AN AGENDA

TIME
FOR OUR
Jefferson Memorial,
Washington, D.C. INTRODUCTION
An Agenda For Our Time
The four speeches in this collection represent a key part of my
effort over the past three years to reinvigorate the Republican
Party and inspire the conservative movement to produce a
positive policy reform agenda aimed at the greatest challenges
of our generation.
When I arrived in Washington in 2011, I joined a Republican
Party that had been put in the position of saying “no” a lot by
a Democratic-controlled Congress intent on fulfilling President
Obama’s campaign promise of “fundamentally transforming
the United States of America.” But while minority parties always
have to oppose, they cannot grow into majorities unless they
also propose. As I saw it, the Republican Party needed to do a
better job articulating a positive conservative vision for society
and connecting that vision to a concrete policy agenda.
This conservative vision, as I explain in the first speech, is one
of social solidarity and mutual cooperation, buttressed by the
twin pillars of American freedom: a free enterprise economy and
a voluntary civil society. These institutions exist and operate
in the vital space between the government and the individual
where organic communities form and networks of economic
opportunity and social cohesion are built.
While not inherently hostile toward government, the
conservative vision sees the role of government as protecting
that space, rather than trying to control or replace it.
Our vision recognizes that the more power government
accumulates and consolidates, the more it tends to become
unfair, inefficient, unaccountable, and harmful to the healthy
functioning of the free market and civil society. Thus a true
conservative reform agenda must do more than just cut big
government—it also has to fix broken government. And with
a government as broken as ours, the first step in this effort is
to thoughtfully diagnose the problem.
In the remaining three speeches I lay out a conservative
diagnosis of our current government dysfunction and offer
some potential remedies—some of my own and some from
other reform-oriented conservatives.
In my view the greatest domestic challenge of our generation is
America’s large and growing Opportunity Deficit. This opportunity
crisis presents itself in three principal ways: immobility among
the poor, trapped in poverty; insecurity in the middle class, where
families just can’t seem to get ahead; and cronyist privilege at the
top, where political and economic elites twist policy to unfairly
profit at everyone else’s expense.
The Left assumes this inequality is a sign of market failure or
insufficient government regulation. But the fact is that bad
government policies are too often the cause of unequal opportunity.
For the same kind of dysfunctional big government that unfairly
excludes the poor and middle class from being able to earn their
success on a level playing field sometimes unfairly exempts the
wealthy and well-connected from having to earn their success.
These speeches are not the culmination of a conservative reform
agenda, but merely the beginning. With much of the difficult work
still ahead of us, they are meant to reorient the Republican Party
and direct the creation of its agenda toward the goal that Abraham
Lincoln set forth over 150 years ago: “to lift artificial weights from
all shoulders… clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all, … [and]
afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life.”
Mike Lee
U.S. Senator for Utah
The Wave, North Coyote Buttes, - AN AGENDA FOR OUR TIME -
Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness, UT

Table of Contents

2 12

WHAT CONSERVATIVES WHAT’S NEXT FOR

ARE FOR CONSERVATIVES

24 34

BRING O P P O R T U N I T Y, C R O N Y I S M ,
THEM IN AND CONSERVATIVE REFORM
 Thor’s Hammer, Navajo Loop,
Bryce Canyon National Park, UT
- AN AGENDA FOR OUR TIME -
What Conservatives Are For
In recent years, as the federal government
has expanded its reach and consolidated
its power more than any other time in our
history, conservatives have tended to define
ourselves in terms of what we are against.
While it is important to oppose the policies
of an overreaching and unsustainable
federal government, we must also make the
positive case for conservatism and articulate
1 2
to the American people what conservatives
are for. Conservatism is ultimately not about
WHAT CONSERVATIVES ARE FOR
the policies we support or oppose, but the
kind of society those policies would allow
the American people to create together.
The conservative vision for society is one
of social solidarity and interdependence
between neighbors and friends, families
and congregations, city councils and local
associations, and business owners and
customers, who are free to pursue their own
happiness and choose to do so together.
The institutions that facilitate this pursuit—
and help solve public problems that arise
along the way—are not distant, bureaucratic
agencies, but a free enterprise economy,
voluntary civil society, and local and state
governments. Central to this vision is a
strong, but limited, federal government that
protects the space for these institutions
to thrive and helps all Americans gain
WHAT CONSERVATIVES ARE FOR
access to them. For our federal government
to maintain, without exceeding, this
indispensible role it must reject policy
privilege that bestows unfair advantages to
the wealthy and well-connected, and it must
embrace policy diversity among America’s
50 states and keep policy decisions as close
as possible to the people affected by them.
“FREEDOM DOESN’T
DIVIDE US. BIG
GOVERNMENT “What Conservatives Are For”
DOES.” REMARKS TO THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION
U.S. Senator Mike Lee
April 22, 2013

