1, "parent-friendly" -> 1, "parental" -> 1, "parent" -> 1, "paper" -> 1, "pandemic" -> 1, "panacea" -> 1, "Palestinians" -> 1, "Palestinian" -> 1, "painful" -> 1, "pages" -> 1, "packed" -> 1, "Pacific" -> 1, "owning" -> 1, "owners" -> 1, "overworked" -> 1, "overwhelms" -> 1, "overtime" -> 1, "overstressed" -> 1, "overdue" -> 1, "overcrowded" -> 1, "Over" -> 1, "Oval" -> 1, "outstanding" -> 1, "output" -> 1, "outpace" -> 1, "out-of-step" -> 1, "out-of-date" -> 1, "out-of-control" -> 1, "out-compete" -> 1, "outcome" -> 1, "Out" -> 1, "Other" -> 1, "Osama" -> 1, "origin" -> 1, "organizing" -> 1, "Organized" -> 1, "ordinary" -> 1, "optimism" -> 1, "opposition" -> 1, "opinion" -> 1, "operational" -> 1, "operation" -> 1, "operated" -> 1, "openness" -> 1, "Opening" -> 1, "opening" -> 1, "Open" -> 1, "on-the-job" -> 1, "oncoming" -> 1, "Once" -> 1, "once" -> 1, "Olmstead" -> 1, "old-fashioned" -> 1, "officers" -> 1, "Office" -> 1, "offensive" -> 1, "offenses" -> 1, "offenders" -> 1, "offender" -> 1, "occupied" -> 1, "obstructed" -> 1, "objective" -> 1, "objections" -> 1, "obey" -> 1, "nursing" -> 1, "NRA" -> 1, "Notwithstanding" -> 1, "notify" -> 1, "notified" -> 1, "Nor" -> 1, "Non-Proliferation" -> 1, "non-partisan" -> 1, "non-negotiable" -> 1, "non-NATO" -> 1, "non-governmental" -> 1, "none" -> 1, "Non-Discrimination" -> 1, "nominees" -> 1, "nominee" -> 1, "nominate" -> 1, "noise" -> 1, "Nobody" -> 1, "noble" -> 1, "ninety" -> 1, "Nine" -> 1, "Nigeria" -> 1, "nicotine" -> 1, "Next" -> 1, "Newt" -> 1, "Newest" -> 1, "newcomers" -> 1, "newborn" -> 1, "nevertheless" -> 1, "Neutralizing" -> 1, "nets" -> 1, "negotiators" -> 1, "negotiating" -> 1, "negotiated" -> 1, "neglecting" -> 1, "neediest" -> 1, "necessitated" -> 1, "Nearly" -> 1, "nearest" -> 1, "near" -> 1, "Navy's" -> 1, "nature" -> 1, "NATO's" -> 1, "Nations" -> 1, "narrow" -> 1, "narco-traffickers" -> 1, "name" -> 1, "Nagorno-Karabakh" -> 1, "mysteries" -> 1, "murder" -> 1, "multi-party" -> 1, "multilingualism" -> 1, "multilateral" -> 1, "multi-ethnic" -> 1, "Much" -> 1, "Mozambique's" -> 1, "movie" -> 1, "movement" -> 1, "moved" -> 1, "motivate" -> 1, "mothers" -> 1, "mortgage" -> 1, "morals-free" -> 1, "morally" -> 1, "moral" -> 1, "months" -> 1, "monstrous" -> 1, "monies" -> 1, "moments" -> 1, "mohair" -> 1, "modernizing" -> 1, "modernized" -> 1, "moderate" -> 1, "models" -> 1, "mitigation" -> 1, "misunderstanding" -> 1, "mistake" -> 1, "mist" -> 1, "missions" -> 1, "misery" -> 1, "Mired" -> 1, "mirage" -> 1, "miracles" -> 1, "minority" -> 1, "minor" -> 1, "mining" -> 1, "minds" -> 1, "Milosevic" -> 1, "Military" -> 1, "milestone" -> 1, "miles" -> 1, "mileage" -> 1, "mile" -> 1, "migrants" -> 1, "mightily" -> 1, "middle-class" -> 1, "mid-1960's" -> 1, "Mexico's" -> 1, "messages" -> 1, "message" -> 1, "merit" -> 1, "mentors" -> 1, "mentoring" -> 1, "Memorandum" -> 1, "membership" -> 1, "Melting" -> 1, "meetings" -> 1, "mediocrity" -> 1, "medicine" -> 1, "medication" -> 1, "Medicaid" -> 1, "media" -> 1, "mechanisms" -> 1, "measurements" -> 1, "measurement" -> 1, "measure" -> 1, "meanness" -> 1, "meaningfully" -> 1, "meaningful" -> 1, "meaning" -> 1, "meals" -> 1, "McCain-Feingold" -> 1, "Mbeki" -> 1, "maximum" -> 1, "maximizing" -> 1, "mature" -> 1, "matter" -> 1, "materially" -> 1, "mastered" -> 1, "master" -> 1, "Marti" -> 1, "marketplace" -> 1, "market-based" -> 1, "maritime" -> 1, "marginalized" -> 1, "march" -> 1, "Manufacturing" -> 1, "manner" -> 1, "manipulative" -> 1, "mandatory" -> 1, "mandate" -> 1, "managers" -> 1, "malls" -> 1, "Malaria" -> 1, "majority" -> 1, "Main" -> 1, "main" -> 1, "magnet" -> 1, "luxury" -> 1, "lowest-performing" -> 1, "lower-income" -> 1, "lower" -> 1, "low-cost" -> 1, "Low" -> 1, "Louisiana" -> 1, "lost" -> 1, "loss" -> 1, "Looking" -> 1, "long-standing" -> 1, "long-haul" -> 1, "logging" -> 1, "locks" -> 1, "Lock" -> 1, "locate" -> 1, "localized" -> 1, "lobbying" -> 1, "lobby" -> 1, "loans" -> 1, "Livable" -> 1, "litigation" -> 1, "literate" -> 1, "literally" -> 1, "link" -> 1, "lines" -> 1, "limiting" -> 1, "likelihood" -> 1, "lifts" -> 1, "lifting" -> 1, "lifted" -> 1, "Lifetime" -> 1, "Lifelong" -> 1, "licenses" -> 1, "library" -> 1, "libraries" -> 1, "Liberty" -> 1, "liberties" -> 1, "liability" -> 1, "lessons" -> 1, "lesson" -> 1, "lesbians" -> 1, "lesbian" -> 1, "Leone" -> 1, "lending" -> 1, "lenders" -> 1, "legitimate" -> 1, "legacies" -> 1, "Left" -> 1, "Lebanon" -> 1, "least" -> 1, "learners" -> 1, "learned" -> 1, "leap" -> 1, "leads" -> 1, "leading" -> 1, "lays" -> 1, "laying" -> 1, "Laws" -> 1, "launderers" -> 1, "latest" -> 1, "late" -> 1, "Laser" -> 1, "language-based" -> 1, "land-based" -> 1, "Laden" -> 1, "lack" -> 1, "labor-management" -> 1, "laboratories" -> 1, "labeling" -> 1, "Kyoto" -> 1, "Koreas" -> 1, "Korea's" -> 1, "knows" -> 1, "known" -> 1, "knock" -> 1, "knitting" -> 1, "Kind" -> 1, "killers" -> 1, "kill" -> 1, "keyboard" -> 1, "Kennedy" -> 1, "keeps" -> 1, "keeping" -> 1, "Kashmir" -> 1, "juveniles" -> 1, "juvenile" -> 1, "justices" -> 1, "Justice" -> 1, "Just" -> 1, "jurisdiction" -> 1, "judiciary" -> 1, "judicial" -> 1, "Judges" -> 1, "judges" -> 1, "judge" -> 1, "joyful" -> 1, "Jordan" -> 1, "Joint" -> 1, "joint" -> 1, "joining" -> 1, "Jobs" -> 1, "joblessness" -> 1, "jobless" -> 1, "Jews" -> 1, "Jerusalem" -> 1, "Jefferson" -> 1, "j" -> 1, "It's" -> 1, "Israel's" -> 1, "Israel-Jordan" -> 1, "isolation" -> 1, "Islands" -> 1, "island's" -> 1, "Islanders" -> 1, "island" -> 1, "Islamic" -> 1, "irresponsibility" -> 1, "Iran's" -> 1, "involves" -> 1, "involvement" -> 1, "inviting" -> 1, "invite" -> 1, "investigation" -> 1, "inventors" -> 1, "inventions" -> 1, "invaluable" -> 1, "INTRODUCTION" -> 1, "intertwined" -> 1, "intersection" -> 1, "Internationally" -> 1, "interference" -> 1, "Interests" -> 1, "interdiction" -> 1, "intercepted" -> 1, "interactive" -> 1, "intensely" -> 1, "integration" -> 1, "integrated" -> 1, "insure" -> 1, "Insurance" -> 1, "insulate" -> 1, "instrumental" -> 1, "institute" -> 1, "Instability" -> 1, "inspired" -> 1, "inspectors" -> 1, "insisting" -> 1, "inside" -> 1, "INS" -> 1, "inner" -> 1, "injustices" -> 1, "injury" -> 1, "injuries" -> 1, "injure" -> 1, "inherently" -> 1, "inhabitants" -> 1, "Infrastructure" -> 1, "information-based" -> 1, "influences" -> 1, "inflation-free" -> 1, "inflation" -> 1, "infected" -> 1, "inexorably" -> 1, "inevitable" -> 1, "inequality" -> 1, "independence" -> 1, "indeed" -> 1, "increases" -> 1, "inconsistent" -> 1, "Inclusion" -> 1, "Incentives" -> 1, "incarceration" -> 1, "inappropriate" -> 1, "inadequate" -> 1, "improves" -> 1, "improvements" 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DateObject[{1996, 8, 26}], "Text" -> "Today's Democratic Party: Meeting America's Challenges, Protecting America's Values\n\nIntroduction\n\nIn 1996, America will choose the President who will lead us from the millennium which saw the birth of our nation, and into a future that has all the potential to be even greater than our magnificent past. Today's Democratic Party is ready for that future. Our vision is simple. We want an America that gives all Americans the chance to live out their dreams and achieve their God-given potential. We want an America that is still the world's strongest force for peace and freedom. And we want an America that is coming together around our enduring values, instead of drifting apart.\nToday's Democratic Party is determined to renew America's most basic bargain: Opportunity to every American, and responsibility from every American. And today's Democratic Party is determined to reawaken the great sense of American community.\nOpportunity. Responsibility. Community. These are the values that made America strong. These are the values of the Democratic Party. These are the values that must guide us into the future.\nToday, America is moving forward with the strong Presidential leadership it deserves. The economy is stronger, the deficit is lower, and government is smaller. Education is better, our environment is cleaner, families are healthier, and our streets are safer. There is more opportunity in America, more responsibility in our homes, and more peace in the world.\nToday's Democratic Party stands proudly on the record of the last four years. We are living in an age of enormous possibility, and we are working to make sure that all Americans can make the most of it. America is moving in the right direction.\nNow we must move forward, and we know the course we must follow. We need a smaller, more effective, more efficient, less bureaucratic government that reflects our time-honored values. The American people do not want big government solutions and they do not want empty promises. They want a government that is for them, not against them; that doesn't interfere with their lives but enhances their quality of life. They want a course that is reasonable, help that is realistic, and solutions that can be delivered -- a moderate, achievable, common-sense agenda that will improve people's daily lives and not increase the size of government.\nThat is what today's Democratic Party offers: the end of the era of big government and a final rejection of the misguided call to leave our citizens to fend for themselves -- and bold leadership into the future: To meet America's challenges, protect America's values, and fulfill American dreams.\nOpportunity\n\nFor 220 years, America has been defined by a single ideal: Opportunity for all who take the responsibility to seize it. The mission of the Democratic Party in 1996 is to ensure that the great American Dream of opportunity for all is within reach for all, and that it travels with us, whole and intact, as we walk together into tomorrow.\nIn the 12 years before President Clinton took office, Republicans in the White House allowed the deficit to spiral out of control, and ignored the economic interests of ordinary Americans. Bill Clinton was determined to turn things around and move America in a new direction. With his leadership, we put in place a comprehensive strategy for economic growth. Today's Democratic Party knows that the private sector is the engine of economic growth, and we fought to put America's economic house in order so private business could prosper. We worked to tap the full potential of a new global economy through open and fair trade. We fought to invest in the American people so they would have the capacity to meet the demands of the new economy. And we have invested in the roads, bridges, and highways that are the lifelines of American commerce.\nDemocrats in Congress supported this course and America is better off because they did. Republicans opposed our economic plan; America's economic growth over the last four years makes it clear that they were wrong. Our strategy is in place, and it is working. We are proud of our economic record over the last four years -- and we know that our record is a record to build on, not to rest on. We have to move forward, to make sure that every American willing to work hard has the opportunity to build a good life and share in the benefits of economic success.\nIn the last four years we worked to get the American economy going: cutting the deficit, expanding trade, and investing in our people. In the next four years we have to make the new economy work for all Americans: balancing the budget, creating more jobs, making sure all families can count on good health care and a secure retirement, and, most of all, expanding educational opportunities so all Americans can learn the skills they need to build the best possible future.\nBalancing the budget. For 12 years, Republicans hid behind rosy scenarios while quadrupling the national debt. We knew this had to stop. In 1992, we promised to cut the deficit in half over four years. We did. Our 1993 economic plan cut spending by over a quarter trillion dollars in five years. The only deficit left today is interest payments on the debt run up over the 12 Republican years before fiscal responsibility returned to the White House. President Clinton is the first President to cut the deficit four years in a row since before the Civil War.\nNow the Democratic Party is determined to finish the job and balance the budget. President Clinton has put forward a plan to balance the budget by 2002 while living up to our commitments to our elderly and our children and maintaining strong economic growth. The Republican Congress' own economists admit the President's plan will balance the budget by 2002. It cuts hundreds of wasteful and outdated programs, but it preserves Medicare and Medicaid, it protects education and the environment, and it defends working families. The President's plan reflects America's values. The Republican plan does not.\nToday's Democratic Party believes we have a duty to care for our parents, so they can live their lives in dignity. That duty includes securing Medicare and Medicaid, finding savings without reducing quality or benefits, and protecting Social Security for future generations. The Republican agenda rests on massive Medicare cuts, three times bigger than the largest Medicare cuts in history, including new premium increases on seniors, and drastic changes to Medicaid that will jeopardize the health care of children and seniors.\nToday's Democratic Party believes that all children should have the opportunity and the education to make the most of their own lives. We believe that schools should be run by teachers and principals, not by Washington. The Republican agenda slashes college scholarships and college loans, cuts Head Start, and cuts funds to reduce class size and improve teacher standards.\nToday's Democratic Party believes we have a duty to preserve God's earth and American quality of life for future generations. We are committed to reform, so we protect our environment but we do not trap business in a tangle of red tape. The Republican budget guts environmental protection.\nToday's Democratic Party believes that working people should not be taxed into poverty. The Republican budget raises taxes on millions of working families.\nToday's Democratic Party believes that America must put our families first. The Republican budget tried to take Big Bird away from 5-year-olds, school lunches away from 10-year-olds, summer jobs away from 15-year-olds, and college loans away from 20-year-olds.\nToday's Democratic Party believes in a government that works better and costs less. We know that government workers are good people trapped in bad systems, and we are committed to reinventing government to reform those systems. We believe that public servants have suffered too long from unfair politically based criticism destroying their morale and hampering their ability to perform duties which the private sector will not undertake. The Republican budget cuts government where it is needed to protect our values, and they were even willing to shut down the government altogether to force their budget on the American people.\nTax relief for working families and small businesses. President Clinton and Democrats in Congress expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit, cutting taxes to help 40 million Americans in 15 million working families -- without a single Republican vote. The Dole-Gingrich budget was designed to give a massive tax break to the wealthiest Americans, and pay for it by raising taxes on ordinary Americans and slashing health care for the elderly. America cannot afford to return to the era of something-for-nothing tax cuts and smoke-and-mirrors accounting that produced a decade of exploding deficits. Today's Democratic Party is committed to targeted tax cuts that help working Americans invest in their future, and we insist that any tax cuts are completely paid for, because we are determined to balance the budget.\nWe want to strengthen middle-class families by providing a $500 tax cut for children. We want to cut taxes to help families pay for education after high school and to guarantee the first two years of college. We want people to be able to use their IRA's to buy a first home, deal with a medical emergency, or provide for education. We want to cut taxes for small businesses that invest in the future and set up pensions for their workers. And we want to cut taxes for people who are self-employed and self-insured so their health care is more affordable.\nTechnology. We know investments in technology drive economic growth, generate new knowledge, create new high-wage jobs, build new industries, and improve our quality of life. In the face of Republican efforts to undermine America's dedication to innovation, President Clinton and the Democratic Party have fought to maintain vital investments in science and technology. We remember that government investment in technology is responsible for the computer, for jet aircraft, and for the Internet -- no investments have ever paid off better, in jobs, in opportunity, or in growth.\nWe support government policies that encourage private sector investment and innovation to create a pro-growth economic climate, like a permanent research and development tax credit. We want technology to create jobs and improve the quality of life for American workers. President Clinton and Vice President Gore fought for, and the President signed, a sweeping telecommunications reform bill that will unleash the creative power of the information industry to create millions of high-wage American jobs. We recognize that our system of research colleges and universities is the bedrock of American leadership in science and technology. When we invest in our research institutions we are literally investing in our future by helping to train the next brilliant generation of American scientists and engineers. As we enter the 21st century, we will continue to invest in world-class research and development, advanced technologies in transportation, information, and other industries, and agricultural and environmental research in partnership with American business. We are working to reinvent the national laboratories and revitalize America's space program, including support for the space station.\nCreating jobs through trade. We believe that if we want the American economy to continue strong growth, we must continue to expand trade, and not retreat from the world. America's markets are open to the world, so America has a right to demand that the world's markets are open to our products. American products are the best in the world. When American workers and American companies have the chance to compete around the world, we do not take second place.\nIn the last four years, the Clinton-Gore Administration has signed over 200 trade agreements, including NAFTA and GATT, to open markets around the world to American products, and create more jobs for the people who make them here at home. We have put in place the most sweeping agreements to lower foreign trade barriers of any administration in modern American history, including over 20 such agreements with Japan alone -- and American exports to Japan in the sectors covered by those agreements have increased by 85 percent. All over the world, barriers to American products have come down, exports are at an all time high -- and we have created over one million high-paying export-related jobs.\nIn the next four years, we must continue to work to lower foreign trade barriers; insist that foreign companies play by fair rules at home and abroad; strengthen rules that protect the global economy from fraud and dangerous instability; advance American commercial interests abroad; and ensure that the new global economy is directly beneficial to American working families. As we work to open new markets, we must negotiate to guarantee that all trade agreements include standards to protect children, workers, public safety, and the environment. We must ensure adequate trade adjustment assistance and education and training programs to help working families compete and win in the global economy.\nEvery step of the way, we have been opposed by Republicans intent on cutting education. Now, they want to cut education from Head Start through college scholarships. They want to undermine our public schools and make borrowing for college more difficult for millions of students.\nToday's Democratic Party will stand firmly against the Republican assault on education. Cutting education as we move into the 21st century would be like cutting defense spending at the height of the Cold War. We must do more to expand educational opportunity -- not less.\nStrengthening public schools. We increased Head Start funding to expand early education for more children who need it. We passed Goals 2000 to help schools set high standards, and find the resources they need to succeed: the best books, the brightest teachers, the most up-to-date technology. We restructured federal education programs and eliminated federal regulations to give local schools, teachers, and principals the flexibility and help they need to meet those standards. We've worked to make sure our children have the best teachers by expanding teacher education. We applaud the work of state and local Democrats to develop innovative solutions to make sure our children get the best possible education.\nTeaching values in schools. Today's Democratic Party knows our children's education is not complete unless they learn good values. We applaud the efforts of the Clinton-Gore Administration to promote character education in our schools. Teaching good values, strong character, and the responsibilities of citizenship must be an essential part of American education.\nSafe schools and healthy students. If young people do not have the freedom to learn in safety, they do not have the freedom to learn at all. Over the last four years, we have worked hard to keep schools safe and drug-free, and students healthy. When Senator Dole and Speaker Gingrich led Republican efforts to cut school safety funding, President Clinton and Democrats in Congress wouldn't let them get away with it. When Senator Dole and Speaker Gingrich led Republican efforts to destroy the nation's school lunch program, President Clinton and Democrats in Congress stopped them cold. Now, we must work together at every level of government to launch a major rebuilding effort to make sure our children go to school in high-quality facilities where they can learn. We must help schools set the highest standards for good behavior and discipline in our schools. Children cannot learn -- and teachers cannot teach -- without order in the classroom.\nTechnology in the classroom. We must bring the 21st century into every classroom in America. There is a vast realm of knowledge waiting for our children to tap into. Computers are powerful tools to teach students to read better, write better, and understand math. President Clinton and Vice President Gore understand that technological literacy is essential to success in the new economy. The only way to achieve that for every student is to give them all access to a computer, good software, trained teachers, and the Internet -- and President Clinton and Vice President Gore have launched a partnership with high-tech companies, schools, state, and local governments to wire every classroom and library to the Information Superhighway by the year 2000.\nPreparing students for jobs. We passed School-to-Work so young people can learn the skills they need to get and keep high wage jobs. The Republican Congress is trying to destroy it, and we pledge to stop them. We want to keep working with the private sector, to encourage community partnerships that build the bridge between a good education and a good job.\nHigher education for all Americans. Finally, we must make sure that every American has the opportunity to go to college. Higher education is the key to a successful future in the 21st century. The typical worker with a college education earns 73 percent more than one without. America has the best higher education in the world. We do not need to change it -- we need to make it available for all Americans. Our goal must be nothing less than to make the 13th and 14th years of education as universal as the first 12.\nOver the last four years, the Democratic Party under President Clinton has put an unprecedented college opportunity strategy in place: We reformed the student loan program, to make college more affordable for 5.5 million students -- and we saved money for the taxpayers by eliminating the middleman, cutting red tape, and cutting the cost of student loan defaults in half. We have expanded Pell Grant college scholarships for deserving students. And the President's national service program has already helped 45,000 Americans earn money for college by helping their communities.\nTax cuts for college. Over the next four years, we want to go even further: We should expand work-study so one million students a year can work their way through college by the year 2000.We should allow people to use money from their IRA to help pay for college. We should give a $1000 honor scholarship for the top 5 percent of graduates in every high school. And we must make 14 years of education the standard for every American. The Democratic Party wants to create a $10,000 tax deduction for families to help pay for education after high school. And we want to create a $1,500 tax cut for Americans, modeled after Georgia's successful HOPE scholarships, to guarantee the first year of tuition at a typical community college, and the second year if individuals earn it by maintaining a B average. No tax cut will do more to raise American incomes than a tax cut to pay for college.\nRewarding work. We honor work in America. Americans work hard, and they have a right to expect that work will pay. We want to continue reversing the trend of the eighties, so all Americans benefit from continued economic growth and rising wages. The President and Democrats in Congress raised the minimum wage to $5.15 an hour, after defeating fierce Republican opposition led by Senator Dole and Speaker Gingrich. We believe the minimum wage should be a wage you can live on. President Clinton and Congressional Democrats fought for and won the largest expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit in history, a tax cut for 15 million working families, because no parent who takes the responsibility to work full time should have to raise children in poverty. We want to strengthen families, and we challenge the private sector to help their workers earn enough to support a family.\nHealth care. The Democratic Party is committed to ensuring that Americans have access to affordable, high-quality health care. Because of President Clinton's determined leadership and the tireless efforts of Democrats in Congress, we passed the Kennedy-Kassebaum health reform bill to stop insurance companies from denying coverage to families where one member has a preexisting condition, and to make sure that people can take their health insurance with them when they change jobs. No more Americans should have to turn down a better job because they would lose their health care if they took it. We have expanded the Women, Infants, and Children program that provides prenatal and early childhood nutrition, so that all eligible women, infants, and children will have access to the health and nutrition services they need. We established a comprehensive effort to immunize children, after defeating Republican opposition led by Senator Dole. Last year, the percentage of two-year-olds in America who were fully immunized reached an historic high.\nThe Clinton-Gore Administration has dramatically shortened the approval process for new lifesaving drugs at the Food and Drug Administration and will continue to work to streamline the process further; and we have made AIDS research, prevention, and treatment a top priority, increasing funding by almost 40 percent, including more than doubling the Ryan White Care Act to help care for people with AIDS. We are committed to finding a cure for AIDS, combating HIV-related discrimination, supporting HOPWA funding to help with housing for people living with AIDS, and working to ensure that all Americans living with AIDS have access to new and potentially lifesaving drugs; serious biomedical research which promises breakthroughs for so many diseases; and doing more to help all Americans live longer, healthier lives. We recognize the enormous contribution of our teaching hospitals and medical schools -- they lay the foundation for the best medical care in the world, and we will continue to promote policies that strengthen them.\nWe have paid special attention to women's health issues, including a 65 percent increase for breast cancer research. We are committed to finding a cure for breast cancer and we pledge to continue supporting funds for innovative research, and access for all women to high quality treatment and care.\nThe Democratic Party is proud that we held the line against the Republicans' mean-spirited Medicare and Medicaid cuts that would risk the health care of millions of Americans, from infants to seniors. Senator Dole voted against Medicare when it was first created, boasts about it today, and now Republican leaders want Medicare to Awither on the vine.\" The Dole-Gingrich Medicare plan would put millions of our parents into a second class health care system for the first time in their lives, and we will not stand for it. The Dole-Gingrich Medicaid plan would end the guarantee to meaningful health benefits for millions of children, older Americans, and people with disabilities. President Clinton forced Republicans to put aside their attempt to block grant Medicaid, and insisted that welfare reform protects women and children by maintaining the Medicaid guarantee. The Democratic Party wants America to preserve and strengthen Medicare and Medicaid, so we honor our values and protect the health of our children, parents, and grandparents, ensuring they can get the health care they need, from doctors visits to long-term care.\nIn 1993 -- without a single Republican vote -- President Clinton and Democrats in Congress extended the Medicare Trust Fund into the 21st century. We have given 12 states more flexibility to run their Medicaid programs more efficiently and expand coverage, while maintaining the guarantee of meaningful benefits. When these plans are implemented, two million more Americans will have health insurance because of them. We have given Medicare beneficiaries more health plan choices and increased benefits. We have cracked down on health care waste, fraud, and abuse, saving more than $15 billion in three years. Now we must finish the job -- we can balance the budget while we preserve and strengthen Medicare and Medicaid, protecting millions of middle class families from being overwhelmed by health care costs for their parents, children, or family members with disabilities.\nIn the next four years, we must take further steps to ensure that Americans have access to quality, affordable health care. We should start by making sure that people get help paying premiums so they do not lose health care while they're looking for a new job. We support expanded coverage of home care, hospice, adult day-care, and community-based services, so the elderly and people with disabilities of all ages can live in their own communities and as independently as possible. We are disappointed Congress walked away from bipartisan efforts to provide mental health parity; we believe health insurance coverage for mental health care is vitally important and we support parity for mental health care.\nRetirement. Over the last four years, President Clinton took strong steps to protect the pensions of more than 40 million workers and retirees by fixing the federal pension insurance system and demanding that companies fund their retirement plans fully. We established a nationwide retirement protection program to protect workers' 401K retirement savings from fraud and abuse. We recognize the unique concerns of women when it comes to preparing for retirement and have worked to protect women's pension rights.\nOver the next four years, we want to take further steps to make sure that Americans who have worked hard for their whole lives can enjoy retirement in the dignity and security they have earned. We want to make sure people can carry their pensions with them when they change jobs, protect pensions even further, and expand the number of workers with pension coverage. We will continue to support the Railroad Retirement System. Democrats created Social Security, we oppose efforts to dismantle it, and we will fight to save it. We must ensure that it is on firm financial footing well into the next century. We call on Republicans to put politics aside and join us in a serious bipartisan effort to make sure that Social Security will continue to provide true security for future generations, as it has done for millions of older Americans for decades.\nTraining. We must do more to make sure all Americans have the skills they need to compete. We want a G.I. Bill for Workers to transform the confusing tangle of federal training programs into a simple job-training skill grant that will go directly to unemployed workers so they will be able to get the training that is right for them. We want to strengthen training opportunities for people with disabilities, so they can learn the skills they need to live independent, productive lives.\nStanding up for working Americans. We nearly doubled funding for the dislocated worker program and launched special projects to help workers displaced by base closures, natural disasters, and mass layoffs. We are reforming OSHA so it can do a better job to protect worker safety with less red tape, and we continue to oppose Republican efforts to gut it. We beat back efforts to undermine workers' rights to form and join unions and to dismantle the enforcement powers of the National Labor Relations Board. The Democratic Party is committed to prompt, fair, impartial, protection of workers and the traveling and shipping public by improving the speed, efficiency, authority, and efficacy of the FAA and the FRA. We vigorously oppose Republican efforts to pass Right-to-Work legislation, and we are proud the President vetoed efforts to undermine collective bargaining through the TEAM Act. We are working to eradicate sweatshops in the U.S. apparel industry by stepping up enforcement and public education. We oppose the hiring of permanent workers to replace lawful economic strikers; we support the President's action to stop the government from procuring goods and services from companies that do so; and we support legislation to prohibit the permanent replacement of lawfully striking workers. We believe in equal pay for equal work and pay equity.\nPromoting economic growth and opportunity for all Americans. We know that it is good for America when small, minority, and women-owned businesses have the opportunity to grow and prosper. These business-owners create new jobs, expand opportunities, and serve as powerful role models for young people. Over the last four years, the President has transformed the Small Business Administration to eliminate burdensome paperwork and deliver real assistance to entrepreneurs as they work to start or expand their businesses. At the same time, since Bill Clinton became President, we have more than doubled the number of loans to small businesses, nearly tripled loans to minority businesses, and quadrupled loans to women-owned businesses. The President ordered all federal agencies to comply with laws designed to ensure that small, minority, and women-owned businesses can compete for their fair share of procurement dollars. We are committed to continued efforts to expand opportunity for small, minority, and women business owners.\nClean, affordable energy. Clean, abundant, and reliable energy is essential to a strong American economy. We support investment in research and development to spur domestic energy production and enhance efficiency. New technologies -- natural gas, energy efficiency, renewable energy -- developed in partnership with American industries and scientists are increasing productivity and creating jobs. We believe America should reduce its dependence on foreign energy sources.\nCorporate citizenship. Employers have a responsibility to do their part as well. President Clinton and the Democratic Party stand on the side of working families. We believe that values like loyalty, fairness, and responsibility are not inconsistent with the bottom line. The Democratic Party insists that corporate leaders invest in the long-term, by providing workers with living wages and benefits, education and training, a safe, healthy place to work, and opportunities for greater involvement in company decision making and ownership. Employers must make sure workers share in the benefits of the good years, as well as the burdens of the bad ones. Employers must offer employees the opportunity to share in the profits they help create. Employers must respect the commitment of workers to their families, and must work to provide good pensions and health care. When CEOs put their workers and long-term success ahead of short-term gain, their workers will do better and so will they.\nResponsibility\n\nToday's Democratic Party knows that the era of big government is over. Big bureaucracies and Washington solutions are not the real answers to today's challenges. We need a smaller government . . . and we must have a larger national spirit. Government's job should be to give people the tools they need to make the most of their own lives. Americans must take the responsibility to use them, to build good lives for themselves and their families. Personal responsibility is the most powerful force we have to meet our challenges and shape the future we want for ourselves, for our children, and for America.\nBill Clinton promised to turn things around, and that is exactly what he did. After a long hard fight, President Clinton beat back fierce Republican opposition, led by Senator Dole and Speaker Gingrich, to answer the call of America's police officers and pass the toughest Crime Bill in history. The Democratic Party under President Clinton is putting more police on the streets and tougher penalties on the books; we are taking guns off the streets and working to steer young people away from crime and gangs and drugs in the first place. And it is making a difference. In city after city and town after town, crime rates are finally coming down.\nCommunity policing. Nothing is more effective in the fight against crime than police officers on the beat, engaged in community policing. The Crime Bill is putting 100,000 new police officers on the street. We deplore cynical Republican attempts to undermine our promise to America to put 100,000 new police officers on the street. We pledge to stand up for our communities and stand with our police officers by opposing any attempt to repeal or weaken this effort. But we know that community policing only works when the community works with the police. We echo the President's challenge to Americans: If 50 citizens joined each of America's 20,000 neighborhood watch groups, we would have a citizen force of one million strong to give our police forces the backup they need.\nProtecting our children, our neighborhoods, and our police from criminals with guns. Bob Dole, Newt Gingrich, and George Bush were able to hold the Brady Bill hostage for the gun lobby until Bill Clinton became President. With his leadership, we made the Brady Bill the law of the land. And because we did, more than 60,000 felons, fugitives, and stalkers have been stopped from buying guns. President Clinton led the fight to ban 19 deadly assault weapons, designed for one purpose only -- to kill human beings. We oppose efforts to restrict weapons used for legitimate sporting purposes, and we are proud that not one hunter or sportsman was forced to change guns because of the assault weapons ban. But we know that the military-style guns we banned have no place on America's streets, and we are proud of the courageous Democrats who defied the gun lobby and sacrificed their seats in Congress to make America safer.\nToday's Democratic Party stands with America's police officers. We are proud to tell them that as long as Bill Clinton and Al Gore are in the White House, any attempt to repeal the Brady Bill or assault weapons ban will be met with a veto. We must do everything we can to stand behind our police officers, and the first thing we should do is pass a ban on cop-killer bullets. Any bullet that can rip through a bulletproof vest should be against the law; that is the least we can do to protect the brave police officers who risk their lives to protect us.\nTough punishment. We believe that people who break the law should be punished, and people who commit violent crimes should be punished severely. President Clinton made three-strikes-you're-out the law of the land, to ensure that the most dangerous criminals go to jail for life, with no chance of parole. We established the death penalty for nearly 60 violent crimes, including murder of a law enforcement officer, and we signed a law to limit appeals. The Democratic Party is a party of inclusion, and we respect the conscience of all Americans on this issue.\nWe provided almost $8 billion in new funding to help states build new prison cells so violent offenders serve their full sentences. We call on the states to meet the President's challenge and guarantee that serious violent criminals serve at least 85 percent of their sentence. The American people deserve a criminal justice system in which criminals are caught, the guilty are convicted, and the convicted serve their time.\nFighting youth violence and preventing youth crime. Nothing we do to fight crime is more important than fighting the crime and violence that threatens our children. We have to protect them from criminals who prey on them -- and we have to teach them good values and give them something to say yes to, so they stay away from crime and trouble in the first place.\nThe Democratic Party understands what the police have been saying for years: The best way to fight crime is to prevent it. That is why we fought for drug-education and gang-prevention programs in our schools. We support well thought out, well organized, highly supervised youth programs to provide young people with a safe and healthy alternative to hanging out on the streets. We made it a federal crime for any person under the age of 18 to possess a handgun except when supervised by an adult. Democrats fought to pass, and President Clinton ordered states to impose, zero tolerance for guns in school, requiring schools to expel for one year any student who brings a gun to school.\nAt the same time, when young people cross the line, they must be punished. When young people commit serious violent crimes, they should be prosecuted like adults. We established boot camps for young non-violent offenders. If Senator Dole and the Republicans are serious about fighting juvenile crime, they should listen to America's police officers and support the steps Democrats have taken, because they are making a difference, and then they should join us as we work to do more.\nWe want parents to bring order to their children's lives and teach them right from wrong, and we want to make it easier for them to take that responsibility. We support schools that adopt school uniform policies, to promote discipline and respect. We support community-based curfews to keep kids off the street after a certain time, so they're safe from harm and away from trouble. We urge schools and communities to enforce truancy laws: Young people belong in school, not on the street.\nWe also know that we must do everything we can to help families protect their children, especially from dangerous criminals who have made a dark habit of preying on young people. Study after study shows that sex offenders are likely to repeat their crimes again and again. Under President Clinton, we have taken strong steps to help keep children safe. We required every state in the country to compile a registry of sex offenders. The President signed Megan's Law to require that states tell a community whenever a dangerous sexual predator enters its midst. We support the President's directive to the Attorney General, calling on her to work with the states and Congress to develop a national sex offender registry. This will ensure that police officers in every state can get the information they need from any state to track sex offenders down and bring them to justice when they commit new crimes.\nBattling illegal drugs. We must keep drugs off our streets and out of our schools. President Clinton and the Democratic Party have waged an aggressive war on drugs. The Crime Bill established the death penalty for drug kingpins. The President signed a directive requiring drug testing of anyone arrested for a federal crime, and he challenged states to do the same for state offenders. We established innovative drug courts which force drug users to get treatment or go to jail. We stood firm against Republican efforts to gut the Safe and Drug Free Schools effort that supports successful drug-education programs like D.A.R.E. The Clinton Administration went to the Supreme Court to support the right of schools to test athletes for drugs. The President launched Operation Safe Home to protect the law-abiding residents of public housing from violent criminals and drug dealers who use their homes as a base for illegal activities. We support the President's decision to tell those who commit crimes and peddle drugs in public housing: You will get no second chance to threaten your neighbors; it is one strike and you're out. We are making progress. Overall drug use in America is dropping; the number of Americans who use cocaine has dropped 30 percent since 1992. Unfortunately casual drug use by young people continues to climb. We must redouble our efforts against drug abuse everywhere, especially among our children.\nEarlier this year, the President appointed General Barry McCaffrey to lead the nation's war on drugs. General McCaffrey is implementing an aggressive four part strategy to reach young children and prevent drug use in the first place; to catch and punish drug users and dealers; to provide treatment to those who need help; and to cut drugs off at the source before they cross the border and pollute our neighborhoods. But every adult in America must take responsibility to set a good example, and to teach children that drugs are wrong, they are illegal, and they are deadly.\nWe must do everything we can to make sure that the victims of violent crime are treated with the respect and the dignity they deserve. We support the President's call for a constitutional amendment to protect the rights of victims. We believe that when a plea bargain is entered in public, a criminal is sentenced, or a defendant is let out on bail, the victims ought to know about it, and have a say. A constitutional amendment is the only way to protect those rights in every courtroom in America.\nWe know that citizenship is the cornerstone of full participation in American life. We are proud that the President launched Citizenship USA to help eligible immigrants become United States citizens. The Immigration and Naturalization Service is streamlining procedures, cutting red tape, and using new technology to make it easier for legal immigrants to accept the responsibilities of citizenship and truly call America their home.\nToday's Democratic Party also believes we must remain a nation of laws. We cannot tolerate illegal immigration and we must stop it. For years before Bill Clinton became President, Washington talked tough but failed to act. In 1992, our borders might as well not have existed. The border was under-patrolled, and what patrols there were, were under-equipped. Drugs flowed freely. Illegal immigration was rampant. Criminal immigrants, deported after committing crimes in America, returned the very next day to commit crimes again.\nPresident Clinton is making our border a place where the law is respected and drugs and illegal immigrants are turned away. We have increased the Border Patrol by over 40 percent; in El Paso, our Border Patrol agents are so close together they can see each other. Last year alone, the Clinton Administration removed thousands of illegal workers from jobs across the country. Just since January of 1995, we have arrested more than 1,700 criminal aliens and prosecuted them on federal felony charges because they returned to America after having been deported.\nHowever, as we work to stop illegal immigration, we call on all Americans to avoid the temptation to use this issue to divide people from each other. We deplore those who use the need to stop illegal immigration as a pretext for discrimination. And we applaud the wisdom of Republicans like Mayor Giuliani and Senator Domenici who oppose the mean-spirited and short-sighted effort of Republicans in Congress to bar the children of illegal immigrants from schools -- it is wrong, and forcing children onto the streets is an invitation for them to join gangs and turn to crime. Democrats want to protect American jobs by increasing criminal and civil sanctions against employers who hire illegal workers, but Republicans continue to favor inflammatory rhetoric over real action. We will continue to enforce labor standards to protect workers in vulnerable industries. We continue to firmly oppose welfare benefits for illegal immigrants. We believe family members who sponsor immigrants into this country should take financial responsibility for them, and be held legally responsible for supporting them.\nOver the past four years, President Clinton has dramatically transformed the welfare system. He has freed 43 states from federal rules and regulations so they can reform their welfare systems. The Clinton Administration has granted 77 waivers -- more than twice as many waivers as granted in the Reagan-Bush years. For 75 percent of all Americans on welfare, the rules have changed for good already, and welfare is becoming what it should be: a second chance, not a way of life. Welfare rolls are finally coming down -- there are 1.8 million fewer people on welfare today than there were when President Clinton took office in January 1993.\nWe are proud the President forced Congressional Republicans to abandon their wrong-headed and mean-spirited efforts to punish the poor. Republicans wanted to eliminate the guarantee of health care for the poor, the elderly, and the disabled. They were wrong, and we stopped them. Republicans wanted to destroy the food stamp and school lunch programs that provide basic nutrition to millions of working families and poor children. They were wrong, and we stopped them. Republicans wanted to gut child abuse prevention and foster care. They were wrong, and we stopped them. Republicans wanted to cut off young, unwed mothers -- because they actually thought their children would be better off living in an orphanage. They were dead wrong, and we stopped them. The bill Republicans in Congress passed last year was values-backward -- it was soft on work and tough on children, and we applaud the President for stopping it.\nWe know the new bill passed by Congress is far from perfect -- parts of it should be fixed because they go too far and have nothing to do with welfare reform. First, Republicans cut too far into nutritional assistance for working families with children; we are committed to correcting that. Second, Republicans insisted on using welfare reform as a vehicle to cut off help to legal immigrants. That was wrong. Legal immigrants work hard, pay their taxes, and serve America. It is wrong to single them out for punishment just because they are immigrants. We pledge to make sure that legal immigrant families with children who fall on hard times through no fault of their own can get help when they need it. And we are committed to continuing the President's efforts to make it easier for legal immigrants who are prepared to accept the responsibilities of citizenship to do so.\nBut the new welfare plan gives America an historic chance: to break the cycle of dependency for millions of Americans, and give them a real chance for an independent future. It reflects the principles the President has insisted upon since he started the process that led to welfare reform. Our job now is to make sure this welfare reform plan succeeds, transforming a broken system that holds people down into a working system that lifts people up and gives them a real chance to build a better life. States asked for this responsibility -- now we have to make sure they shoulder it. We must make sure as many people as possible move from welfare to work. We must make sure that children are protected. In addition to health care and nutritional assistance, states should provide in-kind vouchers to children whose parents have reached the time limit. We challenge states to exempt battered women from time limits and other restrictions. We challenge states to ensure that hard-earned, federal taxpayer dollars are spent effectively and fraud and abuse are prevented. We challenge the business community to provide more of the private sector jobs people on welfare need to build good lives and strong families. We know that passing legislation is not enough; we must make sure people get the skills they need to get jobs, and that there are jobs for them to go to so they leave welfare and stay off. We want to make sure welfare reform will put more people to work and move them into the economic mainstream, not take jobs away from working families.\nChild support. Nobody has the right to walk away from the responsibility to care for his or her children. If you owe child support, paying it fully and promptly is just the first step in living up to your responsibility as a parent. The Clinton Administration has made a determined effort to crack down on deadbeat parents, collecting a record $11 billion in 1995 through tough enforcement -- almost a 40 percent increase over 1992. President Clinton issued an Executive Order to track down federal workers who fail to pay child support, and force them to pay. The Clinton Administration is working to put wanted lists of parents who owe child support in the post office and on the Internet. President Clinton and Democrats in Congress insisted that the toughest possible child support enforcement be part of the new welfare reform plan -- including the President's plan to deny drivers licenses and professional licenses to people who do not pay their child support. We are telling deadbeats: If you neglect your responsibility to your children, we will suspend your license, garnish your wages, track you down, and make you pay.