10-28-2000

POLITICS: First Things First

If elected, Al Gore would focus in his first year on unfinished
legislative business from 2000 that proved potent for Democrats during the
campaign, and on those campaign pledges he uttered while battling Texas
Gov. George W. Bush. Democrats believe that Gore learned something from
the Clinton years about putting big legislative battles in a sensible
order to keep Congress from overloading, and to use one legislative
success as leverage for another.


Campaign Finance Reform: Has pledged to make a "soft-money" ban
the first bill sent to the new Congress.


Education: Would seek to expand the federal role in education. A required
reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (delayed in
2000 by Congress) would be the entree to achieving this goal, which
includes teacher hiring and training, school construction, early-childhood
education, and school accountability.


Health Care: Would sign a patients' bill of rights that allows patients to
sue their health plans; make prescription drug coverage a Medicare
benefit; begin to make good on his pledge that every child will have
health coverage within four years.


Budget: Would maintain balanced budget; pay down publicly held debt with
surplus revenues, and credit the resulting interest savings to Social
Security; win passage of tax cuts targeted to specific individual and
business needs; win passage of government-matched Social Security
retirement savings accounts as an addition to the system; secure more
funding for defense.


Racial Profiling: Has pledged to make "the first civil rights act of
the 21st century" an executive order barring federal law enforcement
officials from stopping, searching, and detaining suspects on the basis of
race or ethnicity. (The President does not have the authority to impose
restrictions on local law enforcement.)


Alexis Simendinger

National Journal