When we concede this narrative, even

I. Introduction
In Washington, it is common for both
parties to succumb to easy negativity.
3 Republicans and Democrats stand
opposed to each other, obviously,
WHAT CONSERVATIVES ARE FOR
just implicitly, we concede the debate…
before it even begins.
And yet too many of us – elected
conservatives especially – do it anyway.
We take the bait. A liberal proposes an
II. Agenda and Vision
Perhaps it’s because it’s so easy in
Washington to forget.
4
In Washington, we debate public policy
so persistently that we can lose sight of

WHAT CONSERVATIVES ARE FOR

The Sisters, Monument Valley, UT
and outspoken partisanship gets the
headlines.
This negativity is unappealing on both
sides. That helps explain why the federal
government is increasingly held in such
low regard by the American people.
But for the Left, the defensive crouch
at least makes sense. Liberalism’s main
purpose today is to defend its past gains
from conservative reform.
But negativity on the Right, to my mind,
makes no sense at all.
The Left has created this false narrative
that liberals are for things, and
conservatives are against things.
idea, we explain why it won’t work, and
we think we’ve won the debate.
But even if we do, we reinforce that false
narrative… winning battles while losing
the war.
This must be frustrating to the scholars of
the Heritage Foundation, who work every
day producing new ideas for conservatives
to be for.
But it should be even more frustrating to
the conservatives around the country that
we elected conservatives all serve.
After all, they know what they’re for: why
don’t we?
the fact that policies are means, not ends.
We say we are for lower taxes, or less
regulation, or spending restraint. But
those are just policies we advocate.
They’re not what we’re really for. What
we’re really for are the good things those
policies will yield to the American people.
What we’re really for is the kind of society
those policies would allow the American
people to create, together.
III The Vision
Together.
 If there is one idea too often missing from
our debate today that’s it: together.
In the last few years, we conservatives seem
to have abandoned words like “together,”
“compassion,” and “community”… as if
their only possible meanings were as a
secret code for statism.
This is a mistake. Collective action
doesn’t only – or even usually - mean
government action.
Conservatives cannot surrender the idea
of community to the Left, when it is the
vitality of our communities upon which
our entire philosophy depends.
Nor can we allow one politician’s
occasional conflation of “compassion”
and “bigger government” to discourage
us from emphasizing the moral core of
our worldview.
Conservatism is ultimately not about the
bills we want to pass, but the nation we
5 want to be.
If conservatives want the American
people to support our agenda for the
WHAT CONSERVATIVES ARE FOR
government, we have to do a better job
of showing them our vision for society.
And re-connecting our agenda to it.
We need to remind the American people
– and perhaps, too, the Republican Party
itself – that the true and proper end of
political subsidiarity is social solidarity.
Ours has never been a vision of
isolated, atomized loners. It is a vision
of husbands and wives; parents and
children; neighbors and neighborhoods;
volunteers and congregations; bosses
and employees; businesses and
customers; clubs, teams, groups,
associations… and friends.
The essence of human freedom, of
civilization itself, is cooperation. This is
something conservatives should celebrate.
It’s what conservatism is all about.
Freedom doesn’t mean “you’re on your
own.” It means “we’re all in this together.”
Our vision of American freedom is of
two separate but mutually reinforcing
institutions: a free enterprise economy
and a voluntary civil society.
History has shown both of these organic
systems to be extremely efficient at
delivering goods and services. But these
two systems are not good because they
work. They work because they are good.
Together, they work for everyone because
they impel everyone… to work together.
They harness individuals’ self-interest to
the common good of the community, and
ultimately the nation.
They work because in a free market
economy and voluntary civil society,
whatever your career or your cause, your
success depends on your service. The
only way to look out for yourself is to look
out for those around you. The only way
to get ahead is to help other people do
the same.
What, exactly, are all those supposedly
cut-throat, exploitive businessmen and
women competing for? To figure out the
best way to help the most people.
That’s what the free market does. It
rewards people for putting their God-
given talents and their own exertions in
the service of their neighbors.
Whatever money they earn is the wealth
they create, value they add to other
people’s lives.
No matter who you are or what you’re after,
the first question anyone in a free market
must ask him or herself is: how can I help?
What problems need to be solved? What
can I do to improve other people’s lives?
The free market does not allow anyone to
take; it impels everyone to give.
The same process works in our voluntary