\nTeen pregnancy. For the first time in years, the teen pregnancy rate has leveled off and begun to drop. But we all know it is still far too high. Government alone cannot solve this problem. That is why President Clinton challenged community, business, and religious leaders together to form a national campaign to keep the teen pregnancy rate going down. And he expanded support for community-based prevention programs that teach abstinence and demand responsibility. We must send the strongest possible signal to young people that it is wrong to get pregnant or father a child until they are married and ready to support that child and raise that child.\nWe also know that half of all underage mothers were made pregnant by a man in his twenties, or even older. Statutory rape is a crime, but unfortunately the laws that protect young women from it are almost never enforced. We echo the President's call to America's prosecutors: Enforce the statutory rape laws vigorously against men who prey on underage women.\nThe Democratic Party is a party of inclusion. We respect the individual conscience of each American on this difficult issue, and we welcome all our members to participate at every level of our party.\nOur goal is to make abortion less necessary and more rare, not more difficult and more dangerous. We support contraceptive research, family planning, comprehensive family life education, and policies that support healthy childbearing. For four years in a row, we have increased support for family planning. The abortion rate is dropping. Now we must continue to support efforts to reduce unintended pregnancies, and we call on all Americans to take personal responsibility to meet this important goal.\nIn the last four years, President Clinton, working with the National Performance Review chaired by Vice President Gore, has cut the federal government by almost 240,000 positions, making the smallest federal government in 30 years. We did it the right way, treating workers with respect. The federal government is eliminating 16,000 pages of outdated and unnecessary regulations, has abolished 179 programs and projects, and saved taxpayers billions of dollars. The President fought for and signed unfunded mandates legislation. This stops Congress from requiring state and local governments to implement expensive policies without providing any means to pay for them, and encourages better partnerships and more balance of resources and responsibilities. Beginning with Ulysses S. Grant, Presidents have tried to get the line-item veto and failed; President Clinton signed landmark legislation that will give him and his successors this powerful tool to cut pork-barrel spending from bills passed by Congress.\nFor years, Republicans talked about making government smaller while letting it grow -- Democrats are doing it. For years, Republicans talked about cutting the deficit while letting it climb -- Democrats are doing it. For years, Republicans talked about shifting power back to states and communities -- Democrats are doing it. For years, Republicans talked about making government more businesslike and efficient -- Democrats are doing it. Democrats are bringing responsibility back to Washington. In the last two years, Republicans under Senator Dole and Speaker Gingrich shut the federal government down in an irresponsible attempt at partisan blackmail. Democrats under President Clinton said, and America agreed: Partisan threats are no way to run a government. Nobody should ever shut down the government again. The Republican shutdown cost the taxpayers $1.4 billion. Democrats believe government should work better and cost less -- not work less and cost more.\nThe Republican shutdown was an affront to the hardworking public servants in our cities, towns, states, and nation who devote their lives to improving life in our country. Thanks to them our streets are safer, our water is cleaner, and our nation is secure. We condemn Republican tactics to sow cynicism and mistrust by scapegoating those government workers. Front-line federal workers committed to providing quality services have joined the President's efforts to make government work better for the American people. With their help, we are saving money for the taxpayers and improving services for our people. Those workers who are doing more with less deserve our respect and admiration.\nIn the last four years, we have transformed the Federal Emergency Management Agency from an outdated bureaucracy into a swift and effective agent of relief for victims of earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, or other disasters. Americans with life-threatening diseases like cancer and AIDS gain access to new drugs faster, because the Food and Drug Administration has streamlined its approval process, become more flexible in certifications, and eliminated unnecessary paperwork. The Small Business Administration has eliminated half of its regulations, cut loan applications as long as 100 pages down to one, and doubled its loan volume -- all helping Americans to produce record numbers of small businesses in each of the last three years. American homebuyers are saving an average of $1,000 in closing costs because the Department of Housing and Urban Development has eliminated paperwork and other unnecessary burdens.\nOver the next four years, the Democratic Party will continue to make responsibility the rule in Washington: cutting bureaucracy further, improving customer service, demanding better performance, holding people and agencies accountable for producing the best results, ensuring all Americans have access to high quality public services, whether they reside in inner cities, suburbs, or rural communities, and forging new partnerships with the private sector including small, minority, and women-owned businesses, and with state and local governments to enhance opportunities for all Americans from technology to transportation to travel and tourism. We concur with the unanimous findings and recommendations of the Department of Labor Task Force on Excellence in State and Local Government outlining further ways to improve the functions of government through labor-management partnerships.\nShortly after Bill Clinton took office, he implemented the toughest ethics code on executive officials in history: Senior appointees are barred from lobbying their own agencies for five years after they leave, and they can never lobby for foreign governments. After years of Republican delay, Democrats passed and the President signed the Motor Voter Bill to make it easier for people to participate in our democracy and exercise their civic responsibility in the voting booth. The President led the fight to repeal the tax loophole that let lobbyists deduct the cost of their activities, and prevailed. In 1995, after a Republican filibuster, Congress finally answered the President's call to stop taking gifts, meals, and trips from lobbyists; to bring lobbyists out from dark rooms and into the bright light of public scrutiny by requiring full disclosure; and to apply to itself the laws that apply to the rest of the country.\nBut we must take further strong action. The President and the Democratic Party support the bipartisan McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill. It will limit campaign spending, curb the influence of PACs and lobbyists, and end the soft money system. Perhaps most important of all, this bill provides free TV time for candidates, so they can talk directly to citizens about real issues and real ideas. Unfortunately, Republicans in Congress will not even let this bill come up for a vote. We call on them to stop stonewalling. It is time to take the reins of democracy away from big money and put them back in the hands of the American people, where they belong. We applaud efforts by broadcasters and private citizens alike, to increase candidates' direct access to voters through free TV.\nFinally, we believe all Americans have a right to fair political representation -- including the citizens of the District of Columbia who deserve full self-governance, political representation, and statehood. We recognize the existing status of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and the strong economic relationship between the people of Puerto Rico and the United States. We pledge to support the right of the people of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico to choose freely, and in concert with the U.S. Congress, their relationship with the United States, either as an enhanced commonwealth, a state, or an independent nation. We support fair participation for Puerto Rico in federal programs and are committed to providing effective incentives for investment based on preserving and creating jobs in the islands. We pledge just and fair treatment under federal policies to the peoples of American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the Virgin Islands; we respect their right to be consulted on policies that affect them directly, and to choose freely their future political status; and we will continue to work with Guam to reach agreement on establishing a Commonwealth of Guam.\nSecurity, Freedom, and Peace\n\nThe firm, sustained use of American might and diplomacy helped win the greatest victory for freedom in this half of the century -- the end of the Cold War. But to meet the challenges of this new era of promise and peril, America needed leadership that was able to see the contours of the new world -- and willing to act with steadiness, strength, and flexibility in the face of change to make the most of it.\nPresident Clinton and Vice President Gore have seized the opportunities of the post Cold War era. Over the past four years, their leadership has made America safer, more prosperous, and more engaged in solving the challenges of a new era.\nFour years ago, thousands of Russian nuclear weapons were aimed at American cities. Today, not a single Russian missile points at our children, and through the START treaties, we will cut American and Russian nuclear arsenals by two-thirds from their Cold War height.\nFour years ago, the forces of reform in the former Soviet Union were embattled. Today, U.S. initiatives are helping democracy and free markets take root throughout the region, Russian troops are out of the Baltics, and democracy has triumphed in Russia's elections.\nFour years ago, the Middle East process had not moved beyond a set of principles, and there were no signs of peace in Northern Ireland. Today, in the Middle East we have seen real agreements toward peace, and handshakes of history, and the people of Northern Ireland have seen a 17 month cease-fire and historic negotiations among the parties.\nFour years ago, the North Koreans were operating a dangerous nuclear program. Today, that program is frozen, under international inspection, and slated to be dismantled.\nFour years ago, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization -- the bulwark of Western security during the Cold War -- was losing direction and support. Today, NATO is keeping the peace in Bosnia with its Partnership for Peace allies and, as a result of American leadership, preparing to welcome new members from Central Europe.\nFour years ago, America stood aloof as war and genocide spread through the former Yugoslavia. Today, thanks to NATO airstrikes, American diplomacy and the deployment of troops from the U.S. and other nations, the war has stopped and Bosnia has its first real chance for a lasting peace.\nFour years ago, dictators ruled in Haiti, abusing human rights and leaving thousands of its citizens desperate to flee to our shores. Today, the dictators are gone, democracy has been restored, and Haiti's mass-exodus has stopped.\nFour years ago, South Africa was struggling under political violence associated with apartheid. Now, following the 1994 elections -- which the United States strongly supported -- there is a national unity government and South Africa is free and democratic.\nFour years ago, there was good reason to worry that the world was dividing into separate, isolated, regional trading blocks. Today, thanks to Clinton Administration efforts to find new markets for American products and strengthen our existing ties, America's relations with our trading parties around the world are stronger than ever. We applaud efforts like the Summit of the Americas, the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings, and, especially, the extraordinary leadership of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown on behalf of American industry and workers everywhere. Ron Brown will always be remembered with great pride and the deepest gratitude by the Democratic Party and by all Americans.\nThe Clinton-Gore Administration's record of leadership has deterred America's adversaries and earned respect from our allies and partners. The Dole-Gingrich Congress and the Republican Party have a different approach to America's security. Too often they would force America to go it alone -- or not at all. Their shortsighted approach has cut resources for diplomacy that could strengthen our security, and reflects an inadequate understanding of the threats and opportunities of this new era.\nToday's Democratic Party is unwilling to surrender to the voices of retreat and indifference. We believe the only way to ensure America's security and prosperity over the long run is to continue exerting American leadership across a range of military, diplomatic, and humanitarian, challenges around the world. Led by President Clinton and Vice President Gore, today's Democratic Party has set a far reaching agenda to strengthen our security, and promote peace and freedom.\nToday's Democratic Party is committed to strengthening our military and adapting it to new challenges; reducing the threat of weapons of mass destruction; and meeting new challenges to our security such as terrorism, international crime, and drug trafficking.\nStrengthening our military. Over the past four years, the Administration has undertaken the most successful restructuring of our military forces in history. Even as the size of our forces has decreased, their capabilities, readiness and qualitative edge have increased. The Administration has ensured that America is prepared to fight alongside others when we can, and alone when we must. We have defeated attempts to cut our defense budget irresponsibly. Three times in three years, President Clinton has increased our defense spending plans -- a total of almost $50 billion -- for readiness, force modernization, and quality of life improvements. We will continue our work to ensure that the men and women who wear American uniforms receive adequate pay and support, including: childcare, education, housing, access to quality health care for themselves and their families, and protection against sexual harassment. The Administration defense plan reverses the downward trend in procurement with a 40% real increase for weapons modernization by 2001. At the same time, as part of its reinventing government program, the Administration has fundamentally reformed government procurement rules in order to get the most for our money. We should also work to increase our efforts to convert unnecessary or obsolete military facilities to serve important economic needs of local communities and, while maintaining military readiness, to continue our initiatives to make our defense industrial base and products applicable to domestic commercial markets.\nRepeatedly during the past four years -- from the Persian Gulf to Bosnia -- our men and women in uniform have proven they are the best trained, best equipped, best prepared fighting force in the world. The Democratic Party is committed to build on this record by fully funding the Pentagon's 5-year defense plan; undertaking a second fundamental review of our defense structure; finding new ways for our service branches to work jointly to increase our war fighting capabilities; and ensuring that our troops can dominate the battlefield of the future.\nWe honor America's veterans; they put their lives on the line to protect our way of life and promote our values around the world. Today's Democratic Party will stand by America's duty to our veterans. President Clinton and Vice President Gore have fought hard to protect veterans' benefits; to expand disability benefits for Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange; aggressively responding to veterans of the Persian Gulf War suffering from undiagnosed illnesses; promoting veterans employment; and improving and strengthening the medical system of the Department of Veterans Affairs.\nReducing the threat of weapons of mass destruction. Strengthening our security also requires an aggressive effort against weapons of mass destruction -- nuclear, chemical, and biological -- and their means of delivery. From the nuclear weapons programs in Iraq and North Korea to the Sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway, our nation has seen that this threat is clear and present. To meet it, we must seize the opportunities presented by the end of the Cold War to cut weapons of mass destruction stockpiles while working to prevent lethal weapons and materials from falling into the wrong hands.\nPresident Clinton and Vice President Gore have pursued the most far reaching arms control and non-proliferation agenda in history. They negotiated an agreement to end the targeting of Russian nuclear missiles on American cities and citizens. They secured ratification of START II which, along with START I, will reduce Russian and American arsenals by two-thirds. They prevented the breakup of the Soviet Union from yielding three new nuclear weapons states, by convincing Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan to give up the nuclear weapons left on their territories when the Soviet Union collapsed. They secured the indefinite and unconditional extension of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. They acted to freeze North Korea's nuclear program.\nThe Democratic Party supports efforts to sign a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty this year and to bring it into force as soon as possible. We support immediate ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention -- delayed too long by the Dole Senate. We support full funding of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program to eliminate former Soviet nuclear and chemical weapons and support funds to ensure that nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union are secure and do not fall into the wrong hands. We support vigilant efforts, in cooperation with the Republic of Korea, Japan, and others, to ensure North Korea fully abides by its agreements to dismantle its nuclear program, and we support the Administration's vigorous efforts to prevent Iraq, Iran, and other dangerous states from acquiring or developing weapons of mass destruction.\nThe Democratic Party is committed to a strong and balanced National Missile Defense (NMD) program. The Administration is spending $3 billion a year on six different systems to protect our troops in the field and our allies from short and medium range missiles. To prepare for the possibility of a long range missile attack on American soil by a rogue state, the Clinton Administration is committed to developing by the year 2000 a defensive system that could be deployed by 2003, well before the threat becomes real. The Democratic Party opposes the Republican NMD plan -- spending up to $60 billion on a revival of the Star Wars program that would force us to choose a costly system today that could be obsolete tomorrow. The Republican plan would waste money, weaken America's defenses and violate existing arms control agreements that make us more secure. It is the wrong way to defend America.\nMeeting new challenges. Today's Democratic Party knows that stronger security requires vigorous efforts to address the new dangers of this era. Chief among these are the interwoven threats of terrorism, drug trafficking, and international crime. We have seen the terrible toll they have exacted -- the murder of American soldiers in their barracks in Saudi Arabia and of innocent civilians on buses in Israel; corruption and crime from the former Soviet Union to Latin America. We know these vicious criminals may come from within or without and pay no heed to borders; we have seen firsthand the awful, evil work of the forces of terror at the World Trade Center and in Oklahoma City. And we know all too well the havoc drugs wreak when they cross our borders and flow through our neighborhoods.\nThe Clinton-Gore Administration has mounted the most aggressive effort in American history to combat terrorism, drug trafficking, and international crime. We captured and convicted the perpetrators of the World Trade Center bombing. We enacted a strong new anti-terrorism law, in spite of foot dragging by the Republican Congress; now, President Clinton and Democrats are fighting to take further steps to protect American citizens. We convened an historic summit of Mideast leaders at Sharm el-Sheik to coordinate anti-terrorism efforts, and made anti-terrorism a centerpiece of the 1996 G-7 summit. We imposed or maintained strong sanctions against states that sponsor terrorism, including Iran, Iraq, Libya, and Sudan, and made clear to Syria that normal relations depend on concrete steps to end its support for groups involved with terrorism. We opposed irresponsible cuts to U.S. intelligence programs and supported efforts to reorganize and strengthen the full range of intelligence agencies and programs. We opened FBI centers to provide anti-crime and anti-terrorism training. We made Colombia ineligible for most American assistance after that country's leadership failed to cooperate with American anti-narcotics efforts.\nOur three front war on terrorism -- abroad, through greater cooperation with our allies; at home, by giving law enforcement the most powerful tools available to fight terrorism; and in our airports and on airplanes, through tough air travel security measures -- is producing results. President Clinton asked the Vice President to chair a commission on the future of air traffic security and safety. We will work to increase the security of our air travel system, the safety of our airplanes, and the safety and security of our air traffic control system.\nToday's Democratic Party is determined to keep the war on global terrorism, narcotics, and crime at the center of our security agenda. We will seek increased cooperation from our allies and friends abroad in fighting these threats. We will continue to work aggressively to shut off foreign drug flows, eradicate foreign drug crops, and assist countries that demonstrate active cooperation.\nThe Democratic Party believes a key to strengthening peace is stable and peaceful relations among the world's major powers. That has been the driving force behind much of the Clinton-Gore Administration's work, from its peace initiative in Bosnia to new security agreements with Japan. We are committed to promoting democracy in regions and countries important to America's security, and to standing with all those willing to take risks for peace, from the Middle East to Northern Ireland, where President Clinton was the first U.S. president to engage directly in the search for peace, including making an historic visit to Northern Ireland. And we are committed to doing it with all the tools we have: with diplomacy where possible, with force where necessary, and working with others where appropriate -- our allies, willing partners, the U.N. and other security organizations -- to share the risks and costs of our leadership.\nEurope and the former Soviet Union. Today's Democratic Party knows that the security of Europe remains a vital American interest, and that we must remain engaged in Europe, a region in which we have fought the two world wars and the Cold War this century. It is our vision to see, one day, a community of free, democratic, and peaceful nations, bound by political, security, cultural, and economic ties, spanning across North America and Europe. We applaud the Clinton-Gore Administration's efforts to foster a peaceful, democratic and undivided Europe -- including expanded support for reform in former communist states; dramatically increased assistance to Ukraine; the Partnership for Peace program of military cooperation with Europe's new democracies; its steady, determined work to add new Central European members to NATO in the near future; and its efforts to resolve regional disputes such as between Greece and Turkey. We support continued efforts to secure a just and lasting peace in Bosnia, Northern Ireland and Cyprus. We are committed to the success of independence in Ukraine and the Baltics. And we support the continuing evolution of a prosperous and peaceful Russia. And as part of our effort to support we will pursue a relationship in which we seek cooperation when we can, and frankly express disagreements where they exist, such as on Chechnya.\nAsia. We know that many of America's most pressing security challenges and most promising commercial opportunities lie in the Asia Pacific region. The Democratic Party applauds the important new security charter with Japan, the Administration's close cooperation with the Republic of Korea toward the goal of a unified and non-nuclear peninsula, and the deployment of an American naval task force to the Taiwan Straits to ensure that China's military exercises did not imperil the security of the region. The Party supports the Administration's policy of steady engagement to encourage a stable, secure, open and prosperous China -- a China that respects human rights throughout its land and in Tibet, that joins international efforts against weapons proliferation, and that plays by the rules of free and fair trade. Today's Democratic Party strongly supports continued American troop presence in East Asia and efforts to promote increased regional security. And we are committed to building long-term relationships with India, Pakistan, and others in South Asia in order to advance America's diverse interests in that region, from democracy and commerce to nuclear non-proliferation.\nThe Middle East. President Clinton has overseen a remarkable record of achievement toward peace and security in the Middle East -- the Israeli-Palestinian accords; the peace agreement between Israel and Jordan; new regional security and investment summits; Israel's increased acceptance throughout the Middle East and the world; the dual containment of Iraq and Iran. The Democratic Party is committed to help build on this record, knowing that peace and security are indivisible, and supports the efforts by the Clinton-Gore Administration to achieve a comprehensive and lasting peace among Israel and all its neighbors, including Lebanon and Syria. The Democratic Party remains committed to America's long-standing special relationship with Israel, based on shared values, a mutual commitment to democracy and a strategic alliance that benefits both nations. The United States should continue to help Israel maintain its qualitative edge. Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and should remain an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths. We are also committed to working with our Arab partners for peace to build a brighter, more secure and prosperous future for all the people of the Middle East. To that end, we seek to further and enhance our close ties with states and peoples in the Arab and Islamic world committed to non-aggression and willing to take risks for peace.\nLatin America and the Caribbean. The Clinton-Gore Administration forged an historic partnership with the democracies of the Western Hemisphere, as reflected in the 1994 Summit of the Americas. Today, every country in the Hemisphere is a democracy except Cuba. Because democratic stability and prosperity in the countries to our south are in our interest and theirs, President Clinton took bold steps to bolster Mexico's economy when it was threatened by crisis; worked to resolve internal and border conflicts in the Hemisphere; joined with regional partners to combat narcotics trafficking; and tightened the tough sanctions against the repressive Castro regime and those who support that regime, while reaching out to the people of Cuba in their quest for democracy, human rights, and freedom. The Democratic Party is committed to further consolidating democracy, stability, and open markets throughout the hemisphere.\nAfrica. The Clinton Administration championed South Africa's democratic transition; supported Africa's many emerging democracies and led international efforts to speed the return of democracy in Nigeria; helped save countless lives in Somalia, Rwanda, and elsewhere through conflict resolution, removal of landmines, and humanitarian relief; and took steps to help sub-Saharan Africa's 700 million people develop into strong economies and markets. The Democratic Party believes that continuing to help the people of Africa nurture their continent's extraordinary potential and address its serious problems is both the right thing to do and profoundly in America's interest.\nPromoting democracy. America remains a beacon of hope to all who cherish democracy and human rights, and America's security benefits from the enlargement of the community of market democracies. The Clinton-Gore Administration has actively promoted the consolidation and spread of democracy and human rights: in Russia and throughout the former Soviet Union, Central Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa. President Clinton directed Vice President Gore to lead bi-national efforts to establish trading relationships to help promote democracy in three strategic areas: Russia, South Africa, and Egypt. The Democratic Party supports the aspirations of all those who seek to strengthen civil society and accountable governance. To this end, we support the MacBride Principles of equal access to regional employment in Northern Ireland. We are committed to the human rights and well-being of Jewish people and other minorities in the countries of the former Soviet Union. We support continued funding for the National Endowment for Democracy, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Asia Pacific Network, Radio Marti and other efforts to promote democracy and the free flow of ideas. We recognize the Information Age offers new opportunities and responsibilities for our democracy and diplomacy that we must seize and meet.\nResources for diplomacy. There is a price to be paid for America's security and its leadership in world affairs -- and the Republican Party now refuses to pay that price. Even though less than one percent of the federal budget goes to foreign policy spending, the Republican Party has savaged our diplomatic readiness, defaulted on treaty obligations to pay dues to the United Nations, slashed assistance to the poorest and most vulnerable populations on earth, and pushed the United States to dead last among developed nations in the global fight against starvation, infant mortality, natural disasters and environmental degradation and other worldwide problems. The Democratic Party is committed to resist these irresponsible cuts that undermine our security and America's ability to lead. We are committed to strengthen our security and express our values, by strongly supporting the Clinton-Gore Administration's work to ensure adequate resources for American foreign policy.\nCommunity\n\nAcross America, in far too many places, the bonds of community that tie us together and remind us that we rise or fall together, have too often frayed. Today's Democratic Party believes we must reawaken the strong sense of community that has helped America to prosper for 220 years. America is uniquely suited to lead the world into the 21st century because of our great diversity and our shared values. We must never let our differences divide us from each other; instead we must come together on a new common ground, based on the enduring values we share. When Americans work together -- in our homes, our schools, our houses of worship, our civic groups, our businesses, labor unions and professional associations -- we can meet any challenge, and realize every dream.\nStanding up for parents. In the first month of Bill Clinton's Presidency, the Democratic Party ended eight years of Republican gridlock and enacted the Family and Medical Leave Act. Americans blessed with a new child or troubled by a family health crisis can no longer be forced to choose between their families and their jobs. A bipartisan panel reported that 12 million workers have already been able to live up to their family obligations without risking their jobs. And almost 90 percent of businesses found that complying with this law cost them little or nothing. Despite how important this is to American families, Senator Dole led Republican opposition to it and still insists it was wrong. This law is good for families, it is good for America, and it would not be the law today without the Democratic Party. President Clinton fought for and secured tax credits to encourage adoption, and stood firm against Republican attempts to undermine adoption assistance.\nNow we want to take the next step. We believe parents should be able to take unpaid leave from work and choose flex time so they can do their job as parents: to do things like go to parent-teacher conferences or take a child to the doctor. We challenge employers to plan and schedule work to allow parents to have time with their children and to afford employees the opportunity to see their families.\nResponsible entertainment. President Clinton and Vice President Gore have led the fight to help parents control what their children see on television. Because of their leadership, Congress passed a law requiring all new televisions to include a device called a V-chip that will block violent programs when it is activated by an adult. Senator Dole likes to talk about TV violence, but when it came time to act, he stood with a small minority to oppose the bipartisan V-chip bill. The President achieved a breakthrough agreement with the media and entertainment industries to develop a rating system for TV shows similar to the motion picture rating system, so parents can make informed decisions about what they want their children to watch. When parents control the remote, it is not censorship, it is personal responsibility for their children's upbringing.\nWe believe in public support for the arts, including the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Public and private investment in the arts and humanities and the institutions that support them is an investment in the education of our children, the strength of our economy, and the quality of American life. We support high-quality, family-friendly programming. America is the leading exporter of intellectual property built on a strong foundation of artistic freedom. We are proud to have stopped the Republican attack on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting -- we want our children to watch Sesame Street, not Power Rangers. And we echo the President's call to the entertainment industry: Work harder to develop and promote movies, music, and TV shows that are suitable -- and educational -- for children. President Clinton has revived and restored the Consumer Product Safety Commission as an effective guardian of children and families in and around their homes. We will continue to work with industry and consumers to protect children and other Americans from dangerous toys and hazardous products.\nTobacco. Cigarette smoking is rapidly becoming the single greatest threat to the health of our children. We know that 3,000 young people start smoking every day, and 1,000 of them will lead shorter lives because of it. Despite that, Senator Dole and other Republicans continue to ignore volumes of medical research to make baffling claims that cigarettes are not addictive. They even argue with distinguished Republican experts like President Reagan's Surgeon General C. Everett Koop. President Clinton and Vice President Gore understand that we have a responsibility to protect our children's future by cracking down on illegal sales of tobacco to minors and by curbing sophisticated advertising campaigns designed to entice kids to start smoking before they are old enough to make an informed decision. The President has proposed measures to cut off children's access to cigarettes, crack down on those who sell tobacco to minors illegally, and curtail advertising designed to appeal to children. Tobacco companies may market to adults if they wish, but they must take the responsibility to draw the line on children.\nEncouraging private sector investment, and community-based solutions. After over a decade of sustained Republican neglect and empty Republican promises, President Clinton and Democrats in Congress launched a comprehensive strategy to unleash economic growth and restore opportunity to our distressed neighborhoods. Without a single Republican vote, we created 105 Empowerment Zones and Enterprise Communities. This effort, chaired by Vice President Gore, is bringing jobs and businesses to our poorest urban and rural areas. Thousands of new businesses have already moved into these areas, or expanded existing operations, bringing new hope and new jobs to these neighborhoods. We reformed the Community Reinvestment Act to shift the focus from process toward results; we implemented low income mortgage purchase requirements on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; and we created a Community Development Financial Institutions Fund. Together, these efforts are unleashing billions of dollars in new private sector lending and investment for housing and economic development in our inner cities and poorest rural areas. The President and Vice President have created a brownfields initiative to bring life back to abandoned and contaminated property by reforming outdated regulations and providing incentives for cleanup.\nOver the next four years, we want a second round of Empowerment Zones to bring economic growth to more American communities; a significant expansion of the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund to spur more private sector investment in local economies; and a new tax incentive to encourage further cleanup and redevelopment of brownfields. We are committed to American cities. We believe that vast opportunities for private investment exist in America's cities. We want to leverage federal investment to maximize private sector investments in our urban centers and support a comprehensive approach to urban problems. Today's Democratic Party knows that the best way to bring jobs and growth back to our poorest neighborhoods is to harness the job-creating power of the private sector.\nHelping people afford safe, secure housing. Safe, secure housing is an essential part of strong communities and strong families. We are proud that after four years of a Democrat in the White House, the percentage of people who own their own house climbed faster than it has in 30 years. Bill Clinton took executive action to make it easier and cheaper for working and middle-class homebuyers to get a home loan. We pledge to stand against Republican efforts to repeal the deductibility of home mortgage interest payments. Fulfilling his 1992 pledge, President Clinton made the low-income housing tax credit permanent, encouraging private developers to build more affordable housing. This tax credit is making it easier for families to get housing, and we will stand against Republican attacks on it.\nThe Clinton Administration has made sweeping changes to transform the nation's public housing system after decades of neglect. In the last four years, Democrats demolished more units of unlivable public housing than Republicans did in the previous twelve years, replacing them with lower-density developments that can serve as anchors for neighborhood renewal. In the next four years, we want to transform the worst public housing from a system that traps people in rundown, crime-ridden projects into one which gives families the freedom to choose where they live by providing vouchers to help them with housing costs. We have dramatically increased help for the homeless, and shifted focus from temporary shelters toward permanent solutions designed to move people back into the mainstream, into jobs and a home of their own.\nThe Republican Congress, under Senator Dole and Speaker Gingrich, voted to cut environmental enforcement resources by 25 percent. President Clinton and Democrats in Congress said no. We believe government has a responsibility to enforce the laws that help keep toxic chemicals from our water, pesticides from our food, and smog from our air.\nThe Republican Congress, under Senator Dole and Speaker Gingrich, let lobbyists for the polluters write their own loopholes into bills to weaken laws that protect the health and safety of our children. President Clinton and Democrats in Congress said no. We believe America's elected officials have a responsibility to protect America's families from threats to their health, and that trust must never be abdicated -- especially not by placing control of environmental safeguards in the hands of the very polluters those safeguards are meant to keep in line.\nThe Republican Congress, under Senator Dole and Speaker Gingrich, tried to make taxpayers pick up the tab for toxic wastes, and let polluters who caused the problem and can afford to fix it off the hook. President Clinton and Democrats in Congress said no. We believe America should insist that toxic waste cleanup is paid for by those responsible for it in the first place -- and not foisted off on the taxpayers.\nIn the last four years, President Clinton and Vice President Gore have taken strong action to make our air and water cleaner. They reformed the Superfund program -- in each of the last two years nearly as many toxic dumps were cleaned as in the previous decade. They dramatically strengthened Community Right-to-Know efforts, because Americans should be informed about toxic chemicals being released into the air and water so they can take steps to protect themselves and their families. They took measures to cut toxic air pollution from chemical plants by 90 percent, and after years of Republican neglect they cleaned up hundreds of nuclear weapons sites and are committed to finishing the job.\nEnvironmental protection should include more education on compliance for small and medium sized business, more strategies to increase compliance for all businesses, and tough enforcement -- including criminal prosecution -- for those who put human health and the environment at risk.\nWe are committed to protecting the majestic legacy of our National Parks and enhancing recreational opportunities. We are determined to continue working to restore the Florida Everglades, to preserve our wildlife refuges, and to fight any effort to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling. We will be good stewards of our old-growth forests, oppose new offshore oil drilling and mineral exploration and production in our nation's many environmentally critical areas, and protect our oceans from oil spills and the dumping of toxic and radioactive waste.\nThe President and Vice President announced an historic partnership with the Big Three American automakers to develop the technology to produce cars up to three times more fuel efficient than those made today -- cleaner cars for a cleaner environment. We will continue to support responsible recycling, and encourage energy efficiency that makes our economy more efficient and less reliant on foreign oil. We believe that adequate investments in better mass transit, cleaner cars, and renewable energy sources are good for the environment and good for the economy.\nAfter years in which Republicans neglected the global environment, the Clinton Administration has made America a leader in the fight to meet environmental challenges that transcend national borders and require global cooperation. The Clinton-Gore Administration led the world in calling for a global ban on ocean-dumping of low-level radioactive waste and for a legally binding treaty to phase out persistent organic pollutants such as DDT and PCBs. We will seek a strong international agreement to further reduce greenhouse gas emissions worldwide and protect our global climate. We are committed to preserving the planet's biodiversity, repairing the depleted ozone layer, and working with other nations to stabilize population growth.\nDemocrats recognize that sustainable development is the key to protecting the environment and promoting economic growth. That is why the Clinton-Gore Administration has reformed our foreign aid programs to focus on sustainable development. At home, Democrats know that sound economic development means sound environmental protection.\nFighting discrimination and protecting civil rights. Today's Democratic Party knows we must renew our efforts to stamp out discrimination and hatred of every kind, wherever and whenever we see it. We deplore the recent wave of burnings that has targeted African-American churches in the South, as well as other houses of worship across the country, and we have established a special task force to help local communities catch and prosecute those responsible, prevent further arsons, and rebuild their churches. We believe everyone in America should learn English so they can fully share in our daily life, but we strongly oppose divisive efforts like English-only legislation, designed to erect barriers between us and force people away from the culture and heritage of which they are rightly proud. The Clinton Administration is committed to strengthening the government-to-government relationship between the federal government and the American Indian and Alaska Native tribal governments. The President will continue implementation of the Self-Governance/Self-Determination Act amendments which he signed in 1994 that will eventually open up the self-governance program to all tribal governments who wish to participate, giving these governments full control of where and how certain federal resources are spent on their reservations. We must remember we do not have an American to waste. We continue to lead the fight to end discrimination on the basis of race, gender, religion, age, ethnicity, disability, and sexual orientation. The Democratic Party has always supported the Equal Rights Amendment, and we are committed to ensuring full equality for women and to vigorously enforce the Americans with Disabilities Act. We support continued efforts, like the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, to end discrimination against gay men and lesbians and further their full inclusion in the life of the nation. Over the last four years, President Clinton and the Democrats have worked aggressively to enforce the letter and spirit of civil rights law. The President and Vice President remain committed to an Administration that looks like America, and we are proud of the Administration's extraordinary judicial appointments -- they are both more diverse and more qualified than any previous Administration. We know there is still more we can do to ensure equal opportunity for all Americans, so all people willing to work hard can build a strong future. President Clinton is leading the way to reform affirmative action so that it works, it is improved, and promotes opportunity, but does not accidentally hold others back in the process. Senator Dole has promised to end affirmative action. He's wrong, and the President is right. When it comes to affirmative action, we should mend it, not end it.\nReligious freedom. Today's Democratic Party understands that all Americans have a right to express their faith. The Constitution prohibits the state establishment of religion, and it protects the free exercise of religion. The President fought for and signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, to reaffirm the great protection the Constitution gives to religious expression, and to recognize the historic role people of faith have played in America. Americans have a right to express their love of God in public, and we applaud the President's work to ensure that children are not denied private religious expression in school. Whenever the religious rights of our children -- or any American -- are threatened, we will stand against it.\nResponsibility to our community and our country. Today's Democratic Party believes every American has a duty and a responsibility to give something back to their community and their country. In the past three years, 45,000 Americans have performed national service as part of the AmeriCorps program President Clinton and the Democrats fought so hard to create -- and we applaud those Republicans who joined a bipartisan effort to preserve AmeriCorps when Speaker Gingrich\"s House tried to kill it.\nWe applaud the American spirit of voluntarism and charity. As we balance the budget, we must work even harder in our own lives to live up to the duties we owe one another. We must shrink the government, but we cannot shrink from our challenges. We believe every school and college in America should make service a part of its basic ethic, and we want to expand national service by helping communities give scholarships to high school students for community service. We challenge Americans in all walks of life to make a new commitment to taking responsibility for themselves, their families, their communities, and their country.\nIf we do our job, we will make the next American century as great as each one that has come before it. We will enter the 21st century with the American Dream alive for all, with America still the world's strongest force for peace and freedom, and with the American community coming together, enriched by our diversity and stronger than ever.