A Congress is typically considered fortunate if it can clear one major initiative per session — and miraculous if that session coincides with an election year.
The 2004 election not only gave Republicans a firm majority in the Senate, it also provided the opportunity for the Republican Party to communicate our vision to the American people. With the election behind us, the Republican Party must keep the promises made to Americans on the campaign trail and enact our ambitious agenda.
Throughout our nation’s history, hope and optimism have always defined the American spirit. Every generation has struggled to leave our children an America that is stronger and more secure than the one left to us. That is our inheritance, and it must also be our commitment.
President Bush has said strengthening Social Security will be a top priority of his administration. This is welcome news for today’s and tomorrow’s workers, who pay a portion of their hard-earned wages in exchange for the promise of income security should they become disabled, retire or die.
Social Security has revolutionized how America’s workers prepare for their retirement. It operates as both retirement security and social insurance, offering a lifetime, inflation-protected benefit for senior citizens, disabled workers and widows. It has saved millions from poverty, reducing the number of seniors living at or below the poverty line from 50 percent to less than 10 percent today. Since its inception in 1935, this New Deal has been a good deal for hundreds of millions of Americans.
As the new year approaches and a Republican-controlled White House and Congress set their sights on major tax reform, the middle class had better hold onto its wallets.
Even Congress has become fully aware of the nation’s energy crisis and the need for a comprehensive energy bill. Natural gas prices are on the rise, our electricity transmission grid is outdated, and America is too dependent on foreign energy sources. There can no longer be a doubt that America needs a pro-growth national energy policy.
Now, more than ever, the country needs a solid energy policy. With gasoline, heating oil and natural gas prices at all-time highs, and crude oil supplies more precarious than ever, we must act now on sensible and balanced legislation. Some predict that Republican leaders will merely seek to pass the unpassed portions of its previous failed bills, relying upon a slight Republican gain in the Senate. But the success of an energy bill will hinge upon the answer
to the following questions.
A major piece of unfinished business from the 108th Congress is the reauthorization of the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century — TEA 21. To some, it may be surprising that such a popular bill which provides long-term funding for our nation’s highway, transit and safety programs has been so difficult to complete.
Both the House and the Senate passed major national infrastructure bills in the soon-to-be-concluded 108th Congress.
With the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on our nation, we learned, to our horror, that no nation is immune from the violent hatred of fundamentalist terrorism. On that day, we were seized by the power of evil. Now, we are informed and better prepared to defeat this evil. The need for vigilance, however, remains paramount.
More than three years after the most deadly attack on our country, the threat of international terrorism is greater than ever before. Osama bin Laden remains on the loose. Sleeper cells continue to recruit and operate in the United States. And nearly 18,000 al Qaeda militants have expanded their presence to 60 countries across the globe.