civil society.
Conservatives’ commitment to civil society
begins, of course, with the family, and the
paramount, indispensable institution of
marriage. But it doesn’t end there.
Just as individuals depend on free
enterprise to protect them from
economic oppression, families depend
on mediating institutions to protect
them from social isolation.
That is where the social entrepreneurs of
our civil society come in.
Just like for-profit businesses, non-profit
religious, civic, cultural, and charitable
institutions also succeed only to the
extent that they serve the needs of the
community around them.
Forced to compete for voluntary
donations, the most successful mediating
institutions in a free civil society are
at least as innovative and efficient as
profitable companies.
If someone wants to make the world a
better place, a free civil society requires
that he or she do it well.
Social entrepreneurs know that only the
best soup kitchens, the best community
theater companies, and the best youth
soccer leagues – and for that matter, the
best conservative think tanks – will survive.
So they serve.
They serve their donors by spending
their resources wisely. They serve their
communities by making them better
places to live. And they serve their
beneficiaries, by meeting needs together
better than they can meet them alone.
Freedom doesn’t divide us. Big
government does.
It’s big government that turns citizens into
supplicants, capitalists into cronies, and
cooperative communities into competing
special interests.
Freedom, by contrast, unites us. It pulls us
together, and aligns our interests.
It draws us out of ourselves and into the
lives of our friends, neighbors, and even
perfect strangers. It draws us upward,
toward the best version of ourselves.
The free market and civil society are not
things more Americans need protection
from. They’re things more Americans
need access to.
Liberals scoff at all this.
They attack free enterprise as a failed
theory that privileges the rich, exploits the
poor, and threatens the middle class.
But our own history proves the opposite.
Free enterprise is the only economic
system that does not privilege the rich.
Instead it incentivizes them to put their
wealth to productive use serving other
people… or eventually lose it all.
Free enterprise is the greatest weapon
against poverty ever conceived by man.
If the free market exploits the poor, how
do liberals explain how the richest nation This vision of America conservatives seek
in human history mostly descends from is not an Ayn Rand novel. It’s a Norman
immigrants who originally came here Rockwell painting, or a Frank Capra movie:
with nothing? a society of “plain, ordinary kindness, and
a little looking out for the other fellow, too.”
Nor does free enterprise threaten the
middle class. Free enterprise is what
created the middle class in the first place. IV. The Agenda
The great obstacle to realizing this vision
The free market created the wealth that
today is government dysfunction. This is
liberated millions of American families
where our vision must inform our agenda.
from subsistence farming, opening
up opportunities for the pursuit of What reforms will make it easier for
happiness never known before or since in entrepreneurs to start new businesses?
government-directed economies. For young couples to get married and
start new families? And for individuals
Progressives are equally dismissive of
everywhere to come together to bring
our voluntary civil society. They simply
to life flourishing new partnerships and
do not trust free individuals and organic
communities?
communities to look out for each other, or
solve problems without supervision.
What should government do – and
just as important, not do – to allow the
They think only government – only they
free market to create new economic
– possess the moral enlightenment to
opportunity and to allow civil society to
do that.
create new social capital?
To be blunt, elite progressives in
We conservatives are not against 6
Washington don’t really believe in
government. The free market and civil
communities at all. No, they believe in
society depend on a just, transparent,
WHAT CONSERVATIVES ARE FOR
community organizers. Self-anointed
and accountable government to enforce
strangers, preferably ones with Ivy
the rule of law.
League degrees, fashionable ideological
grievances, and a political agenda to What we are against are two pervasive
redress those grievances. problems that grow on government like
mold on perfectly good bread: corruption
For progressives believe the only valid
and inefficiency.
purpose of “community” is to accomplish
the agenda of the state.
It is government corruption and
inefficiency that today stand between
But we know from our own lives that
the American people and the economy
the true purpose of our communities is
and society they deserve.
instead to accomplish everything else.
To combat those pathologies, a new
To enliven our days. To ennoble our children.
conservative reform agenda should
To strengthen our families. To unite our
center around three basic principles:
neighborhoods. To pursue our happiness,
equality, diversity, and sustainability.
and protect our freedom to do so.