\nAmerica's best days lie ahead, as we renew our historic pledge to uphold and advance the promise of America -- One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.", "Words" -> 15667, "WordCounts" -> <|"the" -> 788, "to" -> 734, "and" -> 719, "of" -> 341, "in" -> 240, "a" -> 212, "We" -> 210, "for" -> 210, "that" -> 184, "we" -> 173, "our" -> 160, "is" -> 139, "are" -> 115, "President" -> 105, "have" -> 101, "their" -> 96, "The" -> 95, "on" -> 92, "with" -> 91, "it" -> 89, "from" -> 80, "they" -> 79, "by" -> 79, "Clinton" -> 75, "American" -> 75, "years" -> 71, "Party" -> 71, "Democratic" -> 67, "people" -> 64, "has" -> 60, "more" -> 57, "America" -> 57, "all" -> 57, "will" -> 55, "new" -> 55, "must" -> 54, "support" -> 53, 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"40" -> 5, "1992" -> 5, "world's" -> 4, "works" -> 4, "women-owned" -> 4, "water" -> 4, "wage" -> 4, "vote" -> 4, "violence" -> 4, "victims" -> 4, "unnecessary" -> 4, "turn" -> 4, "troops" -> 4, "tried" -> 4, "trafficking" -> 4, "tools" -> 4, "today's" -> 4, "times" -> 4, "These" -> 4, "Tax" -> 4, "tape" -> 4, "systems" -> 4, "supporting" -> 4, "successful" -> 4, "success" -> 4, "student" -> 4, "strongly" -> 4, "stronger" -> 4, "strengthening" -> 4, "street" -> 4, "stood" -> 4, "start" -> 4, "special" -> 4, "smaller" -> 4, "shut" -> 4, "sex" -> 4, "Security" -> 4, "same" -> 4, "said" -> 4, "safer" -> 4, "Safe" -> 4, "Rico" -> 4, "repeal" -> 4, "remain" -> 4, "religious" -> 4, "reflects" -> 4, "red" -> 4, "readiness" -> 4, "range" -> 4, "Puerto" -> 4, "prosperous" -> 4, "potential" -> 4, "poorest" -> 4, "peaceful" -> 4, "pass" -> 4, "partnerships" -> 4, "partners" -> 4, "outdated" -> 4, "opposition" -> 4, "Opportunity" -> 4, "oil" -> 4, "office" -> 4, "never" -> 4, "neglect" -> 4, "nearly" -> 4, "nation's" -> 4, "men" -> 4, "long-term" -> 4, "legal" -> 4, "leave" -> 4, "leaders" -> 4, "Korea" -> 4, "just" -> 4, "joined" -> 4, "join" -> 4, "Iraq" -> 4, "insisted" -> 4, "immigration" -> 4, "if" -> 4, "honor" -> 4, "homes" -> 4, "helped" -> 4, "hands" -> 4, "goal" -> 4, "General" -> 4, "gas" -> 4, "fraud" -> 4, "forward" -> 4, "forced" -> 4, "firm" -> 4, "finding" -> 4, "express" -> 4, "existing" -> 4, "ever" -> 4, "essential" -> 4, "especially" -> 4, "equal" -> 4, "Employers" -> 4, "eliminated" -> 4, "elderly" -> 4, "efficient" -> 4, "efficiency" -> 4, "Dole-Gingrich" -> 4, "disabilities" -> 4, "deserve" -> 4, "democracies" -> 4, "countries" -> 4, "could" -> 4, "compete" -> 4, "community-based" -> 4, "coming" -> 4, "classroom" -> 4, "civil" -> 4, "borders" -> 4, "border" -> 4, "big" -> 4, "based" -> 4, "barriers" -> 4, "attempt" -> 4, "At" -> 4, "assault" -> 4, "anti-terrorism" -> 4, "already" -> 4, "aggressive" -> 4, "agencies" -> 4, "again" -> 4, "After" -> 4, "afford" -> 4, "adult" -> 4, "adequate" -> 4, "across" -> 4, "abroad" -> 4, "youth" -> 3, "worker" -> 3, "With" -> 3, "why" -> 3, "weaken" -> 3, "watch" -> 3, "wages" -> 3, "vigorously" -> 3, "urban" -> 3, "understand" -> 3, "Ukraine" -> 3, "Treaty" -> 3, "travel" -> 3, "transformed" -> 3, "transform" -> 3, "trading" -> 3, "track" -> 3, "toughest" -> 3, "ties" -> 3, "thousands" -> 3, "things" -> 3, "There" -> 3, "tell" -> 3, "taking" -> 3, "taken" -> 3, "sweeping" -> 3, "strongest" -> 3, "Strengthening" -> 3, "step" -> 3, "START" -> 3, "Start" -> 3, "spirit" -> 3, "Social" -> 3, "smoking" -> 3, "size" -> 3, "shows" -> 3, "sexual" -> 3, "seniors" -> 3, "seize" -> 3, "secured" -> 3, "saving" -> 3, "sanctions" -> 3, "Russia" -> 3, "rural" -> 3, "risks" -> 3, "risk" -> 3, "returned" -> 3, "results" -> 3, "Responsibility" -> 3, "renew" -> 3, "remains" -> 3, "religion" -> 3, "relief" -> 3, "relations" -> 3, "reaching" -> 3, "reach" -> 3, "rate" -> 3, "raise" -> 3, "Radio" -> 3, "punished" -> 3, "protects" -> 3, "prosper" -> 3, "promoting" -> 3, "promises" -> 3, "promised" -> 3, "promise" -> 3, "projects" -> 3, "procurement" -> 3, "problems" -> 3, "previous" -> 3, "prevention" -> 3, "prepared" -> 3, "pregnancy" -> 3, "power" -> 3, "poor" -> 3, "polluters" -> 3, "policy" -> 3, "policing" -> 3, "plans" -> 3, "pension" -> 3, "Peace" -> 3, "party" -> 3, "participate" -> 3, "paperwork" -> 3, "Pacific" -> 3, "owe" -> 3, "opposed" -> 3, "older" -> 3, "nutrition" -> 3, "number" -> 3, "nothing" -> 3, "natural" -> 3, "NATO" -> 3, "mental" -> 3, "measures" -> 3, "mean-spirited" -> 3, "means" -> 3, "lower" -> 3, "lobby" -> 3, "limit" -> 3, "Latin" -> 3, "lasting" -> 3, "land" -> 3, "key" -> 3, "justice" -> 3, "issue" -> 3, "irresponsible" -> 3, "Iran" -> 3, "Internet" -> 3, "interests" -> 3, "insist" -> 3, "innovative" -> 3, "informed" -> 3, "information" -> 3, "independent" -> 3, "increasing" -> 3, "inclusion" -> 3, "include" -> 3, "implemented" -> 3, "high-quality" -> 3, "Hemisphere" -> 3, "Head" -> 3, "gut" -> 3, "gun" -> 3, "Guam" -> 3, "groups" -> 3, "greater" -> 3, "generations" -> 3, "funds" -> 3, "Fund" -> 3, "freely" -> 3, "focus" -> 3, "flexibility" -> 3, "finally" -> 3, "fall" -> 3, "failed" -> 3, "extraordinary" -> 3, "expanding" -> 3, "everything" -> 3, "entertainment" -> 3, "enough" -> 3, "enhance" -> 3, "engaged" -> 3, "Endowment" -> 3, "eliminate" -> 3, "educational" -> 3, "echo" -> 3, "earn" -> 3, "Drug" -> 3, "doubled" -> 3, "dismantle" -> 3, "disasters" -> 3, "direction" -> 3, "dignity" -> 3, "difficult" -> 3, "Development" -> 3, "destroy" -> 3, "deplore" -> 3, "Department" -> 3, "decision" -> 3, "decade" -> 3, "day" -> 3, "cross" -> 3, "Crime" -> 3, "credit" -> 3, "creating" -> 3, "course" -> 3, "convicted" -> 3, "continuing" -> 3, "Commonwealth" -> 3, "commitment" -> 3, "commercial" -> 3, "close" -> 3, "clear" -> 3, "cleanup" -> 3, "class" -> 3, "city" -> 3, "chemical" -> 3, "Central" -> 3, "cars" -> 3, "cancer" -> 3, "campaign" -> 3, "bringing" -> 3, "break" -> 3, "Brady" -> 3, "both" -> 3, "Big" -> 3, "behind" -> 3, "Because" -> 3, "became" -> 3, "beat" -> 3, "basic" -> 3, "base" -> 3, "attempts" -> 3, "attack" -> 3, "As" -> 3, "approach" -> 3, "aggressively" -> 3, "age" -> 3, "Africa's" -> 3, "affirmative" -> 3, "advance" -> 3, "act" -> 3, "achieve" -> 3, "30" -> 3, "2000" -> 3, "1996" -> 3, "1995" -> 3, "1994" -> 3, "1993" -> 3, "Zones" -> 2, "write" -> 2, "worship" -> 2, "worldwide" -> 2, "World" -> 2, "women's" -> 2, "within" -> 2, "wish" -> 2, "win" -> 2, "whole" -> 2, "whenever" -> 2, "Western" -> 2, "welcome" -> 2, "ways" -> 2, "wants" -> 2, "walk" -> 2, "waivers" -> 2, "vulnerable" -> 2, "vouchers" -> 2, "voted" -> 2, "vital" -> 2, "vision" -> 2, "vigorous" -> 2, "veto" -> 2, "very" -> 2, "V-chip" -> 2, "vast" -> 2, "using" -> 2, "users" -> 2, "until" -> 2, "unleash" -> 2, "unions" -> 2, "uniform" -> 2, "Unfortunately" -> 2, "undivided" -> 2, "understands" -> 2, "underage" -> 2, "typical" -> 2, "two-thirds" -> 2, "trouble" -> 2, "tribal" -> 2, "trend" -> 2, "treaty" -> 2, "transportation" -> 2, "trained" -> 2, "traffic" -> 2, "Trade" -> 2, "town" -> 2, "top" -> 2, "tomorrow" -> 2, "Tobacco" -> 2, "tobacco" -> 2, "Three" -> 2, "threatened" -> 2, "thought" -> 2, "thing" -> 2, "they're" -> 2, "thanks" -> 2, "teen" -> 2, "Technology" -> 2, "technologies" -> 2, "Teaching" -> 2, "teacher" -> 2, "task" -> 2, "targeted" -> 2, "tap" -> 2, "tangle" -> 2, "talk" -> 2, "Syria" -> 2, "sustained" -> 2, "sustainable" -> 2, "supervised" -> 2, "Summit" -> 2, "summit" -> 2, "strength" -> 2, "strategic" -> 2, "steady" -> 2, "stay" -> 2, "status" -> 2, "stands" -> 2, "Standing" -> 2, "stamp" -> 2, "stable" -> 2, "stability" -> 2, "spur" -> 2, "spread" -> 2, "sponsor" -> 2, "spent" -> 2, "speed" -> 2, "space" -> 2, "sources" -> 2, "sound" -> 2, "something" -> 2, "soft" -> 2, "Small" -> 2, "simple" -> 2, "shutdown" -> 2, "shrink" -> 2, "shared" -> 2, "servants" -> 2, "sense" -> 2, "self-governance" -> 2, "scientists" -> 2, "science" -> 2, "say" -> 2, "savings" -> 2, "saved" -> 2, "save" -> 2, "safeguards" -> 2, "row" -> 2, "Ron" -> 2, "role" -> 2, "return" -> 2, "retreat" -> 2, "Retirement" -> 2, "restored" -> 2, "restore" -> 2, "rest" -> 2, "resolve" -> 2, "requires" -> 2, "require" -> 2, "Republic" -> 2, "representation" -> 2, "renewable" -> 2, "remember" -> 2, "Religious" -> 2, "relationships" -> 2, "reinventing" -> 2, "registry" -> 2, "regime" -> 2, "reforming" -> 2, "reducing" -> 2, "reawaken" -> 2, "ready" -> 2, "reached" -> 2, "rating" -> 2, "ratification" -> 2, "rape" -> 2, "radioactive" -> 2, "qualitative" -> 2, "putting" -> 2, "punishment" -> 2, "punish" -> 2, "Public" -> 2, "provides" -> 2, "Protecting" -> 2, "prosperity" -> 2, "prosecuted" -> 2, "property" -> 2, "Promoting" -> 2, "professional" -> 2, "production" -> 2, "producing" -> 2, "produce" -> 2, "problem" -> 2, "principles" -> 2, "principals" -> 2, "price" -> 2, "prey" -> 2, "prevented" -> 2, "preserving" -> 2, "preparing" -> 2, "pregnant" -> 2, "powers" -> 2, "poverty" -> 2, "post" -> 2, "possibility" -> 2, "planning" -> 2, "personal" -> 2, "Persian" -> 2, "percentage" -> 2, "peoples" -> 2, "penalty" -> 2, "payments" -> 2, "paying" -> 2, "Patrol" -> 2, "Partnership" -> 2, "parties" -> 2, "participation" -> 2, "parity" -> 2, "parent" -> 2, "pages" -> 2, "ordinary" -> 2, "ordered" -> 2, "often" -> 2, "officials" -> 2, "offers" -> 2, "obsolete" -> 2, "obligations" -> 2, "nutritional" -> 2, "Nothing" -> 2, "non-proliferation" -> 2, "Nobody" -> 2, "No" -> 2, "NMD" -> 2, "neighbors" -> 2, "neighborhood" -> 2, "needed" -> 2, "necessary" -> 2, "narcotics" -> 2, "murder" -> 2, "moving" -> 2, "moved" -> 2, "mothers" -> 2, "mortgage" -> 2, "month" -> 2, "modernization" -> 2, "missiles" -> 2, "missile" -> 2, "minors" -> 2, "minimum" -> 2, "might" -> 2, "middle-class" -> 2, "Meeting" -> 2, "medium" -> 2, "meaningful" -> 2, "McCaffrey" -> 2, "may" -> 2, "materials" -> 2, "massive" -> 2, "market" -> 2, "makes" -> 2, "major" -> 2, "maintain" -> 2, "mainstream" -> 2, "lunch" -> 2, "lose" -> 2, "longer" -> 2, "lifesaving" -> 2, "lie" -> 2, "licenses" -> 2, "level" -> 2, "letting" -> 2, "legally" -> 2, "left" -> 2, "least" -> 2, "leading" -> 2, "Last" -> 2, "largest" -> 2, "Labor" -> 2, "labor" -> 2, "knowledge" -> 2, "kill" -> 2, "kids" -> 2, "January" -> 2, "jail" -> 2, "issues" -> 2, "Islands" -> 2, "investing" -> 2, "intelligence" -> 2, "Institutions" -> 2, "institutions" -> 2, "instead" -> 2, "insists" -> 2, "innovation" -> 2, "inner" -> 2, "initiatives" -> 2, "initiative" -> 2, "Information" -> 2, "infants" -> 2, "indivisible" -> 2, "Income" -> 2, "incentives" -> 2, "ideas" -> 2, "hundreds" -> 2, "humanitarian" -> 2, "how" -> 2, "houses" -> 2, "house" -> 2, "hope" -> 2, "homebuyers" -> 2, "hold" -> 2, "high-wage" -> 2, "Higher" -> 2, "her" -> 2, "held" -> 2, "height" -> 2, "healthier" -> 2, "harder" -> 2, "had" -> 2, "Gulf" -> 2, "grow" -> 2, "greatest" -> 2, "granted" -> 2, "Grant" -> 2, "grant" -> 2, "Government" -> 2, "going" -> 2, "God" -> 2, "giving" -> 2, "given" -> 2, "gangs" -> 2, "gain" -> 2, "Freedom" -> 2, "Free" -> 2, "foundation" -> 2, "foster" -> 2, "form" -> 2, "Food" -> 2, "food" -> 2, "flow" -> 2, "five" -> 2, "firmly" -> 2, "finish" -> 2, "find" -> 2, "Financial" -> 2, "financial" -> 2, "Finally" -> 2, "Fighting" -> 2, "fierce" -> 2, "faster" -> 2, "faith" -> 2, "facilities" -> 2, "face" -> 2, "expression" -> 2, "exports" -> 2, "expansion" -> 2, "exist" -> 2, "exercise" -> 2, "executive" -> 2, "except" -> 2, "everywhere" -> 2, "Even" -> 2, "eradicate" -> 2, "enter" -> 2, "enormous" -> 2, "enduring" -> 2, "enacted" -> 2, "empty" -> 2, "Empowerment" -> 2, "employment" -> 2, "employers" -> 2, "employees" -> 2, "eliminating" -> 2, "eligible" -> 2, "elections" -> 2, "edge" -> 2, "economies" -> 2, "earth" -> 2, "Earned" -> 2, "earned" -> 2, "early" -> 2, "duties" -> 2, "during" -> 2, "drug-education" -> 2, "dropping" -> 2, "drilling" -> 2, "dreams" -> 2, "Dream" -> 2, "domestic" -> 2, "does" -> 2, "divide" -> 2, "diversity" -> 2, "diverse" -> 2, "diseases" -> 2, "discipline" -> 2, "disability" -> 2, "directive" -> 2, "diplomatic" -> 2, "different" -> 2, "difference" -> 2, "dictators" -> 2, "developing" -> 2, "developed" -> 2, "Despite" -> 2, "deported" -> 2, "deployment" -> 2, "demanding" -> 2, "demand" -> 2, "defeating" -> 2, "decades" -> 2, "debt" -> 2, "death" -> 2, "dealers" -> 2, "deadly" -> 2, "dead" -> 2, "dark" -> 2, "daily" -> 2, "cure" -> 2, "Cuba" -> 2, "crisis" -> 2, "Credit" -> 2, "crack" -> 2, "constitutional" -> 2, "Constitution" -> 2, "conscience" -> 2, "Congressional" -> 2, "computer" -> 2, "compliance" -> 2, "commerce" -> 2, "comes" -> 2, "combat" -> 2, "Clinton's" -> 2, "climb" -> 2, "climate" -> 2, "cleaned" -> 2, "Clean" -> 2, "civic" -> 2, "cigarettes" -> 2, "churches" -> 2, "China" -> 2, "Children" -> 2, "chemicals" -> 2, "character" -> 2, "changes" -> 2, "challenged" -> 2, "chaired" -> 2, "certain" -> 2, "centers" -> 2, "Center" -> 2, "catch" -> 2, "capabilities" -> 2, "candidates" -> 2, "calling" -> 2, "Business" -> 2, "bureaucracy" -> 2, "burdens" -> 2, "brownfields" -> 2, "Brown" -> 2, "breast" -> 2, "Border" -> 2, "books" -> 2, "bold" -> 2, "block" -> 2, "bills" -> 2, "billions" -> 2, "belong" -> 2, "being" -> 2, "becoming" -> 2, "become" -> 2, "bargain" -> 2, "Baltics" -> 2, "bad" -> 2, "average" -> 2, "available" -> 2, "asked" -> 2, "aside" -> 2, "arts" -> 2, "arsenals" -> 2, "arrested" -> 2, "arms" -> 2, "Arab" -> 2, "approval" -> 2, "apply" -> 2, "AmeriCorps" -> 2, "Americas" -> 2, "amendment" -> 2, "always" -> 2, "allow" -> 2, "airplanes" -> 2, "ahead" -> 2, "advertising" -> 2, "adults" -> 2, "adoption" -> 2, "address" -> 2, "activities" -> 2, "accountable" -> 2, "accept" -> 2, "abortion" -> 2, "ability" -> 2, "A" -> 2, "90" -> 2, "85" -> 2, "45,000" -> 2, "220" -> 2, "2002" -> 2, "15" -> 2, "100,000" -> 2, "$8" -> 1, "$60" -> 1, "$5.15" -> 1, "$500" -> 1, "$50" -> 1, "$3" -> 1, "$1,500" -> 1, "$15" -> 1, "$1.4" -> 1, "$11" -> 1, "$10,000" -> 1, "$1000" -> 1, "$1,000" -> 1, "zero" -> 1, "Yugoslavia" -> 1, "you're" -> 1, "Young" -> 1, "You" -> 1, "yielding" -> 1, "yes" -> 1, "wrong-headed" -> 1, "wreak" -> 1, "wouldn't" -> 1, "worst" -> 1, "worry" -> 1, "world-class" -> 1, "work-study" -> 1, "Workers" -> 1, "Work" -> 1, "won" -> 1, "Women" -> 1, "Without" -> 1, "wisdom" -> 1, "wire" -> 1, "Wildlife" -> 1, "wildlife" -> 1, "whose" -> 1, "whether" -> 1, "wherever" -> 1, "Whenever" -> 1, "We've" -> 1, "went" -> 1, "well-being" -> 1, "Welfare" -> 1, "wear" -> 1, "Weapons" -> 1, "wealthiest" -> 1, "wave" -> 1, "wastes" -> 1, "wasteful" -> 1, "Wars" -> 1, "wars" -> 1, "walks" -> 1, "walked" -> 1, "waiting" -> 1, "waged" -> 1, "voting" -> 1, "voters" -> 1, "Voter" -> 1, "voluntarism" -> 1, "volumes" -> 1, "volume" -> 1, "voices" -> 1, "vitally" -> 1, "visits" -> 1, "visit" -> 1, "Virgin" -> 1, "violate" -> 1, "vine" -> 1, "vigilant" -> 1, "Vietnam" -> 1, "victory" -> 1, "vicious" -> 1, "vetoed" -> 1, "Veterans" -> 1, "vest" -> 1, "vehicle" -> 1, "values-backward" -> 1, "Values" -> 1, "used" -> 1, "USA" -> 1, "urge" -> 1, "Urban" -> 1, "up-to-date" -> 1, "upon" -> 1, "uphold" -> 1, "upbringing" -> 1, "unwilling" -> 1, "unwed" -> 1, "unprecedented" -> 1, "unpaid" -> 1, "unlivable" -> 1, "unless" -> 1, "unleashing" -> 1, "universities" -> 1, "universal" -> 1, "unity" -> 1, "units" -> 1, "uniquely" -> 1, "unique" -> 1, "unintended" -> 1, "uniforms" -> 1, "unified" -> 1, "unfunded" -> 1, "unfortunately" -> 1, "unfair" -> 1, "unemployed" -> 1, "undiagnosed" -> 1, "undertaking" -> 1, "undertaken" -> 1, "undertake" -> 1, "understanding" -> 1, "under-patrolled" -> 1, "under-equipped" -> 1, "Under" -> 1, "unconditional" -> 1, "unanimous" -> 1, "U.N." -> 1, "Ulysses" -> 1, "two-year-olds" -> 1, "twice" -> 1, "twenties" -> 1, "twelve" -> 1, "turned" -> 1, "Turkey" -> 1, "tuition" -> 1, "trying" -> 1, "Trust" -> 1, "trust" -> 1, "truly" -> 1, "true" -> 1, "truancy" -> 1, "troubled" -> 1, "troop" -> 1, "triumphed" -> 1, "trips" -> 1, "tripled" -> 1, "trillion" -> 1, "treating" -> 1, "treaties" -> 1, "treated" -> 1, "travels" -> 1, "traveling" -> 1, "traps" -> 1, "trapped" -> 1, "trap" -> 1, "transition" -> 1, "transit" -> 1, "transforming" -> 1, "transcend" -> 1, "Training" -> 1, "train" -> 1, "toys" -> 1, "towns" -> 1, "tourism" -> 1, "tougher" -> 1, "Tough" -> 1, "total" -> 1, "tool" -> 1, "Too" -> 1, "toll" -> 1, "tolerate" -> 1, "tolerance" -> 1, "Tokyo" -> 1, "Together" -> 1, "tireless" -> 1, "time-honored" -> 1, "tightened" -> 1, "tie" -> 1, "Tibet" -> 1, "three-strikes-you're-out" -> 1, "threatens" -> 1, "threaten" -> 1, "Threat" -> 1, "Thousands" -> 1, "though" -> 1, "Those" -> 1, "then" -> 1, "theirs" -> 1, "Their" -> 1, "Thanks" -> 1, "testing" -> 1, "Test" -> 1, "test" -> 1, "terror" -> 1, "territories" -> 1, "terrible" -> 1, "temptation" -> 1, "temporary" -> 1, "telling" -> 1, "televisions" -> 1, "television" -> 1, "telecommunications" -> 1, "Teen" -> 1, "technological" -> 1, "TEAM" -> 1, "teaching" -> 1, "taxpayer" -> 1, "taxed" -> 1, "Task" -> 1, "targeting" -> 1, "takes" -> 1, "Taiwan" -> 1, "tactics" -> 1, "tab" -> 1, "System" -> 1, "swift" -> 1, "sweatshops" -> 1, "suspend" -> 1, "surrender" -> 1, "Surgeon" -> 1, "Supreme" -> 1, "Superhighway" -> 1, "Superfund" -> 1, "summits" -> 1, "summer" -> 1, "suited" -> 1, "suitable" -> 1, "suffering" -> 1, "suffered" -> 1, "Sudan" -> 1, "successors" -> 1, "succeeds" -> 1, "succeed" -> 1, "subway" -> 1, "suburbs" -> 1, "sub-Saharan" -> 1, "Study" -> 1, "study" -> 1, "struggling" -> 1, "structure" -> 1, "striking" -> 1, "strikers" -> 1, "strike" -> 1, "strengthened" -> 1, "Street" -> 1, "streamlining" -> 1, "streamlined" -> 1, "streamline" -> 1, "strategies" -> 1, "Straits" -> 1, "stops" -> 1, "stopping" -> 1, "stonewalling" -> 1, "stockpiles" -> 1, "stewards" -> 1, "stepping" -> 1, "steer" -> 1, "steadiness" -> 1, "Statutory" -> 1, "statutory" -> 1, "station" -> 1, "statehood" -> 1, "State" -> 1, "starvation" -> 1, "started" -> 1, "Star" -> 1, "standing" -> 1, "standard" -> 1, "stalkers" -> 1, "stabilize" -> 1, "sportsman" -> 1, "sporting" -> 1, "spite" -> 1, "spiral" -> 1, "spills" -> 1, "spanning" -> 1, "sow" -> 1, "south" -> 1, "source" -> 1, "sophisticated" -> 1, "soon" -> 1, "something-for-nothing" -> 1, "Somalia" -> 1, "solving" -> 1, "solve" -> 1, "soldiers" -> 1, "soil" -> 1, "software" -> 1, "society" -> 1, "smoke-and-mirrors" -> 1, "smog" -> 1, "smallest" -> 1, "slated" -> 1, "slashing" -> 1, "slashes" -> 1, "slashed" -> 1, "skill" -> 1, "sized" -> 1, "six" -> 1, "sites" -> 1, "similar" -> 1, "signs" -> 1, "significant" -> 1, "signal" -> 1, "sign" -> 1, "side" -> 1, "shoulder" -> 1, "short-term" -> 1, "shortsighted" -> 1, "short-sighted" -> 1, "Shortly" -> 1, "shorter" -> 1, "shortened" -> 1, "short" -> 1, "shores" -> 1, "shipping" -> 1, "shifting" -> 1, "shifted" -> 1, "shift" -> 1, "shelters" -> 1, "Sharm" -> 1, "shape" -> 1, "severely" -> 1, "Sesame" -> 1, "Service" -> 1, "separate" -> 1, "sentences" -> 1, "sentenced" -> 1, "sentence" -> 1, "Senior" -> 1, "send" -> 1, "Senate" -> 1, "sell" -> 1, "self-insured" -> 1, "Self-Governance/Self-Determination" -> 1, "self-employed" -> 1, "seized" -> 1, "securing" -> 1, "sectors" -> 1, "Secretary" -> 1, "Second" -> 1, "seats" -> 1, "search" -> 1, "scrutiny" -> 1, "School-to-Work" -> 1, "Schools" -> 1, "scholarship" -> 1, "schedule" -> 1, "scenarios" -> 1, "scapegoating" -> 1, "saying" -> 1, "saw" -> 1, "savaged" -> 1, "Saudi" -> 1, "Sarin" -> 1, "Samoa" -> 1, "sales" -> 1, "Safety" -> 1, "sacrificed" -> 1, "S." -> 1, "s" -> 1, "Ryan" -> 1, "Rwanda" -> 1, "Russia's" -> 1, "rundown" -> 1, "ruled" -> 1, "rule" -> 1, "round" -> 1, "rosy" -> 1, "root" -> 1, "rooms" -> 1, "rolls" -> 1, "rogue" -> 1, "roads" -> 1, "risking" -> 1, "rising" -> 1, "rise" -> 1, "rip" -> 1, "Right-to-Work" -> 1, "Right-to-Know" -> 1, "Rights" -> 1, "rightly" -> 1, 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"old" -> 1, "Oklahoma" -> 1, "offshore" -> 1, "officer" -> 1, "offer" -> 1, "offender" -> 1, "oceans" -> 1, "ocean-dumping" -> 1, "nurture" -> 1, "Nunn-Lugar" -> 1, "numbers" -> 1, "Nuclear" -> 1, "normal" -> 1, "non-violent" -> 1, "Non-Proliferation" -> 1, "non-nuclear" -> 1, "Non-Discrimination" -> 1, "non-aggression" -> 1, "Nigeria" -> 1, "Newt" -> 1, "New" -> 1, "Network" -> 1, "negotiations" -> 1, "negotiated" -> 1, "negotiate" -> 1, "neglected" -> 1, "needs" -> 1, "near" -> 1, "naval" -> 1, "Naturalization" -> 1, "Native" -> 1, "nationwide" -> 1, "Nations" -> 1, "NAFTA" -> 1, "mutual" -> 1, "music" -> 1, "much" -> 1, "movies" -> 1, "mounted" -> 1, "Motor" -> 1, "motion" -> 1, "mortality" -> 1, "morale" -> 1, "modern" -> 1, "moderate" -> 1, "models" -> 1, "modeled" -> 1, "mistrust" -> 1, "mission" -> 1, "Missile" -> 1, "misguided" -> 1, "minorities" -> 1, "mineral" -> 1, "millennium" -> 1, "military-style" -> 1, "midst" -> 1, "Mideast" -> 1, "middleman" -> 1, "middle" -> 1, "Mexico's" -> 1, "met" -> 1, "mend" -> 1, "member" -> 1, "Megan's" -> 1, "meetings" -> 1, "meeting" -> 1, "Medical" -> 1, "media" -> 1, "meant" -> 1, "meals" -> 1, "McCain-Feingold" -> 1, "Mayor" -> 1, "maximize" -> 1, "math" -> 1, "mass-exodus" -> 1, "Marti" -> 1, "married" -> 1, "Mariana" -> 1, "mandates" -> 1, "Management" -> 1, "man" -> 1, "majestic" -> 1, "maintained" -> 1, "magnificent" -> 1, "Mae" -> 1, "MacBride" -> 1, "Mac" -> 1, "lunches" -> 1, "loyalty" -> 1, "low-level" -> 1, "low-income" -> 1, "lower-density" -> 1, "low" -> 1, "love" -> 1, "losing" -> 1, "loopholes" -> 1, "loophole" -> 1, "looks" -> 1, "looking" -> 1, "long-standing" -> 1, "Local" -> 1, "lobbying" -> 1, "little" -> 1, "literally" -> 1, "literacy" -> 1, "lists" -> 1, "listen" -> 1, "line-item" -> 1, "limits" -> 1, "likes" -> 1, "likely" -> 1, "light" -> 1, "lifts" -> 1, "life-threatening" -> 1, "lifelines" -> 1, "license" -> 1, "Libya" -> 1, "library" -> 1, "Liberty" -> 1, "liberty" -> 1, "leverage" -> 1, "leveled" -> 1, "letter" -> 1, "lethal" -> 1, "lesbians" -> 1, "lending" -> 1, "legitimate" -> 1, "Legal" -> 1, "legacy" -> 1, "Led" -> 1, "Lebanon" -> 1, "leaving" -> 1, "Leave" -> 1, "leader" -> 1, "layoffs" -> 1, "layer" -> 1, "lay" -> 1, "lawfully" -> 1, "lawful" -> 1, "law-abiding" -> 1, "Law" -> 1, "launch" -> 1, "larger" -> 1, "landmines" -> 1, "landmark" -> 1, "labor-management" -> 1, "laboratories" -> 1, "Korea's" -> 1, "Koreans" -> 1, "Koop" -> 1, "knowing" -> 1, "knew" -> 1, "kingpins" -> 1, "kind" -> 1, "Kennedy-Kassebaum" -> 1, "keeping" -> 1, "Kazakhstan" -> 1, "juvenile" -> 1, "Just" -> 1, "judicial" -> 1, "Jordan" -> 1, "jointly" -> 1, "joins" -> 1, "job-training" -> 1, "job-creating" -> 1, "Jewish" -> 1, "jet" -> 1, "Jerusalem" -> 1, "jeopardize" -> 1, "itself" -> 1, "issued" -> 1, "Israel's" -> 1, "Israeli-Palestinian" -> 1, "isolated" -> 1, "islands" -> 1, "Islamic" -> 1, "irresponsibly" -> 1, "IRA's" -> 1, "IRA" -> 1, "involvement" -> 1, "involved" -> 1, 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1, "government-to-government" -> 1, "Government's" -> 1, "governance" -> 1, "goods" -> 1, "gone" -> 1, "goes" -> 1, "God's" -> 1, "God-given" -> 1, "Goals" -> 1, "Giuliani" -> 1, "gifts" -> 1, "G.I." -> 1, "Georgia's" -> 1, "George" -> 1, "genocide" -> 1, "generation" -> 1, "generate" -> 1, "gender" -> 1, "gay" -> 1, "GATT" -> 1, "garnish" -> 1, "gang-prevention" -> 1, "G-7" -> 1, "fundamentally" -> 1, "fundamental" -> 1, "fund" -> 1, "functions" -> 1, "Fulfilling" -> 1, "fulfill" -> 1, "fugitives" -> 1, "fuel" -> 1, "frozen" -> 1, "Front-line" -> 1, "front" -> 1, "From" -> 1, "friends" -> 1, "freeze" -> 1, "freed" -> 1, "Freddie" -> 1, "frayed" -> 1, "frankly" -> 1, "FRA" -> 1, "found" -> 1, "forging" -> 1, "forged" -> 1, "forests" -> 1, "forcing" -> 1, "Force" -> 1, "footing" -> 1, "foot" -> 1, "following" -> 1, "follow" -> 1, "foisted" -> 1, "flows" -> 1, "flowed" -> 1, "Florida" -> 1, "floods" -> 1, "flexible" -> 1, "flex" -> 1, "flee" -> 1, "fixing" -> 1, "fixed" -> 1, "fix" -> 1, 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DateObject[{1992, 7, 13}], "Text" -> "A New Covenant with the American People\n\nPreamble\n\nTwo hundred summers ago, this Democratic Party was founded by the man whose burning pen fired the spirit of the American Revolution—who once argued we should overthrow our own government every 20 years to renew our freedom and keep pace with a changing world. In 1992, the party Thomas Jefferson founded invokes his spirit of revolution anew.\nOur land reverberates with a battle cry of frustration that emanates from America's very soul—from the families in our bedrock neighborhoods, from the unsung, workaday heroes of the world's greatest democracy and economy. America is on the wrong track. The American people are hurting. The American Dream of expanding opportunity has faded. Middle class families are working hard, playing by the rules, but still falling behind. Poverty has exploded. Our people are torn by divisions.\nThe last 12 years have been a nightmare of Republican irresponsibility and neglect. America's leadership is indifferent at home and uncertain in the world. Republican mismanagement has disarmed government as an instrument to make our economy work and support the people's most basic values, needs and hopes. The Republicans brought America a false and fragile prosperity based on borrowing, not income, and so will leave behind a mountain of public debt and a backbreaking annual burden in interest. It is wrong to borrow to spend on ourselves, leaving our children to pay our debts.\nWe hear the anguish and the anger of the American people. We know it is directed not just at the Republican administrations that have had power, but at government itself.\nTheir anger is justified. We can no longer afford business as usual—neither the policies of the last 12 years of tax breaks for the rich, mismanagement, lack of leadership and cuts in services for the middle class and the poor, nor the adoption of new programs and new spending without new thinking. It is time to listen to the grass roots of America, time to renew the spirit of citizen activism that has always been the touchstone of a free and democratic society.\nTherefore we call for a revolution in government—to take power away from entrenched bureaucracies and narrow interests in Washington and put it back in the hands of ordinary people. We vow to make government more decentralized, more flexible, and more accountable—to reform public institutions and replace public officials who aren't leading with ones who will.\nThe Revolution of 1992 is about restoring America's economic greatness. We need to rebuild America by abandoning the something-for-nothing ethic of the last decade and putting people first for a change. Only a thriving economy, a strong manufacturing base, and growth in creative new enterprise can generate the resources to meet the nation's pressing human and social needs. An expanding, entrepreneurial economy of high-skill, high-wage jobs is the most important family policy, urban policy, labor policy, minority policy and foreign policy America can have.\nThe Revolution of 1992 is about putting government back on the side of working men and women—to help those who work hard, pay their bills, play by the rules, don't lobby for tax breaks, do their best to give their kids a good education and to keep them away from drugs, who want a safe neighborhood for their families, the security of decent, productive jobs for themselves, and a dignified life for their parents.\nThe Revolution of 1992 is about a radical change in the way government operates—not the Republican proposition that government has no role, nor the old notion that there's a program for every problem, but a shift to a more efficient, flexible and results-oriented government that improves services, expands choices, and empowers citizens and communities to change our country from the bottom up. We believe in an activist government, but it must work in a different, more responsive way.\nThe Revolution of 1992 is about facing up to tough choices. There is no relief for America's frustration in the politics of diversion and evasion, of false choices or of no choices at all. Instead of everyone in Washington blaming one another for inaction, we will act decisively—and ask to be held accountable if we don't.\nAbove all the Revolution of 1992 is about restoring the basic American values that built this country and will always make it great: personal responsibility, individual liberty, tolerance, faith, family and hard work. We offer the American people not only new ideas, a new course, and a new President, but a return to the enduring principles that set our nation apart: the promise of opportunity, the strength of community, the dignity of work, and a decent life for senior citizens.\nTo make this revolution, we seek a New Covenant to repair the damaged bond between the American people and their government, that will expand opportunity, insist upon greater individual responsibility in return, restore community, and ensure national security in a profoundly new era.\nWe welcome the close scrutiny of the American people, including Americans who may have thought the Democratic Party had forgotten its way, as well as all who know us as the champions of those who have been denied a chance. With this platform we take our case for change to the American people.\nI. Opportunity\n\nOur Party's first priority is opportunity—broad-based, non-inflationary economic growth and the opportunity that flows from it. Democrats in 1992 hold nothing more important for America than an economy that offers growth and jobs for all.\nPresident Bush, with no interest in domestic policy, has given America the slowest economic growth, the slowest income growth, and the slowest jobs growth since the Great Depression. And the American people know the long Bush recession reflects not just a business cycle, but a long-term slide, so that even in a fragile recovery we're sinking. The ballooning Bush deficits hijacked capital from productive investments. Savings and loan sharks enriched themselves at their country's expense. The stock market tripled, but average incomes stalled, and poverty claimed more of our children.\nWe reject both the do-nothing government of the last twelve years and the big government theory that says we can hamstring business and tax and spend our way to prosperity. Instead we offer a third way. Just as we have always viewed working men and women as the bedrock of our economy, we honor business as a noble endeavor, and vow to create a far better climate for firms and independent contractors of all sizes that empower their workers, revolutionize their workplaces, respect the environment, and serve their communities well.\nWe believe in free enterprise and the power of market forces. But economic growth will not come without a national economic strategy to invest in people. For twelve years our country has had no economic vision, leadership or strategy. It is time to put our people and our country first.\nInvesting In America\n\nThe only way to lay the foundation for renewed American prosperity is to spur both public and private investment. We must strive to close both the budget deficit and the investment gap. Our major competitors invest far more than we do in roads, bridges, and the information networks and technologies of the future. We will rebuild America by investing more in transportation, environmental technologies, defense conversion, and a national information network.\nTo begin making our economy grow, the President and Congress should agree that savings from defense must be reinvested productively at home, including research, education and training, and other productive investments. This will sharply increase the meager nine percent of the national budget now devoted to the future. We will create a \"future budget\" for investments that make us richer, to be kept separate from those parts of the budget that pay for the past and present. For the private sector, instead of a sweeping capital gains windfall to the wealthy and those who speculate, we will create an investment tax credit and a capital gains reduction for patient investors in emerging technologies and new businesses.\nSupport for Innovation\n\nWe will take back the advantage now ceded to Japan and Germany, which invest in new technologies at higher rates than the U.S. and have the growth to show for it. We will make the R&D tax credit permanent, double basic research in the key technologies for our future, and create a civilian research agency to fast-forward their development.\nThe Deficit\n\nAddressing the deficit requires fair and shared sacrifice of all Americans for the common good. In 12 Republican years a national debt that took 200 years to accumulate has been quadrupled. Rising interest on that debt now swallows one tax dollar in seven. In place of the Republican supply-side disaster, the Democratic investment, economic conversion and growth strategy will generate more revenues from a growing economy. We must also tackle spending, by putting everything on the table; eliminate nonproductive programs; achieve defense savings; reform entitlement programs to control soaring health care costs; cut federal administrative costs by 3 percent annually for four years; limit increases in the \"present budget\" to the rate of growth in the average American's paycheck; apply a strict \"pay as you go\" rule to new non-investment spending; and make the rich pay their fair share in taxes. These choices will be made while protecting senior citizens and without further victimizing the poor. This deficit reduction effort will encourage private savings, eliminate the budget deficit over time, and permit fiscal policies that can restore America's economic health.\nDefense Conversion\n\nOur economy needs both the people and the funds released from defense at the Cold War's end. We will help the stalwarts of that struggle—the men and women who served in our armed forces and who work in our defense industries—make the most of a new era. We will provide early notice of program changes to give communities, businesses and workers enough time to plan. We will honor and support our veterans. Departing military personnel, defense workers, and defense support personnel will have access to job retraining, continuing education, placement and relocation assistance, early retirement benefits for military personnel, and incentives to enter teaching, law enforcement and other vital civilian fields. Redirected national laboratories and a new civilian research agency will put defense scientists, engineers and technicians to work in critical civilian technologies. Small business defense firms will have technical assistance and transition grants and loans to help convert to civilian markets, and defense dependent communities will have similar aid in planning and implementing conversion. We will strongly support our civilian space program, particularly environmental missions.\nThe Cities\n\nOnly a robust economy will revitalize our cities. It is in all Americans' interest that the cities once again be places where hard-working families can put down roots and find good jobs, quality health care, affordable housing, and decent schools. Democrats will create a new partnership to rebuild America's cities after 12 years of Republican neglect. This partnership with the mayors will include consideration of the seven economic growth initiatives set forth by our nation's mayors. We will create jobs by investing significant resources to put people back to work, beginning with a summer jobs initiative and training programs for inner-city youth. We support a stronger community development program and targeted fiscal assistance to cities that need it most. A national public works investment and infrastructure program will provide jobs and strengthen our cities, suburbs, rural communities and country. We will encourage the flow of investment to inner city development and housing through targeted enterprise zones and incentives for private and public pension funds to invest in urban and rural projects. While cracking down on redlining and housing discrimination, we also support and will enforce a revitalized Community Reinvestment Act that challenges banks to lend to entrepreneurs and development projects; a national network of Community Development Banks to invest in urban and rural small businesses; and microenterprise lending for poor people seeking self-employment as an alternative to welfare.\nAgriculture and the Rural Community\n\nAll Americans, producers and consumers alike, benefit when our food and fiber are produced by hundreds of thousands of family farmers receiving fair prices for their products. The abundance of our nation's food and fiber system should not be taken for granted. The revolution that lifted America to the forefront of world agriculture was achieved through a unique partnership of public and private interests. The inattention and hostility that has characterized Republican food, agricultural and rural development policies of the past twelve years have caused a crisis in rural America. The cost of Republican farm policy has been staggering and its total failure is demonstrated by the record number of rural bankruptcies.\nA sufficient and sustainable agricultural economy can be achieved through fiscally responsible programs. It is time to reestablish the private/public partnership to ensure that family farmers get a fair return for their labor and investment, so that consumers receive safe and nutritious foods, and that needed investments are made in basic research, education, rural business development, market development and infrastructure to sustain rural communities.\nWorkers' Rights\n\nOur workplaces must be revolutionized to make them more flexible and productive. We will reform the job safety laws to empower workers with greater rights and to hold employers accountable for dangers on the job. We will act against sexual harassment in the workplace. We will honor the work ethic—by expanding the earned income tax credit so no one with children at home who works full-time is still in poverty; by fighting on the side of family farmers to ensure they get a fair price for their hard work; by working to sustain rural communities; by making work more valuable than welfare; and by supporting the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively without fear of intimidation or permanent replacement during labor disputes.\nLifelong Learning\n\nA competitive American economy requires the global market's best educated, best trained, most flexible work force. It's not enough to spend more on our schools; we must insist on results. We oppose the Bush Administration's efforts to bankrupt the public school system—the bedrock of democracy—through private school vouchers. To help children reach school ready to learn, we will expand child health and nutrition programs and extend Head Start to all eligible children, and guarantee all children access to quality, affordable child care. We deplore the savage inequalities among public schools across the land, and believe every child deserves an equal chance to a world class education. Reallocating resources toward this goal must be a priority. We support education reforms such as site-based decision-making and public school choice, with strong protections against discrimination. We support the goal of a 90 percent graduation rate, and programs to end dropouts. We will invest in educational technology, and establish world-class standards in math, science and other core subjects and support effective tests of progress to meet them. In areas where there are no registered apprenticeship programs, we will adopt a national apprenticeship-style program to ease the transition from school to work for non-college bound students so they can acquire skills that lead to high-wage jobs. In the new economy, opportunity will depend on lifelong learning. We will support the goal of literacy for all Americans. We will ask firms to invest in the training of all workers, not just corporate management.\nA Domestic GI Bill\n\nOver the past twelve years skyrocketing costs and declining middle class incomes have placed higher education out of reach for millions of Americans. It is time to revolutionize the way student loan programs are run. We will make college affordable to all students who are qualified to attend, regardless of family income. A Domestic G.I. Bill will enable all Americans to borrow money for college, so long as they are willing to pay it back as a percentage of their income over time or through national service addressing unmet community needs.\nAffordable Health Care\n\nAll Americans should have universal access to quality, affordable health care—not as a privilege, but as a right. That requires tough controls on health costs, which are rising at two to three times the rate of inflation, terrorizing American families and businesses and depriving millions of the care they need. We will enact a uniquely American reform of the health care system to control costs and make health care affordable; ensure quality and choice of health care providers; cover all Americans regardless of preexisting conditions; squeeze out waste, bureaucracy and abuse; improve primary and preventive care including child immunization and prevention of diseases like Tuberculosis now becoming rampant in our cities; provide expanded education on the relationship between diet and health; expand access to mental health treatment services; provide a safety net through support of public hospitals; provide for the full range of reproductive choice—education, counseling, access to contraceptives, and the right to a safe, legal abortion; expand medical research; and provide more long term care, including home health care. We will make ending the epidemic in breast cancer a major priority, and expand research on breast, cervical and ovarian cancer, infertility, reproductive health services and other special health needs of women. We must be united in declaring war on AIDS and HIV disease, implement the recommendations of the National Commission on AIDS and fully fund the Ryan White Care Act; provide targeted and honest prevention campaigns; combat HIV-related discrimination; make drug treatment available for all addicts who seek it; guarantee access to quality care; expand clinical trials for treatments and vaccines; and speed up the FDA drug approval process.\nFairness\n\nGrowth and equity work in tandem. People should share in society's common costs according to their ability to pay. In the last decade, mounting payroll and other taxes have fallen disproportionately on the middle class. We will relieve the tax burden on middle class Americans by forcing the rich to pay their fair share. We will provide long-overdue tax relief to families with children. To broaden opportunity, we will support fair lending practices.\nEnergy Efficiency and Sustainable Development\n\nWe reject the Republican myth that energy efficiency and environmental protection are enemies of economic growth. We will make our economy more efficient, by using less energy, reducing our dependence on foreign oil, and producing less solid and toxic waste. We will adopt a coordinated transportation policy, with a strong commitment to mass transit; encourage efficient alternative-fueled vehicles; increase our reliance on clean natural gas; promote clean coal technology; invest in R&D on renewable energy sources; strengthen efforts to prevent air and water pollution; support incentives for domestic oil and gas operations; and push for revenue-neutral incentives that reward conservation, prevent pollution and encourage recycling.\nCivil and Equal Rights\n\nWe don't have an American to waste. Democrats will continue to lead the fight to ensure that no Americans suffer discrimination or deprivation of rights on the basis of race, gender, language, national origin, religion, age, disability, sexual orientation, or other characteristics irrelevant to ability. We support the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment; affirmative action; stronger protection of voting rights for racial and ethnic minorities, including language access to voting; and continued resistance to discriminatory English-only pressure groups. We will reverse the Bush Administration's assault on civil rights enforcement, and instead work to rebuild and vigorously use machinery for civil rights enforcement; support comparable remedies for women; aggressively prosecute hate crimes; strengthen legal services for the poor; deal with other nations in such a way that Americans of any origin do not become scapegoats or victims of foreign policy disputes; provide civil rights protection for gay men and lesbians and an end to Defense Department discrimination; respect Native American culture and our treaty commitments; require the United States Government to recognize its trustee obligations to the inhabitants of Hawaii generally, and to Native Hawaiians in particular; and fully enforce the Americans with Disability Act to enable people with disabilities to achieve independence and function at their highest possible level.\nCommonwealths and Territories\n\nWe recognize the existing status of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and the strong economic relationship between the people of Puerto Rico and the United States. We pledge to support the right of the people of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico to choose freely, and in concert with the U.S. Congress, their relationship with the United States, either as an enhanced commonwealth, a state or an independent nation. We support fair participation for Puerto Rico in federal programs. We pledge to the people of American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the Virgin Islands just and fair treatment under federal policies, assisting their economic and social development. We respect their right and that of the people of Palau to decide freely their future relationship with the United States and to be consulted on issues and policies that directly affect them.\nII. Responsibility\n\nSixty years ago, Franklin Roosevelt gave hope to a nation mired in the Great Depression. While government should promise every American the opportunity to get ahead, it was the people's responsibility, he said, to make the most of that opportunity: \"Faith in America demands that we recognize the new terms of the old social contract. In the strength of great hope we must all shoulder our common load.\"\nFor twelve years, the Republicans have expected too little of our public institutions and placed too little faith in our people. We offer a new social contract based neither on callous, do-nothing Republican neglect, nor on an outdated faith in programs as the solution to every problem. We favor a third way beyond the old approaches—to put government back on the side of citizens who play by the rules. We believe that by what it says and how it conducts its business, government must once again make responsibility an instrument of national purpose. Our future as a nation depends upon the daily assumption of personal responsibility by millions of Americans from all walks of life—for the religious faiths they follow, the ethics they practice, the values they instill, and the pride they take in their work.\nStrengthening The Family\n\nGovernments don't raise children, people do. People who bring children into this world have a responsibility to care for them and give them values, motivation and discipline. Children should not have children. We need a national crackdown on deadbeat parents, an effective system of child support enforcement nationwide, and a systematic effort to establish paternity for every child. We must also make it easier for parents to build strong families through pay equity. Family and medical leave will ensure that workers don't have to choose between family and work. We support a family preservation program to reduce child and spousal abuse by providing preventive services and foster care to families in crisis. We favor ensuring quality and affordable child care opportunities for working parents, and a fair and healthy start for every child, including essential pre-natal and well baby care. We support the needs of our senior citizens for productive and healthy lives, including hunger prevention, income adequacy, transportation access and abuse prevention.\nWelfare Reform\n\nWelfare should be a second chance, not a way of life. We want to break the cycle of welfare by adhering to two simple principles: no one who is able to work can stay on welfare forever, and no one who works should live in poverty. We will continue to help those who cannot help themselves. We will offer people on welfare a new social contract. We'll invest in education and job training, and provide the child care and health care they need to go to work and achieve long-term self- sufficiency. We will give them the help they need to make the transition from welfare to work, and require people who can work to go to work within two years in available jobs either in the private sector or in community service to meet unmet needs. This will restore the covenant that welfare was meant to be: a promise of temporary help for people who have fallen on hard times.\nChoice\n\nDemocrats stand behind the right of every woman to choose, consistent with Roe v. Wade, regardless of ability to pay, and support a national law to protect that right.\nIt is a fundamental constitutional liberty that individual Americans—not government—can best take responsibility for making the most difficult and intensely personal decisions regarding reproduction. The goal of our nation must be to make abortion less necessary, not more difficult or more dangerous. We pledge to support contraceptive research, family planning, comprehensive family life education, and policies that support healthy childbearing and enable parents to care most effectively for their children.\nMaking Schools Work\n\nEducation is a cooperative enterprise that can only succeed if everyone accepts and exercises personal responsibility. Students must stay in school and do their best; parents must get involved in their children's education; teachers must attain, maintain, and demonstrate classroom competency; school administrators must enforce discipline and high standards of educational attainment; governments must end the inequalities that create educational ghettos among school districts and provide equal educational opportunity for all; and ensure that teachers' pay measures up to their decisive role in children's lives; and the American people should recognize education as the core of our economy, democracy and society. Labor-Management Responsibilities.\nThe private sector is the engine of our economy and the main source of national wealth. But it is not enough for those in the private sector just to make as much money as they can. The most irresponsible people in all of the 1980s were those at the top of the ladder: the inside traders, quick buck artists, and S&L kingpins who looked out for themselves and not for the country. America's corporate leaders have a responsibility to invest in their country. CEOs, who pay themselves 100 times what they pay the average worker, shouldn't get big raises unrelated to performance. If a company wants to overpay its executives and underinvest in the future or transfer jobs overseas, it shouldn't get special treatment and tax breaks from the Treasury. Managers must work with employees to make the workplace safer, more satisfying and more efficient.\nWorkers must also accept added responsibilities in the new economy. In return for an increased voice and a greater stake in the success of their enterprises, workers should be prepared to join in cooperative efforts to increase productivity, flexibility and quality. Government's neutrality between labor and management cannot mean neutrality about the collective bargaining process, which has been purposely crippled by Republican administrations. Our economic growth depends on processes, including collective bargaining, that permit labor and management to work together on their common interests, even as they work out their conflicts.\nResponsibility for the Environment\n\nFor ourselves and future generations, we must protect our environment. We will protect our old growth forests, preserve critical habitats, provide a genuine \"no net loss\" policy on wetlands, reduce our dependence on toxic chemicals, conserve the critical resources of soil, water and air, oppose new offshore oil drilling and mineral exploration and production in our nation's many environmentally critical areas, and address ocean pollution by reducing oil and toxic waste spills at sea. We believe America's youth can serve its country well through a civilian conservation corps. To protect the public health, we will clean up the environmental horrors at federal facilities, insist that private polluters clean up their toxic and hazardous wastes, and vigorously prosecute environmental criminals. We will oppose Republican efforts to gut the Clean Air Act in the guise of competitiveness.\nWe will reduce the volume of solid waste and encourage the use of recycled materials while discouraging excess packaging. To avoid the mistakes of the past, we will actively support energy- efficiency, recycling, and pollution prevention strategies.\nResponsible Government\n\nDemocrats in 1992 intend to lead a revolution in government, challenging it to act responsibly and be accountable, starting with the hardest and most urgent problems of the deficit and economic growth. Rather than throw money at obsolete programs, we will eliminate unnecessary layers of management, cut administrative costs, give people more choices in the service they get, and empower them to make those choices. To foster greater responsibility in government at every level, we support giving greater flexibility to our cities, counties and states in achieving Federal mandates and carrying out existing programs.\nResponsible Officials\n\nAll branches of government must live by the laws the rest of us obey, determine their pay in an open manner that builds public trust, and eliminate special privileges. People in public office need to be accessible to the people they represent. It's time to reform the campaign finance system, to get big money out of our politics and let the people back in. We must limit overall campaign spending and limit the disproportionate and excessive role of PACs. We need new voter registration laws that expand the electorate, such as universal same-day registration, along with full political rights and protections for public employees and new regulations to ensure that the airwaves truly help citizens make informed choices among candidates and policies. And we need fair political representation for all sectors of our country—including the District of Columbia, which deserves and must get statehood status.\nIII. Restoring Community\n\nThe success of democracy in America depends substantially on the strength of our community institutions: families and neighborhoods, public schools, religious institutions, charitable organizations, civic groups and other voluntary organizations. In these social networks, the values and character of our citizens are formed, as we learn the habits and skills of self-government, and acquire an understanding of our common rights and responsibilities as citizens.\nTwelve years of Republican rule have undermined the spirit of mutual dependence and obligation that binds us together. Republican leaders have urged Americans to turn inward, to pursue private interests without regard to public responsibilities. By playing racial, ethnic and gender-based politics they have divided us against each other, created an atmosphere of blame, denial and fear, and undone the hard-fought battles for equality and fairness.\nOur communities form a vital \"third sector\" that lies between government and the marketplace. The wisdom, energy and resources required to solve our problems are not concentrated in Washington, but can be found throughout our communities, including America's non-profit sector, which has grown rapidly over the last decade. Government's best role is to enable people and communities to solve their own problems.\nAmerica's special genius has been to forge a community of shared values from people of remarkable and diverse backgrounds. As the party of inclusion, we take special pride in our country's emergence as the world's largest and most successful multiethnic, multiracial republic. We condemn antisemitism, racism, homophobia, bigotry and negative stereotyping of all kinds. We must help all Americans understand the diversity of our cultural heritage. But it is also essential that we preserve and pass on to our children the common elements that hold this mosaic together as we work to make our country a land of freedom and opportunity for all.\nBoth Republican neglect and traditional spending programs have proven unequal to these challenges. Democrats will pursue a new course that stresses work, family and individual responsibility, and that empowers Americans to liberate themselves from poverty and dependence. We pledge to bolster the institutions of civil society and place a new emphasis on civic enterprises that seek solutions to our nation's problems. Through common, cooperative efforts we can rebuild our communities and transform our nation.\nCombatting Crime and Drugs\n\nCrime is a relentless danger to our communities. Over the last decade, crime has swept through our country at an alarming rate. During the 1980s, more than 200,000 Americans were murdered, four times the number who died in Vietnam. Violent crimes rose by more than 16 percent since 1988 and nearly doubled since 1975. In our country today, a murder is committed every 25 minutes, a rape every six minutes, a burglary every 10 seconds. The pervasive fear of crime disfigures our public life and diminishes our freedom.\nNone suffer more than the poor: an explosive mixture of blighted prospects, drugs and exotic weaponry has turned many of our inner city communities into combat zones. As a result, crime is not only a symptom but also a major cause of the worsening poverty and demoralization that afflicts inner city communities.\nTo empower America's communities, Democrats pledge to restore government as the upholder of basic law and order for crime-ravaged communities. The simplest and most direct way to restore order in our cities is to put more police on the streets.\nAmerica's police are locked in an unequal struggle with crime: since 1951 the ratio of police officers to reported crimes has reversed, from three-to-one to one-to-three. We will create a Police Corps, in which participants would receive college aid in return for several years of service after graduation in a state or local police department. As we shift people and resources from defense to the civilian economy, we will create new jobs in law enforcement for those leaving the military.\nWe will expand drug counselling and treatment for those who need it, intensify efforts to educate our children at the earliest ages to the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse, and curb demand from the street corner to the penthouse suite, so that the U.S., with five percent of the world's population, no longer consumes 50 percent of the world's illegal drugs.\nCommunity Policing.\nNeighborhoods and police should be partners in the war on crime. Democrats support more community policing, which uses foot patrols and storefront offices to make police officers visible fixtures in urban neighborhoods. We will combat street violence and emphasize building trust and solving the problems that breed crime.\nFirearms.