Solutions Conservatives need to pursue

October 29, 2010 | By Bethany Murphy From our mail box to you - editor/Midknightmail1@aol.com

Solutions for Conservatives

As Election Day fast approaches, political prognosticators say a big conservative wave is about to wash over the nation, sending new lawmakers with fresh ideas to Washington. Whether they win or lose next week, conservatives must be armed and ready to win upcoming policy battles. And The Heritage Foundation has just the tools they need.

Heritage experts have identified 23 policy areas of concern for candidates and Americans, Solutions for America. This guide offers clear policy recommendations on today’s most important issues. These recommendations include:

• Federal Spending. Government spending is out of control—so much so that a new political movement, the tea party, has sprung up to rein it in. America has a spending problem, and Heritage has a solution. The majority of our spending growth is on entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—to say nothing of Obamacare—and Heritage has created a series of recommendations that the new Congress should enact in order to correct the out of control spending that will tack on an additional trillion dollars to our national debt in the next decade.
• Health Care. Heritage urges a total and immediate repeal of Obamacare, and this needs to be a top priority for the new Congress. But Congress shouldn’t stop there: Heritage supports free market solutions (link in PDF) as opposed to a big government takeover of one-sixth of the nation’s economy.
• Government Regulations. The amount of government regulation in the past year has been unprecedented, costing taxpayers an additional $26.5 billion in 2010 alone. These costs will affect Americans in many ways. It will raise the price of the cars they buy and the food they eat, for example, while destroying an untold number of jobs. Worse, the amount of red tape is set to rise in the coming year. Congress must keep in mind that the more regulations placed on Americans, the more they are restricting their freedoms.

All of these recommendations have one thing in common – reducing the federal government’s involvement in our everyday lives. Despite what Vice President Biden might believe, this country was built because of the ingenuity, hard work, and risk-taking of enterprising Americans. This country did not become the greatest in the world through government handouts and wealth redistribution. The laws of free market capitalism created the world’s only superpower. We can only remain so if we continue to honor the founding principles that make our nation exceptional among all others.

Bethany Murphy is a writer for MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation. Nathaniel Ward; Amanda Reinecker and Andrew Vitaliti, a Heritage intern, contributed to this report.