A. Equality/Corruption
The first and most important of these
principles is equality.
The only way for the free market and
civil society to function… to tie personal
success to interpersonal service… to align
the interests of the strong and the weak…
is to have everyone play by the same rules.
Defying this principle is how our
government has always corrupted itself,
our free market, and our civil society.
In the past, the problem was political
discrimination that held the disconnected
down. Today, government’s specialty is
dispensing political privileges to prop the
well-connected up.
In either case, the corruption is the
same: official inequality … twisting the
law to deem some people “more equal
than others”… making it harder for
some to succeed even when they serve,
7 and harder for others to fail even when
they don’t.
WHAT CONSERVATIVES ARE FOR
And so we have corporate welfare: big
businesses receiving direct and indirect
subsidies that smaller companies don’t.
We have un-civil society: politicians
funding large, well-connected non-profit
institutions based on political favoritism
rather than merit.
We have venture socialism: politicians
funneling taxpayer money to politically
correct businesses that cannot attract
real investors.
We have regulatory capture: industry
leaders influencing the rules governing
their sectors to protect their interests and
hamstringing innovative challengers.
The first step in a true conservative
reform agenda must be to end this kind of
preferential policymaking. Beyond simply
being the right thing to do, it is a pre-
requisite for earning the moral authority
and political credibility to do anything else.
Why should the American people trust our
ideas about middle-class entitlements…
when we’re still propping up big banks?
Why should they trust us to fix the
tax code while we use their tax
dollars to create artificial markets for
uncompetitive industries?
Why should they trust our vision of a
free civil society when we give special
privileges to supposed non-profits
like Planned Parenthood, public
broadcasting, agricultural check-off
programs, and the Export-Import Bank?
And perhaps most important, why
should Americans trust us at all, when
too often, we don’t really trust them?
When we vote for major legislation…
negotiated in secret… without
debating it… without even reading it…
deliberately excluding the American
people from their own government?
To conservatives, equality needs to mean
equality for everyone.
B. Diversity/Federalism
The second principle to guide our agenda
is diversity. Or, as you might have heard it
called elsewhere: “federalism.”
The biggest reason the federal government
makes too many mistakes is that it makes
too many decisions. Most of these are
decisions the federal government doesn’t
have to make – and therefore shouldn’t.
Every state in the union has a
functioning, constitutional government.
And just as important, each state has
a unique political and cultural history,
with unique traditions, values, and
priorities.
Progressives today are fundamentally
intolerant of this diversity.
They insist on imposing their values on
everyone. To them, the fifty states are
just another so-called “community” to
be “organized,” brought to heel by their
betters in Washington.
This flies in the face of the Founders and
the Constitution, of course. But it also
flies in the face of common sense and
experience.
The usurpation of state authority is why
our national politics is so dysfunctional
and rancorous.
We expect one institution – the federal
government – to set policies that govern
the lives of 300 million people, spread
across a continent. Of course it’s going
to get most of it wrong.
That’s why successful organizations
in the free market and civil society are
moving in the opposite direction.
While government consolidates,
businesses delegate and decentralize.
While Washington insists it knows
everything, effective organizations
increasingly rely on diffuse social networks
and customizable problem solving.
We should not be surprised that, as