\nIt is time to shut down the weapons bazaars in our cities. We support a reasonable waiting period to permit background checks for purchases of handguns, as well as assault weapons controls to ban the possession, sale, importation and manufacture of the most deadly assault weapons. We do not support efforts to restrict weapons used for legitimate hunting and sporting purposes. We will work for swift and certain punishment of all people who violate the country's gun laws and for stronger sentences for criminals who use guns. We will also seek to shut down the black market for guns and impose severe penalties on people who sell guns to children.\nPursuing All Crime Aggressively.\nIn contrast to the Republican policy of leniency toward white collar crime—which breeds cynicism in poor communities about the impartiality of our justice system—Democrats will redouble efforts to ferret out and punish those who betray the public trust, rig financial markets, misuse their depositors' money or swindle their customers.\nFurther Initiatives.\nDemocrats also favor innovative sentencing and punishment options, including community service and boot camps for first time offenders; tougher penalties for rapists; victim-impact statements and restitution to ensure that crime victims will not be lost in the complexities of the criminal justice system; and initiatives to make our schools safe, including alternative schools for disruptive children.\nEmpowering The Poor and Expanding The Middle Class\n\nWe must further the new direction set in the Family Support Act of 1988, away from subsistence and dependence and toward work, family and personal initiative and responsibility. We advocate slower phasing out of Medicaid and other benefits to encourage work; special savings accounts to help low-income families build assets; fair lending; an indexed minimum wage; an expanded Job Corps; and an end to welfare rules that encourage family breakup and penalize individual initiative, such as the $1,000 limit on personal savings.\nImmigration.\nOur nation of immigrants has been invigorated repeatedly as new people, ideas and ways of life have become part of the American tapestry. Democrats support immigration policies that promote fairness, non-discrimination and family reunification, and that reflect our constitutional freedoms of speech, association and travel.\nHousing.\nSafe, secure housing is essential to the institutions of community and family. We support home ownership for working families and will honor that commitment through policies that encourage affordable mortgage credit. We must also confront homelessness by renovating, preserving and expanding the stock of affordable low-income housing. We support tenant management and ownership, so public housing residents can manage their own affairs and acquire property worth protecting.\nNational Service.\nWe will create new opportunities for citizens to serve each other, their communities and their country. By mobilizing hundreds of thousands of volunteers, national service will enhance the role of ordinary citizens in solving unresolved community problems.\nThe Arts\n\nWe believe in public support for the Arts, including a National Endowment for the Arts that is free from political manipulation and firmly rooted in the First Amendment's freedom of expression guarantee.\nIV. Preserving Our National Security\n\nDuring the past four years, we have seen the corrosive effect of foreign policies that are rooted in the past, divorced from our values, fearful of change and unable to meet its challenges. Under President Bush, crises have been managed, rather than prevented; dictators like Saddam Hussein have been wooed, rather than deterred; aggression by the Serbian regime against its neighbors in what was Yugoslavia has been met by American timidity rather than toughness; human rights abusers have been rewarded, not challenged; the environment has been neglected, not protected; and America's competitive edge in the global economy has been dulled, not honed. It is time for new American leadership that can meet the challenges of a changing world.\nAt the end of World War II, American strength had defeated tyranny and American ingenuity had overcome the Depression. Under President Truman, the United States led the world into a new era, redefining global security with bold approaches to tough challenges: containing communism with the NATO alliance and in Korea; building the peace through organizations such as the United Nations; and advancing global economic security through new multilateral institutions.\nNearly a half century later, we stand at another pivotal point in history. The collapse of communism does not mean the end of danger or threats to our interests. But it does pose an unprecedented opportunity to make our future more secure and prosperous. Once again, we must define a compelling vision for global leadership at the dawn of a new era.\nRestructuring Our Military Forces\n\nWe have not seen the end of violence, aggression and the conflicts that can threaten American interests and our hopes for a more peaceful world. What the United States needs is not the Bush Administration's Cold War thinking on a smaller scale, but a comprehensive restructuring of the American military enterprise to meet the threats that remain.\nMilitary Strength.\nUse Of Force.\nThe United States must be prepared to use military force decisively when necessary to defend our vital interests. The burdens of collective security in a new era must be shared fairly, and we should encourage multilateral peacekeeping through the United Nations and other international efforts.\nPreventing And Containing Conflict.\nAmerican policy must be focused on averting military threats as well as meeting them. To halt the spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, we must lead a renewed international effort to get tough with companies that peddle nuclear and chemical warfare technologies, strengthen the International Atomic Energy Agency, and enforce strong sanctions against governments that violate international restraints. A Comprehensive Test Ban would strengthen our ability to stop the spread of nuclear weapons to other countries, which may be our greatest future security threat. We must press for strong international limits on the dangerous and wasteful flow of conventional arms to troubled regions. A U.S. troop presence should be maintained in South Korea as long as North Korea presents a threat to South Korea.\nRestoring America's Economic Leadership\n\nThe United States cannot be strong abroad if it is weak at home. Restoring America's global economic leadership must become a central element of our national security policies. The strength of nations, once defined in military terms, now is measured also by the skills of their workers, the imagination of their managers and the power of their technologies.\nВ Either we develop and pursue a national plan for restoring our economy through a partnership of government, labor and business, or we slip behind the nations that are competing with us and growing. At stake are American jobs, our standard of living and the quality of life for ourselves and our children.\nEconomic strength—indeed our national security—is grounded on a healthy domestic economy. But we cannot be strong at home unless we are part of a vibrant and expanding global economy that recognizes human rights and seeks to improve the living standards of all the world's people. This is vital to achieving good quality, high paying jobs for Americans.\nTrade.\nOur government must work to expand trade, while insisting that the conduct of world trade is fair. It must fight to uphold American interests—promoting exports, expanding trade in agricultural and other products, opening markets in major product and service sectors with our principal competitors, and achieving reciprocal access. This should include renewed authority to use America's trading leverage against the most serious problems. The U.S. government also must firmly enforce U.S. laws against unfair trade.\nTrade Agreements.\nMultilateral trade agreements can advance our economic interests by expanding the global economy. Whether negotiating the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) or completing the GATT negotiations, our government must assure that our legitimate concerns about environmental, health and safety, and labor standards are included. Those American workers whose jobs are affected must have the benefit of effective adjustment assistance.\nPromoting Democracy\n\nBrave men and women—like the hero who stood in front of a tank in Beijing and the leader who stood on a tank in Moscow—are putting their lives on the line for democracy around the world. But as the tide of democracy rose in the former Soviet Union and in China, in the Baltics and South Africa, only reluctantly did this Administration abandon the status quo and embrace the fight for freedom.\nSupport for democracy serves our ideals and our interests. A more democratic world is a world that is more peaceful and more stable. An American foreign policy of engagement for democracy must effectively address:\nEmerging Democracies.\nHelping to lead an international effort to assist the emerging—and still fragile—democracies in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union build democratic institutions in free market settings, demilitarize their societies and integrate their economies into the world trading system. Unlike the Bush Administration, which waited too long to recognize the new democratic governments in the Baltic countries and the nations of the former Soviet Union, we must act decisively with our European allies to support freedom, diminish ethnic tensions, and oppose aggression in the former communist countries, such as Bosnia-Herzegovina, which are struggling to make the transition from communism to democracy. As change sweeps through the Balkans, the United States must be sensitive to the concerns of Greece regarding the use of the name Macedonia. And in the post-Cold War era, our foreign assistance programs in Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America and elsewhere should be targeted at helping democracies rather than tyrants.\nDemocracy Corps.\nPromoting democratic institutions by creating a Democracy Corps to send American volunteers to countries that seek legal, financial and political expertise to build democratic institutions, and support groups like the National Endowment for Democracy, the Asia Foundation, and others.\nChina Trade Terms.\nConditioning of favorable trade terms for China on respect for human rights in China and Tibet, greater market access for U.S. goods, and responsible conduct on weapons proliferation.\nSouth Africa.\nMaintenance of state and local sanctions against South Africa in support of an investment code of conduct, existing limits on deductibility of taxes paid to South Africa, and diplomatic pressure until there is an irreversible, full and fair accommodation with the black majority to create a democratic government with full rights for all its citizens. We deplore the continuing violence, especially in Boipatong Township, and are concerned about the collapse of the negotiations. The U.S. Government should consider reimposing Federal sanctions. The Democratic Party supports the creation of a South African/American Enterprise Fund that will provide a new interim government with public and private funds to assist in the development of democracy in South Africa.\nMiddle East Peace\n\nSupport for the peace process now underway in the Middle East, rooted in the tradition of the Camp David accords. Direct negotiations between Israel, her Arab neighbors and Palestinians, with no imposed solutions, are the only way to achieve enduring security for Israel and full peace for all parties in the region. The end of the Cold War does not alter America's deep interest in our long-standing special relationship with Israel, based on shared values, a mutual commitment to democracy, and a strategic alliance that benefits both nations. The United States must act effectively as an honest broker in the peace process. It must not, as has been the case with this Administration, encourage one side to believe that it will deliver unilateral concessions from the other. Jerusalem is the capital of the state of Israel and should remain an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths.\nHuman Rights\n\nStanding everywhere for the rights of individuals and respect for ethnic minorities against the repressive acts of governments—against torture, political imprisonment, and all attacks on civilized standards of human freedom. This is a proud tradition of the Democratic Party, which has stood for freedom in South Africa and continues to resist oppression in Cuba. Our nation should once again promote the principle of sanctuary for politically oppressed people everywhere, be they Haitian refugees, Soviet Jews seeking U.S. help in their successful absorption into Israeli society, or Vietnamese fleeing communism. Forcible return of anyone fleeing political repression is a betrayal of American values.\nHuman Needs\n\nSupport for the struggle against poverty and disease in the developing world, including the heartbreaking famine in Africa. We must not replace the East-West conflict with one between North and South, a growing divide between the industrialized and developing world. Our development programs must be reexamined and restructured to assure that their benefits truly help those most in need to help themselves. At stake are the lives of millions of human beings who live in hunger, uprooted from their homes, too often without hope. The United States should work to establish a specific plan and timetable for the elimination of world hunger.\nCyprus\n\nA renewed commitment to achieve a Cyprus settlement pursuant to the United Nations resolutions. This goal must now be restored to the diplomatic agenda of the United States.\nNorthern Ireland\n\nIn light of America's historic ties to the people of Great Britain and Ireland, and consistent with our country's commitment to peace, democracy and human rights around the world, a more active United States role in promoting peace and political dialogue to bring an end to the violence and achieve a negotiated solution in Northern Ireland.\nPreserving The Global Environment\n\nAs the threat of nuclear holocaust recedes, the future of the earth is challenged by gathering environmental crises. As governments around the world have sought the path to concerted action, the Bush Administration—despite its alleged foreign policy expertise—has been more of an obstacle to progress than a leader for change, practicing isolationism on an issue that affects us all. Democrats know we must act now to save the health of the earth, and the health of our children, for generations to come.\nAddressing Global Warming.\nThe United States must become a leader, not an impediment, in the fight against global warming. We should join our European allies in agreeing to limit carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000.\nOzone Depletion.\nThe United States must be a world leader in finding replacements for CFCs and other ozone depleting substances.\nBiodiversity.\nWe must work actively to protect the planet's biodiversity and preserve its forests. At the Rio Earth Summit, the Bush Administration's failure to negotiate a biodiversity treaty it could sign was an abdication of international leadership.\nDeveloping Nations\n\nWe must fashion imaginative ways of engaging governments and business in the effort to encourage developing nations to preserve their environmental heritage.\nPopulation Growth\n\nExplosive population growth must be controlled by working closely with other industrialized and developing nations and private organizations to fund greater family planning efforts.\nAs a nation and as a people, we have entered into a new era. The Republican President and his advisors are rooted in Cold War precepts and cannot think or act anew. Through almost a half century of sacrifice, constancy and strength, the American people advanced democracy's triumph in the Cold War. Only new leadership that restores our nation's greatness at home can successfully draw upon these same strengths of the American people to lead the world into a new era of peace and freedom.\nIn recent years we have seen brave people abroad face down tanks, defy coups, and risk exodus by boat on the high seas for a chance at freedom and the kind of opportunities we call the American Dream. It is time for Americans to fight against the decline of those same opportunities here at home.\nAmericans know that, in the end, we will all rise or fall together. To make our society one again, Democrats will restore America's founding values of family, community and common purpose.\nWe believe in the American people. We will challenge all Americans to give something back to their country. And they will be enriched in return, for when individuals assume responsibility, they acquire dignity. When people go to work, they rediscover a pride that was lost. When absent parents pay child support, they restore a connection they and their children need. When students work harder, they discover they can learn as well as any on earth. When corporate managers put their workers and long-term success ahead of short-term gain, their companies do well and so do they. When the leaders we elect assume responsibility for America's problems, we will do what is right to move America forward together.", "Words" -> 8313, "WordCounts" -> <|"the" -> 414, "and" -> 396, "to" -> 260, "of" -> 252, "in" -> 153, "a" -> 150, "for" -> 117, "our" -> 96, "We" -> 95, "that" -> 89, "will" -> 80, "on" -> 57, "their" -> 54, "must" -> 52, "is" -> 50, "we" -> 49, "people" -> 46, "as" -> 44, "The" -> 43, "American" -> 40, "with" -> 39, "new" -> 38, "by" -> 37, "support" -> 36, "work" -> 35, "have" -> 35, "be" -> 35, "an" -> 34, "more" -> 32, "all" -> 32, "who" -> 31, "not" -> 28, "make" -> 28, "government" -> 26, "from" -> 26, "at" -> 26, "they" -> 25, "are" -> 25, "public" -> 24, "economy" -> 23, "it" -> 22, "has" -> 22, "Americans" -> 22, "should" -> 21, "can" -> 21, "world" -> 20, "America's" -> 20, "or" -> 19, "national" -> 19, "health" -> 19, "years" -> 18, "United" -> 18, "Republican" -> 18, "other" -> 18, "communities" -> 18, "children" -> 18, "care" -> 18, "family" 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"businesses" -> 4, "build" -> 4, "benefits" -> 4, "behind" -> 4, "become" -> 4, "At" -> 4, "All" -> 4, "Administration's" -> 4, "acquire" -> 4, "abuse" -> 4, "ability" -> 4, "12" -> 4, "works" -> 3, "while" -> 3, "when" -> 3, "Washington" -> 3, "upon" -> 3, "Union" -> 3, "two" -> 3, "trust" -> 3, "transportation" -> 3, "toward" -> 3, "threats" -> 3, "threat" -> 3, "third" -> 3, "these" -> 3, "terms" -> 3, "taxes" -> 3, "success" -> 3, "students" -> 3, "stronger" -> 3, "strategy" -> 3, "stood" -> 3, "still" -> 3, "status" -> 3, "stake" -> 3, "spend" -> 3, "slowest" -> 3, "skills" -> 3, "share" -> 3, "set" -> 3, "serve" -> 3, "senior" -> 3, "seen" -> 3, "sanctions" -> 3, "safety" -> 3, "rich" -> 3, "Restoring" -> 3, "restoring" -> 3, "responsibilities" -> 3, "requires" -> 3, "regardless" -> 3, "reduce" -> 3, "pursue" -> 3, "protection" -> 3, "prosperity" -> 3, "promote" -> 3, "promise" -> 3, "priority" -> 3, "pride" -> 3, "politics" -> 3, "planning" -> 3, "plan" -> 3, "personnel" -> 3, "permit" -> 3, "own" -> 3, "over" -> 3, "ourselves" -> 3, "Only" -> 3, "Northern" -> 3, "North" -> 3, "nor" -> 3, "neighborhoods" -> 3, "negotiations" -> 3, "markets" -> 3, "making" -> 3, "long-term" -> 3, "live" -> 3, "like" -> 3, "less" -> 3, "lending" -> 3, "legal" -> 3, "learn" -> 3, "leaders" -> 3, "land" -> 3, "Ireland" -> 3, "insist" -> 3, "inner" -> 3, "initiative" -> 3, "increase" -> 3, "if" -> 3, "hunger" -> 3, "hope" -> 3, "hold" -> 3, "high" -> 3, "guns" -> 3, "guarantee" -> 3, "growing" -> 3, "groups" -> 3, "Great" -> 3, "Government" -> 3, "funds" -> 3, "four" -> 3, "food" -> 3, "firms" -> 3, "fear" -> 3, "favor" -> 3, "farmers" -> 3, "Family" -> 3, "faith" -> 3, "existing" -> 3, "establish" -> 3, "essential" -> 3, "environment" -> 3, "enough" -> 3, "effectively" -> 3, "effective" -> 3, "earth" -> 3, "drugs" -> 3, "domestic" -> 3, "does" -> 3, "Depression" -> 3, "depends" -> 3, "decent" -> 3, "debt" -> 3, "crimes" -> 3, "Crime" -> 3, "corporate" -> 3, "cooperative" -> 3, "conversion" -> 3, "contract" -> 3, "conduct" -> 3, "combat" -> 3, "college" -> 3, "collective" -> 3, "choose" -> 3, "breaks" -> 3, "big" -> 3, "bedrock" -> 3, "based" -> 3, "away" -> 3, "average" -> 3, "assault" -> 3, "Arts" -> 3, "around" -> 3, "among" -> 3, "always" -> 3, "agricultural" -> 3, "aggression" -> 3, "Administration" -> 3, "achieving" -> 3, "accountable" -> 3, "zones" -> 2, "youth" -> 2, "wrong" -> 2, "would" -> 2, "workplaces" -> 2, "workplace" -> 2, "Workers" -> 2, "whose" -> 2, "While" -> 2, "where" -> 2, "were" -> 2, "Welfare" -> 2, "ways" -> 2, "water" -> 2, "war" -> 2, "want" -> 2, "vow" -> 2, "voting" -> 2, "volunteers" -> 2, "vision" -> 2, "violate" -> 2, "vigorously" -> 2, "victims" -> 2, "unmet" -> 2, "universal" -> 2, "unequal" -> 2, "Under" -> 2, "truly" -> 2, "treaty" -> 2, "tradition" -> 2, "trading" -> 2, "Through" -> 2, "thousands" -> 2, "thinking" -> 2, "there" -> 2, "technology" -> 2, "teachers" -> 2, "tank" -> 2, "sustain" -> 2, "suffer" -> 2, "successful" -> 2, "struggle" -> 2, "street" -> 2, "stock" -> 2, "stay" -> 2, "stand" -> 2, "spread" -> 2, "solving" -> 2, "solve" -> 2, "solutions" -> 2, "solution" -> 2, "solid" -> 2, "shut" -> 2, "shouldn't" -> 2, "shift" -> 2, "sexual" -> 2, "seven" -> 2, "seeking" -> 2, "secure" -> 2, "sectors" -> 2, "says" -> 2, "same" -> 2, "sacrifice" -> 2, "rule" -> 2, "rose" -> 2, "roots" -> 2, "revolutionize" -> 2, "Responsible" -> 2, "responsible" -> 2, "Responsibility" -> 2, "require" -> 2, "Republicans" -> 2, "reproductive" -> 2, "replace" -> 2, "renew" -> 2, "remain" -> 2, "religious" -> 2, "relief" -> 2, "reject" -> 2, "registration" -> 2, "regarding" -> 2, "reduction" -> 2, "reducing" -> 2, "recycling" -> 2, "receive" -> 2, "reach" -> 2, "R&D" -> 2, "racial" -> 2, "purpose" -> 2, "punishment" -> 2, "protections" -> 2, "protecting" -> 2, "prosecute" -> 2, "Promoting" -> 2, "projects" -> 2, "progress" -> 2, "products" -> 2, "problem" -> 2, "principles" -> 2, "preventive" -> 2, "prevent" -> 2, "pressure" -> 2, "Preserving" -> 2, "present" -> 2, "prepared" -> 2, "population" -> 2, "playing" -> 2, "play" -> 2, "placed" -> 2, "place" -> 2, "permanent" -> 2, "people's" -> 2, "penalties" -> 2, "peaceful" -> 2, "party" -> 2, "part" -> 2, "ownership" -> 2, "Over" -> 2, "origin" -> 2, "ordinary" -> 2, "order" -> 2, "officers" -> 2, "number" -> 2, "New" -> 2, "neutrality" -> 2, "networks" -> 2, "network" -> 2, "net" -> 2, "neighbors" -> 2, "necessary" -> 2, "Native" -> 2, "mutual" -> 2, "multilateral" -> 2, "mismanagement" -> 2, "minutes" -> 2, "minorities" -> 2, "Military" -> 2, "medical" -> 2, "mean" -> 2, "mayors" -> 2, "may" -> 2, "mass" -> 2, "many" -> 2, "managers" -> 2, "made" -> 2, "low-income" -> 2, "lost" -> 2, "longer" -> 2, "local" -> 2, "loan" -> 2, "living" -> 2, "little" -> 2, "limits" -> 2, "liberty" -> 2, "level" -> 2, "legitimate" -> 2, "leaving" -> 2, "leave" -> 2, "language" -> 2, "keep" -> 2, "justice" -> 2, "join" -> 2, "It's" -> 2, "Islands" -> 2, "investing" -> 2, "instrument" -> 2, "Instead" -> 2, "instead" -> 2, "initiatives" -> 2, "infrastructure" -> 2, "information" -> 2, "inequalities" -> 2, "industrialized" -> 2, "individuals" -> 2, "independent" -> 2, "incomes" -> 2, "include" -> 2, "improve" -> 2, "important" -> 2, "II" -> 2, "ideas" -> 2, "hundreds" -> 2, "Human" -> 2, "hopes" -> 2, "honest" -> 2, "his" -> 2, "high-wage" -> 2, "higher" -> 2, "heritage" -> 2, "half" -> 2, "Growth" -> 2, "greatness" -> 2, "greatest" -> 2, "great" -> 2, "graduation" -> 2, "Government's" -> 2, "Global" -> 2, "generations" -> 2, "generate" -> 2, "gas" -> 2, "gains" -> 2, "further" -> 2, "fund" -> 2, "fully" -> 2, "frustration" -> 2, "freely" -> 2, "fragile" -> 2, "founded" -> 2, "foster" -> 2, "forests" -> 2, "forces" -> 2, "force" -> 2, "flow" -> 2, "flexibility" -> 2, "fleeing" -> 2, "fiscal" -> 2, "firmly" -> 2, "financial" -> 2, "fiber" -> 2, "Federal" -> 2, "far" -> 2, "false" -> 2, "fallen" -> 2, "faiths" -> 2, "fairness" -> 2, "failure" -> 2, "expanded" -> 2, "everywhere" -> 2, "everyone" -> 2, "even" -> 2, "European" -> 2, "equity" -> 2, "Equal" -> 2, "equal" -> 2, "Environment" -> 2, "enterprises" -> 2, "enriched" -> 2, "Energy" -> 2, "enduring" -> 2, "Endowment" -> 2, "empowers" -> 2, "employees" -> 2, "either" -> 2, "efficiency" -> 2, "Economic" -> 2, "East" -> 2, "early" -> 2, "each" -> 2, "During" -> 2, "Dream" -> 2, "do-nothing" -> 2, "Domestic" -> 2, "disputes" -> 2, "disease" -> 2, "discipline" -> 2, "diplomatic" -> 2, "dignity" -> 2, "difficult" -> 2, "Development" -> 2, "deserves" -> 2, "deplore" -> 2, "Defense" -> 2, "decisively" -> 2, "dangers" -> 2, "dangerous" -> 2, "danger" -> 2, "Cyprus" -> 2, "cycle" -> 2, "cut" -> 2, "crisis" -> 2, "crises" -> 2, "criminals" -> 2, "Covenant" -> 2, "course" -> 2, "core" -> 2, "controls" -> 2, "control" -> 2, "continuing" -> 2, "continue" -> 2, "consumers" -> 2, "constitutional" -> 2, "consistent" -> 2, "conservation" -> 2, "Congress" -> 2, "conflicts" -> 2, "concerns" -> 2, "comprehensive" -> 2, "competitors" -> 2, "competitive" -> 2, "companies" -> 2, "Commonwealth" -> 2, "come" -> 2, "collapse" -> 2, "close" -> 2, "civic" -> 2, "choice" -> 2, "children's" -> 2, "changing" -> 2, "challenged" -> 2, "century" -> 2, "case" -> 2, "Care" -> 2, "cancer" -> 2, "campaign" -> 2, "call" -> 2, "By" -> 2, "burden" -> 2, "building" -> 2, "bring" -> 2, "breast" -> 2, "borrow" -> 2, "black" -> 2, "biodiversity" -> 2, "Bill" -> 2, "benefit" -> 2, "bargaining" -> 2, "available" -> 2, "assure" -> 2, "assume" -> 2, "assist" -> 2, "ask" -> 2, "areas" -> 2, "any" -> 2, "another" -> 2, "anger" -> 2, "anew" -> 2, "An" -> 2, "alternative" -> 2, "allies" -> 2, "alliance" -> 2, "air" -> 2, "AIDS" -> 2, "aid" -> 2, "ahead" -> 2, "ago" -> 2, "agency" -> 2, "after" -> 2, "adopt" -> 2, "administrative" -> 2, "administrations" -> 2, "Addressing" -> 2, "address" -> 2, "actively" -> 2, "action" -> 2, "achieved" -> 2, "accessible" -> 2, "abroad" -> 2, "abortion" -> 2, "1988" -> 2, "1980s" -> 2, "$1,000" -> 1, "Yugoslavia" -> 1, "you" -> 1, "year" -> 1, "worth" -> 1, "worsening" -> 1, "world-class" -> 1, "World" -> 1, "worker" -> 1, "workaday" -> 1, "Work" -> 1, "wooed" -> 1, "women—to" -> 1, "women—like" -> 1, "woman" -> 1, "within" -> 1, "With" -> 1, "wisdom" -> 1, "windfall" -> 1, "willing" -> 1, "White" -> 1, "white" -> 1, "Whether" -> 1, "What" -> 1, "wetlands" -> 1, "we're" -> 1, "We'll" -> 1, "welcome" -> 1, "weaponry" -> 1, "wealthy" -> 1, "wealth" -> 1, "weak" -> 1, "wastes" -> 1, "wasteful" -> 1, "War's" -> 1, "Warming" -> 1, "warming" -> 1, "warfare" -> 1, "wants" -> 1, "walks" -> 1, "waiting" -> 1, "waited" -> 1, "wage" -> 1, "Wade" -> 1, "vouchers" -> 1, "voter" -> 1, "voluntary" -> 1, "volume" -> 1, "voice" -> 1, "visible" -> 1, "Virgin" -> 1, "Violent" -> 1, "viewed" -> 1, "Vietnamese" -> 1, "Vietnam" -> 1, "victimizing" -> 1, "victim-impact" -> 1, "vibrant" -> 1, "veterans" -> 1, "very" -> 1, "vehicles" -> 1, "valuable" -> 1, "vaccines" -> 1, "v." -> 1, "usual—neither" -> 1, "using" -> 1, "uses" -> 1, "used" -> 1, "Use" -> 1, "urgent" -> 1, "urged" -> 1, "uprooted" -> 1, "upholder" -> 1, "uphold" -> 1, "until" -> 1, "unsung" -> 1, "unresolved" -> 1, "unrelated" -> 1, "unprecedented" -> 1, "unnecessary" -> 1, "Unlike" -> 1, "unless" -> 1, "united" -> 1, "uniquely" -> 1, "unique" -> 1, "unilateral" -> 1, "unfair" -> 1, "undone" -> 1, "undivided" -> 1, "underway" -> 1, "understanding" -> 1, "understand" -> 1, "undermined" -> 1, "underinvest" -> 1, "under" -> 1, "uncertain" -> 1, "unable" -> 1, "tyrants" -> 1, "tyranny" -> 1, "Two" -> 1, "Twelve" -> 1, "turned" -> 1, "turn" -> 1, "Tuberculosis" -> 1, "trustee" -> 1, "Truman" -> 1, "troubled" -> 1, "troop" -> 1, "triumph" -> 1, "tripled" -> 1, "trials" -> 1, "treatments" -> 1, "Treasury" -> 1, "travel" -> 1, "transit" -> 1, "transform" -> 1, "transfer" -> 1, "trained" -> 1, "traditional" -> 1, "traders" -> 1, "track" -> 1, "Township" -> 1, "toughness" -> 1, "tougher" -> 1, "touchstone" -> 1, "total" -> 1, "torture" -> 1, "torn" -> 1, "top" -> 1, "took" -> 1, "tolerance" -> 1, "today" -> 1, "timidity" -> 1, "timetable" -> 1, "ties" -> 1, "tide" -> 1, "Tibet" -> 1, "throw" -> 1, "throughout" -> 1, "thriving" -> 1, "three-to-one" -> 1, "three" -> 1, "threaten" -> 1, "thought" -> 1, "Those" -> 1, "Thomas" -> 1, "think" -> 1, "These" -> 1, "there's" -> 1, "Therefore" -> 1, "There" -> 1, "theory" -> 1, "Their" -> 1, "That" -> 1, "tests" -> 1, "Test" -> 1, "terrorizing" -> 1, "Territories" -> 1, "Terms" -> 1, "term" -> 1, "tensions" -> 1, "tenant" -> 1, "temporary" -> 1, "technicians" -> 1, "technical" -> 1, "teaching" -> 1, "tapestry" -> 1, "tanks" -> 1, "tandem" -> 1, "taken" -> 1, "tackle" -> 1, "table" -> 1, "system—the" -> 1, "system—Democrats" -> 1, "systematic" -> 1, "symptom" -> 1, "swindle" -> 1, "swift" -> 1, "swept" -> 1, "sweeps" -> 1, "sweeping" -> 1, "swallows" -> 1, "Sustainable" -> 1, "sustainable" -> 1, "supports" -> 1, "supporting" -> 1, "supply-side" -> 1, "Summit" -> 1, "summers" -> 1, "summer" -> 1, "suite" -> 1, "sufficient" -> 1, "sufficiency" -> 1, "successfully" -> 1, "succeed" -> 1, "suburbs" -> 1, "substantially" -> 1, "substances" -> 1, "subsistence" -> 1, "subjects" -> 1, "Students" -> 1, "student" -> 1, "struggling" -> 1, "struggle—the" -> 1, "strongly" -> 1, "strive" -> 1, "strict" -> 1, "stresses" -> 1, "strength—indeed" -> 1, "strengths" -> 1, "Strengthening" -> 1, "Strength" -> 1, "streets" -> 1, "strategies" -> 1, "strategic" -> 1, "storefront" -> 1, "stop" -> 1, "stereotyping" -> 1, "states" -> 1, "statements" -> 1, "statehood" -> 1, "starting" -> 1, "Start" -> 1, "start" -> 1, "Standing" -> 1, "standard" -> 1, "stalwarts" -> 1, "stalled" -> 1, "staggering" -> 1, "stable" -> 1, "squeeze" -> 1, "spur" -> 1, "spousal" -> 1, "sporting" -> 1, "spills" -> 1, "speed" -> 1, "speech" -> 1, "speculate" -> 1, "specific" -> 1, "space" -> 1, "sources" -> 1, "source" -> 1, "soul—from" -> 1, "sought" -> 1, "something-for-nothing" -> 1, "something" -> 1, "soil" -> 1, "society's" -> 1, "societies" -> 1, "soaring" -> 1, "smaller" -> 1, "Small" -> 1, "small" -> 1, "slower" -> 1, "slip" -> 1, "slide" -> 1, "S&L" -> 1, "skyrocketing" -> 1, "sizes" -> 1, "Sixty" -> 1, "six" -> 1, "site-based" -> 1, "sinking" -> 1, "simplest" -> 1, "simple" -> 1, "similar" -> 1, "significant" -> 1, "sign" -> 1, "show" -> 1, "shoulder" -> 1, "short-term" -> 1, "sharply" -> 1, "sharks" -> 1, "severe" -> 1, "several" -> 1, "settlement" -> 1, "settings" -> 1, "Service" -> 1, "serves" -> 1, "served" -> 1, "serious" -> 1, "Serbian" -> 1, "separate" -> 1, "sentencing" -> 1, "sentences" -> 1, "sensitive" -> 1, "send" -> 1, "sell" -> 1, "self-government" -> 1, "self-employment" -> 1, "self" -> 1, "seeks" -> 1, "security—is" -> 1, "Security" -> 1, "seconds" -> 1, "second" -> 1, "seas" -> 1, "sea" -> 1, "scrutiny" -> 1, "scientists" -> 1, "science" -> 1, "Schools" -> 1, "scapegoats" -> 1, "scale" -> 1, "Savings" -> 1, "save" -> 1, "savage" -> 1, "satisfying" -> 1, "sanctuary" -> 1, "Samoa" -> 1, "same-day" -> 1, "sale" -> 1, "said" -> 1, "safer" -> 1, "Safe" -> 1, "Saddam" -> 1, "Ryan" -> 1, "Rural" -> 1, "run" -> 1, "Roosevelt" -> 1, "Roe" -> 1, "robust" -> 1, "roads" -> 1, "risk" -> 1, "Rising" -> 1, "rising" -> 1, "rise" -> 1, "Rio" -> 1, "rig" -> 1, "richer" -> 1, "rewarded" -> 1, "reward" -> 1, "Revolution—who" -> 1, "revolutionized" -> 1, "revitalized" -> 1, "revitalize" -> 1, "reversed" -> 1, "reverse" -> 1, "reverberates" -> 1, "revenues" -> 1, "revenue-neutral" -> 1, "reunification" -> 1, "retraining" -> 1, "retirement" -> 1, "results-oriented" -> 1, "results" -> 1, "result" -> 1, "Restructuring" -> 1, "restructuring" -> 1, "restructured" -> 1, "restrict" -> 1, "restraints" -> 1, "restores" -> 1, "restored" -> 1, "restitution" -> 1, "rest" -> 1, "responsive" -> 1, "responsibly" -> 1, "Responsibilities" -> 1, "resolutions" -> 1, "resistance" -> 1, "resist" -> 1, "residents" -> 1, "required" -> 1, "republic" -> 1, "reproduction" -> 1, "repressive" -> 1, "repression" -> 1, "representation" -> 1, "represent" -> 1, "reported" -> 1, "replacements" -> 1, "replacement" -> 1, "repeatedly" -> 1, "repair" -> 1, "renovating" -> 1, "renewable" -> 1, "remedies" -> 1, "remarkable" -> 1, "reluctantly" -> 1, "relocation" -> 1, "religion" -> 1, "relieve" -> 1, "reliance" -> 1, "relentless" -> 1, "released" -> 1, "Reinvestment" -> 1, "reinvested" -> 1, "reimposing" -> 1, "regulations" -> 1, "registered" -> 1, "regions" -> 1, "region" -> 1, "regime" -> 1, "regard" -> 1, "refugees" -> 1, "reforms" -> 1, "Reform" -> 1, "reflects" -> 1, "reflect" -> 1, "reexamined" -> 1, "reestablish" -> 1, "redouble" -> 1, "redlining" -> 1, "rediscover" -> 1, "Redirected" -> 1, "redefining" -> 1, "recycled" -> 1, "recovery" -> 1, "record" -> 1, "recommendations" -> 1, "recognizes" -> 1, "reciprocal" -> 1, "recession" -> 1, "recent" -> 1, "receiving" -> 1, "recedes" -> 1, "reasonable" -> 1, "Reallocating" -> 1, "ready" -> 1, "ratio" -> 1, "ratification" -> 1, "Rather" -> 1, "rates" -> 1, "rapists" -> 1, "rapidly" -> 1, "rape" -> 1, "range" -> 1, "rampant" -> 1, "raises" -> 1, "raise" -> 1, "radical" -> 1, "racism" -> 1, "race" -> 1, "quo" -> 1, "quick" -> 1, "qualified" -> 1, "quadrupled" -> 1, "push" -> 1, "Pursuing" -> 1, "pursuant" -> 1, "purposes" -> 1, "purposely" -> 1, "purchases" -> 1, "punish" -> 1, "providing" -> 1, "providers" -> 1, "proven" -> 1, "proud" -> 1, "protected" -> 1, "prosperous" -> 1, "prospects" -> 1, "proposition" -> 1, "property" -> 1, "promoting" -> 1, "proliferation" -> 1, "profoundly" -> 1, "productivity" -> 1, "productively" -> 1, "production" -> 1, "product" -> 1, "producing" -> 1, "producers" -> 1, "produced" -> 1, "processes" -> 1, "privileges" -> 1, "privilege" -> 1, "principle" -> 1, "principal" -> 1, "primary" -> 1, "prices" -> 1, "price" -> 1, "Preventing" -> 1, "prevented" -> 1, "pressing" -> 1, "press" -> 1, "preserving" -> 1, "preservation" -> 1, "presents" -> 1, "presence" -> 1, "pre-natal" -> 1, "preexisting" -> 1, "precepts" -> 1, "Preamble" -> 1, "practicing" -> 1, "practices" -> 1, "practice" -> 1, "Poverty" -> 1, "post-Cold" -> 1, "possible" -> 1, "possession" -> 1, "pose" -> 1, "Population" -> 1, "Poor" -> 1, "polluters" -> 1, "politically" -> 1, "Policing" -> 1, "policing" -> 1, "Police" -> 1, "point" -> 1, "platform" -> 1, "planet's" -> 1, "places" -> 1, "placement" -> 1, "pivotal" -> 1, "phasing" -> 1, "pervasive" -> 1, "period" -> 1, "performance" -> 1, "percentage" -> 1, "penthouse" -> 1, "pension" -> 1, "penalize" -> 1, "pen" -> 1, "peddle" -> 1, "peacekeeping" -> 1, "Peace" -> 1, "payroll" -> 1, "paying" -> 1, "paycheck" -> 1, "patrols" -> 1, "patient" -> 1, "path" -> 1, "paternity" -> 1, "pass" -> 1, "Party's" -> 1, "parts" -> 1, "partners" -> 1, "parties" -> 1, "particularly" -> 1, "particular" -> 1, "participation" -> 1, "participants" -> 1, "Palestinians" -> 1, "Palau" -> 1, "paid" -> 1, "PACs" -> 1, "packaging" -> 1, "pace" -> 1, "Ozone" -> 1, "ozone" -> 1, "overthrow" -> 1, "overseas" -> 1, "overpay" -> 1, "overcome" -> 1, "overall" -> 1, "ovarian" -> 1, "outdated" -> 1, "others" -> 1, "orientation" -> 1, "organize" -> 1, "options" -> 1, "oppression" -> 1, "oppressed" -> 1, "opportunity—broad-based" -> 1, "Opportunity" -> 1, "operations" -> 1, "operates—not" -> 1, "opening" -> 1, "open" -> 1, "one-to-three" -> 1, "ones" -> 1, "Once" -> 1, "often" -> 1, "offshore" -> 1, "Officials" -> 1, "officials" -> 1, "offices" -> 1, "office" -> 1, "offers" -> 1, "offenders" -> 1, "Of" -> 1, "ocean" -> 1, "obstacle" -> 1, "obsolete" -> 1, "obligations" -> 1, "obligation" -> 1, "obey" -> 1, "nutritious" -> 1, "nutrition" -> 1, "notion" -> 1, "notice" -> 1, "nothing" -> 1, "non-profit" -> 1, "nonproductive" -> 1, "non-investment" -> 1, "non-inflationary" -> 1, "None" -> 1, "non-discrimination" -> 1, "non-college" -> 1, "noble" -> 1, "nine" -> 1, "nightmare" -> 1, "neither" -> 1, "Neighborhoods" -> 1, "neighborhood" -> 1, "negotiating" -> 1, "negotiated" -> 1, "negotiate" -> 1, "neglected" -> 1, "negative" -> 1, "Needs" -> 1, "needed" -> 1, "Nearly" -> 1, "nearly" -> 1, "natural" -> 1, "NATO" -> 1, "nationwide" -> 1, "narrow" -> 1, "name" -> 1, "NAFTA" -> 1, "myth" -> 1, "murdered" -> 1, "murder" -> 1, "multiracial" -> 1, "Multilateral" -> 1, "multiethnic" -> 1, "much" -> 1, "move" -> 1, "mounting" -> 1, "mountain" -> 1, "motivation" -> 1, "Moscow—are" -> 1, "mosaic" -> 1, "mortgage" -> 1, "mobilizing" -> 1, "mixture" -> 1, "misuse" -> 1, "mistakes" -> 1, "missions" -> 1, "mired" -> 1, "minority" -> 1, "minimum" -> 1, "mineral" -> 1, "microenterprise" -> 1, "met" -> 1, "mental" -> 1, "meeting" -> 1, "Medicaid" -> 1, "measures" -> 1, "measured" -> 1, "meant" -> 1, "meager" -> 1, "math" -> 1, "materials" -> 1, "market's" -> 1, "marketplace" -> 1, "Mariana" -> 1, "manufacturing" -> 1, "manufacture" -> 1, "manner" -> 1, "manipulation" -> 1, "mandates" -> 1, 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"Year" -> 1988, "Date" -> DateObject[{1988, 7, 18}], "Text" -> "WE THE PEOPLE OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,\nIn order to initiate the changes necessary to keep America strong and make America better, in order to restore competence, caring and incorruptibility to the Federal Executive Branch and get it working again fairly for all Americans, and in order to secure for our children a future of liberty and opportunity,\nHereby pledge our Party, our leaders, our elected officials and our every individual effort to fulfilling the following fundamental principles for all members of the American family.", "Words" -> 91, "WordCounts" -> <|"to" -> 6, "and" -> 6, "our" -> 5, "the" -> 4, "THE" -> 3, "order" -> 3, "OF" -> 3, "for" -> 3, "of" -> 2, "in" -> 2, "America" -> 2, "all" -> 2, "working" -> 1, "WE" -> 1, "UNITED" -> 1, "strong" -> 1, "STATES" -> 1, "secure" -> 1, "restore" -> 1, "principles" -> 1, "pledge" -> 1, "PEOPLE" -> 1, "PARTY" -> 1, "Party" -> 1, "opportunity" -> 1, "officials" -> 1, "necessary" -> 1, "members" -> 1, "make" -> 1, "liberty" -> 1, "leaders" -> 1, "keep" -> 1, "it" -> 1, "initiate" -> 1, "individual" -> 1, "incorruptibility" -> 1, "In" -> 1, "Hereby" -> 1, "get" -> 1, "future" -> 1, "fundamental" -> 1, "fulfilling" -> 1, "following" -> 1, "Federal" -> 1, "family" -> 1, "fairly" -> 1, "Executive" -> 1, "every" -> 1, "elected" -> 1, "effort" -> 1, "DEMOCRATIC" -> 1, "competence" -> 1, "children" -> 1, "changes" -> 1, "caring" -> 1, "Branch" -> 1, "better" -> 1, "Americans" -> 1, "American" -> 1, "AMERICA" -> 1, "again" -> 1, "a" -> 1|>|>, <|"SourceURL" -> "http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29608", "Name" -> "Democratic Party Platform of 1984", "Party" -> "Democratic", "Year" -> 1984, "Date" -> DateObject[{1984, 7, 16}], "Text" -> "Preamble\n\nA fundamental choice awaits America—, a choice between two futures.\nIt is a choice between solving our problems, and pretending they don't exist, between the spirit of community, and the corrosion of selfishness: between justice for all, and advantage for some; between social opportunity and contracting horizons: between diplomacy and conflict: between arms control and an arms race: between leadership and alibis.\nAmerica stands at a crossroads.\nMove in one direction, and the President who appointed James Watt will appoint the Supreme Court majority for the rest of the century. The President who proposed deep cuts in Social Security will be charged with rescuing Medicare. The President who destroyed the Environmental Protection Agency will decide whether toxic dumps get cleaned up. The President who fought the Equal Rights Amendment will decide whether women get fair pay for their work. The President who launched a covert war in Central America will determine our human rights policy. The President who abandoned the Camp David process will oversee Middle East policy, The President who opposed every nuclear arms control agreement since the bomb went off will be entrusted with the fate of the earth.\nWe offer a different direction.\nFor 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, and freedom.\nIn the future we propose, young families will be able to buy and keep new homes—instead of fearing the explosion of their adjustable-rate mortgages. Workers will feel secure in their jobs—instead of fearing layoffs 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.\nSmall businesses will have the capital they need—instead of credit they can't afford, People will master technology—instead of being mastered or displaced by it. Industries will be revitalized—not abandoned. Students will attend the best colleges and vocational schools for which they qualify,—instead of trimming their expectations. Minorities will rise in the mainstream economic life—instead of waiting on the sidelines. Children will dream of better days ahead—and not of nuclear holocaust.\nOur Party is built on a profound belief in America and Americans.\nWe believe in the inspiration of American dreams, and the power of progressive ideals. We believe in the dignity of the individual and the enormous potential of collective action. We believe in building, not wrecking. We believe in bridging our differences, not deepening them. We believe in a fair society for working Americans of average income: an opportunity society for enterprising Americans; a caring society for Americans in need through no fault of their own—the sick, the disabled, the hungry, the elderly, the unemployed: and a safe, decent and prosperous society for all Americans.\nWe are the Party of American values—the worth of every human being; the striving toward excellence; the freedom to innovate; the inviolability of law; the sharing of sacrifice; the struggle toward justice; the pursuit of happiness.\nWe are the Party of American progress—the calling to explore; the challenge to invent; the imperative to improve; the importance of courage; the perennial need for fresh thinking, sharp minds, and ambitious goals.\nWe are the Party of American strength—the security of our defenses; the power of our moral values; the necessity of diplomacy; the pursuit of peace; the imperative of survival.\nWe are the Party of American vision—the trustees of a better future. This platform is our road map toward that future.\nChapter I: Economic Growth, Prosperity, and Jobs\n\nIntroduction\n\nBuilding a prosperous America in a changing world: that is the Democratic agenda for the future. To build that America, we must meet the challenge of long-term, sustainable, noninflationary economic growth. Our future depends on it.\nTo a child, economic growth means the promise of quality education. To a new graduate, it means landing a good first job. To a young family, growth means the opportunity to own a home or a car. To an unemployed worker, it means the chance to live in dignity again. To a farmer, growth means expanding markets, fair prices, and new customer. To an entrepreneur, it means a shot at a new business. To our nation, it means the ability to compete in a 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 just the favored few.\nFor our party and our country, it is vital that 1984 be a year of new departures.\nWe have a proud legacy to build upon: the Democratic tradition of caring, and the Democratic commitment to an activist government that understands and accepts its responsibilities.\nOur history has been proudest when we have taken up the challenges of our times, the challenges we accept once again in 1984 to find new ways in times of accelerating change, to fulfill our historic commitments. We will continue to be the party of justice. And we will foster the productivity and growth on which justice depends.\nFor the 1980's, the Democratic Party will emphasize two fundamental economic goals. We will restore rising living standards in our country. And we will offer every American the opportunity for secure and productive employment.\nOur program will be bold and comprehensive. It will ask restraint and cooperation from all sectors of the economy. It will rely heavily on the private sector as the prime source of expanding employment. And it will treat every individual with decency and respect.\nA Democratic Administration will take four key steps to secure a bright future of long-term economic growth and opportunity for every American:\n* Instead of runaway deficits, a Democratic Administration will pursue overall economic policies that sharply reduce deficits, down interest rates, free savings for private investment, prevent another explosion of inflation and put the dollar on a competitive footing.\n* Instead of government by neglect, a Democratic Administration will establish a framework that will support growth and productivity and assure opportunity.\n* In place of conflict, a Democratic Administration will pursue cooperation, backed by trade, tax and financial regulations that will serve the long-term growth of the American economy and the broad national interest.\n* Instead of ignoring America's future, a Democratic Administration will make a series of long-term investments in research, infrastructure, and above all in people. Education, training and retraining will become a central focus in an economy built on change.\nThe Future if Reagan Is Reelected\n\n\" Since the Reagan Administration took office, my wife and I have lost half our net worth. Took us 20 years to build that up, and about three to lose it. That is hard to deal with...\"\nDavid Sprague, Farmer. Colorado (Democratic Platform Committee Hearing, Springfield, Illinois, April 27, 1984)\n\"There's got to be something wrong with our government's policy when it's cheaper to shut a plant down than it is to operate it...The Houston Works plant sits right in the middle of the energy capital of the world and 83 percent of our steel went directly into the energy-related market, yet Japan could sit their products on our docks cheaper than we can make it and roll in there.\"\nEarly Clowers. President, Steel Workers Local 2708 (Democratic Platform Committee Hearing. Houston, Texas. May 29. 1984)\nA Democratic future of growth and opportunity of mastering change rather than hiding from it, of promoting fairness instead of growing inequality, stands in stark contrast to another four years of Ronald Reagan. Staying the course with Ronald Reagan raises a series of hard questions about a bleak future.\nWhat would be the impact of the Republican deficit if Mr. Reagan is reelected?\nA second Reagan term would bring federal budget deficits larger than any in American history—indeed, any in world history. Under the Republican's policies, the deficit will continue to mount. Interest rates, already rising sharply, will start to soar. Investments in the future will be solved, then stopped. The Reagan deficits mortgage the future and threaten the present.\nMr. Reagan has already conceded that these problems exist. But as he said in his 1984 Economic Report to the Congress, he prefers to wait until after the election to deal with them. And then, he plans \"to enact spending reductions coupled with tax simplification that will eventually eliminate our budget deficit.\"\nWhat will Mr. Reagan's plan for \"tax-simplification\" mean to average Americans if he is reelected?\nHow will Mr. Reagan's \"spending reductions\" affect average Americans if he is reelected?\nIf he gets a second term, Mr. Reagan will use the deficit to justify his policy of government by subtraction. The deficits he created will become his excuse for destroying programs he never supported. Medicare, Social Security, federal pensions, farm price supports and dozens of other people-oriented programs will be in danger.\nIf Mr. Reagan is reelected, will our students have the skills to work in a changing economy?\nIf we are to compete and grow, the next generation of Americans must be the best-trained, best-educated in history. While our competitors invest in educating their children, Mr. Reagan cuts the national commitment to our schools. While our competitors spend greater and greater percentages of their GNP on civilian research and development, this President has diverted increasing portions of ours into military weaponry. These policies are short-sighted and destructive.\nIf Mr. Reagan is reelected, will basic industries and the workers they employ be brought into the future?\nThe Republican Administration has turned its back on basic industries and their communities. Instead of putting forward policies to help revitalize and adjust, Mr. Reagan tells blameless, anxious, displaced workers to abandon their neighborhoods and homes and \"vote with their feet.\"\nAmerica's economic strength was built on basic industries. Today, in a changing economy, they are no less important. Strong basic industries are vital to our economic health and essential to our national security. And as major consumers of high technology, they are catalysts for growth in newly emerging fields. We need new approaches to ensure strong American basic industries for the remainder of this century and beyond.\nCan the road to the future be paved with potholes?\nAdequate roads and bridges, mass transit, water supply and sewage treatment facilities, and ports and harbors are essential to economic growth. For four years, the Reagan Administration has refused to confront adequately the growing problems in our infrastructure. Another term will bring four more years of negligence and neglect.\nIf Mr. Reagan is reelected, how many children will join the millions already growing up at risk?\nBetween 1980 and 1982, more than two million younger Americans joined the ranks of the poor: the sharpest increase on record.\nWith the Reagan Administration's cutbacks in prenatal care and supplemental food programs have come infant mortality rates in parts of our cities rivaling those of the poorest Latin American nations. Black infants are now twice as likely as white infants to die during the first year of life.\nCuts in school lunch and child nutrition programs have left far too many children hungry and unable to focus on their lessons.\nTeenage prostitution, alcohol and drug abuse, depression, and suicide have all been linked to child abuse. The Administration has abandoned most avenues to breaking the cycle of abuse. Funding to prevent and treat child physical abuse has been cut in half. And funds to help private groups set up shelters for runaway youth are being diverted elsewhere.\nIf Mr. Reagan is reelected, will we ensure that our children are able to enjoy a clean, healthy environment?\nProtecting our natural heritage— its beauty and its richness— is not a partisan issue. For eighty years, every American President has understood the importance of protecting out air, our water, and our health. Today, a growing population puts more demands on our environment. Chemicals which are unsafe or disposed of improperly threaten neighborhoods and families. And as our knowledge expands, we learn again and again how fragile life and health—human and animal—truly are.\nEnsuring the environmental heritage of future generations demands action now. But the Reagan Administration continues to develop, lease, and sell irreplaceable wilderness lands. While thousands of toxic waste sites already exist, and more and more are being created constantly, the Reagan Administration is cleaning them up at a rate of only 1.5 per year. The environmental legacy of Ronald Reagan will be long-lasting damage that can never truly be undone.\nIf Mr. Reagan is reelected will we be able to heat our homes and run our factories?\nTwice in the past, our country has endured the high costs of dependence on foreign oil. Yet the Reagan Administration is leaving us vulnerable to another embargo or an interruption in oil supply. By failing adequately to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and trusting blindly to the market to \"muddle through\" in a crisis this Administration has wagered our national security on its economic ideology. One rude shock from abroad or just one \"market failure\", and our country could find itself plunged into another energy crisis.\nThe New Economic Reality; Five Reagan Myths\n\nUnderlying the Reagan approach to the economy are five key myths: myths that determine and distort the Reagan economic policy, and ensure that it is not the basis for long-term growth.\nThe world has changed, but Ronald Reagan does not understand.\nFirst, and most fundamental the Reagan Administration continues to act as if the United States were an economic island unto itself. But we have changed from a relatively isolated economy to an economy of international interdependence. In fact, the importance of international trade to the U.S. economy has roughly doubled in a decade. Exports now account for almost 10 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 acres is now planted for the overseas market. Imports have also doubled in importance.\nFinancial markets are also closely linked. U.S. direct investments and commercial loans overseas now amount to hundreds of billions of dollars. A debt crisis in Mexico will affect balance sheets in San Francisco. A recession in Europe will limit the profits of U.S. subsidiaries operating in the European market. Lower overseas profits wilt limit the flow of earnings back to the United State—one important way the U.S. has found to help pay for the rising tide of imports. Hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign short-term capital invested here are sensitive to small shifts in interest rates or the appearance of added risk. It is only partly bad loans that brought Continental Illinois to the brink of bankruptcy. Heavily dependent on short-term foreign deposits, Continental Illinois was particularly vulnerable. Rumors that were false at the time were enough to set off a run on the bank.\nThe strength of American steel, the competitiveness of the U.S. machine tool industry, and the long-term potential of U.S. agriculture are no longer matters decided exclusively in Washington or by the American market. America must look to Tokyo, Paris, and the money markets in Singapore and Switzerland. Policy based on the myth that America is independent of the world around us is bound to fail.\nSecond, this Administration has ignored the enormous changes sweeping through the American work force.\nThe measuring of the baby boom generation, the sharp increase in the percentage of women seeking work, and the aging of the work force all have to be taken into account.