Washington has assumed greater
control over transportation, education,
labor, welfare, health care, home
mortgage lending, and so much else,
all of those increasingly centralized
Turret Arch Trough North Window,
systems are failing.
Arches National Park, UT
Conservatives should seize this
opportunity not to impose our ideas on
these systems, but to crowd-source the
solutions to the states.
Let the unique perspectives and values of
each state craft its own policies, and see
what works and what doesn’t.
If Vermont’s pursuit of happiness leads it
to want more government, and Utah’s less,
who are politicians from the other 48 states
to tell them they can’t have it? Would we
tolerate this kind of official intolerance in
any other part of American life?
A Pew study just last week found that
Americans trust their state governments
twice as much as the federal government,
and their local governments even more.
This shouldn’t be a surprise – it should be
a hint.
State and local governments are
8
more responsive, representative, and
accountable than Washington, D.C. It’s
WHAT CONSERVATIVES ARE FOR
time to make them more powerful, too.
In the past, conservatives given federal
power have been tempted to overuse
it. We must resist this temptation. If we
want to be a diverse movement, we must
be a tolerant movement.
The price of allowing conservative states
to be conservative is allowing liberal
states to be liberal.
Call it subsidiarity. Call it federalism. Call
it constitutionalism. But we must make
this fundamental principle of pluralistic
diversity a pillar of our agenda.
 C. Sustainability
And that brings us to our third guiding
principle.
Once we eliminate policy privilege and
restore policy diversity, we can start
ensuring policy sustainability.
Once the federal government stops doing
things it shouldn’t, it can start doing the
things it should, better.
That means national defense and
intelligence, federal law enforcement
and the courts, immigration, intellectual
property, and even the senior entitlement
programs whose fiscal outlook threatens
our future solvency and very survival.
Once we clear unessential policies from
the books, federal politicians will no
longer be able to hide: from the public, or
their constitutional responsibilities.
Congress will be forced to work together
to reform the problems government has
9 created in our health care system.
We can fundamentally reform and
WHAT CONSERVATIVES ARE FOR
V. Conclusion
The bottom line of all of this is that
conservatives in that (the capitol)
building need to start doing what
conservatives in this building already
do: think long and hard about what we
believe, why we believe it, and most of
all, remember to put first things first.
For conservatives, the first thing is not
our agenda of political subsidiarity – it’s
our vision of social solidarity.
It is a vision of society as an interwoven
and interdependent network of
individuals, families, communities,
businesses, churches, formal and
informal groups working together to
meet each other’s needs and enrich
each other’s lives.
It is of a free market economy that grants
everyone a “fair chance and an unfettered
start in the race of life.”
It is of a voluntary civil society that
strengthens our communities, protects
the vulnerable, and minds the gaps to
interests traditionally aligned with
– and financially generous to – the
establishments of both parties.
And sometimes, it will require us to stand
up for those no one else will: the unborn
child in the womb, the poor student in
the failing school, the reformed father
languishing in prison, the single mom
trapped in poverty, and the splintering
neighborhoods that desperately need
them all.
But if we believe this vision is worth the
American people being for, it’s worth
elected conservatives fighting for.
What we are fighting for is not just
individual freedom, but the strong, vibrant
communities free individuals form.
The freedom to earn a good living,
and build a good life: that is what
conservatives are for.
Thank you very much.
10