\nDecade 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 distinctions that have existed in many types of employment.\nIn 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 not worry about the effects of unemployment on family stability: they do not worry about decent housing and health care: they do not need child care. But in the real world, most Americans do. Providing adequate child care for the millions 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 one where federal leadership and support are essential.\nThe work force is also aging. For the first time in this century, the average American is 31 years of age. Coupled with greater longevity and the gradual elimination of mandatory retirement rules, older workers can be expected to increase steadily their share of the total work force.\nMoreover, the kinds of jobs available in our economy are changing rapidly. The combined pressures of new products, new process technology, and foreign competition are changing the face of American industry.\nNew technologies, shifting economics and deregulation have opened up dozens of new careers both in traditional industrial concerns and in new businesses. Many of them did not exist at all only a few years ago.\nAnd the change is far from over. In setting national policy, a government that ignores that change is bound to fail. In setting national policy, a government that ignores the future is short-changing the American people.\nThird, the Reagan program has ignored the fundamental changes that are sweeping through the structure of American industry, the diversity of the economy and the challenges various sectors face. New products and new ways of manufacturing are part of the change. High technology is creating new competitive industries, and holding out the promise of making older industries competitive once again.\nForeign competition has also had a major impact. But the tide runs much deeper than that.\nIn the past decade, small business and new entrepreneurs have become more and more of a driving force in the American economy. Small businesses are a growing force in innovation, employment, and the long-term strength of the American economy.\nTechnology itself appears to be changing the optimal size of American businesses. And unlike the conglomerate mergers of the 1960's, renewed emphasis on quality and efficient production has shifted the focus back to industry-specific experience.\nAn Administration that sets tax policy, spending priorities, and an overall growth program without understanding the new dynamics and the diversity of American industry is weakening, rather than strengthening the American economy.\nReaganomics is based on the theory that blanket-tax cuts for business and the rich would turn directly into higher productivity that private investors and industry would use the money saved to restore our edge in innovation and competitiveness.\nIn practice, the theory failed because it did not take into account the diversity within our economy. The economy is composed of a set of complex public and private institutions which are intricately interrelated and increasingly influenced by the pressures of international competition. In the international economy, multinational companies and governments cooperate to win trade advantage, often at American expense.\nWe are coming to understand that in an expanding number of markets, industrial strategies, rather than just the energies of individual firms, influence competitive success. Indeed, success in marketing a product may depend more on the quality and productivity of the relationship between government and business than on the quality of the product. While several foreign industrial strategies have failed, foreign governments are becoming more sophisticated in the design and conduct of their industrial strategies. The Reagan Administration is not.\nFourth, the Reagan Administration has acted as if deficits do not count. The deficits are huge and are expected to get larger—and they are a major negative factor in everything from high interest rates to the third world debt crisis.\n—Because of the huge tax cuts to benefit the wealthy, and an enormous military buildup bought on credit, the federal deficit in 1983 was equivalent to 6% of our GNP. In dollars it amounted to almost 200 billion—more than three times larger than the deficit Ronald Reagan campaigned against in 1980.\n—Under the budget Reagan proposed to Congress earlier this year, the annual deficit would grow to $248 billion by 1989, and unless he makes major changes in current policy, it will exceed $300 billion. Reagan doubled the national debt during his first term. Given eight years, he will have tripled it. According to the proposed budget, at the end of his second term Reagan by himself will have put this country three times deeper into debt than all our other Presidents combined.\n—As the Reagan debt hangs over us, more and more of our tax dollars are going nowhere. By 1989, the percentage of federal revenues to be spent on deficit interest payments alone will have doubled. These unproductive payments will claim a staggering 42Вў on every personal income tax dollar we pay. This huge allocation will do nothing to reduce the principal of the debt: it will only finance the interest payments.\n—The interest payments on Reagan's debt are grossly out of line with historical spending patterns. Since 1981, more money has been squandered on interest payments on the Reagan-created debt alone than has been saved by all of Reagan's cuts in domestic spending. Non-defense discretionary spending, to be productively invested in programs to benefit the poor and middle class, and to build our social capital, is being overwhelmed by the enormous sum of money wasted on interest payments. By 1989, the annual payment will account for twice the percentage of federal revenue that we have ever set aside for such discretionary programs.\n—Interest payments on the debt are rising at an alarming rate. Today the annual payment has already reached $110 billion—twice what it was four years ago. During a second Reagan term, it will double again, reaching $207 billion by 1989.\n—The consequences for the individual taxpayer are enormous. Deficit increases under Reagan so far are equivalent to $2,387 levied from every woman, man and child alive in the United States today.\n—The consequences for the nation as a whole are also enormous. The massive government borrowing necessary to service the debt will amount to about three-quarters of the entire nation's net savings between 1983 and 1986.\nThe pressure of the deficits on interest rates has sucked in a wave of overseas investment. Some of those investments have been made in manufacturing plants or other commercial enterprises. Much of the foreign money, however, is in the term of portfolio holdings or even more liquid short-term bank deposits. It is an uncertain source for savings for a long-term investment program. To a limited degree, it puts the country in the same risky position as Continental Illinois Bank which relied heavily on short-term foreign deposits to make long-term domestic loans\nHigh interest rates will eventually take their toll on domestic investment, make their own contribution to inflationary pressure (while eventually slowing growth and inflation), and increase the tensions in the domestic banking system. They will also have a potentially devastating impact on the international economy. Each percentage point rise in U.S. interest rates adds $3-5 billion to the annual debt payments of the developing world. High American interest rates 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.\nFifth, and finally, the Reagan Administration has virtually wished away the role of government. When it comes to the economy, its view is that the government that governs best is one that governs not at all.\nA Democratic Administration must answer this challenge reaffirming the principle that government must both \"provide for the common defense\" and \"promote the general welfare\" as coequal responsibilities under the Constitution. If the Democratic Party can succeed in correcting the present imbalance, it will reverse the cycle of pain and despair, and recapture the initiative in the area of social and economic progress.\nThe Reagan Administration succeeded in shifting massive resources from human needs functions of the Federal budget to military-related functions and created unprecedented deficits based on the assumption that government should have a diminished responsibility for social progress, and thus, for the welfare of the needy and disadvantaged in society. The resulting Reagan-induced recession caused tremendous suffering, threw millions of people out of work, terminated or reduced benefits, and raised the national misery index.\nMr. Reagan denies government's critical role in our economy. Government cannot, and should not, dominate our free enterprise economy. But American prosperity has been most pronounced when the government played a supportive or catalytic role in the nation's economic fortunes. There are a wide variety of examples stretching back through our entire history: government investments in roads and research, in education and training: government initiatives in opening up new economic possibilities, initiatives that started with the decision to protect domestic markets shortly after the Revolution to the ongoing commercial development of space.\nAgriculture is a clear example of government cooperation with a highly competitive private sector that has yielded a harvest of economic results that is the envy of the world. The government helps fund the research, helps spread it through the economy, educates the modern farmer, influences production levels, and helps develop new markets overseas. It is America's most conspicuous example of a successful industrial strategy—combining the cooperative efforts of business, government and our universities.\nReagan's Recession and A Recovery Built on Debt\n\nThe Economic Roller Coaster—Following the first oil shock in 1973, the United States embarked on a ten year economic roller coaster. The up and down performance of the economy was paralleled by erratic macroeconomic policy. There were wide swings from stimulative fiscal and monetary policies causing raging inflation, to government-engineered recessions.\nThe frequency of the cycles created a climate of uncertainty that was tailor-made to discourage and distort investment. Each cycle left the economy weaker than the one before. At the end of each recession the level of inflation was higher, and at the end of each recovery the level of unemployment had risen.\nEven more disturbing was the decline in the rate of growth or productivity. By the end of the 1970's, productivity growth first stopped and then fell. Productivity growth has finally resumed—but the rate of growth remains disappointing compared both to our own economic past and the performance of other industrial economies.\nReaganomics and an Election Year Recovery—Ronald Reagan swept into office on the promise of a smaller government and a bigger private sector, of higher GNP and lower inflation, and of the elimination of federal deficits.\nFirst, he proposed huge tax cuts. Mr. Reagan went so far as to suggest that the growth caused by his tax cuts would be so rapid that total tax revenues would actually rise even while tax rates were cut.\nSecond, he promised a huge defense build-up.\nThird, he promised stable prices. How was he going to contain prices while stimulating rapid growth? His answer was tight money.\nFourth, the supply-siders promised growth and stable prices without the intervening pain of a recession. In effect, Reagan promised tight money without tears.\nCut taxes but raise more revenues. Arm to the teeth. Growth with stable prices. 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 kind of tax cuts were based neither on rational economic theory nor on any empirical evidence. And wishing simply did not make it so. George Bush was right when he called Reaganomics \"voodoo economics\".\nInstead of growth, the country had plunging production and record unemployment. Instead of increased savings and investment, the country had bankruptcy and economic decline. The Reagan policies, which were supposed to break the cycle of inflation and recession, only made it worse.\nReagan cut domestic programs, but more than offset those cuts with vastly increased defense spending. The Government significantly reduced the growth of the money supply and kept real interest rates high. For a recession, real interest rates reached record highs. These interest rates brought an added problem. They attracted foreign funds and helped drive up the international value of the dollar. American business was faced with a double whammy—empty order books and high interest rates. For the increasingly large part of American business that either sells overseas or competes with imports at home, the over-valued dollar abroad meant their products cost far more compared to the foreign competition.\nReagan 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 largest and most severe economic collapse since the Great Depression.\nThe Reagan Administration then prepared for the election year by \"staying the course\" in fiscal policy (pumping up demand with huge deficits) and sharply reversing the course in monetary policy.\nThe Federal Reserve Board rapidly expanded the supply of money and the economy ceased to decline and began to recover.\nThe Millions Left Behind—But millions of Americans were left behind. Over the last two years, 1.8 million men and women have became discouraged workers and more than 5.4 million have fallen into poverty. Nearly half of all minority youth are unemployed, and Black males have effectively lost 13 percent of their labor force participation in the last two decades. Unemployment on Indian reservations continues to be among the highest in the nation. The U.S.-Mexico border has been devastated by the currency devaluations and economic crisis in Mexico. Small businesses have closed: American families are suffering hunger and poor health, as unemployment exceeds depression rates. Women continue to receive less than 60 percent of the wages that men receive, with minority women receiving far less. Millions of other Americans, including the growing number of women heading poor households or those who have been hard-hit by plant closings or obsolescent skills, avidly seek training or retraining in occupations that hold real promise for sustained employment opportunities in the future.\nMillions of Americans, including those in the industrial and agricultural heartland, have been severely affected by the recent recession and the transformation in American industry that accompanied it. Furthermore, the changes seem to have come very quickly, and they do not seem to be over. Many Americans worked in auto, steel, machine tool, textile, agriculture and small business and related industries. Today for many of them, the recovery is a fiction, or seems very fragile. Plant closings have hit hard and job security and loss of health and pension benefits evoke memories from the past.\nInvestment in jobs for all Americans constitutes the key investment for the future of the nation. For every one million workers who go back to work, our country produces an additional $60-70 billion in goods and adds $25 billion to the Federal treasury. The Democratic Party will work aggressively to stimulate employment, rebuild trade and encourage labor-intensive industrialization.\nSeven Threats to the Recovery\n\nThe current election year recovery is in serious jeopardy, threatened by a series of major economic problems:\n* Unless corrective action is taken soon, the current $180 billion deficit will balloon even larger by the end of the decade.\n* Interest rates are high and rising. The prime rate has jumped one and one haft percentage points. A credit crunch is rapidly approaching in which federal borrowing for the deficit will overwhelm private demand for funds to fuel the recovery. Mortgage rates have risen to a point where home sales and housing starts are beginning to fall. The variable rate mortgage that buffers the thrift industry against high interest rates may, in the near future, put the entire industry under pressure as steadily rising rates put mortgage payments beyond the reach of the average homeowner.\n* The Federal Reserve Board faced a deficit dilemma. By expanding the money supply to help finance the deceit, the Federal Reserve runs the risk of runaway inflation. But if it limits growth by restricting the money supply, high interest rates will distort growth or tip the economy back into recession.\n* The Reagan Administration has done nothing to solve America's repeated problem of reconciling steady growth with stable prices, except by causing a deep recession. Continuing high levels of unemployment still exist in various communities across the country. Many jobs have disappeared. The Reagan Administration is not interested in new forms of fighting inflation—its anti-inflation program amounts to little more than unemployment, tight money and union busting. It is a highly cynical economic selective service that drafts only the poor and the middle class to fight the war against inflation, Unrestrained by the demands of another election, a second Reagan Administration will be even less concerned about the impact of deep recession on the average working American.\n* Our trade deficit is a looming disaster for the national economy. An overvalued dollar, itself the product of high interest rates, helped create a nearly $70 billion trade deficit in 1983. It will be almost twice as large in 1984. Borrowing to support the deficits and buying abroad to maintain a recovery tilted toward consumption are eroding America's position as a creditor nation.\n* America is very much a part of the international economy. And the recovery overseas has been slow to catch hold. European economies are strained by the impact of high American interest rates on their own economies. For many developing countries, growth has been slowed or even reversed by the overhang of an enormous burden of commercial and official debt. If they cannot buy our products, our economy must slow.\n* The sheer size of the international debt burden is itself a threat to the recovery. It is not only a question of falling exports Latin America. The America and international financial system has been put in peril by the weakening of debtor nations' ability to repay their debt to U.S. banks as interest rates rise.\nHoward Baker called Mr. Reagan's policies a \"riverboat gamble\". We now know the outcome. The very wealthiest in out society have been big winners—but future generations of Americans will be the losers.\nThe Americans coming of age today face a future less secure and less prosperous than their parents did—unless we change course. We have an obligation to our children and to their children. We Democrats have a different vision of our future.\nThe Democratic Alternative: A Prosperous America In A Changing World\n\n\"There's a lot of people out there only making $3.35 an hour, and that'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 would like to know that if anybody can answer. I urge the Democratic Party to develop policies and protect working people.\"\nDoris Smith, Steward, SEIU Local 706.(Democratic Platform Committee Hearing. Houston, Texas, May 29, 1984)\n\"We do not have a surplus as long as one member of my family is hungry. 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 at the expense of his own children.\"\nRoberta Archer, Farmer, Springfield, Illinois(Democratic Platform Committee Hearing. Springfield, Illinois, April 27, 1984)\n\"In the four years prior to Mr. Reagan taking over, I was fortunate to have four years of employment, and I was able to put money aside in savings accounts which since have been exhausted. My unemployment benefits are exhausted too...I may not qualify for any type of public assistance and the standard of living I was accustomed to for my wife and myself and my family has drastically changed...But we as Democrats can join together in harmony and unison and we decide what is the future or the fate of our people and what is good for all of us. So I am very proud to be a Democrat.\"\nJames Price, unemployed mine worker(Democratic Platform Committee Hearing, Birmingham. Alabama, April 24, 1984)\nDemocratic growth is not just a matter of good numbers, but of opportunities for people. Jobs and employment are at the center of Democratic thinking. It is not only a question of legislation or appropriations. Rather, it is a 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 economic necessities of the present.\nAn America at work is a moral obligation as well as the most effective way to return our economy to a high growth path. Employed people stimulate the economy, their taxes pay for the expenses of government and their production adds to our national wealth. Moreover, the social and economic fabric of the nation will be strengthened as millions of Americans who presently are frozen out of productive and dignified employment become contributing citizens.\nThe potential for America is unlimited. It is within our means to put America back on a long-term path that will assure both growth and broad-based economic opportunity. That is what the next Democratic Administration will do. First, we will adopt overall economic policies that will bring interest rates down, free savings for private investment, prevent another explosion of inflation, and put the dollar on a competitive basis. Second, we will invest 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, government will work with the private sector to assure that American businesses and American workers can compete fully and fairly in a changing world economy.\nOverall Economic Policies: A Firm Ground For Growth\n\nA Democratic Administration will pursue economic policies which provide the basis for long-term economic growth and will allow us to fulfill our commitment to jobs for all Americans who want to work. A key part of the effort will be reducing and eventually eliminating the deficits that currently form a dark cloud over the nation's future. In addition, monetary policy must be set with an eye to stability and to the strengths or weaknesses of the economy. Finally, we will pursue policies that will promote price stability and prevent inflation from breaking out again.\nReducing the Reagan Budget Deficits\n\nAfter plunging the nation into a deficit crisis, President Reagan refuses to take part in efforts to solve it. He postpones hard decisions until after the Presidential election, refusing to compromise, refusing to address revenues and defense spending seriously, refusing all but a \"down payment\" on the deficit. The President continues to stand apart from serious, comprehensive efforts to cut the deficit. There must be statesmanship and compromise here, not ideological rigidity or election year politics.\nThe Democratic Party is pledged to reducing these intolerable deficits. We will reassess defense expenditures: create a tax system that is both adequate and fair: control skyrocketing health costs without sacrificing quality of care: and eliminate other unnecessary expenditures. Through efficiency and toughness, we will restore sanity to our fiscal house.\nWe oppose the artificial and rigid Constitutional restraint of a balanced budget amendment. Further we oppose efforts to call a federal Constitutional convention for this purpose.\nRational Defense Spending—In the last three years, the Defense Department was told by this Administration that it could have anything it wanted, and at any price. As Democrats, we believe in devoting the needed resources to ensure our national security. But military might cannot be measured solely by dollars spent. American military strength must be secured at an affordable cost. We will reduce the rate of increase in defense spending. Through careful reevaluation of proposed and existing weapons, we will stop throwing away money on unworkable or unnecessary systems; through military reform we will focus defense expenditure on the most cost-effective military policies. We will insist that our allies contribute fairly to our collective security, and that the Department of Defense reduces its scandalous procurement waste.\nAnd above all else, we will seek sensible arms control agreements as a means of assuring that there will be a future for our children and that we as a nation will have the resources we need to invest for the future.\nTax Reform—America needs a tax system that encourages growth and produces adequate revenues in a fair, progressive fashion. The Democratic Party is committed to a tax policy that embodies these basic values.\nThe present system is unfair, complex, and encourages people to use a wide range of loopholes to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. The combination of loopholes for the few and high rates for the many is both unfair and anti-growth. It distorts investment, diverting creative energies into tax avoidance. And it makes the tax code even less comprehensible to the average American.\nOur tax code must produce sufficient revenue to finance our defense and allow for investment in our future, and we will ask every America to pay his or her fair share. But by broadening the tax base, simplifying the tax code, lowering rates, and eliminating unnecessary, unfair and unproductive deductions and tax expenditure, we can raise the revenues we need and promote growth without increasing the burden on average taxpayers.\nRonald Reagan's tax program gave huge breaks to wealthy individuals and to large corporations while shifting the burden to low and moderate income families. The Democratic Party is pledged to reverse these unsound policies. We will cap the effect of the Reagan tax cuts for wealthy Americans and enhance the progressivity of our personal income tax code, limiting the benefits of the third year of the Reagan tax cuts to the level of those with incomes of less than $60,000. We will partially defer indexation while protecting average Americans. We will close loopholes, eliminate the preferences and write-offs, exceptions, and deductions which skew the code toward the rich and toward unproductive tax shelters. Given the fact that there has been a veritable hemorrhage of capital out of the federal budget, reflected in part by the huge budget deficit, there must be a return to a fair tax on corporate income. Under the Reagan Administration, the rate of taxation on corporations has been so substantially reduced that they are not contributing their fair share to federal revenues. We believe there should be a 15% minimum corporate tax. In addition, our tax code has facilitated the transfer of capital from the United States to investments abroad, contributing to plant closing without notice in many communities and loss of millions of jobs. We will toughen compliance procures to reduce the $100 billion annual tax evasion.\nOur country must move to a simpler, more equitable, and more progressive tax system. Our tax code can let the market put our country's savings to the best use. There must be a fair balance between corporate and personal tax increases. Wealthier taxpayers will have to shoulder a greater share of the new tax burdens. Economic distortions must be eliminated.\nControlling Domestic Spending—A balanced program for reducing Republican mega-deficits must also deal with the growing costs of domestic programs. But this must be done in a way that is fair to average Americans.\nSocial Security is one of the most important and successful initiatives in the history of our country, and it is an essential element of the social compact that binds us together as a community. There is no excuse—as the Reagan Administration has repeatedly suggested—for slashing Social Security to pay for excesses in other areas of the budget. We will steadfastly oppose such efforts, now and in the future.\nIt is rather in the area of health care costs that reform is urgently needed. By 1988, Medicare costs will rise to $106 billion: by the turn of the 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 senior citizens and the needy receive. As Democrats, we will protect the interests of health care beneficiaries. The real problem is the growing cost of health care services.\nWe propose to control these costs, and to demand that the health care industry become more efficient in providing care to all Americans, both young and old. We will limit what health care providers can receive as reimbursement, and spur innovation and competition in health care delivery. The growth of alternative health care delivery systems such as HMO's, PPO's and alternatives to long-term care such as home care and social HMO's should be fostered so that high quality care will be available at a lower cost. We must learn the difference between health care and sick care. Unlike the Republicans, we recognize that investing in preventive health care 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 Democratic Administration will provide the leadership at the federal level to assure that 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 unnecessary spending.\nMonetary Policy for Growth\n\nReducing the deficit is the fine step toward lowering interest rates and establishing the basis for fair tax and budget policies. But even with a Democratic fiscal policy reining in the deficit, the task of the Federal Reserve Board will be critical. Monetary policy must work to achieve stable real interest rates, the availability of capital for long-term investments, predictable long-term policy and stable prices. We reject the rigid adherence to monetary targets that has frequently characterized the Reagan monetary policy. Whatever targeting approach the Federal Reserve Board adopts, it must be leavened with a pragmatic appraisal of what is happening in the harsh world of the real economy, particularly the impact on unemployment, interest rates, and the international value of the dollar.\nAn Anti-Inflation Program\n\nWe have learned that sustained economic growth is impossible in a climate of high inflation or of inflationary expectations. The .Reagan Administration's only prescription for inflation is recession—deliberate high unemployment—coupled with a relentless assault on the collective bargaining power and rights of working men and women. The Democratic Party believes that these tactics are both unacceptable and ineffective.\nWe will develop the following five-step program to stabilize prices:\n—Growth investments in new plants and equipment and research and development. The productivity growth that comes in tandem with new investments will help offset—point for point—any increase in cost.\n—Increased flexibility in the marketplace—will also help keep inflationary pressures under control. There is no single policy that will make the U.S. economy more adaptable. Rather, there is a series of smaller steps which will help keep prices stable. In general, competitive markets are more likely to restrain sudden surges of prices than markets dominated by a few large firms. No Democratic Administration will forget the use of old fashioned antitrust policy to keep markets competitive—and prices down.\n—Trade policy—is also an important component of any effective anti-inflation program. Expanding world markets for American goods increase the gains from large scale production and stimulate research and development on new products and processes.\n—The price-wage spiral—as part of any effective anti-inflation program, serious policies to address the price-wage spirals and other inflationary pressures we have experienced in the past must be developed.\n—We believe that an attack on sectorial sources of inflation—in food, fuel, utilities, health care, and elsewhere—is essential if price stability is to be sustained without economic distortions. Our agriculture, energy, and health programs will all promote sectorial price stability while assuring fair treatment for average Americans, including working men and women and family farmers. For example, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is one clear response to reducing the 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 suddenly threatened oil supplies. In this context, a far-reaching energy policy that emphasizes conservation and the development of alternative energy supplies will also help stabilize energy prices. And lower interest rates from reduced budget deficits will reduce upward pressure on housing costs and bring housing back within the reach of millions of Americans now excluded from the market.\nInvesting in People\n\nAmerica's greatest resource is our people. As Democrats we affirm the need for both public and private investment —in our children; in out educational institutions and out students; in jobs, training, and transitional assistance for our workers—to build America's future. If we choose wisely, these investments will be returned to our country many times over. They are essential if we are to create an America with high-quality jobs and rising opportunities for all. And they are vital if we are to safeguard our competitive position in the world economy.\nInvesting in Children\n\nSimple decency demands that we make children one of our highest national priorities. But the argument for so acting goes well beyond that. Programs for children represent the most critical investment we can make in out ability to compete in future world markets and maintain a strong national defense in the decades ahead.\nAbove all else, the Democratic Party stands for making the proper investment in coming generations of Americans.\nPreventive efforts must be at the heart of the broad range of health, child care, and support programs for children. Helping these children makes good moral sense—and sound economic sense. Measles vaccine alone has saved $1.3 billion in medical costs in just ten years. Supplemental food programs for low-income pregnant women and infants save $3 for every dollar spent.\nBy improving access to medical care before and after birth, we can promote a generation of healthy mothers and healthy babies. Seeing that supplemental food programs for low-income pregnant women and infants reach all those eligible will do more than save the $40,000 now spent to treat one low birth weight infant in a neo-natal ward. It will also reduce the risk of birth defects for such infants.\nWe recognize that a hungry child is a child who cannot learn. Restoring school breakfast and school lunches for millions of children will improve their alertness and concentration in school.\nChild care must also be a top priority. Helping communities establish after-school care programs will remove millions of American children from the serious risks they now face of injury, abuse and alienation by staying at home alone. Encouraging employers, churches, public centers, and private groups to provide quality, affordable child care will give millions of children whose parents must work the kind of adult supervision necessary to thrive. And setting up centers for child care information and referral will assist parents wherever they reside to locate quality care for their children.\nPreventing child abuse must be at the forefront of Democratic Party concern. Local, community-based child abuse prevention programs must be strengthened and expanded. A Child who learns first about the risks of sexual abuse in school will be less likely to become the target of repeated victimization. Federal challenge grants could encourage states to make local prevention efforts a real priority.\nPrompt intervention efforts must also be provided for children in crisis. If we are to make any headway in breaking the cycle of child abuse, both victims and offenders must have access to treatment programs.\nJuvenile offenders must not be left in adult jails where the only skills they acquire are those of the career criminal. Safe shelter and assistance must be available for the hundreds of thousands of runaway children at risk of exploitation in our cities. Local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies must refine ways to locate children who have been abducted. And children in foster care must not be allowed to graduate to the streets at age 18 without ever having known a permanent home.\nWe must ensure that essential surveys on children's health and welfare status are reinstated. We know more about the number of matches sold than about the number of children across the country who die in fires while alone at home. Likewise, we know less about hunger and malnutrition among children than we do about the health of the nation's poultry stock.\nThe Democratic Party affirms its commitment to protecting the health and safety of children in the United States. Existing laws mandating the use of automobile child restraints must be enforced, and child safety seat loaner or rental programs and public education programs must be encouraged, in order to reduce significantly the leading cause of death and serious injury among children between the ages of six months and five years—motor vehicle crashes.\nThe crises devastating many of our nation's youth is nowhere more dramatically evidenced than in the alarming rate of increase in teenage suicide. Over 6,000 young people took their lives in 1983, and for each actual suicide 50 to 100 other youths attempted suicide. The underlying causes of teenage suicide, as well as its full scope, are not adequately researched or understood. We must commit ourselves to seek out the causes, formulate a national policy of prevention, and provide guidance to our state and local governments in developing means to stem this devastating tide of self-destruction. We support the creation of a national panel on teenage suicide to respond to this challenge.\nA Democratic Administration which establishes these priorities can reduce the risks for our young people and improve the odds. By so doing it will serve their future...and ours.\nInvesting in Education\n\nNo 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 strong economy, a strong defense or a strong system of justice, we cannot achieve it without a strong educational system. Our very future in international economic competition depends on skilled workers and on first-rate scientists, engineers, and managers.\nWe Democrats are committed to equity in education. We will insist on excellence, discipline, and high standards. Quality education depends on students, teachers and parents performing at the highest levels of achievement.\nToday, education in America needs help. But, the Reagan Administration offers misleading homilies about the importance of education while aggressively slashing education programs.\nThis is intolerable. We know that every dollar we invest in education is ultimately returned to us six-fold. We know that the education of our citizens is critical to our democracy.\nThere are four key goals that a Democratic program for educational excellence must address: strengthening local capacity to innovate and progress in public education and encourage parental involvement; renewing our efforts to ensure that all children, whatever their race, income, or sex have a fair and equal chance to learn; attracting the most talented young people into teaching and enabling them to remain and develop in their profession; and ensuring that all American families can send their children on to college or advanced training.\nPrimary and Secondary Education—While education is the responsibility of local government, local governments already strapped for funds by this Administration cannot be expected to bear alone the burden of undertaking the 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 between businesses and schools—without leadership at the federal level.\nDemocrats will provide that leadership. We call for the immediate restoration of the cuts in funding of education programs by the Reagan Administration, and for a major new commitment to education. We will create a partnership for excellence among federal, state and local governments. We will provide incentives to local school districts to concentrate on science, math, communications and computer literacy; to provide access to advanced technology. In all of these fields, but particularly in computers, there is a growing danger of a two-tier education system. The more affluent districts have adequate hardware and teachers prepared to use it. Many districts are left completely behind or saddled with a modern machine but no provision for faculty training. Every American child should have the basic education that makes computer literacy possible and useful. Major attention must be given to recruiting the finest young people into teaching careers, and to providing adequate staff development programs that enable educators to increase their effectiveness in meeting the needs or all students.\nVocational education should be overhauled to bring instructional materials, equipment, and staff up to date with the technology and practices of the workplace and target assistance to areas with large numbers of disadvantaged youth. We will insist that every child be afforded an equal opportunity to fulfill his or her potential. We will pay special attention to the needs of the handicapped.\nEducation is an important key to the upward mobility of all citizens and especially the disadvantaged, despite the fact that racial discrimination and other prejudices have set limits to such achievement.\nThe Reagan Administration has singled out for extinction the proven most successful education program—compensatory education for disadvantaged children. The Democratic Party will reverse this malicious onslaught and dramatically strengthen support in order to provide educational equity for all children.\nBilingual education enables children to achieve full competence in the English language and the academic success necessary to their full participation in the life of our nation. We reject the Reagan double-talk on bilingual education and commit ourselves to expanding and increasing its effectiveness.\nWe will emphasize the importance of preventing one-third of our student body nationwide from dropping out of school in the first place. And, we will supplement community-based programs encouraging students who have left school due to teenage parenthood, alcohol and drug abuse, or economic difficulties at home, to complete their education.\nRecognizing that young people who are never given an opportunity for a job will be less likely to hold one in adulthood, we will also emphasize training and employment opportunities for youth. In so doing, we need to establish a genuine working partnership with the private sector.\nPrivate schools, particularly parochial schools, are also an important part of our diverse educational system. Consistent with our tradition, the Democratic Party accepts its commitment to constitutionally acceptable methods of supporting the education of all pupils in schools which do not racially discriminate and excluding so-called segregation academies. The Party will continue to support federal education legislation which provides for the equitable participation in federal programs of all low and moderate income pupils.\nHigher Education—We will make certain that higher education does not become a luxury affordable only by the children of the rich. That is Ronald Reagan's America. In our America, no qualified student should be deprived of the ability to go on to college because of financial circumstance.\nThe Democratic Party reaffirms the importance of historically Black colleges. Today the survival of many of these colleges is threatened. The programs that assist them, which have been severely weakened in recent years, must be greatly strengthened with funding targeted toward Black and Hispanic institutions.\nAn explosion in demand for certain types of engineers, scientists and other technical specialists is creating a shortage of faculty and PhD candidates. We must encourage colleges and universities to train more scientists and engineers. More than one hundred years ago the Morrill Land Grant Act provided for agricultural colleges and programs that today still help keep American agriculture the world leader. We need a similar program today to encourage the training of scientists and engineers. At the same time, we must not neglect the arts and humanities, which enrich our spirit. The private sector must also recognize its responsibility to join partnerships which strengthen our diverse public and private higher education system.\nFinally, all our educational institutions must adapt to growing numbers of adults returning to school to upgrade their skills, acquire new skills, prepare themselves for entirely new occupations, and enrich their lives.\nInvesting In the Arts\n\nAmerica is truly growing and prosperous when its spirit flourishes. The arts and humanities are at the core of our national experience. Creativity and 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 craftswomen or the millions who use our libraries, countless Americans have a stake in a nation that honors and rejoices in intelligence and imagination.\nThe Democratic Party will set a new national tone of respect for learning and artistic achievement. Not only will the federal agencies that support them be strengthened and freed from political intimidation, but the White House itself will once again be a place where American cultural and intellectual life—in all its rich diversity—is honored. Excellence must start at the top.\nFinally, the Democratic Party is also committed to the survival of public television and radio stations which allow all Amerces, regardless of ability to pay, to appreciate high quality, alternative programming. We oppose the efforts of the Reagan Administration to enact draconian cuts which would totally undermine the viability of this nation's excellent public broadcasting system, a broadcasting system which has given the country Sesame Street, 3-2-1 Contact, and other superb children's as well as cultural and public affairs programming.\nJobs, Training, and Transitional Assistance\n\nWe must have a growing economy if we are to have jobs for all Americans who seek work. But even in a growing economy, the pressures of competition and the pace of change ensure that while jobs are being created, others are being destroyed. Prosperity will not be evenly distributed among regions and communities. We must make special efforts to help families in economic transition who are faced with loss or homes, health benefits, and pensions. And far too many of our young people, especially minorities, do not have the training and skills they need to get their first job. Democrats believe that it is a national responsibility to ensure that the burdens of change are fairly shared and that every young American can take the first step up the ladder of economic opportunity.\nOf the 8.5 million Americans still out of work, 40 percent are under 25. Unemployment among teenagers stands at almost 20 percent. Less than three percent of the jobs created in the last three and a half years have gone to young people. Black and Hispanic youth have a double burden. Unemployment for black teenagers stands at 44 percent—a 20 percent increase in the last three years. Hispanic teens face a 26 percent unemployment rate.\nAs disturbing as these figures are, they do not tell the whole story. The unemployment rate measures only those teenagers who were actively looking for work, not those who have given up, completely discouraged by the lack opportunity. Again the burden falls disproportionately on minority youth.\nThe Reagan Administration has dismantled virtually all of the successful programs to train and employ young people. Today we are spending less to put young people to work than we were even under the last Republican Administration—70 percent less, when inflation is taken into account. Youth unemployment has skyrocketed, while government efforts to combat it have dwindled to a trickle.\nUnless we address this problem now, half of an entire generation may never know what it means to work. America cannot successfully compete in the world economy if a significant portion of our future work force is illiterate, unskilled, and unemployable.\nThe 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 to lead to jobs. Specifically, targeted efforts are needed to address the urgent problem of unemployment among minority teenagers. We must provide job training for those who have dropped out of school, and take every step to expand educational opportunity for those still in school. We must recognize the special needs of the over-age 50 worker and the displaced homemaker. Through education, training and retraining we must reduce these dangerously high levels of unemployment.\nWe must provide an opportunity for worker, including those dislocated by changing technologies to adapt to new opportunities: we must provide workers with choices as to which skills they wish to acquire. We know that Americans want to work. We are committed to ensuring that meaningful job training is available—for our students, for housewives returning to the workplace, and for those displaced by changing patterns of technology or trade.\n—The federal government will develop a major comprehensive national job skills development policy that is targeted on the chronically unemployed and underemployed. We must train and place these Americans in high-demand labor shortage occupations, working with the private sector so that maximum employment and job creation can be achieved.\n—We will overhaul the currently antiquated unemployment compensation system, and adequately fund job search listings of local employment services.\n—We will also launch meaningful training programs that lead to job placement for women who receive public assistance, in order to break the cycle of dependence and to raise their standard of living. Instead of punitive reductions in AFDC and other benefits for women who seek training and employment while receiving such assistance, beneficiaries should be given a transition period during which they are permitted to earn income in a formal training program while receiving full benefits.\n—We will seriously examine new approaches to training and retraining programs that could be financed directly by government, by labor and management, or by tax free contributions.\n—If cancellations of specific weapons systems result in significant economic dislocations and job loss, it is a national responsibility to address the human consequences of national policy.\nInvesting In Infrastructure\n\nEconomic growth requires that America invest in our infrastructure as well as in our people. Investing in infrastructure means rebuilding our bridges and roads and sewers, and we are committed to doing that. But it also means investing in our cities, in decent housing and public transportation, and in regulatory systems for finance and telecommunication that will provide a sound basis for future economic growth\nInvesting in our Cities\n\nThe Democratic Party recognizes the value of prosperous local government, and within that context we recognize that a healthy city is essential to the well-being of the nation, state, county and surrounding local governments.\nOur nation's economic life depends on the economic growth of our cities. Our cities are not only the treasures from which the nation draws its wealth: they are the centers of industry, the centers of art and culture, the breeding ground for economic innovation, and home to the majority of the America people. Our cities are among this country's greatest achievements, and they can be our country's greatest engine of economic growth.\nCities can be active partners with the federal government and private enterprises for creating new growth. They can be a dynamic entrepreneurial force—by encouraging education and research, by incubating promising new industries, by steering resources toward those most in need, and by fostering new cooperative arrangements among public agencies and private business. Cities can be a leading force for rebuilding the nation's economy.\nBut to do this, cities need state and national leadership which values the role of city and county government. Cities need a President willing to work and consult with mayors and county executives. They need an Administration which puts the needs of urban America on the top of the national agenda—because no plan for economic strength will survive when our cities are left behind.\nToday, the Reagan Administration has turned its back on the cities. By sapping our cities strength, this Administration is sapping out country's strength. Only the intervention of the Congress has prevented further and more devastating cuts in city-oriented programs. The Democratic Party believes in making our cities' needs a federal priority once again: We want to see again cities where people have jobs and adequate housing, cities whose bridges and mass transit are being maintained, and whose neighborhoods are safe to live in. And that will take a commitment by our federal government to help our cities again.\nToward that end, the Democratic Party pledges:\n—a commitment to full employment. We believe the federal government must develop a major, comprehensive national job skills development policy targeted on the chronically unemployed and underemployed. We must launch special training programs for women who receive public assistance. We need to increase government procurement opportunities for small and minority firms and to encourage deposits of federal funds in minority-owned financial institutions. And to build for the future, the Democratic Patty calls Party calls for a new national commitment to education, which must include raising standards, insisting on excellence, and giving all children a chance to learn, regardless of race, income or sex.\n—a commitment to rebuilding the infrastructure of America. We need to inventory facility needs, set priorities and establish policies for the repair, maintenance, and replacement of public works by all levels of government. We need to create a federal capital budget to separate operating and capital outlays. We will consult local governments in decisions affecting the design and performance standards of facilities constructed under federal programs. And we need to create a national reconstruction fund to provide affordable loans to states and localities for infrastructure projects. This will not only rebuild the infrastructure of our cities but provide badly needed employment for people who live there.\n—a commitment to housing. We must restore government's positive role in helping all Americans find adequate and affordable housing. We reaffirm our commitment to public housing for the most disadvantaged members of our society. We must strengthen our commitment to the operation and rehabilitation of current government-assisted housing. We must maintain and expand the flow of mortgage capital, and bring interest rates down with sensible economic policies. We must pull together the patchwork of housing programs and cut through the red tape to make it easier for cities to receive the assistance to meet their own unique needs. We must upgrade and replenish housing in minority communities and create more units for poor and low-income people. And we must enforce fair housing standards to prohibit discrimination in the housing market.\nOur Party must be a vehicle for realizing the hopes, the aspirations, and the dreams of the people of this country. And that includes the people who live in cities.\nPhysical Infrastructure\n\nThis nation's physical infrastructure—our bridges and roads, our ports, our railroads, our sewers, our public transit and water supply systems—is deteriorating faster than we can repair it. The gap between the necessary improvements and available resources grows every year. State and local governments, strapped by Reaganomics, have been forced repeatedly to defer maintenance, and to abandon plans for construction.\nAs Democrats, we recognize that infrastructure is the basis for efficient commerce and industry. If our older industrial cities are to grow, if our expanding regions are to continue to expand, then we must work with state and local government to target our investment to out 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 federal government must take the lead in putting them back to work, and in doing so, providing the basis for private sector investment and economic growth. We need to inventory facility needs, set priorities, and establish policies for the repair, maintenance and replacement of the public works by all of government. We need a capital budget to separate paying for these long-term investments from regular expenditures. Furthermore, we need a national reconstruction fund to provide affordable loans to state and localities for infrastructure projects.\nFinance Infrastructure\n\nAt the heart of our economy is the financial infrastructure: a set of diverse interdependent institutions and markets which are the envy of the world. We must preserve that strengths. Until very recently, the United States operated with a domestic financial system that was built in response to the stock market crash Of 1929, the massive series of bank failures that accompanied the Great Depression, and the speculative excesses of the stock market. There was an emphasis on placing different types of financial activities in different institutions. Commercial banks were not to float stock market issues. Investment bankers could. Neither took equity positions in individual companies. savings and credit institutions were established to support housing and consumer durable. 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 needs of business and consumers have been the fundamental goals.\nBit by bit, the American financial system began to change. The domestic financial market became closely tied to the international market, which in turn had become larger, more competitive, and more volatile. Inflation, technology, the growth of foreign competition, and institutional innovation all combined to create strong pressures for change. The 1980's brought a deregulation of interest rates and a wave of deregulatory decisions by financial regulators.\nThese changes raise serious threats to our traditional financial goals. Before leaping into a highly uncertain financial future, the country should take a careful look at the direction deregulation is taking, and what it means to our financial system and the economy.\nTelecommunications\n\nTelecommunications is the infrastructure of the information age. The last decade has seen an explosion in new technologies expanded competition, and growing dependence on high quality telecommunications.\nNationwide access to those networks is becoming crucial to full participation in a society and economy that are increasingly dependent upon the rapid exchange of information. Electronically-delivered messages, and not the written word, are becoming the dominant form of communication. A citizen without access to telecommunications is in danger of fading into isolation. Therefore, the proper regulation of telecommunications is critical. We must encourage competition while preventing regulatory decisions which substantially increase basic telephone rates and which threaten to throw large numbers of low-income, elderly, or rural people off the telecommunications networks. We must also insure that workers in the telecommunications industry do not find their retirement or other earned benefits jeopardized by the consequences of divestiture.\nThis electronic marketplace is so fundamental to our future as a democracy (as well as to our economy) that social and cultural principles must be as much a part of communications policy as a commitment to efficiency, innovation, and competition. Those principles are diversity, the availability of a wide choice of information services and sources; access, the ability of all Americans, not just a privileged few, to take advantage of this growing array of information services and sources; and opportunity, a commitment to education and diverse ownership, particularly by minorities and women, that will give every American the ability to take advantage of the computer and the telecommunications revolution. We support the Fairness Doctrine and Equal Time requirements, along with other laws and regulations on the electronic media which encourage or require responsiveness to community needs and a diversity or viewpoints.\nHousing\n\nDecent, affordable housing has been a goal of national public policy for almost half a century, since the United States Housing Act of 1937. The Democratic Party has remotely reaffirmed the belief that American citizens should be able to find adequate shelter at reasonable cost. And we have been unwavering in our support of the premise that government has a positive role to play in ensuring housing opportunities for less fortunate Americans, including the elderly and the handicapped, not served by the private market.\nIn the last four years this long-standing commitment to decent shelter has been crippled by the underfunding, insensitivity, high interest rates, and distorted priorities of the Reagan Administration.\nThe Democratic Party has always accorded housing the high priority it deserves. One essential quality will characterize this commitment in the future It must and will be comprehensive.\nBy advocating a comprehensive policy which addresses the totality of our housing needs, we do not mean to suggest that all concerns have an equal claim on resources or require the same level of governmental intervention. The bulk of our resources will be concentrated on those most in need, and government must take a leadership role where others cannot or will not participate.\nWithin a comprehensive framework for policy development and constituency building, we will establish priorities according to principles of compassion and equity. We would like to see a special effort in two areas in the first years of a new Democratic Administration.\nFirst, 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 fortunate among our lower income families and senior citizens. It is the right thing to do and it 'makes economic sense to preserve our own economic investment.\nSecond, we must maintain and expand the flow of mortgage capital. The America dream of home ownership will fall beyond the reach of this generation and future ones if government fails to help attract new sources of capital for housing.\nWe will draw on our historic commitment to housing, and the best insights and energies of today's Democratic Party, to address the future housing needs of all the American people. The Democratic Party will develop short-range emergency responses to the problem of homelessness as well as long-range solutions to its causes. The Democratic Party will support upgrading and replenishment of the housing stock in minority communities, with more affordable units available so that poor and low income people can buy units with low interest loans. Also, fair housing standards need to be vigorously enforced by the federal, state and local governments in order to deal with persistent discrimination in the housing market for buyers and renters. Finally, the expansion of public housing and other publicly-assisted housing programs is a necessity due to the growth in the homeless population and in the high cost of commercially available units.\nTransportation\n\nDemocrats vigorously support the concept of promoting competition in transportation and the elimination of unnecessary and inefficient regulation of the railroad industry. Democrats also insist on insuring a fair rate for captive shippers. It was the Democratic Party which was primarily responsible for the passage of the Staggers Rail Act of 1980, which was designed to accomplish these objectives.\nThe Democratic Party is committed to a policy of administering the transportation laws in a manner which will encourage competition and provide protection for captive shippers.\nA comprehensive maritime policy that is tailored to the realities of today's international shipping world and to the economic, political, and military needs of the United States is a necessity. Such a policy should address all facets of out maritime industry—from shipping to shipbuilding and related activities—in an integrated manner.\nPostal Service\n\nThe private express statutes guarantee the protection and security of the mail for all Americans. They are essential to the maintenance of the national postal system along with retaining rural post offices to assure the delivery of mail to all Americans.\nA Framework for Growth\n\nThe American economy is a complex mix, incorporating any number of different actors and entities—private businesses, professional societies, charitable institutions, lair unions, regional development councils, and local school boards. The economy is driven by millions of individual decisions on spending and saving, on investing and wages. Government is only one force among many woven into the fabric of American economic life. Just as the wrong overall economic policy can disrupt the best private decisions, the best government economic policies will not put us on a path to long-term growth unless business, labor, and other private institutions meet their responsibilities and rise to the competitive challenge of a new era.\nPrivate Sector Responsibilities\n\nIn many cases, the private sector is already playing a major role in laying the basis for future growth and meeting broad community responsibilities. In other cases, however, short-term considerations have been allowed to predominate at the expense of the long-term needs of the national economy.\nA recent wave of mergers has been particularly troubling. Any number of large corporations have focuses their energies arranging the next merger or defending against the latest takeover bid.\nMany of our major competitors have targeted their efforts on investments in new methods of producing cheaper, high-quality products. To respond to the growing pressure of foreign competition. America's private sector must meet several challenges:\n—Investing strategically—the more U.S. companies focus on long-term strategies to improve their competitive positions, the better off the entire economy will be.\n—Managing cost and quality—U.S. companies will have to place similar emphasis on controlling costs and quality to effectively meet the best of the foreign competition.\n—Competing internationally—U.S. business like other institutions in the country need to pay greater attention to the international market place.\nPartnership, Cooperation and Participation\n\nPartnership, cooperation and participation are central to economic growth. We need new cooperative institutions, and a steady redefinition of how labor and management, universities, the private sector, and state and local governments can work together.\n—National cooperation—In developing a long-term growth strategy, there are several particularly important functions that today are poorly performed or poorly coordinated by the government: coordination and policy coherence;\ndeveloping and disseminating useful economic information; anticipating economic problems; and developing long-term consensus between public and private sectors. To better accomplish these tasks, it is time that a national Economic Cooperation Council was created, Its charter would be simple and basic: (1) to collect, analyze, and disseminate economic data; (2) to create a forum where the gap between business, labor, and government is bridged, where all three develop the trust, understanding, and cooperation necessary to improve productivity; and, (3) to identify national priorities, make recommendations on how best to reach those goals, and help build consensus for action.\n—State involvement—Under the guise of increasing the power of state government, the Reagan Administration has actually given the states only the power to decide what programs to cut or eliminate, because of the substantially decreased funding it has made available to the states. Should it be baby clinics, child immunization against disease, day care, maternal health, or youth services? The Democratic Party believes a strong partnership of federal, state and local governments is basic to effective and efficient decision-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 business and universities. And universities are increasingly looking to the private sector in setting their research agendas.\n—Local and community involvement—Citizen involvement in governance should be as great as possible. The responsibility for general governance, the delivery of programs and services, and the resolution of problems should be with the level of government that is closest to the citizenry and that can still discharge those responsibilities effectively and efficiently. These levels of government must assure basic civil liberties and justice for 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 local business will increasingly be brought together. Financial stability and adequate authority are essential prerequisites to developing successful public-private partnerships and maximizing citizen involvement in governance.\nGovernment financial and technical assistance programs should give preference to viable worker and/or community—owned or -run businesses, especially as a response to plant shutdowns.\nBroadening Labor-Management Cooperation\n\nWe support greater employee participation in the workplaces. Employees should have an opportunity to make a greater contribution to workplace productivity and qualify through actual ownership of the company, employee representation on corporate boards, quality work circles, and greater worker participation in management decisions. The government should encourage employee participation and ownership, particularly as an alternative to plant shutdowns. It is destructive of labor-management relations when concessions extracted from labor to preserve jobs are converted after the restoration of profitability, into management bonuses, rather than restoring the concessions that the workers made. Such practices offend our sense of fairness, as does the Reagan Administration-inspired union-busting. Essential to fairness in the workplace is the basic right of workers to organize collectively.\nConsumer Protection\n\nThe Democratic Party strongly reaffirms its commitment to federal programs which are designed to enhance and protect the health and safety of all Americans. Under the Reagan Administration, the critical missions of agencies such as the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have been ignored and subverted.\nThe Reagan Administration proposed abolishing the CPSC, which has recalled over 300 million dangerous and defective products in its 10 year history. When it failed to accomplish this, the Administration attempted to submerge CPSC in the Department of Commerce. Also failing in this attempt, the Reagan Administration inflicted massive budget and personnel cuts on the Commission. The impact has been far reaching: recalls declined 66%, inspections were cut in half and over half of CPSC's regional offices have been closed. The result has been a paralysis of mission and an America more susceptible to dangerous product.\nThe record at the NHTSA, the agency mandated to reduce the appalling annual highway deaths of more than 50,000 Americans, is just as shameful. The President has appointed administrators with no safety background and even less commitment to the public health mission of the agency. Critical lifesaving safety standards, such as one requiring automatic crash protection in 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 proposed in four years.\nAt OSHA and MSHA, we have witnessed a retreat from agency mandates to provide safe and healthful working conditions for this nation's working men and women. Existing standards have been weakened or revoked and not one single new standard has been implemented. Similarly, at the FDA there has been an important shift away from removing dangerous and ineffective drugs in favor of weakening standards for products. The FTC has run roughshod over the nation's antitrust laws, allowing 9 of the 10 largest mergers in history to occur.\nThe dangerous trends in all these areas must be immediately reversed to allow these vital health and safety agencies to pursue their missions aggressively, to protect and enhance the health and safety of all Americans.\nIndividual Empowerment\n\nThe Democratic Party's commitment to full equality is as much a part of prodding individual opportunity as it is part of a program of social justice. 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 mortgage knows the pride that economic self-sufficiency brings. And anyone who has lost a job, watched one's children go hungry, or been denied a chance at success knows the terrible indignity that comes with dependence.\nAs Democrats, we share that belief in independence. Our goal is to allow the greatest number of people the greatest opportunity for self-sufficiency.\nAs 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 education for our young people. We are committed to permitting independence; that's why wee believe discrimination on any basis must come to an end. We believe that independence should be prolonged for as long as possible; to ensure it continues even after retirement, we support Social Security and Medicare. And we believe we must preserve the self-respect of those who are unable to be completely self-sufficient—the very young, the unskilled, the disabled, the very old—and to help them toward as much independence as possible. As much as it is a strategy for long run economic growth, individual empowerment must itself be an operating philosophy. in the welfare system, in education, and in the laws affecting everyone from shareholders to the average voter, the Democratic Party will ask if the individual is being made stronger and more independent.\nAmerica in a World Economy\n\nThe reality of international competition in the 1980's requires government policies which will assure the competitiveness of American industry and American workers. Democrats will support and encourage innovation and research and development in both the private and public sector. We will seek to strengthen America's small businesses. And we will pursue trade policies and industrial strategies to ensure that out workers and our businesses can compete fully and fairly in the international arena.\nInnovation\n\nInnovation—in process and product technology—is at the heart of our ability to compete in a world economy and produce sustained economic growth at home. And research and development, critical as it is for our growing high technology industries, is no less important for our basic industries. In the past generation, our world leadership in innovation has been increasingly jeopardized. We have not invested enough—or wisely enough—to match our major competitors.\nResearch and Development—Since the mid-1960's, all the other major industrial nations have increased their expenditures for research and development more rapidly than we have. Over the past decade, manufacturing productivity rose more than four times faster in Japan, more than three times faster in France, and more than twice as fast in both West Germany and the United Kingdom than in the United States. And the number of patents granted to Americans each year has plunged by 40 percent.\nThe United States should revise its downward trend and increase the percentage of GNP devoted to commercially-related R&D as a long-term spending goal. We must be at the cutting edge, and we will not get there without cooperation between the government and the private sector. As Democrats, our goal is to increase civilian research and development in this country, to expand its commercial application, and to provide more industries with the opportunity to take advantage of it.\nAt the national level, this means enhanced support for undergraduate and graduate training in science, mathematics, and engineering; increased support to refurbish a modernize university research laboratories; increased support for the National Science Foundation and similar efforts; and a commitment to civilian research and development.\nCenters 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 as a 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 for cooperation of academic and entrepreneurial excellence, thereby strengthening our scientific and technological resources and creating tomorrow's jobs.\nSmall and Minority Business\n\nThe Democratic Party recognizes that small businesses create many, if not most of the new jobs in our country, and are responsible for much of the innovation. They are thus our greatest hope for the future. Our capacity as a nation to create an environment that encourages and nurtures innovative new businesses will determine our success in providing jobs for our people. In the private sector, spurring innovation means paying special attention to the needs of small, including minority and women-owned, and rapidly growing businesses on the cutting edge of our economy.\nThis will require incentives for research and development and for employee education and training, including relaxing certain restrictions on pension fund investment; targeted reform that stimulates the flow of capital into new and smaller businesses: a tax code that is no longer biased against small and rapidly growing firms: vigorous enforcement of our antitrust laws, coupled with antitrust policies that permit clearly legitimate joint research and development ventures; expanded small business access to the Export-Import Bank and other agencies involved in export promotion; and targeted reform that provides for the delivery of community-based, community-supported management assistance, and innovative means of making seed capital available for companies in our large cities, as well as our rural communities.\nRules and regulations should not weigh more heavily on new firms or small businesses than they do on the large well-established enterprise, Risk taking is a key to economic growth in a modern industrial society. If anything, rules and regulations should encourage it.\nThe Small Business Administration must once again be responsive to the needs of entrepreneurs, including minorities and women. In addition, the heads of the Small Business Administration, the Minority Business Development Administration and other government agencies must ensure that the needs of smaller minority businesses are met at the regional and local levels. To further meet the needs of smaller minority businesses, we favor increasing government procurement, opportunities for smaller minority firms, encouraging deposits of federal funds in minority-owned financial institutions, and vigorously implementing all set-aside provisions for minority businesses.\nThe Democratic Party pledges to bring about these reforms and create a new era of opportunity for the entrepreneurs who have always led the way in our economy.\nMeeting the Challenge of Economic Competition\n\nThirty years ago, half of all goods produced in the world were made in the United States. While we have greatly expanded our output of services, our share of manufactured products is now just one-fifth of the world's total. Once dominant U.S. industries are now hard-pressed. In April, our trade 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 allow our workers and our industries to be displaced by either unfair import competition, or irrational fiscal and monetary policies.\nSome of these difficulties we have brought on ourselves, with shortsighted strategies, inadequate investment in plant, equipment, and innovation, and fiscal and monetary policies that have impaired our international competitiveness by distorting the value of the dollar against foreign currencies. But other difficulties have been thrust upon us by foreign nations.\nThe reality of the 1980's is that the international economy is the arena in which we must compete, The world economy is an integrated economy: the challenge for our political leadership is to assure that the new arena is in fact a fair playing field for American businesses and consumers. We are committed to pursuing industrial strategies that effectively and imaginatively blend the genius of the free market with vital government partnership and leadership. As Democrats, we will be guided by the following principles and policies.\n—We need a vigorous, open and fair trade policy 'that builds America's competitive strength, and that allows our nation to remain an advanced, diversified economy while promoting full employment and raising living standards in the United States and other countries of the world; opens overseas markets for American products; strengthens the international economic system; assists adjustment to foreign competition; and recognizes the legitimate interests of American workers, farmers and businesses.\n—We will pursue international negotiations to open markets and eliminate trade restrictions, recognizing that the growth and stability of the Third World depends on its ability to sell its products in international markets. High technology, agriculture and other industries should be brought under the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs. Moreover, the developing world is a major market for U.S. exports, particularly capital goods. As a result, the U.S. has major stake in international economic institutions that support growth in the developing world.\n—We recognize that the growth and development of the Third World is vital both to global stability and to the continuing expansion of world trade. The U.S. presently sells more to the Third World than to the European Community and Japan combined. If we do not buy their goods, they cannot buy ours, not can they service their debt. Consequently, it is important to be responsive to the issues of the North/South dialogue such as volatile commodity prices, inequities in the functioning or the international financial and monetary markets, and removal of barriers to the expert or Third World goods.\n—If trade has become big business for the country, exports have become 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 eye to its impact on U.S. exports. The strength of the dollar, the nature of the U.S. tax system, and the adequacy of export finance all play a role in making U.S. exports internationally competitive.\n—The United States continues to struggle with trade barriers that affect its areas of international strength. Subsidized export financing on the part of Europe and Japan has also created problems for the United States, as has the use of industrial policies in Europe and Japan. In some cases, foreign governments target areas of America's competitive strength. In other cases, industrial targeting has been used to maintain industries that cannot meet international competition—often diverting exports to the American market and increasing the burden or adjustment for America's import-competing industries. We will ensure that timely and effective financing can be obtained by American businesses through the Export-Import Bank, so that they can compete effectively against subsidized competitors from abroad.\n—A healthy U.S. auto industry is essential to a strong trade balance and economy. That industry generates a large number of American jobs and both develops and consumes new technology needed for economic vitality. We believe it is a sound principle of international trade for foreign automakers which enjoy substantial sales in the United States to invest here and create jobs where their markets are. This can promote improved trade relations and a stronger American and world economy. We also believe U.S. auto makers need to maintain high volume small car production in the U.S. With the U.S. auto companies' return to profitability (despite continued unemployment in the auto sector), we urge expanded domestic investment to supply consumers with a full range of competitive vehicle. We support efforts by management and labor to improve auto quality and productivity, and to restrain prices.\n—Where foreign competition is fair, American industry should compete without government assistance. Where competition is unfair, we must respond powerfully. We will use trade law and international negotiations to aid U.S. workers, farmers, and businesses injured by unfair trade practices.\n—We need industrial strategies to create a cooperative partnership of labor, capital, and management to increase productivity and to make America competitive once more. Our keystone industries must be modernized and rebuilt, through industry-wide agreements. Where necessary, through Presidential leadership, we must negotiate industrial modernization and growth agreements that commit management to new domestic investment, higher levels of employment and worker training, as well as commit labor to ease the introduction of new technologies.\n—There must be a broad consensus and commitment among labor, business and financial institutions that industry should and can be assisted, and in a particular way. We believe that all parties to modernization agreements must contribute to their success and that the government must be prepared to 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.\n—The problems of individual industries, rather than industry as a whole, is another area in which an Economic Cooperation Council will be effective. In the case of a particular industry, the Council would select sub-councils to solve specific problems. Key members of the interested businesses and unions, financial institutions, academic specialists and other concerned and knowledgeable parties would meet to hammer out proposed strategies and agreements. It is not a question of picking winners and losers. Nor is it even always a question of some industries being more important than others. Rather, it is an opportunity for government and the private sector to forge a consensus to capture new markets, to restore an industry to competitive health, or to smooth the transition of workers and firms to new opportunities.\n—We want industries to modernize so as to restore competitiveness where it is flagging. If temporary trade relief is granted, the quid pro quo for relief will be a realistic, hardheaded modernization plan which will restore competitiveness involving commitments by all affected parties. The public is entitled to receive a fair return on its investment. Where government initiatives are necessary to save an industry like steel, auto or textiles, we must see that those initiatives meet the needs of the whole community—workers as well as executives, taxpayers and consumers as well as stockholders.\n—To facilitate the efforts of workers and communities to keep plants open and operating and in cases which closings are unavoidable, to help workers and communities to adapt, we support a requirement that companies give advance notification of plant closings or large-scale layoffs to their employees, surrounding communities and local governments. Where plants are nonetheless closed, we will help workers and communities to adapt.\n—Finally, we need a vigorous effort to redress the currency distortions that are undermining our international competitiveness. In addition to reducing our budget deficit, we will press for improved economic coordination with the major industrialized nations; work with Japan and other countries to further liberalize currency and investment regulations; :and negotiate toward agreements that will blunt speculative currency swings and restore stability and predictability to the international monetary system.\nAgriculture\n\nAgriculture—America's largest, most fundamental industry—has been plunged into its worst depression since Herbert Hoover presided over the farm economy's collapse half a century ago. During President Reagan's stewardship of our nation's agriculture economy: real prices paid to farmers for their commodities have plummeted by twenty-one percent; real interest rates paid by farmers have increased be as much as 1,200 percent; real farm income has fallen to its lowest level since 1933; debt owed by U.S. farmers and ranchers has swelled to $215 billion; and farm foreclosures and forced sales have tripled.\nRonald Reagan has hung a \"for sale\" sign on America's independent, family-based system of agricultural production. While these farmers have raised their production efficiency to record highs, Reagan's policies have forced down their prices, income, and financial worth.\nThe Reagan Administration has been unwilling to take sensible, fiscally responsible 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 office in 1981. This is a rate of more than 1,000 families pushed off their land every week, the equivalent of all the farms and ranches in California and Iowa, our two largest agricultural states. Hundreds of thousands of the remaining enterprises teeter on the brink of bankruptcy and cannot survive another four years of this Administration's agricultural mismanagement.\nThis collapse is happening despite the fact that Ronald Reagan has squandered taxpayers' money on his farm policies, spending $31 billion on his programs last year alone. That is six times more than any other\nThe Democratic Party strongly opposes the Reagan Administration's policy or aggressively promoting and further subsidizing nuclear power. Today, millions of Americans arc concerned about the safety of nuclear power plants and their radioactive waste. We recognize the safety and economic factors which bring into question the viability of this energy source.\nWe will insist on the highest possible standards of safety and protection of public health with respect to nuclear power, including siting, design, operation, evacuation plans, and waste disposal procedures. We will require nuclear power to compete fairly in the marketplace. We will reexamine and review all federal subsidies to the nuclear industry, including the Price-Anderson Act's limits on the liability of the industry which will be considered for re-authorization in the next Congress. A Democratic Administration will give the Nuclear Regulatory Commission the integrity, competence, and credibility it needs to carry out its mandate to protect the public health and safety. We will expand the role of the public in NRC procedures.\nThe Democratic Party believes high-level radioactive waste and other hazardous materials should be transported only when absolutely necessary. We will guarantee states full participatory rights in all decisions affecting the movement of high-level radioactive waste within their borders. We will require radioactive waste and hazardous materials emergency response plans along transportation routes, similar to those required for nuclear power plants. The Democratic Party will act swiftly to ensure stales' authority to regulate routes and schedules for radioactive and other hazardous shipments.\nWe will ensure that no offshore oil and gas exploration will be taken up that is inconsistent with the protection of our fisheries and coastal resources. The leasing of public lands, both onshore and offshore, will be based on present demand and land use planning processes, and will be undertaken in ways that assure fair economic return to the public, protection of the environment and full participation by state and local governments. The Coastal Zone Management Act should be amended to require initial leasing decisions to be consistent with federally approved state and territorial coastal zone management plans. Interior states should be given consultation and concurrence rights with respect to onshore leases comparable to the rights afforded coastal states with respect to offshore leases.\nWe believe that synthetic fuels research and development support should emphasize environmental protection technologies and standards and hold out reasonable hope of long-term economic viability. The Democratic Party proposes to reevaluate the Synthetic Fuels Corporation.\nEnergy Conservation\n\nThe high cost of producing and using energy now constitutes a substantial share of U.S. capital spending. Energy conservation has become essential to our economy as well as our national security.\nStrict standards of energy efficiency for home appliances, for example, could save enough money in the next 15 years to avoid the need for 40 new power plants. Better insulated houses and apartments can sharply reduce power and heating bills for families throughout America, and help utilities avoid the high cost of building more expensive power plants.\nRonald Reagan sees no role for government in conserving energy, and he has gutted promising conservation efforts. The Democratic Party supports extension of the existing tax credits for business and residential energy conservation and renewable energy use, and expansion of the tax credits to include the incorporation of passive solar designs in new housing. The Democratic Party also supports faithful implementation of existing programs for energy efficiency standards for new appliances: upgrading of fuel efficiency standards for new automobile; establishment of comparable fuel efficiency standards for new light trucks and vans; and development of an energy efficiency rating system to be used to advise home-buyers at the time of sale of the likely future energy costs of houses.\nLifeline Utility Rates\n\nRecognizing that the elderly and the poor suffer most from high energy costs, the Democratic Party supports special, lower electricity and natural gas rates for senior citizens and low-income Americans.\nRecycling\n\nThe Democratic Party recognizes that recovering and recycling used materials can conserve energy and natural resources, create additional jobs, reduce the costs of material goods, eliminate solid waste and liter, and avoid pollution. We will increase efforts to recover and recycle useful materials from municipal waste.\nProtecting Our Environment\n\nAmericans know that industrial production and economic development do not have to mean ruined land or polluted air and water. Sound resource management, careful planning, and strict pollution control enforcement will allow us to have a prosperous economy and a healthy environment. For the last four years the Reagan Administration has assumed a radical position, working to eliminate the environmental protections forged through years of bipartisan cooperation.\nRonald Reagan's first appointees to key environmental positions have already been forced to resign. But the American people are entitled to more than the absence of scandal—they demand real action to protect the health and safety of our families and communities. The Democratic Party supports revitalizing the Environmental Protection Agency by providing it with a budget increase adequate to allow it to carry out its substantially increased responsibility to protect the people and enforce the law.\nHazardous Wastes\n\nThousands of dump sites across America contain highly dangerous poisons that can threaten the health and safety of families who live nearby or who depend on water supplies that could be contaminated by the poisons. Although Congress his established the Superfund for emergency cleanup of these dangerous sites, President Reagan refuses to use it vigorously. The Democratic Party is committed to enforcing existing laws, to dramatically increasing Superfund resources to clean up all sites that threaten public health, and to assuring that everyone whose health or property is damaged has a fair opportunity to force the polluters to pay for the damage. This increased support should be financed at least in part through new taxes on the generation of hazardous wastes, so companies have an economic incentive to reduce the volume and toxicity of their dangerous wastes.\nThe Resource Conservation and Recovery Act should be expanded to include major new requirements for safer management of newly generated toxic waste. High priority must be given to establishing and implementing a program to phase out the land disposal of untreated hazardous waste, requiring instead that it be treated by chemical, biological, or thermal processes that render it harmless and safe for disposal. The Environmental Protection Agency also should adopt standards to ensure that the safest possible methods of managing particular wastes are used, and that available methods are used to reduce the volume and toxicity of waste produced by industry.\nClean Air and Water\n\nThe Democratic Party supports a reauthorized and strengthened Clean Air Act. Statutory requirements for the control of toxic air pollutants should be strengthened, with the environmental agency required to identify and regulate within three years priority air pollutants known or anticipated to cause cancer and other serious diseases. The Democratic Party calls for an immediate program to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions by 50% from 1980 levels within the next decade; this program shall include interim reductions within five years of its enactment. In addition, significant progress will be made to further reductions of nitrogen oxide emissions. Our effort should be designed to reduce environmental and economic damage from acid ram while assuring such efforts do not cause regional economic dislocations. Every effort should be made to mitigate any job losses associated with any national acid rain program.\nThe Democratic Party is committed to strengthening the Clean Water Act to curb both direct and indirect discharge of toxic pollutants into our nation's waters, and supports a strengthened Environmental Protection Agency to assure help to American cities in providing adequate supplies of drinking water free of toxic chemicals and other contaminants.\nWorkplace Safety\n\nThe Democratic Party believes all Americans in their workplaces and communities, have the right to know what hazardous materials and chemicals they may have been exposed to and how they may protect their health from such exposure. The Democratic Party supports appropriate funding levels for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, reversing the Reagan budget cuts in that agency; vigorous enforcement of occupational safety and health standards; and worker right-to-know requirements.\nPesticides and Herbicides\n\nThe Democratic Party is committed to establishing standards and deadlines requiring all pesticides and herbicides to be thoroughly tested to ensure they do not cause cancer, birth defects, or other adverse health effects. We support rigorous research and information programs to develop and assist farmers with the use of integrated pest management and non-chemical pest control methods to reduce the health risk of controlling agricultural pests, and the establishment of strict deadlines to ensure that pesticides are fully tested and in compliance with health and safety standards. The Democratic Party is committed to ensuring that our nation's food supply is free of pesticides whose danger to health has been demonstrate, and believes it is irresponsible to allow the export to other nations of herbicides and pesticides banned for use in the U.S. and will act swiftly to halt such exports.\nEPA Budget\n\nThe Democratic Party opposes the Reagan Administration's budget cuts, which have severely hampered the effectiveness or our environmental programs. The Environmental Protection Agency should receive a budget that exceeds in real dollars the agency's purchasing power when President Reagan took office, since the agency's workload has almost doubled in recent years.\nInternational Leadership\n\nThe Democratic Party strongly opposes the Reagan Administration's abandonment of the United States' historic leadership role in international efforts to control pollution, contrary to our interests and those of our allies. We will restore immediately our nation's leadership on international environmental issues, making the United States once again the best example of an industrial nation committed to protecting its land, water and air resources, as well as those of its neighbors.\nFederal Compliance\n\nThe Democratic Party will require all federal activities, including those associated with the Departments of Defense and Energy, to comply fully with federal health, safety and environmental laws.\nManaging our Public Lands\n\nThe Democratic Party believes in retaining ownership and control of our public lands, and in managing those lands according to the principles of multiple use and sustained yield, with appropriate environmental standards and mitigation requirements to protect the public interest. The Democratic Party supports the substantial expansion of the National Wilderness Preservation System, with designations of all types of ecosystems, including coastal areas, deserts, and prairies as well as forest and alpine areas. Congressional decisions to designate wilderness should include evaluations of mineral resources and other potential land values. Further, the Democratic Party believes that publicly owned timber resources should be priced at levels that reflect their true market value, taking into consideration their true costs to the government. Grazing on our public lands should not impair our grassland resources.\nThe Democratic Party believes the process of designating rivers for inclusion in the national wild and scenic rivers system, halted by the Reagan Administration, should be preserved in their free-flowing condition for the benefit and enjoyment of present and future generations.\nThe Democratic Party supports adequate funding of and restoration of federal programs to protect fully national parks, wildlife refuges, and wilderness areas from external and internal threats. Development activities within national wildlife refuges which are not compatible with the purposes for which the refuges were designated should not be allowed. The letter and the spirit of the Alaska National Interest Lands Consolation Act of 1980 should be followed, with an end to unsound land exchanges and other efforts to circumvent the law.\nA new Democratic Party will provide adequate appropriations for the Land and Water Conservation Fund.\nWetlands—The Democratic Party supports coherent and coordinated federal policies to protect our nation's valuable and disappearing wetlands, which are critical nurseries for commercial fisheries and vital ecological, scenic, and recreational resources. These policies will include more active efforts to acquire threatened wetland areas, consideration of new tax incentives to encourage private efforts to preserve instead of develop wetland, and elimination of current incentives that encourage wetlands destruction.\nWildlife—Fishing, hunting, and enjoyment of America's wildlife can continue to be an important part of our natural heritage only through active programs to maintain the diversity and abundance of plants, animals, and natural habitats. The Democratic Party supports protection of endangered species, land management to maintain healthy populations of wildlife, and full United States participation to implement international wildlife treaties.\nWater Policy—The Democratic Party recognizes that finite and diminishing quantities of water, and often antiquated, inadequate, or inefficient water supply systems, threaten economic growth and the quality of life in all regions of the country. We recognize that federal leadership is necessary to meet these needs, and to do so in environmentally sound ways.\nThe Democratic Party supports the creation of a national water resources planning board and a comprehensive review of the nation's water needs. We support major new water policy efforts addressing several national needs:\n—We will help meet our nation's infrastructure needs, including the construction of new projects which are economically and environmentally sound. New water project starts, by the Corps of Engineers throughout the country and by the Bureau of Reclamation in the West, are critical. In all cases, we will consider innovative and nonstructural alternatives on an equal basis.\n—We will examine the water quantity and water quality issues associated with providing adequate water supply.\n—We will help meet navigation, flood control, and municipal water supply system needs, with new assistance to urban areas needing financial help to rebuild deteriorating water systems.\n—We will give new priority attention to improving efficiency in the use of water, recognizing that more efficient water use is often the least costly and most environmentally acceptable way to meet our water needs and achieve the fullest possible beneficial use of our water resources.\n—We will carefully coordinate federal water policy efforts with affected state governments, making possible not only cooperative financing of water investments but a commensurate sharing of decision-making authority and responsibility.\n—We will provide assistance to states addressing the growing problems of groundwater depletion and contamination.\nChapter II:Justice, Dignity and Opportunity\n\nIntroduction\n\nFulfilling America's highest promise, equal justice for all: that is the Democratic agenda for a just future.\nFor many of our citizens, it is only in the last two decades that the efforts of a broad, bipartisan coalition have begun to give real meaning to the dream of freedom and equality. During that time Democrats, spurred by the Civil Rights Movement, have enacted landmark legislation in areas including voting, education, housing and employment.\nA 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-fought battles, personal sacrifice and loss of life—are imperiled by an Administration that consciously seeks to turn the clock back to an era when second-class citizenship for women and minorities, disenfranchisement, and de jure and de facto segregation were very much the facts of life for well over half of America's population. Moreover, justice encompasses more than our nation's laws. The poor, the female, the minority—many of them just like boats stuck on the bottom—have come to experience an implacable and intractable foe in the Reagan Administration.\nA new Democratic Administration will understand that the age-old scourge of discrimination and prejudice against many groups in American society is still rampant and very much a part of the reason for the debilitating circumstances in which disadvantaged peoples are forced to live. Although strides have been made in combatting discrimination and defamation against Americans of various ethic 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 principle that the government is still responsible for protecting the civil rights of all citizens. Government has a special responsibility to those whom society has historically prevented from enjoying the benefits of full citizenship for reasons of race, religion, sex, age, national origin and ethnic heritage, sexual orientation, or disability.\nThe 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 nation on the road toward achieving equal protection of all our citizens' human rights. The challenge now is to continue to press that cause, while joining a new battle—to assure justice and opportunity in the workplace, and in the economy.\nJustice for all in today's America and the America of tomorrow demands not one, but two broad guarantees. First, we must guarantee that our nation will 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.\nWe 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 read selectively from the United Sates Code and simply ignore the laws ensuring basic rights and opportunities because they conflict with this Administration's ideology. As Democrats, we pledge to reverse the trend towards lawlessness which has characterized this Administration, and to keep our commitments to all in our community who look to the government for defense of their rights.\nBut we recognize that while a first step toward a just society is to guarantee the right of all workers to compete equally for a job, the next step is assuring that enough new jobs are created to give meaningful employment to all our workers for the future.\nIf in past decades we won the right for minorities to ride at the front of the bus, in coming years we must assure that minorities have the opportunity to own the bus company.\nIt will not be enough to say that our nation must offer equal access to health care—we must put comprehensive health care within the reach of all of our citizens, at a price all can afford.\nIt will not do simply to guarantee women a place in the work force—women deserve an equal chance at a career leading to the board of directors.\nAs Democrats, we believe that human rights and an economy of opportunity are two sides of the same coin of justice. No economic program can be considered just unless it advances the opportunity of all to live a better, more dignified life. No American is afforded economic justice when he or she is denied an opportunity to reap the rewards of economic growth.\nEconomic justice is also economic common sense. Any who doubt that should consider the toll of welfare, crime, prisons, public housing and urban squalor on our national wealth. We will pay a high price for all the disadvantaged or disenfranchised if we fail to include them in the new economic revolution.