WHAT CONSERVATIVES ARE FOR

Bryce Canyon National Park, UT
modernize our regulatory system.
We will be forced to rescue our senior
entitlement programs from bankruptcy.
And we can reform our tax system to
eliminate the corporate code’s bias
in favor of big businesses over small
businesses… and the individual code’s
bias against saving, investing, and
especially against parents, our ultimate
investor class.
That is how we turn the federal
government’s unsustainable liabilities
into sustainable assets.
make sure no one gets left behind.
And it is of a just, tolerant, and
sustainable federal government
that protects and complements free
enterprise and civil society, rather than
presuming to replace them.
This vision will not realize itself. The Left,
the inertia of the status quo, and the
entire economy of this city stand arrayed
against it.
Realizing it will sometimes require
conservatives to take on entrenched
interests, pet policies, and political
third-rails. Many of these will be
 - AN AGENDA FOR OUR TIME -
What’s Next for Conservatives?
In order for the Republican Party to put
forward a unifying conservative candidate
for president in 2016, we must first develop
a unifying conservative agenda today—one
that bridges the gap between the party’s
grassroots and establishment leaders
and addresses the great challenge of our
generation: America’s large and growing
Opportunity Deficit. The shortage of
opportunities in this country afflicts every
11
level of our society. At the bottom of the
economy there is a crisis of immobility,
WHAT’S NEXT FOR CONSERVATIVES?
where families and communities are
trapped in poverty, sometimes for
generations, and are disconnected from the
networks of opportunity that more affluent
Americans take for granted. At the same
time, this opportunity deficit exists at the
top of the economy in the form of crony
capitalism and special-interest privilege,
where political and economic elites collude
Silver Lake, UT
to make it easier for preferred Washington
insiders to succeed, and harder for their
competitors to get a fair shot. Finally, our
nation’s shortage of opportunities affects
the middle class, where the hallmarks of
the American Dream—from family stability
and work-life balance to affordable
education and health care—have grown
too elusive for too many. A conservative
reform agenda must address all three levels
12
of this Opportunity Deficit, beginning first
with the middle class, America’s engine
WHAT’S NEXT FOR CONSERVATIVES?
of economic growth and the source of
our exceptionalism. After decades of
poorly designed federal policies that have
inflated the cost of, and restricted access
to, the staples of middle-class security and
opportunity, we must develop innovative
policy reforms for health care, education,
home ownership, work-life balance, and the
cost of raising children.
“FREEDOM DOESN’T
MEAN YOU’RE
ON YOUR OWN. “What’s Next for Conservatives?”
FREEDOM MEANS REMARKS TO THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION
U.S. Senator Mike Lee
WE’RE ALL IN THIS
October 29, 2013
TOGETHER.”
Thank you very much. It’s wonderful to
be back at the Heritage Foundation.
It has been quite a month in Washington.
13
It began with our effort to stop Obamacare
— a goal that all Republicans share even
WHAT’S NEXT FOR CONSERVATIVES?
if we have not always agreed about just
how to pursue it. And it is ending with
powerful practical proof of just why
stopping Obamacare is so essential.
This law is unaffordable and unfair… and
it’s getting worse all the time. As of today,
President Obama’s policy is to fine any
American who does not buy a product that
his bungled website will not sell them.
And they call us unreasonable.
Every week, thousands of Americans get
letters from their insurance companies,
announcing their suspension of
coverage, or shocking price increases.
Heber Valley Sunset, UT Because of Obamacare, Americans are
losing their jobs, wages, and hours. And
when in July the president exempted big
businesses from the hardships of this
law, but not ordinary Americans, I felt I
had to take a stand.
I am proud of my friend Ted Cruz and
the dozens of others – including Speaker
John Boehner and the House Republicans
– who fought Obamacare, continue to
fight it, and will not stop fighting it.
But a month like the one we have been
through should lead us not only to
re-commit to this essential, ongoing
struggle, but also to step back and ask
ourselves where we should be headed
more generally.
What do we do next, not only to stop
Obamacare… but to advance a larger,
positive vision of America, and craft a
practical plan to get us there? What’s next
for conservatives?
That is the question I would like to try to
answer today.
One of conservatives’ defining virtues is
our insistence on learning from history.
14
And to help answer the question, “what’s
next?,” I think the most instructive history
WHAT’S NEXT FOR CONSERVATIVES?
that conservatives can learn from today is
our own.
In particular, I refer to the history of
the conservative movement and the
Republican Party in the late 1970s. There
are many things conservatives today
should take from that era, including
hope and encouragement… but also an
urgent challenge.
Allow me to begin at the beginning.
By 1977, the Republican Party was in
disarray. The party establishment had
been discredited by political failure
and policy debacles, foreign and
 domestic. A new generation of grassroots
conservatives was rising up to challenge
the establishment.
The culmination of that challenge was
Ronald Reagan’s 1976 primary campaign
against a far-less conservative, establishment
incumbent. That campaign failed, of course,