\nAs Democrats, therefore, we pledge to pursue a new definition of justice that meets the new demands of our time. Under a Democratic Administration, equality and fairness under the law will be matched by justice in the economy and in the workplace.\nThe Future If Reagan is Reelected\n\n\"Twenty years after the Equal Pay Act should have eradicated the last vestige of economic discrimination against women, employers have made little progress in integrating their work force. It is the Republican governor of Washington State, and the Republican County Executive of Nassau County, New York, who are committing public resources to mount a legal defense for their jurisdictions blatant sex discrimination practices...The Reagan Administration from the outset has made it abundantly clear that civil rights and economic justice are to be sacrificed on the altar of corporate greed...\"\nDiana Rock, Director of Women's Rights, American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (Democratic Platform Committee Hearing, Cleveland, Ohio, May 21, 1984)\n\"The Reagan Administration, upon taking office in 1981, set upon a concerted effort to roll back civil rights protections. This attack is underway in agency enforcement, court litigation, legislative initiative, and nominations of federal appointees.\"\nVirna M. Canson. Regional Director, West Coast Region, NAACP (Democratic Platform Committee Hearing. Los Angeles, California. May 14, 1984)\nThe neglect of our historic human rights commitment will already be recorded as the first legacy of Ronald Reagan's years in the White House. But suppose Mr. Reagan is reelected.\nWhat would become of America's commitment to equal justice and opportunity if Mr. Reagan is reelected?\nThe hard truth is that if Mr. Reagan is reelected our most vigorous defender of the rule of law—the United States Supreme Court—could be lost to the cause of equal justice for another generation. Today, five of the nine members of that Court are over 75. Our next President will likely have 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 our children's too.\nThere can be little doubt that a Supreme Court chosen by Ronald Reagan would radically restrict constitutional rights and drastically reinterpret existing laws. Today, the fundamental right of a woman to reproductive freedom rests on the votes of six members of the Supreme Court—five of whom are over 75. That right could easily disappear during a second Reagan term. Already, the protections against employment discrimination have been restricted by the Court: a Reagan Court surely would reduce them further. The same is true for the right of workers to have a healthy and safe workplace, and to organize collectively in unions. Although the statute protecting voting rights has been extended through a massive bipartisan effort, opposed by the Reagan Administration, a Reagan Supreme Court could still effectively nullify it simply by erecting impossible standards of proof. Not long ago, the Court decided it should hire independent counsel to argue that tax exemptions for racially discriminatory schools were unlawful because the Justice Department refused to do so. Can anyone imagine a Reagan Court doing that? How much easier it would be for a Reagan Court simply to agree with a Reagan Department of Justice.\n/f, Mr. Reagan is reelected, who would protect women and minorities against discrimination?\nIn the first year after the Reagan Administration assumed office, the number of cases involving charges of employment discrimination filed in court by the EEOC dropped by more than 70 percent. During this Administration, the EEOC has refused to process a single comparable worth case filed by a woman. Meanwhile, the Reagan Justice Department has sought to destroy effective affirmative action remedies, and even to undermine private plans to reduce discrimination in employment. The actions of the Reagan Administration serve only to delay the day when fairness is achieved and such remedial measures are, therefore, no longer needed.\nIt is now clear that if Mr. Reagan is reelected, women and minorities seeking protection of their rights would be forced to contend not only with their employers, but with a hostile government. Equal employment opportunity and equity would remain elusive dreams.\nIf Mr. Reagan is reelected, who would assure access to justice?\nSince the day of its inauguration, the Reagan Administration has conducted a continuous, full-scale war against the federal Legal Services Corporation, whose only job is to ensure that the poor are fairly heard in court, and that they get equal access to our system of justice. Thirty percent of the Corporation's lawyers have been laid off, and the Administration exhausted every means it could find to stack its Board with people hostile to the very concept of equal justice for the poor.\nIn the America of Ronald Reagan, you will only get as much justice as you pay for.\nIf Mr. Reagan is reelected, who would protect the rights of workers?\nThe Republican Administration has consistently viewed the dollar costs to businesses of providing a safe workplace as more important than the impact of injury and disease on working men and women. It has appointed officials to the National Labor Relations Board who openly oppose the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively. The Department of Labor has ignored its mandate to enforce fair labor standards and has sought to reverse hard won gains in protections for worker health and safety.\nWhat would happen if Mr. Reagan is reelected? Will the right to bargain collectively be eviscerated through Republican-approved abuses of the bankruptcy laws? Will the National Labor Relations Act be converted into a tool that limits working men and women and empowers only their employers? Who will ensure that our next generation does not suffer the effects of toxic substances in the workplace—substances whose existence is not even revealed to the worker?\nIf Mr. Reagan is reelected, who would protect the rights of senior citizens?\nSpeaking at Philadelphia in 1980 during his campaign, Ronald Reagan vowed to a large audience of senior citizens his strong support for Social Security. He assured thousands of senior citizens on that occasion that as President he would see to it that every commitment made by the federal government to the senior citizens was faithfully kept.\nRonald 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 Present Reagan asked the Congress of the United States to cut $88 billion in 1981 and the following four years from Social Security programs. He proposed to reduce by a third the number of people protected by the disability insurance program. He proposed to reduce by a third the benefits a senior citizen would receive if he or she retired at 62. He proposed to cut out the burial program for recipients of Social Security.\nHe proposed to cut millions from programs that Democratic Administrations had provided for the education of the children of the elderly covered by Social Security, slashing the list of beneficiaries of these programs by hundreds of thousands of sons and daughters of men and women covered by Social Security. And he called for the abolition of the $122-a-month minimum benefit program, which would have dropped over three million people from Social Security altogether.\nThe American people then revolted, and so did the Congress. The Democratic Party put a stop to the decimation of the Social Security program, but not before President Reagan had cut $19 billion from Social Security benefits in 1981 and the ensuing four years. Democrats in Congress forced the restoration of the $122-a-month minimum benefit program to those who were covered before the Reagan cuts, but never succeeded in extending coverage to the additional 7,000 people a month who would have become eligible after the Reagan cuts.\nInstead of keeping his word that he would not cut Medicare, Reagan forced Congress every year beginning in 1981 to cut billions from the Medicare program. When Social Security developed financial problems due to massive unemployment in 1982, the Reagan Administration moved to \"solve\" them by cutting benefits further. Only the Democrats on the Social Security Commission prevented him from doing that.\nIf Mr. Reagan is reelected, how would we teach our children to respect the law?\nWe cannot teach our children to respect the law when they see the highest officials of government flaunting it at their will. Lawlessness has been a pattern in this Administration—and it is a pattern that is unlikely to be altered if Reagan and the Republicans stay in the White House.\nMore than forty top Republican officials have already been implicated in all kinds of wrongdoing. Murky transactions on the fringe of organized crime, accepting gifts from foreign journalists and governments, misusing government funds, lying under oath, stock manipulations, taking interest-free loans from wealthy businessmen who later receive federal jobs—all of these are part of business as usual with Ronald Reagan's appointees.\nThe Republicans profess to stand for \"law and order.\" But this is the same Administration that voted the bipartisan anti-crime bill in 1982. And when it comes to laws they do not like—whether they concern toxic wastes, pure food and drugs, or worker health and safety—this Administration simply makes believe they do not exist. The same is true overseas: this Administration is just as willing to ignore international law as domestic law. When we finally learned of illegal mining of Nicaragua's harbors, the Reagan Administration hastily attempted, the night before Nicaragua sued us, to withdraw jurisdiction over the question from the World Court. But even this maneuver was carried out in an illegal fashion that the World Court later set aside.\nThis Republican Administration has been unprecedentedly eager to limit public debate by instituting \"security agreements\" that censor ex-officials, \"revising\" the Freedom of Information Act, refusing visas to foreign visitors who might provide another perspective on American policies overseas, and denying our war correspondents their historic position alongside out troops. This comes as no surprise: in the first term, the Reagan Administration had a lot to hide. What would happen in a second?\nIf Mr. Reagan is reelected, what would happen to our unfinished civil rights agenda?\nThe answer is clear: an Administration which refuses to enforce the laws that are on the books can hardly be expected to respect—or even recognize—the rights of those who are not already specifically protected by existing law.\nNowhere is this Administration's hostility to equal rights and equal justice more apparent than in its attitude to the Equal Rights Amendment. As soon as the Reagan faction took control of the Republican Party at its convention in 1980, it ended that Party's forty-year commitment to passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. So long as this Administration remains in office, the proponents of unamended ERA have nothing less than an enemy in the White House. And if this is true for the women of America, it is equally true for disadvantaged minorities who must depend on this government's sense of justice to secure their rights and lead independent lives.\nSince assuming office, the Reagan Administration has shown more hostility—indeed, more outright and implacable aggression—toward the American ideal of equal justice for all than even its harshest critics would have predicted in 1980. Given its first-term record, even our most pessimistic forecasts for four more Republish years may well fall short of the mark. No one knows the full extent of the damage Reagan could wreak on this country in another term. But we do know one thing: we cannot afford to find out.\nThe Democratic Alternative:Equal Justice for All\n\n\"The Democratic Party is challenged as never before to redirect the present dangerous course of our nation and our world, and to provide meaningful work at adequate pay for all our citizens and justice for all Americans.\n\"The dream of a nation fully committed to peace, jobs, and justice has fast became a nightmare under this Administration...\n\"Our choice today is to become just a new party in power in November with new faces and new pledges—or a truly great party with the courage to develop a new vision and a new direction for the sake of our nation and our world.\"\nCoretta Scott King (Democratic Platform Committee Hearing, Washington, DC. June 11. 1984)\n\"The Equal Rights Amendment is the only guarantee of full equality the women of this nation can trust and count on. We have seen in the past three and one-half years an administration that has gone out of its way to prove that laws, court decisions, executive orders, and regulations are not enough—they can be changed by a new majority, overturned, swept aside, underfunded, or rescinded. Only when the legislative protections against such discrimination are in the bedrock of the Constitution can we at the vagaries of changing political climate or a hostile administration will not wipe out those protections.\"\nJudy Goldsmith. President. National Organization for Women (Democratic Platform Committee Hearing, Washington, DC, June 12, 1984)\nEqual justice for all, in a Democratic future, means that every individual must have a fair and equal opportunity to fulfill his or her potential, and to be an independent, working member of our society—and it is the commitment of our Party to secure that opportunity.\nWe are determined to build an America of self-sufficient, independent people. We will enforce the laws guaranteeing equal opportunity and human rights, and complete the unfinished civil rights agenda. We will keep our commitments to all of the members of our community who rely upon our word to stay, or to become, independent—our senior citizens, those who served in our Armed Forces, the handicapped and disabled, the members of our American family who are trapped in poverty, and all Americans who look to government to protect them from the pain, expense, and dislocation caused by crime. And in fulfilling these and all the duties of government, a Democratic Administration will stand as an example to all of integrity and justice.\n\nMany have suffered from historical patterns of discrimination and others, because of their recent immigration in sizeable numbers, are subject to new forms of discrimination. Over the years, the Democratic Party has voiced a commitment to eradicating the injustices. In 1948, the Democratic Platform for the first time contained a plank committing this Party to the cause of civil rights. For almost forty years, we have fought proudly for that cause. In 1964, a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress enacted the landmark legislation prohibiting discrimination in employment and public accommodations. And for nearly two decades, a bipartisan commitment has existed in Congress and in the White House to expand and enforce those laws. Until Ronald Reagan.\nThis Administration has sought to erode the force and meaning of constitutionally-mandated and court-sanctioned remedies for long-standing patterns of discriminatory conduct. It has attempted to create new standards under each of our nation's civil rights laws by requiring a showing of intent to discriminate, and case-by-case litigation of class-wide violations. Its interpretation of two recent Supreme Court decisions attempts to sound the death knell for equal opportunity and affirmative action.\nIn one case, the Administration interpreted the Court's decision as requiring that equal opportunity mandates associated with the receipt of all federal the special needs of the disabled. This Administration has closed its eyes to those needs, and in so doing, violated a fundamental trust by seeking to condemn millions of disabled Americans to dependency. We will honor our commitments. We will insist that those who receive federal funds accommodate disabled employees—a requirement this Administration sought to eliminate. We will insist that benefits be available for those who cannot work, and that training is available for those who need help to find work.\nThe Democratic Party will safeguard the rights of the elderly and disabled to remain free from institutionalization except where medically indicated. The rights of the disabled within institutions should be protected from violations of the integrity of their person. Also, we will promote accessible public transportation, buildings, make voting booths accessible, and strictly enforce laws such as the entire Rehabilitation Act of 1973\nOpportunities for Veterans—This country has a proud tradition of honoring and supporting those who have defended us. Millions of Americans in the years after World War II went to college and bought their homes thanks to GI benefits. But for the latest generation of American veterans, needed support and assistance have been missing.\nThe nation has begun to welcome home with pride its Vietnam veterans, as reflected in the extraordinary Vietnam Veterans Memorial which was built through public contributions. The Democratic Party shares the nation's commitment to Vietnam veterans.\nNo President since the beginning of the Vietnam War has been so persistently hostile to Vietnam veterans programs as Ronald Reagan. He has sought to dismantle the Readjustment Counseling Centers, opposed employment and Agent Orange benefits, as well as basic due process at the Veterans Administration, including judicial review.\nThe Vietnam War divided our nation. Many of the rifts remain, but all agree on the respect due Vietnam veterans for their distinguished service during a troubled time. The Democratic Party pledges to reverse Ronald Reagan's Vietnam veteran policies, helping our nation come together as one people. And we believe it is especially important that we end discrimination against women and minority veterans, particularly in health and education programs.\nWe believe that the government has a special obligation to all of this nation's veterans, and we are committed to fulfilling it—to providing the highest quality health care, improving education and training, providing the assistance they need to live independent and productive lives.\nOpportunities for the Poor—For the past four years, this Administration has callously pursued policies which have further impoverished those at the bottom of the economic ladder and pushed millions of Americans, particularly women and children, below the poverty line. Thanks to the Reagan budget cuts, 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 through work, by conditioning assistance on nonparticipation in the workplace. The figures tell part of the story:\n—Today, 15 percent of all Americans live below the poverty line;\n—Over three million more children are in poverty today than there were in 1979;\n—Over half of all black children under age three live in poverty;\n—More than one-third of all female-headed households are below the poverty line, and for non-white families headed by women with more than one child, the figure is 70 percent.\nBut the numbers tell only part of the story; numbers do not convey the frustration and suffering of women seeking a future for themselves and their children, with no support from anyone; numbers do not recount the pain of growing numbers of homeless men and women with no place to sleep, or of increasing infant mortality rates among children born to poor mothers. Numbers do not convey the human effects of unemployment on a once stable and strong family.\nAs Democrats, we call upon the American people to join with us in a renewed commitment to combat the feminization of poverty in our nation so that every American can be a productive, contributing member of our society. In that effort, our goal is to strengthen families and to reverse the existing incentives for their destruction. We therefore oppose laws requiring an unemployed parent to leave the family or drop out of the work force in order to quality for assistance and health care. We recognize the special need to increase the labor force participation of minority males, and we are committed to expanding their opportunities through education and training and to enforcing the laws which guarantee them equal opportunities. The plight of young mothers must be separately addresses as well; they too need education and training and quality child care must be available if they are to participate in such programs. Only through a nation that cares and a government that acts can those Americans trapped in poverty move toward meaningful independence.\nThe Hungry and the Homeless—In the late 1960's, the nation discovered widespread hunger and malnutrition in America, especially among poor children and the elderly. The country responded with a national effort, of which Americans should be justly proud. By the late 1970's, medical researchers found that hunger had nearly been eliminated.\nSince 1980, however, hunger has returned. High unemployment, coupled with deep cutbacks in food assistance and other basic support programs for poor families have led to conditions not seen in this country for years. Studies in hospitals and health departments document increases in numbers of malnourished children. Increasing numbers of homeless wander our cities streets in search of food and shelter. Religious organizations, charities and other agencies report record numbers of persons standing in line for food at soup kitchens and emergency food pantries.\nStrong action is needed to address this issue and to end the resurgence of hunger in America. The Democratic Party is committed to reversing regressive Reagan policies and to providing more adequate food aid for poor families, infants, children, elderly and handicapped persons. It is time to resume the national effort, jettisoned in 1980, to ensure that less fortunate Americans do not go without adequate food because they are too poor to secure a decent diet. As Democrats, we call upon the American people to join with us in a renewed commitment to fight hunger and homelessness so that every American can be a productive, contributing member of our society.\nHunger is an international problem as well. In many countries it shortens peace and stability. The United States should take the lead in working with our allies and other countries to help wipe hunger from the face of the earth.\nA Democratic President will ensure that the needs of the world's children are given priority in all U.S. foreign assistance programs and that international assistance programs are geared toward increasing self-reliance of local populations and self-sufficiency in food production.\nIntegrity In Government\n\nAs Democrats, we believe that the American people are entitled to a government that is honest, that is open, and that is fully representative of this nation and its people, and we are committed to providing it.\nAfter four years in which the roll of dishonor in the Administration has grown weekly and monthly—from Richard Allen to Rita Lavelle, from Thomas Reed to James Watt—it is time for an end to the embarrassment of Republican cronyism and malfeasance. Our appointments will be ones of which Americans can be proud. Our selection process in staffing the government will be severe. We will not tolerate impropriety in a Democratic Administration.\nWe must work to end political action committee funding of federal political campaigns. To achieve that, we must enact a system of public financing of federal campaigns. At the same time, our Party should assure that a system of public financing be responsive to the problem of under representation of women and minorities in elective offices.\nWe Democrats are not afraid to govern in public and to let the .American people know and understand the basis for our decisions. We will reverse current Administration policies that permit the widespread overclassification of documents lacking a relationship to our national security. We will rescind Reagan Administration directives imposing undue burdens on citizens seeking information about their government through the Freedom of Information Act.\nWe 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 cannot sere the American people fairly. We will ensure that government's number one priority is the performance of its mission under the law, and not the implementation of the narrow political agenda of a single Party. Sound management and fair government cannot be administered by a politicized work force. Neither can it be accomplished by a demoralized work force. A Democratic Administration will not devalue the pay, benefits, and retirement rights of federal workers guaranteed under the law. We will work to reverse personnel policies, including the contracting out of work traditionally performed by public employees, that have made it impossible for current federal employees to recommend a career in federal service to our nation's young people.\nOur judicial system must be one in which excellence and access are the foundations. It is essential to recruit people of high integrity, outstanding competence, and high quality of judgment to serve in our nation's judiciary. And we oppose efforts to strip the federal courts of their historic jurisdiction to adjudicate cases involving questions of federal law and constitutional right.\nCrime\n\nNo problem has worried Americas more persistently over the past 20 years than the problem of crime. Crime and the fear of crime affect us all, but the impact is greatest on poor Americans who live in our cities. Neither a permissive liberalism nor a static conservatism is the answer to reducing crime. While we must eliminate those elements—like unemployment and poverty—that foster the criminal atmosphere, we must never let them be used as an excuse.\nAlthough the primary responsibility for law enforcement rests at the local level. Democrats believe the federal government can play an important role by encouraging local innovation and the implementation of new crime control methods as their effectiveness is shown. And when crime spills acres state borders, the federal government must take the lead, and assume responsibility for enforcing the law. This Administration has done neither. It has talked \"law and order\" while cutting law enforcement budgets. It has decried the influence of drugs, while cutting back on customs enforcement.\nAs a result, drug trafficking and abuse have risen to crisis proportions in the United States. In 1983, an estimated 60 tons of cocaine, 15,000 tons of marijuana, and 10 tons of heroin entered the United States, clear evidence that we are losing the effort overseas to control the production and transshipment of these and other dangerous drugs. Domestically, the illicit trafficking in drugs is a $100 billion per year business; the economic and social costs to our society are far higher.\nToday, 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 heroin have climbed 80 percent. According to the 1983 National High School Survey on 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 is also a serious problem which must be faced.\n—For this reason, the Democratic Party believes it is essential to make narcotics control a high priority on the national agenda, and a major consideration in our dealings with producer and transshipment countries, particularly if they are recipients of U.S. assistance.\n—At the national level, the effort must begin by introducing a comprehensive management plan to eliminate overlap and friction between the 113 different federal agencies with responsibilities for fighting crime, particularly with respect to the control of drug traffic. We must provide the necessary resources to federal agencies and departments with responsibility for the fight against drugs.\n—To spur local law enforcement efforts, establishment of an independent criminal justice corporation should be considered. This corporation could serve as a means of encouraging community-based efforts, such as neighborhood citizen watches, alternative deployment patterns for police, and community service sentencing programs, which have proven effectiveness.\n—Violent acts of bigotry, hatred and extremism aimed at women, racial, ethnic and religious minorities, and gay men and lesbians have become an alarmingly common phenomenon. A Democratic Administration will work vigorously to address, document, and end all such violence.\n—We believe that victims of crime deserve a workable program of compensation. We call for sentencing reforms that routinely include monetary or other forms of restitution to victims. The Federal government should ensure that victims of violent federal crime receive compensation. We need to 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.\n—We support tough restraints on the manufacture, transportation, and sale of snub-nosed handguns, which have no legitimate sporting use and are used in a high proportion of violent crimes.\n—We will establish a strong federal-state partnership to push for further progress in the nationwide expansion of comprehensive, community-based anti-drunk driving programs. With the support of citizens, private-sector business and government at all levels; we will institutionalize fatality and injury reduction on the nation's highways.\n—We support fundamental reform of the sentencing process so that offenders who commit similar crimes receive similar penalties. Reform should begin with the establishment of appropriately drafted sentencing guidelines, and judges deviating from such guidelines should be required to provide written reasons for doing so.\n—Finally, we believe that the credibility of our criminal courts must be restored. Our courts should not be attacked for failing to eliminate the major social problem of crime—courts of justice were not designed, and were never intended, to do that. A Democratic Administration will encourage experimentation with alternative dispute-resolution mechanisms, diversion programs for first and nonviolent offenders, and other devices to eliminate the congestion in our courts and restore to them an atmosphere in which they can perform their intended job: doing real individualized justice, in an orderly way.\nChapter III:Peace, Security, and Freedom\n\nIntroduction\n\nBuilding a safer future for our nations and the world: that is the Democratic agenda 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 our values, and works for peace.\nThe next American President will preside over a period of historic change in the international system. The relatively stable world order that has prevailed since World War II is bursting at the seams from the powerful forces of change —the proliferation of nuclear and conventional weapons, the relentless Soviet military buildup, the achievement of rough nuclear parity between the Soviet Union and the United States, the increasingly interdependent nature of the international economic order, the recovery and rise of European and Asian powers since the devastation of the Second World War, and the search for a new America political consensus in the wake of Vietnam and Lebanon and in the shadow of a regional crisis in Central America.\nThe greatest foreign policy imperative of the Democratic Party and of the next President is to learn from past mistakes and adapt to these changes, rather than to foist or ignore them. While not underestimating the Soviet threat, we can no longer afford simplistically to blame all of our troubles on a single \"focus of evil,\" for the sources of international change run even deeper than the sources of superpower competition. We must see change as an opportunity as well as a challenge. In the 1980's and beyond, America must not only make the world safe for diversity; we must learn to thrive on diversity.\nThe Domestic Party believes that it is time to harness the full range of America's capacity to meet the challenges of a changing world. We reject the notion that America is beset by forces beyond its control. Our commitment to freedom and democracy, our willingness to listen to contrasting viewpoints, and our ingenuity at devising new ideas and arrangements have given us advantages in an increasingly diverse world that no totalitarian system can match.\nThe Democratic Party has a constructive and confident vision of America's ability to use all of our economic, political, and military resources to pursue our wide-ranging security and economic interests in a diverse and changing world. We believe in a responsible defense policy that will increase our national security. We believe in a foreign policy that respects our allies, builds democracy, and advances the cause of human rights. We believe that our economic future lies in our ability to rise to the challenge of international economic competition by making our own industries more competitive. Above all, we believe that our security requires the direct, personal involvement of the President of the United States to limit the Soviet military threat and to reduce the danger of nuclear war.\nWe have no illusions about the forces arrayed against the democratic cause in our time. In the year made famous by George Orwell, we can see the realization of many of his grimmest prophecies in the totalitarian Soviet state, which has amassed an arsenal of weapons far beyond its defensive needs. In the communist and non-communist world, we find tyrannical regimes that trample on human rights and repress their people's cry for economic justice.\nThe Reagan Administration points to Soviet repression—but has no answer other than to escalate the arms race. It downgrades repression in the noncommunist world, by drawing useless distinctions between \"totalitarian\" and \"authoritarian\" regimes.\nThe Democratic Party understands the challenge posed by the enemies of democracy. Unlike the Reagan Administration, however, we are prepared to work constructively to reduce tensions and make genuine progress toward a safer world.\nThe Democratic Party is confident that American ideals and American interests reinforce each other in our foreign policy; the promotion of democracy and human rights not only distinguishes us from our adversaries, but it also builds the long-term stability that comes when governments respect their people. We look forward to the 21st Century as a century of democratic solidarity where security, freedom, and peace will flourish.\nPeace, freedom and security are the essence of America's dream. They are the future of our children and their children.\nThis is the test where failure could provide no opportunity to try once more. As President Kennedy once warned: \"We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world—or to make it the last.\"\nThe Future If Reagan Is Reelected\n\n\"Star Wars is not the path towards a less dangerous world. A direct and safe road exists: equitable and verifiable deep cuts in strategic offensive forces. We must abandon the illusion that ever more sophisticated technology can remove the perils that science and technology have created.\"\nStatement by Dr Jerome B. Wiesner, Dr. Carl Sagan, Dr. Henry Kendall, and Admiral Noel Gayler (Democratic Platform Committee Hearing, Washington, D.C., June 12, 1984)\n\"The minister of the apartheid government recently boasted of the fruitful relationship between Pretoria and Washington since the advent of the Reagan regime. Now apartheid South Africa has acquired the military muscle to bomb, to maim, to kill men, women, and children, and to bully these states into negotiating with apartheid through the threat of increased military action. This may be hailed as a victory for apartheid and for the Reagan Administration, but in truth it can only create anger and contempt in the African people.\"\nProfessor Dennis Brutus, Northwestern University (former political prisoner in South Africa) (Democratic Platform Committee Hearing, New York, New York. April 9, 1984)\nSuppose Mr. Reagan is reelected. How would he deal with the serious threats that face us and our children?\nUnder Mr. Reagan, the nuclear arms race would continue to spiral out of control. A new generation of destabilizing missiles will imperil all humanity. We will live in a world where the nuclear arms race has spread from earth into space.\nUnder Mr. Reason, we would continue to over-emphasize destabilizing and redundant nuclear weapons programs at the expense of our conventional forces. We will spend billions for weapons that do not work. We will continue to ignore proposals to improve defense management, to get a dollar's worth for each dollar spent, and to make our military more combat-effective and our weapons more cost-effective.\nUnder Mr. Reagan, regional conflicts would continue to be dangerously mismanaged. Young Americans may be sent to fight and die needlessly. The spread of nuclear materials to new nations and the spread of sophisticated conventional weapons to virtually every nation on earth will continue unabated.\nCan America afford a President so out of touch with reality that he tells us, \"I think the world is safer and further removed from a possible war than it was several years ago\"?\nCan America afford the recklessness of a President who exposed American Marines to mortal danger and sacrificed over 260 of them in a bungled mission in Lebanon against the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and brought upon us the worst U.S. military disaster since the Vietnam War?\nCan America afford the irresponsibility of a President who undermines confidence in our deterrent with misleading allegations of Soviet nuclear \"superiority\" and whose Administration beguiles the American public with false claims that nuclear war can be survived with enough shovels?\nCan America afford the unresponsiveness of a President who thwarts the will of the majority of Americans by waging a secret war against Nicaragua?\nIn a second Reagan term, will our heavens become a nuclear battleground?\nIn 1980, candidate Ronald Reagan promised the American people a more secure world. Yet, as President:\n—He has raced to deploy new weapons that will be destabilizing and difficult to verify. He has pressed for a multi-billion dollar chemical weapons program. He has launched his trillion dollar \"Slat Wars\" arms race in space.\n—He has relaxed controls on nuclear proliferation, thus enhancing the risk that nuclear weapons will be acquired and used by unstable governments and international terrorists.\n—He has become the first President since the Cold War to preside over the complete collapse of air nuclear arms negotiations with the Soviets.\n—He has rejected SALT II, threatened the ABM Treaty, and abandoned the goal of a complete ban on nuclear weapons tests that that has been pursued by every President since Eisenhower. He has refused to seek negotiations to limit anti-satellite weapons that could threaten our vital early-warning and military satellites. Over 250 strategic missiles and bombers that would have been eliminated under SALT II are still in Soviet hands.\nCon we afford four more years of a Pentagon spending binge?\nIn 1980, candidate Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party promised the American people a defense spending increase \"to be applied judiciously to critically needed programs.\" Yet as President:\n—He has initiated the largest peacetime defense build-up in our history with no coherent plan for integrating the increased programs into an effective military posture.\n—He has slighted training and readiness of our conventional forces in favor of big ticket nuclear items, \"preparing,\" in the words of General Maxwell Taylor, \"for the least possible threats to the neglect of the most probable.\"\n—He has brought us the worst-managed and most wasteful Defense Department in history. Under the Pentagon's wasteful purchasing system, the American taxpayer has paid $435 for a $17 claw hammer, $1100 for a 22-cent plastic steel cap, over $2000 for a 13-cent plain round nut, and $9600 for a 12-cent Allen wrench.\nCan we afford four more years of dangerous foreign policy failures?\nIn 1980, candidate Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party promised \"to put America on a sound, secure footing in the international arena.\" Yet, as President:\n—He has contributed to the decline of U.S.-Soviet relations to a perilous point. Instead of challenges, he has used easy and abusive anti-Soviet rhetoric as a substitute for strength, progress, and careful use of power.\n—He has strained vital U.S. alliances through his bungled efforts to stop the Soviet natural gas pipeline, his inflammatory nuclear rhetoric and policies, and his failure to support the efforts of our democratic allies to achieve a negotiated political solution in Central America.\n—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 he pressured Israel to make one-sided concessions to Jordan. Then he demanded that Israel withdraw from Lebanon. Then he pleaded with them to stay. Then he did not accept their offer of medical help for our wounded Marines. He undercut American credibility throughout the Middle East by declaring Lebanon a vital interest of the United States and then withdrawing.\n—He has brought us a strategy in Central America and the Caribbean that 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 guerillas are stronger than they were three years ago, and the people are much poorer. In Nicaragua, our support for the contras and for the covert war has strengthened the totalitarians at the expense of the moderates. In Honduras, an emerging democracy has been transformed into a staging ground for possible regional war. And in Cost Rica our backing for rebels based there is in danger of dragging that peaceful democracy into a military confrontation with Nicaragua. In Grenada, Mr. Reagan renounced diplomacy for over two years, encouraging extremism, instability, and crisis. By his failure to avoid military intervention, he divided us from our European allies and alienated our friends throughout the Western hemisphere. And by excluding the press, he set a chilling precedent, greatly hampering public scrutiny of 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 further than ever from achieving peace and security in the region.\n—He is the first President to fail to support publicly the ratification of the Genocide Convention. His Vice President has praised the Philippine dictator for his \"love of democracy,\" his first Secretary of State announced that human rights would be replaced as a foreign policy priority, and his first nominee for Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights was rejected by the U.S. Senate as unfit for that post. He has closely identified the United States with the apartheid regime in South Africa, and he has time and again failed to confront dictators around the globe.\nThis is an unprecedented record of failure. But President Reagan is content to make excuses for failure.\nPresident Reagan blames Congress and the Democratic Party. He rebukes Americans deeply and genuinely concerned about the threat of nuclear war. He rails at the Soviet Union—as if words alone, without strategy or effective policy, will make that nation change its course.\nIt is time for Democrats and Americans to apply a tough standard to Ronald Reagan. Let us paraphrase the question he asked in 1980: Are we safer today than 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 less tense, anywhere closer to peace?\nAmericans throughout this land are answering with a resounding no.\nPresident Reagan himself is responsible—responsible for four years of a failed foreign policy. America elects its President to lead. It does not elect its President to make excuses.\nThe Democratic Party believes that it is time to harass the full power of America's spirit and capacity to meet the challenges of a changing world.\nThe Democratic Party has a different and positive vision of America's future. What is at stake may be freedom and survival itself.\nThe Democratic Alternative:A Safer Future for Our Nation and the World\n\n\"I do not see why we think of our nation as so weak and so vulnerable. Let us for heaven's 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 carved out of self-confidence, and planted in belief in our own system.\"\nHistorian Barbara Tuchman (Democratic Platform Committee Hearing. New York, New York, April 9, 1984)\n\"The Democratic Party requires a foreign policy which approaches the problems that confront us primarily in their national and regional contexts, rather than viewing them, as the Reagan Administration does, almost exclusively as a manifestation of the \"evil empire's\" efforts to extend its sway over the entire globe. What we need is a foreign policy which promotes the cause of human rights by opposing tyranny on the part of left as well as right wing governments, rather than a foreign policy like the one we have now, which supports virtually every reactionary and repressive regime that professes to be anti-communist.\"\nHonorable Stephen J. Solarz, U.S. Representative. New York (Democratic Platform Committee Hearing. New York, New York, April 9, 1984)\nThere is no higher goal for the Democratic Party than assuring the national security of the United States. This means a strong national defense, vigorous pursuit of nuclear arms control, and a foreign policy dedicated to salvaging the interests of America and the forces of freedom and democracy in a period of global transformation. This will require new leadership, strong alliances, skillful diplomacy, effective economic cooperation, and a foreign policy sustained by American strength and ideals. And to hold the support of the American people, our leaders must also be careful and measured in the use of force.\nThe Democratic Party is committed to a strong national defense. Democrats know that a relentless Soviet military build-up—well beyond its defensive needs—directly challenges world security, our democratic values, and our free institutions. On the nature of the Soviet threat and on the essential issue of our nation's security, Americans do not divide. On the common interest in human survival, the American and Soviet peoples do not divide.\nMaintaining strong and effective military forces is essential to keeping the peace and safeguarding freedom. Our allies and adversaries must never doubt our military power or our will to defend our vital interests. To that end, we pledge a strong defense built in concert with our allies, based on a coherent strategy, and supported by a sound economy.\nIn an age of about 50,000 nuclear weapons, however, nuclear arms control and reductions are also essential to our security. The most solemn responsibility of a President is to do all that he or she can to prevent a single nuclear weapon from ever being used. Democrats believe that mutual and verifiable controls on nuclear arms can, and must be, a serious integral part of national defense. True national security requires urgent measures to freeze and reverse the arms race, not the pursuit of the phantom of nuclear superiority or futile Star Wars schemes.\nThe Democratic Party believes that the purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter war, not to fight it. Democrats believe that America has the strength and tenacity to negotiate nuclear arms agreements that will reduce the risk of nuclear war and preserve our military security.\nToday we stand at one of the most critical junctures in the arms race since the explosion of the first atomic bomb. Mr. Reagan wants to open the heavens for warfare.\nHis Star Wars proposal would create a vulnerable and provocative \"shield\" that would lull our nation into a false sense of security. It would lead our allies to believe that we are retreating from their defense. It would lead to the death of the ABM Treaty—the most successful arms control treaty in history—and this trillion-dollar program would provoke a dangerous offensive and defensive arms race.\nIf we and our allies could defend our populations effectively against a nuclear war, the Democratic Party would be the first to endorse such a scheme. Unfortunately, our best scientists agree that an effective population defense is probably impossible. Therefore, we must oppose an arms race where the sky is no longer the limit.\nArms Control and Disarmament\n\nRonald Reagan is the first American President in over twenty years who has not reached any significant arms control agreements with the Soviet Union, and he is the first in over fifty years who has not met face to face with Soviet leaders. The unjustified Soviet walkout from key nuclear talks does not excuse the arms control failures of the Administration.\nTo reopen the dialogue, a Democratic President will propose an early summit with regular annual summits to follow with the Soviet leaders, and meetings between senior civilian and military officials, in order to reduce tensions and explore possible formal agreements. In a Democratic Administration, the superpowers will not communicate through megaphones.\nA new Democratic Administration will implement a strategy for peace which makes arms control an integral part of our national security policy. We must move the world back from the brink of nuclear holocaust and set a new direction toward an enduring peace, in which lower levels of military spending will be possible. Our ultimate aim must be to abolish all nuclear weapons in a world safe for peace and freedom.\nThis strategy calls for immediate steps to stop the nuclear arms race, medium-term measures to reduce the dangers of war, and long-term goals to put the world on a new and peaceful course.\nThese steps should lead promptly to the negotiation of a comprehensive, mutual and verifiable freeze on the testing, production, and deployment of all nuclear weapons.\nBuilding on this initiative, the Democratic President will:\n—update and resubmit the SALT II Treaty to the Senate for its advice and consent.\n—pursue deep, stabilizing reductions in nuclear arsenals within the framework of SALT II, in the meantime observing the SALT II limits ourselves and insisting that the Soviets do likewise.\n—propose the merging of the intermediate-range and strategic arms limitations negotiations, if the President judges that this could advance a comprehensive arms limitation agreement with the Soviet Union.\n—immediately resubmit to the Senate for its advice and consent the 1974 Threshold Test Ban Treaty and the 1976 Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty.\n—conclude a verifiable and Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.\n—reaffirm our commitment to the ABM Treaty, ensure U.S. compliance, and vigorously demand answers to questions about Soviet compliance through the Standing Consultative Commission and other appropriate channels.\n—actively pursue a verifiable, anti-satellite weapons treaty and ban on weapons in space.\n—seek a verifiable international ban on the production of nuclear weapons-grade fissile material, such as plutonium and highly enriched uranium.\n—undertake all-out efforts to halt nuclear proliferation.\n—terminate production of the MX missile and the B-1 bomber.\n—prohibit the production of nerve gas and work for a verifiable treaty banning chemical weapons.\n—establish U.S. nuclear risk reduction centers and other improved communications for a crisis.\n—invite the most eminent members of the scientific community to study and report on the worldwide human suffering and the long-term environmental damage which would follow in the days after a nuclear war, and take into account as fully as possible the results of such study in the formulation of our nuclear weapons and arms control policies.\n—strengthen broad-based, long-term public support for arms control by working closely with leaders of grass-roots, civic, women's, labor, business, religious and professional groups, including physicians, scientists, lawyers, and educators.\n—provide national leadership for economic adjustment for affected communities and industries, and retraining for any defense workers affected by the termination or cutbacks in weapons programs.\n—initiate, in close consultation with our NATO allies, a strategy for peace in Europe including:\n—achieving a balance of conventional forces in order to reduce reliance on nuclear weapons and to permit the Atlantic Alliance to move toward the adoption of a \"no first use\" policy;\n—mutually pulling back battlefield nuclear weapons from the front lines of Europe, in order to avoid the necessity of having to make a \"use them or lose them\" choice should hostilities erupt in Europe;\n—negotiating new approaches to intermediate nuclear force limits along the lines of the \"walk in the woods\" proposal, and then seeking to move closer to zero INF deployments by the U.S. and U.S.S.R.;\n—negotiating significant mutual and balanced reductions in conventional forces of both NATO and the Warsaw Pact, and confidence-building measures to reduce the dangers of a surprise attack.\nWe are under no illusion that these arms control proposals will be easy to achieve. Most will involve patience and dedication, and above all leadership in the pursuit of peace, freedom, and security. The Soviets are tough negotiators and too often seek to use arms control talks for propaganda purposes. On this issue—preventing nuclear war—America must lead, and the Democratic Party intends to lead. Without our leadership the nations of the world will be tempted to abandon themselves, perhaps slowly at first, but then relentlessly to the quest for nuclear weapons, and our children will look back with envy upon today's already dangerous nuclear world as a time of relative safety.\nDefense Policy\n\nThe Reagan Administration measures military might by dollars spent. The Democratic Party seeks prudent defense based on sound planning and a realistic assessment of threats. In the field of defense policy, the Democratic Administration will:\n—Work with our NATO and other allies to ensure our collective security, especially by strengthening our conventional defenses so as to reduce our need to rely on nuclear weapons, and to achieve this at increased spending levels, with funding to continue at levels appropriate to our collective security, with the firm hope that successful steps to reduce tensions and to obtain comprehensive and verifiable arms control agreements will guarantee our nation both military security and budgetary relief.\n—Cancel destabilizing or duplicative weapons systems, while proceeding in the absence of appropriate arms control agreements with necessary modernization of our strategic forces.\n—Scale back the construction of large, expensive and vulnerable nuclear carriers.\n—Modernize our conventional forces by balancing new equipment purchases with adequate resources spent on training, fuel, ammunition, maintenance, spare parts, and airlift and sea-lift to assure combat readiness and mobility, and by providing better equipment for our Reserves and National Guard.\n—Reorganize Pentagon management and strengthen the JCS system to reduce inter-service rivalries, promote military leadership over bureaucratic skills, assure effective execution of policies and decisions, undertake better multi-year planning based upon realistic projections of available resources, and reduce conflicts of interest.\n—Ensure open and fair competitive bidding for procurement of necessary equipment and parts, and establish a system of effective, independent testing of weapons for combat conditions.\n—Implement a program of military reform. Our forces must be combat ready; our doctrines should emphasize out-thinking and outmaneuvering our adversaries; and our policies should improve military organization and unit cohesion.\n—Press our European allies to increase their contributions to NATO defense to levels of effort comparable to our own—an approach that the Administration undercut by abandoning the NATO-wide agreement concluded by its Democratic predecessor—and pursue improved trans-Atlantic economic cooperation and coordination of arms procurement.\n—Recognize that the heart of our military strength is people, Americans in 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 and benefits, but the nation's recognition, respect and gratitude as well.\n—Recognize the importance of the intelligence community and emphasize its mission as being dedicated to the timely collection and analysis of information and data. A Democratic Administration will also recognize the urgent need to de-politicize the intelligence community and to restore professional leadership to it.\n—Oppose a peacetime military draft or draft registration.\n—Oppose efforts to restrict the opportunities of women in the military based solely on gender. The Reagan Administration has used the combat designation as an arbitrary and inappropriate way to exclude women from work they can legitimately perform. Women nurses and technicians, for example, have long served with distinction on the front lines: women must not be excluded from jobs that they are trained and able to perform.\n—Seek ways to expand programs such as VISTA, the Young Adult Conservation Corps, and the Peace Corps.\nThese and other qualitative improvements will ensure effective American strength at affordable cost. With this strength we will restore the confidence of our fellow citizens and our allies; we will be able to mount an effective conventional defense; and we will present our adversaries with a credible capability to deter war.\nThe Democratic Party is committed to reversing the policies of the Reagan Administration in the area of military and defense procurement. Public accounts reveal a four-year record of waste, fraud, conflicts of interest, and indications of wrongdoing. Administration officials have engaged in practices that have cost the taxpayers billions of dollars. Further, the Reagan Administration has ignored legal remedies to stop the abuses, recover the funds, and punish those responsible.\nA Democratic President will demand full disclosure of all information, launch a thorough investigation, and seek recovery of any tax funds illegally spent. This will be a major step towards restoring integrity to defense procurements and reducing unnecessary expenditures in the defense budget.\nForeign Policy\n\nThe purpose of foreign policy is to attain a strong and secure United States and a world of peace, freedom and justice. On a planet threatened by dictatorships on the left and right, what is at stake may be freedom itself. On a planet shadowed by the threat of a nuclear holocaust, what is at stake may be nothing less than human survival.\nA Democratic Administration will comprehend that the gravest political and security dangers in the developing world flow from conditions that open opportunities for the Soviet Union and its surrogates: poverty, repression and despair. Against adversaries such as these, military force is of limited value. Such weapons as economic assistance, economic and political reform, and support for democratic values by, among other steps, funding scholarships to study at U.S. colleges and universities, must be the leading elements of our presence and the primary instruments of American influence in the developing countries.\nTo 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 upon the best minds in our country in the quest for peace.\nA Democratic Administration will initiate and establish a Peace Academy. In the interests of balancing this nation's investment in the study of making war, the Peace Academy will study the disciplines and train experts in the arts of waging peace.\nThe Democratic Party is committed to ensuring strong representation of women and minorities in military and foreign policy decision-making positions in our government.\nIn 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 will restore an emphasis on skilled, sensitive, bilateral and multilateral diplomacy as a means to avert and resolve international conflict.\nA Democratic President will recognize that the United States, with broad economic, political and security interests in the world, had an unparalleled stake in the rule of international law. Under a Democratic Administration, there will be no call for clumsy attempts to escape the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, such as those put forth by the Reagan Administration in connection with its mining of the harbors of Nicaragua.\nA Democratic President will reverse the automatic militarization of foreign policy and look to the causes of conflict to find out whether they are internal or external, whether they are political or primarily social and economic.\nIn the face of the Reagan Administration's cavalier approach to the use of military force around the world, the Democratic Party affirms its commitment too the selective, judicious use of American military power in consonance with Constitutional principles and reinforced by the War Powers Act.\nA Democratic President will be prepared to apply military force when vital American interests are threatened, particularly in the event of an attack upon the United States or its immediate allies. But he or she will not hazard American lives or engage in unilateral military involvement:\n* Where our objectives are not clear;\n* Until all instruments of diplomacy and nonmilitary leverage, as appropriate, have been exhausted;\n* Where our objectives threaten unacceptable costs or unreasonable levels of military force;\n* Where the local forces supported are not working to resolve the causes of conflict;\n* Where multilateral or allied options for the resolution of conflict are available.\nFurther, a Democratic Administration will take all reasonable domestic action to minimize U.S. vulnerability to international instability, such as reducing Western reliance 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 resources from volatile regions of the world.\nU.S. covert operations under a Democratic President will be strictly limited to cases where secrecy is essential to the success of an operation and where there is an unmistakable foreign policy rationale. Secrecy will not be used simply to hide from the American people policies they might be expected to oppose.\nFinally, a Democratic President will recognize our democratic process as a source of strength and stability, rather than an unwelcome restraint on the control of foreign policy. He or she will respect the War Powers Resolution as a reflection of wise judgment that the sustained commitment of America's fighting forces must be made with the understanding and support of Congress and the American people. A Democratic President will understand that United States leadership among nations requires a proper respect for law and treaty obligations, and the rights of men and women everywhere.\nEurope and the Atlantic Alliance—American leadership is not about standing up to our friends. It is about standing up with them, and for them, In order to have allies, we must act like one.\nMaintaining a strong alliance is critically important. We remain absolutely committed to the defense of Europe, and we will work to ensure that our allies carry their fair share of the burden of the common defense. A Democratic Administration in turn will commit itself to increased consultation on security affair. We must work to sustain and enhance Western unity.\nWe must persuade the next generation of Europeans that America will use its power responsibly in 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 it must always remain clear that an attack upon them is the same as an attack upon us—by treaty and in reality.\nA strong Western alliance requires frank discussions among friends about the issues that from time to time divide us. For example, we must enter into meaningful negotiations with the European Community to reduce their agricultural export subsidies which unfairly impair the competitiveness of American agricultural products in third-country markets.\nA Democratic President will encourage our European friends to resolve their longs-standing differences over Ireland and Cyprus.\nThe Democratic Party supports an active role by the United States in safeguarding human rights in Northern Ireland and achieving an enduring peaceful settlement of that conflict. We oppose the use of plastic bullets in Northern Ireland, and we urge all sides to reject the use of violence. The Democratic Party supports a ban on all commercial transactions by the U.S. government with firms in England and Ireland that practice, on an on-going basis, discrimination in Northern Ireland on the basis of race, religion, or sex. We affirm our strong commitment to Irish unity—achieved by consent and based on reconciliation of all the people of Ireland. The Democratic Party is greatly encouraged by the historic and hopeful Report of the New Ireland Forum which holds the promise of a real breakthrough. A Democratic President will promptly appoint a special envoy and urge the British as well as the political leaders in Northern Ireland to review the findings and proposals of the Forum with open hearts and open minds, and will appeal to them to join a new initiative for peace. The Congress and a Democratic President will stand ready to assist this process, and will help promote jobs and investments on a non-discriminatory basis, that will represent a significant contribution to the cause of peace in Ireland.\nIn strong contrast to President Reagan's failure to apply effective diplomacy in Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterranean, a Democratic President will act with urgency and determination to make a balanced policy in the area and a peaceful resolution of the Cyprus dispute a key foreign policy priority. A Democratic President will utilize all available U.S. foreign policy instruments and will play an active, instead of a passive, role in the efforts to secure implementation of U.N. Resolutions so as to achieve removal of Turkish troops, the return of refugees, reestablishment of the integrity of the Republic of Cyprus, and respect for all citizens' human rights on Cyprus.\nUnited States—Soviet Relations—U.S. relations with the Soviet Union are a critical element of our security policy. All Americans recognize 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's dangerous behavior internationally and the totalitarian nature of their regime. The Brezhnev Doctrine proclaims Soviet willingness to maintain communist regimes against the opposition of their own people. Thus, Soviet troops have invaded and today continue to wage war on the proud people of Afghanistan. In Poland, a military government, acting under Soviet pressure, has sought to 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 movement in a communist country. In recent years, the Soviet Union and its allies have played a more aggressive role in countries around the world. At the same time, the Soviet military arsenal, nuclear and conventional, far exceeds that needed for its defense.\nYet we also recognize that the Soviets share a mutual interest in survival. They, too, have no defense against a nuclear war. Our security and their security can only be strengthened by negotiation and cooperation.\nTo shape a policy that is both firm and wise, we must first stand confident and never fear the outcome of any competition between our systems. We must see the Soviet Union as it is—neither minimizing the threats that Soviet power and policies pose to U.S. interests, nor exaggerating the strength of a Soviet regime beset by economic stagnation and saddled with a bankrupt and sterile ideology. We must join with our allies and friends to maintain an effective deterrent to Soviet power. We must pursue a clear, consistent and firm policy of peaceful competition toward the Soviet Union, a steady and pragmatic approach that neither tolerates Soviet aggression and repression nor fuels Soviet paranoia.\nThe job of an American President is both to check Soviet challenges to our vital interests, and to meet them on the common ground of survival. The risk of nuclear war cannot be eliminated overnight. But every day it can be either increased or decreased. And one of the surest ways to increase it is to cut off communications.\nEastern Europe—We must respond to the aspirations and hopes of peoples of Eastern Europe and encourage, wherever possible, the forces of change and pluralism that will increase these people's freedom from Soviet tyranny and communist dictatorship. We should encourage Eastern European countries to pursue independent foreign policies and to permit greater liberalization in domestic affairs, and we should seek independent relationships to further these objectives with them.\nThe Democratic Party condemns the Soviet repression by proxy in Poland and the other countries of Eastern Europe. The emergence of the free trade union Solidarity is one of the most formidable developments in post-war Europe and inspires all who love freedom. The struggle of the Polish people for a democratic society and religious freedom is eloquent testimony to their national spirit and bravery that even a brutal martial law regime cannot stamp out.\nToday the Jaruzelski regime claims to have ended the harshest repressive measures. Yet it continues to hold political prisoners, it continues to mistreat them, and it continues to hunt down members of Solidarity.\nThe Democratic Party agrees with Lech Walesa that the underground Solidarity movement must not be deprived of union freedoms. We call for the release of all political prisoners in Poland and an end to their harassment. The recognition of the Free trade union Solidarity, and the resumption of progress toward liberty and human rights in that nation. A Democratic President will continue to press for effective international sanctions against the Polish regime until it makes satisfactory progress toward these objectives.\nThe Middle East—The Democratic Party believes that the security Israel and the pursuit of peace in the Middle East are fundamental priorities for American foreign policy. Israel remains more than a trusted friend, a steady ally, and a sister democracy. Israel is strategically important to the United States, and we must enter into meaningful strategic cooperation.\nJerusalem should remain forever undivided with free access to the holy places for people of all faiths. As stated in the 1976 and 1980 platforms, the Democratic Party recognizes and supports the established status of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. As a symbol of this stand, the U.S. Embassy should be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.\nThe Democratic Party condemns this Administration's failure to maintain a high-level Special Negotiator for the Middle East, and believes that the Camp David peace process must be taken up again with urgency. No nation in the Middle East can afford to wait until a new war brings even worse destruction. Once again we applaud and support the example of both Israel and Egypt in taking bold steps for peace. We believe that the United States should press for negotiations among Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states. We re-emphasize the fundamental principle that the prerequisite for a lasting peace in the Middle East remains an Israel with secure and defensible borders, strong beyond a shadow of a doubt; that the basis for peace is the unequivocal recognition of Israel's right to exist by all other states; and that there should be a resolution of the Palestinian issue.\nThe United States and our allies have vital interests in the Persian Gulf. 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 of the high seas. At the same time, we and our allies should employ active diplomacy to encourage the earliest possible end to Iran/Iraq conflict.\nThe Western Hemisphere—The Western Hemisphere is in trouble. Central America is region at war. Latin America is experiencing the most serious economic crisis in 50 years. The Inter-American system is on the verge of collapse. Concern about U.S. policies has risen sharply.\nIt is time to make this Hemisphere a top priority. We need to develop relations based on mutual respect and mutual benefit. Beyond essential security concerns, these relations must emphasize diplomacy, development and respect for human rights. Above all, support for democracy must be pursued. The Reagan Administration is committing the old error of supporting authoritarian military regimes against the wishes of the people they rule, but the United States was not founded, and defended for 200 years with American blood, in order to perpetuate tyranny among our neighbors.\nThe Hemisphere's nations must strive jointly to find acceptable solutions with judgments and actions based on equally-applied criteria. We must condemn violations of human rights, aggression and deprivation of basic freedoms wherever they occur. The United States must recognize that the economic and debt crisis of Latin America also directly affects us.\nThe Reagan Administration has badly misread and mishandled the conflict in Central America. The President has chosen to dwell on the strategic importance of Central America and to cast the struggle in almost exclusively East-West terms. The strategic importance of Central America is not in doubt, nor is the fact that the Soviet Union, Cuba and Nicaragua have all encouraged instability and supported revolution in the region. What the President ignores, however, are the indigenous causes of unrest. Historically, Central America had been burdened by widespread hunger and disease. And the historic pattern of concentrated wealth has done little to produce stable democratic societies.\nSadly, Mr. Reagan has opted for the all too frequent American response to the unrest that has characterized Central America-military assistance. Over the past 100 years, Panama. Nicaragua, and Honduras have all been occupied by U.S. forces in an effort to suppress indigenous revolutionary movements. In 1954, CIA-backed forces successfully toppled the Government of Guatemala.\nPresident Reagan's massive transfusions of military aid to El Salvador are no substitute for the social and economic reforms that are necessary to undermine the appeal the guerillas hold for many Salvadorans. The changes and upheavals in El Salvador and Nicaragua are home-grown, but they are exacerbated by forces from outside of Central America. The undoubted communist influence on these revolutions cannot be nullified by the dispatch of naval and air armadas to the waters off Nicaragua and thousands of troops to the jungles of Honduras. The solution lies with a new policy that fosters social, economic and political reforms that are compatible with our legitimate vital interests while accommodating the equally legitimate forces of change.\nAmerica must find a different approach. All too often, the United States thinks in terms of what it can do for the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean 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 call it a \"defensive shield.\" Acting for the nations of the Hemisphere rather than acting in concert with them is the surest way of repeating the mistakes of the past and casting dark shadow over the future.\nIt need not be. There is an alternative, a good alternative. The great Mexican patriot Benito Juarez pointed the way and said it best: \"Between men 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.\nDemocrats know there is a real difference between the two and a Democratic President will seek the advice and counsel of the authentic democratic voices within the region—voices that may be heard north and south, east and west; the voices of President Miguel de la Madrid of Mexico, President Balisario Betancur of Colombia, and President Raul Alfonsin of Argentina; the voices of President Jorge Blanco of the Dominican Republic, Prime Minister Tom Adams of Barbados, and President Alberto Monge of Costa Rica. By consulting with and listening carefully to these leaders and to their democratic colleagues elsewhere in the region, the next Democratic President of the United States will fashion a policy toward the region which recognizes that:\n—the security and well-being of the Hemisphere are more a function of economic growth and development than of military agreements and arms transfers;\n—the mounting debt crisis throughout the region poses a broader threat to democratic institutions and political stability than does any insurgency or armed revolutionary movement;\n—there is an urgent and genuine need for far-reaching economic, social and political reforms in much of the region and that such reforms are absolutely essential to the protection of basic human rights;\n—the future belongs as much to the people of the region—the politically forgotten and the economically deprived—as it does to the rich and powerful elite;\n—preservation and protection of U.S. interests in the Hemisphere requires mutual respect for national sovereignty and demilitarization of the region, prior consultation in accordance with the Rio Treaty and the OAS Charter regarding the application of the Monroe Doctrine, the use of military force, and a multilateral commitment to oppose the establishment of Soviet and Cuba military bases, strategic facilities, or combat presence in Central America or elsewhere in Latin America;\n—efforts to isolate Cuba only serve to make it more dependent on the Soviet Union: U.S. diplomatic skills must be employed to reduce that level of dependence and to explore the differences that divide us with a view to stabilizing our relations with Cuba. At the same time we must continue to oppose firmly Cuban intervention in the internal affairs of other nations. Progress in our relationship will depend on Cuba's willingness to end its support for violent revolution, to recognize the sovereignty and independence of other nations by respecting the principle of non-intervention, to demonstrate respect for human rights both inside and outside of Cuba, and to abide by international norms of behavior.\nMindful of these realities and determined to stop widening, militarizing, and Americanizing the conflict, a Democratic President's immediate objective will be to stop the violence and pursue a negotiated political solution in concert with our democratic allies in the Contadora group. He or she will approach Central American policy in the following terms:\n—First, there must be unequivocal support for the Contadora process and for the efforts by those countries to achieve political solutions to the conflicts that plague the Central American region.\n—Second, there must be a commitment on the part of the United States to reduce tensions in the region. We must terminate our support for the contras and other paramilitary groups fighting in Nicaragua. We must halt those U.S. military exercises in the region which are being conducted for no other real purpose than to intimidate or provoke the Nicaraguan government or which may be used as a pretext for deeper U.S. military involvement in the area. And, we must evidence our firm willingness to work for a demilitarized Central America, including the mutual withdrawal of all foreign forces and military advisors from the region. A Democratic President will seek a multilateral framework to protect the security and independence of the region which will include regional agreements to bar new military bases, to restrict the numbers and sophistication of weapons being introduced into Central America, and to permit international inspection of borders. This diplomatic effort can succeed, 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 (other than those provided for in the Panama Canal Treaties), and to deny any external force or power the use of their territories for purposes of subversion in the region. The viability of any security agreement for Central America would be enhanced by the progressive development of pluralism in Nicaragua. To this end, the elections proposed for November are important; how they are conducted will be an indication of Nicaragua's willingness to move in the direction of genuine democracy.\n—Third, there must be a clear, concise signal to indicate that we are ready, willing and able to provide substantial economic resources, through the appropriate multilateral channels, to the nations of Central America, as soon as the Contadora process achieves a measure of success in 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 universities which are providing sanctuary and assistance to Guatemalan, Haitian, and Salvadoran refugees, and will give all assistance to such refugees as is consistent with U.S. law.\n—Fourth, a Democratic President will support the newly elected President of El Salvador in his efforts to establish civilian democratic control, by channeling U.S. aid through him and by conditioning it on the elimination of government-supported death squads and on progress toward his objectives of land reform, human rights and serious negotiations with contending forces in El Salvador, in order to achieve a peaceful democratic political settlement of the Salvadoran conflict.\n—Fifth, a Democratic President will not use U.S. armed forces in or 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 present danger of attack upon the U.S., its territories or possessions or upon U.S. embassies or citizens, consistent with the War Powers Act.\nThese are the key elements that evidence very real differences between the 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 Central American region.\nA Democratic President would seek to work with the countries of the Caribbean to strengthen democratic institutions. He or she would not overlook human rights, by refusing to condemn repression by the regimes of the right or the left in the region. A Democratic President would give high priority to democracy, freedom, and to multilateral development. A Democratic President would encourage regional cooperation and make of that important area a showplace rather than a footstool for economic development. Finally, support for democracy must be pursued in its own right, and not just as a tactic against communism.\nHuman rights principles were a cornerstone of President Carter's foreign policy and have always been a central concern in the Inter-American system. Regional multilateral action to protect and advance human rights is an international obligation.\nA Democratic President must not overlook human rights, refusing to condemn repression by the regimes of the right or the left in the region. Insistence that governments respect their obligations to their people, is a criterion that must apply equally to all. It is as important in Cuba as in El Salvador, Guatemala as in Nicaragua, in Haiti as in the Paraguay and Uruguay.\nA Democratic Administration would place protection of human rights in a core position in our relations with Latin America and the Caribbean. It would particularly seek multilateral support for such principles by strengthening and backing the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and by encouraging the various private organizations in the hemisphere dedicated to monitoring and protecting human rights.\nAfrica—The Democratic Party will advocate a set of bold new initiatives for Third World nations in general and Africa in particular. Hunger, drought, and famine have brought untold suffering to millions in Africa. This human misery—and the armies of nationless—requires a policy of substantial increases in humanitarian assistance, a major thrust in agricultural technology transfer, and cessation of the unfortunate tendency to hold such aid hostage to East-West confrontation or other geopolitical aims. The United States also must offer substantially greater economic assistance to these nations, while engaging in a North-South multilateral dialogue that addresses mutual economic development strategies, commodities pricing, and other treaties relevant to international trade. A Democratic President will join with our friends within and outside the continent in support of respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all African states. Africa is the home of one-eighth of the world's population and a continent of vast resources. Our national interest demands that we give this rich and diverse continent a much higher priority.\nA Democratic President will reverse the Reagan Administration's failed policy of \"constructive engagement\" and strongly and unequivocally oppose the apartheid regime in South Africa. A Democratic Administration will.\n—exert maximum pressure on South Africa to hasten the establishment of a democratic, unitary political system within South Africa.\n—pursue scrupulous enforcement of the 1977 U.N. arms embargo against South Africa, including enforcement of restrictions on the sale of \"dual use\" equipment.\n—impose a ban on all new loans by U.S. business interests to the South African government and on all new investments and loans to the South African private sector, until there is substantial progress toward the full participation of all the people of South Africa in the social, political, and economic life in that country and toward an end to discrimination based on race or ethnic origin.\n—ban the sale or transfer of sophisticated computers and nuclear technology to South Africa and the importation of South African gold coins.\n—reimpose export controls in effect during the Carter Administration which were relaxed by the Reagan Administration.\n—withdraw landing rights to South African aircraft.\nThe Democratic Party condemns South Africa for unjustly holding political prisoners. Soviet harassment of the Sakharovs is identical to South African house 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 demand their immediate release. In addition, we demand the immediate release of all other political prisoners in South Africa.\nA Democratic Administration will work as well toward legitimate rights of self-determination of the peoples of Namibia by:\n—demanding compliance with U.N. Security Council Resolution 435—the six-year-old blueprint for Namibian independence;\n—imposing severe fines on U.S. companies that violate the United Nations Decree prohibiting foreign exploitation of Namibian mineral wealth until Namibia attains independence;\n—progressively increasing effective sanctions against South Africa unless and until it grants independence to Namibia and abolishes its own abhorrent apartheid system.\nAsia—Our relationship with the countries of Asia and the Pacific Basin will continue to be of increasing importance. The political, cultural, economic, and strategic ties which link the United States to this reason cannot be ignored.\nWith our Asian friends and allies, we have a common cause in preserving the security and enhancing democracy in the area.\nWith our Asian trading partners, we share a common interest in expanding commerce and fair trade between us, as evidenced by the 33 percent of total American trade now conducted with those countries.\nAnd with the growing number of Asian/Pacific-Americans, we welcome the strength and vitality which increased cultural ties bring to this country.\nOur relationship with Japan is a key to the maintenance of peace, security, and development in Asia and the Pacific region. Mutual respect, enhanced cooperation, and steady diplomacy must guide our dealings with Japan. At the same time, as allies and friends, we must work to resolve areas of disagreement. A Democratic President, therefore, will press for increased access to Japanese as well as other Asian markets for American firms and their produces. Finally, a Democratic President will expect Japan to continue moving toward assuming its fair share of the burden of collective security—in self-defense as well as in foreign assistance and democratic development.\nOur security in the Pacific region is also closely tied to the well-being of our long-time allies. Australia and New Zealand. A Democratic President will honor and strengthen our security commitment to ANZUS as well as to other Southeast Asian friends.\nOur relationship with the People's Republic of China must also be nurtured and strengthened. The Democratic Party believes that our developing relations with the PRC offer a historic opportunity to bring one quarter of the world's population into the community of nations, to strengthen a counterweight to Soviet expansionism, and to enhance economic relations that offer great potential for mutual advantage. At the same time, we recognize our historic ties to the people on Taiwan and we will continue to honor our commitments to them, consistent with the Taiwan Relations Act.\nOur own principles and interests demand that we work with those in Asia, as well as elsewhere, who can encourage democratic institutions and support greater respect for human rights. A Democratic President will work closely with the world's largest democracy, India, and maintain mutually beneficial ties. A Democratic President will press for the restoration of full democracy in the Philippines, further democratization and the elimination of martial law in Taiwan, the return to freedom of speech and press in South Korea, and restoration of human rights for the people of East Timor. Recognizing the strategic importance of Pakistan and the close relationship which has existed between our two countries, a Democratic President would press to restore democracy and terminate its nuclear weapons program. Finally, a Democratic President would press for the fullest possible accounting of Americans still missing in Indochina.\nFor the past four years, the Soviet Union has been engaged in a brutal effort to crush the resistance of the people or Afghanistan. It denies their right to independence. It is trying to stamp out their culture and to deny them the right to practice their religion, Islam. But despite appalling costs, the people of Afghanistan continue to resist—demonstrating the same qualities of human aspiration and fortitude that made our own nation great. We must continue to oppose Soviet aggression in Afghanistan. We should support the efforts of the Afghanistan freedom fighters with material assistance.\nIf the Soviet Union is prepared to abide by the principles of international law and human dignity, it should find the U.S. prepared to help produce a peaceful settlement.\nGlobal Debt and Development\n\nThe Democratic Party will pursue policies for economic development, for aid and trade that meet the needs of the people of the developing world and that further our own national interest. The next Democratic President will support development policies that meet the basic needs of the poor for food, water, energy, medical care, and shelter rather than \"trickle down\" policies that never reach those on the bottom. The next Democratic Administration will give preference in its foreign assistance to countries with democratic institutions and respect for human rights.\nA Democratic President will seek to cut back record U.S. budget deficits and interest rates not only for our own economic well-being, but to reduce the economic crisis confronting so many industrialized and developing states alike.\nMr. Reagan has perceived national security in very limited and parochial terms, and thus has failed completely to grasp the significance of the international debt which now has sky-rocketed to some $800 billion. In 1983, some thirty nations accounting for half of this total were forced to seek restructuring of their debts with public and private creditors because they were unable to meet their debt payments.\nThe U.S. economy is directly linked to the costs of these loans through their variable interest rates (tied to the U.S. prime rate). A rise in the U.S. prime rate by one percent added more than $4 billion to the annual interest costs associated with these external debts. The struggle to meet their external debts has slashed the purchasing power of these developing countries and forced them to curtail imports from the U.S. This accounts for one-third to one-half of the adverse turn in the U.S. trade deficit, which is projected to reach $130 billion this year.\nThe social and political stability of these developing countries is seriously challenged by the debt crisis. In light of the interdependence of the international economy, the crisis also threatens the very foundation of the international financial system. To answer these dangers, the Democratic Administration will:\n—Call immediately for discussions on improving the functioning of the international monetary systems and on developing a comprehensive long-term approach to the international debt problem.\n—Instruct the Treasury Department to work with the Federal Reserve Board, U.S. bank regulators, key private banks, and the finance ministers and central bankers of Europe and Japan, to develop a short-term program for reducing the debt service obligations of less developed countries, while 1) preserving the safety and soundness of the international banking system and 2) ensuring that the costs of the program shared equitably among all parties to existing and rescheduled debts.\n—Recommend an increase in the lending capacity of the World Bank, as well as an increase in the lending capacity of the Export-Import Bank of the U.S.. to ensure that debtor nations obtain adequate capital for investment in export industries.\n—Review international trade barriers which limit the ability of these countries to earn foreign exchange.\nSecurity assistance can in appropriate circumstances, help our friends meet legitimate defense needs. But shifting the balance from economic development toward military sales, as has occurred over the past three and one-half years, sets back the cause of peace and justice, fuels restful arms races, and places sophisticated weapons in the hands of those who could one day turn them back upon us and upon our friends and allies. The Democratic Party seeks now, as in the past, effective international agreements to limit and reduce the transfer of conventional arms.\nA Democratic President will seize new opportunities to make major advances at limited cost in the health and survival of the world's poorest people—thus enabling more people to contribute to and share in the world's resources, and promoting stability and popular participation in their societies. Recognizing that unrestrained population growth constitutes a danger for economic progress and political stability, a Democratic President will restore full U.S. support for national and international population programs that are now threatened by the policies of the Reagan Administration.\nA Democratic President will work to see the power and prestige of the U.S. fully committed to the reform and strengthening of the United Nations and other international agencies in the pursuit of their original purposes—peace, economic and social welfare, education, and human rights.\nBecause of the economic instability caused by global debts and by other problems, unprecedented migration into the United States and other parts of the world is occurring in the form of economic refugees. The Democratic Party will support economic development programs so as to aid nations in reducing migration from their countries, and thereby reduce the flow of economic refugees to the U.S. and other parts of the world.\nRather than scuttling the international Law of the Sea negotiations after over a decade of bipartisan U.S. involvement, a Democratic President will actively pursue efforts to achieve an acceptable Treaty and related agreements that protect U.S. interests in all uses of ocean space.\nHuman Rights and Solidarity\n\nThe Democratic Party believes that we need new approaches to replace the failed Republican policies. We need sustained, personal, presidential leadership in foreign policy and arms control. We need a President who will meet with the Soviets to challenge them to reduce the danger of nuclear war, who will become personally involved in reviving the Camp David peace process, who will give his or her full support to the Contadora negotiations, and who will press the South Africans to repeal their policies of apartheid and destabilization. We need a President who will understand that human rights and national security interests are mutually supportive. We need a President to restore our influence, enhance our security, pursue democracy and freedom, and work unremittingly for peace. With firm purpose, skill, sensitivity, and a recovery of our own pride in what we are—a Democratic President will build an international alliance of free people to promote these great causes.\nA Democratic President will pursue a foreign policy that advances basic civil and political rights—freedom of speech, association, thought and religion, the right to leave, freedom of the integrity of the person, and the prohibition of torture, arbitrary detention and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment—and that seeks as well to attain basic, economic, social, and cultural rights. A Democratic President's concern must extend from the terror of the Russian Gulag to the jails of Latin generals. The banning of South African blacks is no more acceptable than the silencing of Cuban poets. A Democratic President will end U.S. support for dictators throughout the world from Haiti to the Philippines. He or she will support and defend the observance of basic human rights called for in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Helsinki Final Act. He or she will seek, through both quiet diplomacy and public measures, the release of political prisoners and the free immigration of prosecuted individuals and peoples around the world. He or she will seek U.S. ratification of the Genocide Convention, the International Covenants on Human Rights, and the American Convention on Human Rights, as well as the establishment of a U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. He or she will fulfill the spirit as well as the letter of our legislation calling for the denial of military and economic assistance to governments that systematically violate human rights.\nThe Democratic Party believes that whether it is in response to totalitarianism in the Soviet Union or repression in Latin America and East Asia, to apartheid in South Africa or martial law in Poland, to terrorism in Libya or the reign of terror in Iran, or to barbaric aggression in Southeast Asia and Afghanistan, the foreign policy of the United States must be unmistakably on the side of those who love freedom.\nAs Democrats and as Americans, we will make support for democracy, human rights and economic and social justice the cornerstone of our policy. These are 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.", "Words" -> 36365, "WordCounts" -> <|"the" -> 2098, "and" -> 1519, "of" -> 1378, "to" -> 1204, "in" -> 667, "a" -> 638, "for" -> 433, "that" -> 406, "our" -> 384, "will" -> 369, "is" -> 339, "The" -> 266, "be" -> 234, "Democratic" -> 220, "on" -> 210, "are" -> 203, "as" -> 202, "We" -> 198, "with" -> 193, "we" -> 192, "by" -> 179, "has" -> 173, "Reagan" -> 169, "must" -> 167, "have" -> 162, "Administration" -> 140, "or" -> 139, "all" -> 134, "not" -> 130, "it" -> 129, "an" -> 129, "economic" -> 126, "their" -> 125, "Party" -> 122, "American" -> 113, "President" -> 109, "new" -> 107, "which" -> 90, "more" -> 90, "this" -> 84, "government" -> 84, "from" -> 84, "than" -> 82, "at" -> 82, "people" -> 79, "policy" -> 78, "America" -> 77, "its" -> 76, "who" -> 75, "In" -> 75, "U.S." -> 74, "other" -> 71, "economy" -> 70, "should" -> 69, "can" -> 68, "A" -> 68, "Americans" -> 67, "programs" -> 65, "national" -> 65, "been" 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-> 11, "created" -> 11, "conventional" -> 11, "clear" -> 11, "worker" -> 10, "War" -> 10, "Vietnam" -> 10, "Under" -> 10, "times" -> 10, "These" -> 10, "strengthened" -> 10, "strategies" -> 10, "still" -> 10, "stable" -> 10, "senior" -> 10, "see" -> 10, "risk" -> 10, "regional" -> 10, "regime" -> 10, "reducing" -> 10, "recovery" -> 10, "recession" -> 10, "principles" -> 10, "present" -> 10, "payments" -> 10, "once" -> 10, "negotiations" -> 10, "mutual" -> 10, "multilateral" -> 10, "loans" -> 10, "limit" -> 10, "life" -> 10, "land" -> 10, "itself" -> 10, "information" -> 10, "impact" -> 10, "goods" -> 10, "given" -> 10, "funds" -> 10, "farmers" -> 10, "face" -> 10, "example" -> 10, "dollars" -> 10, "does" -> 10, "danger" -> 10, "combat" -> 10, "civil" -> 10, "burden" -> 10, "bring" -> 10, "African" -> 10, "address" -> 10, "workplace" -> 9, "Where" -> 9, "today" -> 9, "throughout" -> 9, "threat" -> 9, "Third" -> 9, "then" -> 9, "systems" -> 9, "survival" -> 9, "strategy" -> 9, "stand" -> 9, "sound" -> 9, "services" -> 9, "second" -> 9, "safe" -> 9, "rise" -> 9, "relationship" -> 9, "reform" -> 9, "priorities" -> 9, "plants" -> 9, "plant" -> 9, "place" -> 9, "open" -> 9, "office" -> 9, "off" -> 9, "No" -> 9, "members" -> 9, "Latin" -> 9, "Ireland" -> 9, "integrity" -> 9, "Instead" -> 9, "insist" -> 9, "include" -> 9, "hunger" -> 9, "higher" -> 9, "guarantee" -> 9, "get" -> 9, "fully" -> 9, "firms" -> 9, "failure" -> 9, "failed" -> 9, "exports" -> 9, "European" -> 9, "Equal" -> 9, "efficiency" -> 9, "East" -> 9, "doing" -> 9, "different" -> 9, "Department" -> 9, "continues" -> 9, "companies" -> 9, "challenges" -> 9, "cases" -> 9, "build" -> 9, "beyond" -> 9, "area" -> 9, "appropriate" -> 9, "approach" -> 9, "apartheid" -> 9, "alone" -> 9, "almost" -> 9, "allow" -> 9, "aid" -> 9, "agricultural" -> 9, "ago" -> 9, "affordable" -> 9, "able" -> 9, "youth" -> 8, "York" -> 8, "world's" -> 8, "whose" -> 8, "While" -> 8, "What" -> 8, "verifiable" -> 8, "values" -> 8, "Treaty" -> 8, "toxic" -> 8, "took" -> 8, "threatened" -> 8, "threaten" -> 8, "sustained" -> 8, "success" -> 8, "students" -> 8, "spirit" -> 8, "spent" -> 8, "seeking" -> 8, "savings" -> 8, "return" -> 8, "Reserve" -> 8, "requires" -> 8, "require" -> 8, "remain" -> 8, "reductions" -> 8, "recent" -> 8, "reach" -> 8, "pressure" -> 8, "prepared" -> 8, "population" -> 8, "Over" -> 8, "offer" -> 8, "Middle" -> 8, "measures" -> 8, "makes" -> 8, "look" -> 8, "like" -> 8, "keep" -> 8, "join" -> 8, "Investing" -> 8, "increasingly" -> 8, "improve" -> 8, "II" -> 8, "Human" -> 8, "huge" -> 8, "hold" -> 8, "High" -> 8, "healthy" -> 8, "greatest" -> 8, "goal" -> 8, "funding" -> 8, "family" -> 8, "fairly" -> 8, "expanding" -> 8, "expand" -> 8, "existing" -> 8, "enormous" -> 8, "enforce" -> 8, "encouraging" -> 8, "elderly" -> 8, "effectively" -> 8, "educational" -> 8, "diversity" -> 8, "disadvantaged" -> 8, "disabled" -> 8, "decade" -> 8, "current" -> 8, "course" -> 8, "competitiveness" -> 8, "common" -> 8, "code" -> 8, "century" -> 8, "call" -> 8, "before" -> 8, "because" -> 8, "annual" -> 8, "alternative" -> 8, "agenda" -> 8, "addition" -> 8, "With" -> 7, "Western" -> 7, "ways" -> 7, "veterans" -> 7, "until" -> 7, "universities" -> 7, "unemployed" -> 7, "understand" -> 7, "turn" -> 7, "together" -> 7, "targeted" -> 7, "taking" -> 7, "successful" -> 7, "strengthening" -> 7, "stop" -> 7, "stock" -> 7, "steps" -> 7, "step" -> 7, "State" -> 7, "single" -> 7, "Since" -> 7, "simply" -> 7, "significant" -> 7, "service" -> 7, "serve" -> 7, "scientists" -> 7, "schools" -> 7, "Salvador" -> 7, "run" -> 7, "rising" -> 7, "revenues" -> 7, "repression" -> 7, "recognizes" -> 7, "question" -> 7, "pursuit" -> 7, "protecting" -> 7, "promised" -> 7, "promise" -> 7, "price" -> 7, "potential" -> 7, "peaceful" -> 7, "partnership" -> 7, "oil" -> 7, "Medicare" -> 7, "meaningful" -> 7, "materials" -> 7, "massive" -> 7, "Many" -> 7, "lower" -> 7, "long" -> 7, "legitimate" -> 7, "learn" -> 7, "leaders" -> 7, "Justice" -> 7, "involvement" -> 7, "initiatives" -> 7, "immediate" -> 7, "however" -> 7, "how" -> 7, "highest" -> 7, "hard" -> 7, "great" -> 7, "Government" -> 7, "good" -> 7, "goals" -> 7, "fund" -> 7, "focus" -> 7, "First" -> 7, "export" -> 7, "expanded" -> 7, "exist" -> 7, "excellence" -> 7, "establishment" -> 7, "equipment" -> 7, "entire" -> 7, "ensuring" -> 7, "emphasize" -> 7, "El" -> 7, "each" -> 7, "during" -> 7, "done" -> 7, "diverse" -> 7, "depends" -> 7, "demands" -> 7, "decent" -> 7, "cycle" -> 7, "cultural" -> 7, "Commission" -> 7, "commercial" -> 7, "changes" -> 7, "causes" -> 7, "Can" -> 7, "broad" -> 7, "Board" -> 7, "better" -> 7, "auto" -> 7, "attack" -> 7, "April" -> 7, "answer" -> 7, "air" -> 7, "agriculture" -> 7, "age" -> 7, "1983" -> 7, "1981" -> 7, "Yet" -> 6, "welfare" -> 6, "Washington" -> 6, "vision" -> 6, "vigorously" -> 6, "vigorous" -> 6, "value" -> 6, "unnecessary" -> 6, "unfair" -> 6, "true" -> 6, "transportation" -> 6, "ties" -> 6, "threats" -> 6, "thousands" -> 6, "That" -> 6, "telecommunications" -> 6, "taken" -> 6, "Supreme" -> 6, "suicide" -> 6, "substantial" -> 6, "standard" -> 6, "stake" -> 6, "sources" -> 6, "sought" -> 6, "some" -> 6, "Solidarity" -> 6, "smaller" -> 6, "Small" -> 6, "similar" -> 6, "short-term" -> 6, "sense" -> 6, "Second" -> 6, "sale" -> 6, "Safety" -> 6, "rich" -> 6, "restoration" -> 6, "responsible" -> 6, "responsibilities" -> 6, "response" -> 6, "requiring" -> 6, "regulations" -> 6, "regimes" -> 6, "refusing" -> 6, "reforms" -> 6, "rapidly" -> 6, "purpose" -> 6, "proud" -> 6, "protections" -> 6, "Protection" -> 6, "prosperous" -> 6, "procurement" -> 6, "principle" -> 6, "pressures" -> 6, "preserve" -> 6, "position" -> 6, "plans" -> 6, "personal" -> 6, "percentage" -> 6, "patterns" -> 6, "objectives" -> 6, "natural" -> 6, "movement" -> 6, "move" -> 6, "mortgage" -> 6, "methods" -> 6, "maintenance" -> 6, "low" -> 6, "lives" -> 6, "limits" -> 6, "likely" -> 6, "largest" -> 6, "invest" -> 6, "infants" -> 6, "ignored" -> 6, "hazardous" -> 6, "Growth" -> 6, "groups" -> 6, "flow" -> 6, "fiscal" -> 6, "financing" -> 6, "finance" -> 6, "fairness" -> 6, "fact" -> 6, "explosion" -> 6, "expense" -> 6, "especially" -> 6, "enhance" -> 6, "elimination" -> 6, "election" -> 6, "drugs" -> 6, "drug" -> 6, "direction" -> 6, "did" -> 6, "dependence" -> 6, "Defense" -> 6, "deep" -> 6, "decades" -> 6, "Cuba" -> 6, "corporate" -> 6, "commitments" -> 6, "commit" -> 6, "comes" -> 6, "colleges" -> 6, "collective" -> 6, "closely" -> 6, "choice" -> 6, "chance" -> 6, "centers" -> 6, "capacity" -> 6, "buy" -> 6, "built" -> 6, "bipartisan" -> 6, "benefit" -> 6, "ban" -> 6, "avoid" -> 6, "attention" -> 6, "assuring" -> 6, "always" -> 6, "agency" -> 6, "Afghanistan" -> 6, "advantage" -> 6, "active" -> 6, "account" -> 6, "worth" -> 5, "willingness" -> 5, "wildlife" -> 5, "wide" -> 5, "whole" -> 5, "White" -> 5, "whether" -> 5, "wealth" -> 5, "want" -> 5, "vulnerable" -> 5, "unless" -> 5, "treaty" -> 5, "total" -> 5, "top" -> 5, "Then" -> 5, "terms" -> 5, "tensions" -> 5, "technologies" -> 5, "taxpayers" -> 5, "suffering" -> 5, "substantially" -> 5, "study" -> 5, "struggle" -> 5, "steel" -> 5, "steady" -> 5, "stands" -> 5, "space" -> 5, "Soviets" -> 5, "sophisticated" -> 5, "shelter" -> 5, "sharply" -> 5, "sex" -> 5, "several" -> 5, "series" -> 5, "SALT" -> 5, "safer" -> 5, "roads" -> 5, "retraining" -> 5, "requirements" -> 5, "remains" -> 5, "relief" -> 5, "reject" -> 5, "refugees" -> 5, "range" -> 5, "radioactive" -> 5, "promoting" -> 5, "productive" -> 5, "product" -> 5, "produces" -> 5, "prisoners" -> 5, "prevent" -> 5, "practices" -> 5, "pledge" -> 5, "planning" -> 5, "plan" -> 5, "permit" -> 5, "peoples" -> 5, "Peace" -> 5, "parts" -> 5, "parents" -> 5, "ownership" -> 5, "others" -> 5, "On" -> 5, "often" -> 5, "officials" -> 5, "nor" -> 5, "neglect" -> 5, "nature" -> 5, "Moreover" -> 5, "mission" -> 5, "medical" -> 5, "low-income" -> 5, "loss" -> 5, "longer" -> 5, "Local" -> 5, "living" -> 5, "line" -> 5, "limited" -> 5, "legislation" -> 5, "least" -> 5, "lands" -> 5, "issues" -> 5, "intervention" -> 5, "instead" -> 5, "influence" -> 5, "incentives" -> 5, "Illinois" -> 5, "hungry" -> 5, "House" -> 5, "hostile" -> 5, "hope" -> 5, "highly" -> 5, "Hemisphere" -> 5, "heart" -> 5, "government's" -> 5, "gone" -> 5, "gas" -> 5, "fulfill" -> 5, "fuel" -> 5, "firm" -> 5, "fight" -> 5, "few" -> 5, "fearing" -> 5, "farm" -> 5, "external" -> 5, "expenditures" -> 5, "expected" -> 5, "expansion" -> 5, "ever" -> 5, "equity" -> 5, "equality" -> 5, "Environmental" -> 5, "environment" -> 5, "enough" -> 5, "engineers" -> 5, "emphasis" -> 5, "emergency" -> 5, "elsewhere" -> 5, "efficient" -> 5, "effectiveness" -> 5, "Eastern" -> 5, "due" -> 5, "dream" -> 5, "doubt" -> 5, "doubled" -> 5, "displaced" -> 5, "directly" -> 5, "designed" -> 5, "deposits" -> 5, "delivery" -> 5, "deeper" -> 5, "debts" -> 5, "deal" -> 5, "day" -> 5, "damage" -> 5, "Cyprus" -> 5, "cutting" -> 5, "credit" -> 5, "cooperative" -> 5, "contributing" -> 5, "consumers" -> 5, "consistent" -> 5, "consensus" -> 5, "concerned" -> 5, "concern" -> 5, "compliance" -> 5, "complete" -> 5, "competitors" -> 5, "community-based" -> 5, "communist" -> 5, "coming" -> 5, "come" -> 5, "collapse" -> 5, "closings" -> 5, "civilian" -> 5, "changed" -> 5, "careful" -> 5, "Black" -> 5, "billions" -> 5, "belief" -> 5, "bankruptcy" -> 5, "Bank" -> 5, "balance" -> 5, "associated" -> 5, "assist" -> 5, "aside" -> 5, "Asian" -> 5, "Asia" -> 5, "around" -> 5, "approaches" -> 5, "An" -> 5, "Agency" -> 5, "affected" -> 5, "adversaries" -> 5, "adapt" -> 5, "act" -> 5, "acceptable" -> 5, "abroad" -> 5, "20" -> 5, "1980's" -> 5, "works" -> 4, "why" -> 4, "When" -> 4, "went" -> 4, "well-being" -> 4, "wealthy" -> 4, "Water" -> 4, "wastes" -> 4, "Wars" -> 4, "virtually" -> 4, "victims" -> 4, "viability" -> 4, "various" -> 4, "urgent" -> 4, "urge"