and was derided by Washington insiders as a
foolish “civil war” that ultimately served only
to elect Democrats.
In other words, we have been here before.
And of course, we know now that Reagan
and the conservative movement were
vindicated in 1980.
So it is tempting for conservatives today
to believe that history is on the verge of
repeating itself, that our struggles with
the Republican establishment are only a
prelude to pre-ordained victory… and that
our own vindication – our generation’s
1980 - is just around the corner.
15 But there is still a piece missing,
a glaring difference between the
successful conservative challenge to
WHAT’S NEXT FOR CONSERVATIVES?
the Washington establishment in the
late 1970s, and our challenge to the
establishment today.
Much of the difference can be found in
what happened between 1976 and 1980
– the hard, heroic work of translating
conservatism’s bedrock principles into
new and innovative policy reforms.
In The Conservative Mind, Russell Kirk
observed that “conservatives inherit from
[Edmund] Burke a talent for re-expressing
their convictions to fit the time.”
That is precisely what the conservatives
of the late 1970s did. The ideas that
defined and propelled the Reagan
Revolution did not come down from a
mountain etched in stone tablets.
They were forged in an open, roiling,
diverse debate about how conservatism
could truly meet the challenges of that
day. That debate invited all conservatives
and as we know, elevated the best.
There was Jack Kemp, advancing supply-side
economics to combat economic stagnancy.
There were James Buckley and Henry
Hyde, taking up the cause of the unborn
after Roe v. Wade.
There was Milton Friedman, promoting
the practical and moral superiority of
free enterprise.
There were Cold Warriors like Irving Kristol
and Jeane Kirkpartrick, challenging the
premise of peaceful coexistence and
moral equivalence with the Soviets.
There were Peter Berger and Richard John
Neuhaus, arguing that the “mediating
institutions” of civil society protected
and promoted human happiness more
effectively than big government programs.
There were Professors Robert Bork and
Antonin Scalia, challenging the received
wisdom of constitutional interpretation
laid down by the Warren Court.
There were think tanks like the American
Enterprise Institute and the new Cato
Institute, and a flowering of grassroots
organizations around the country.
And of course, in the middle of it all, there
were Paul Weyrich, Ed Fuelner, Joseph Coors
and The Heritage Foundation, specifically
founded to chart a new, conservative
direction for public policy in America.
Together, that generation of conservatives
transformed a movement that was
anti-statist, anti-communist, and anti-
establishment… and made it pro-reform.
Contrary to the establishment’s
complaints, conservatives in the late
1970s did not start a “civil war.” They
started a (mostly) civil debate.
Because of that confident and deeply
conservative choice – to argue rather
than quarrel, to persuade rather than
simply purge - the vanguards of the
establishment never knew what hit them.
The bottom line was that in 1976, the
conservative movement found a leader
for the ages… yet it still failed.
By 1980, the movement had forged an
agenda for its time… and only then did
it succeed.
That, my fellow conservatives, is the
lesson our generation must take from our
movement’s “revolutionary era” – and the
enormous and exhilarating challenge it
presents to us today.
What that generation did – comprehensively
re-expressing conservative convictions
to fit the time – has not been done since.
Conservative activists and intellectuals are
still providing new energy and producing
new ideas. But on the whole, elected
Republicans and candidates have not held
up our end.
Instead of emulating those earlier
conservatives, too many Republicans
today mimic them – still advocating
policies from a bygone age.
It’s hard to believe, but by the time we reach
November 2016, we will be about as far –
chronologically speaking – from Reagan’s
election as Reagan’s election was from D-Day!
Yet as the decades pass and a new
generation of Americans faces a new
generation of problems, the party
establishment clings to its 1970s agenda
like a security blanket. The result is that to
many Americans today, especially to the
underprivileged and middle class, or those
who have come of age or immigrated since
Reagan left office the Republican Party
may not seem to have much of a relevant
reform message at all.
This is the reason the G.O.P. can seem so
out of touch. And it is also the reason we
find ourselves in such internal disarray.
The gaping hole in the middle of the
Republican Party today – the one
that separates the grassroots from
establishment leaders - is precisely
the size and shape of a new, unifying
conservative reform agenda.
For years, we have tried to bridge that gulf
with tactics and personalities and spin.
But it doesn’t work. To revive and reunify
our movement, we must fill the void with
new and innovative policy ideas. Today, as
it was a generation ago, the establishment
will not produce that agenda. And so,
once again, conservatives must.
We must.
And three recent efforts show that we
still can.
Jim DeMint, Tom Coburn, and Jeff Flake’s
crusade against earmarks, Paul Ryan’s
heroic work on Medicare reform, and
Rand Paul’s stand against domestic
drone-strike authority all demonstrate
that thoughtful, idea-driven conservatism
is as powerful today as it has ever been.
It’s time for another Great Debate, and we
should welcome all input.
Grassroots and establishment.
Conservatives and moderates. Libertarians
and traditionalists. Interventionists and non-
interventionists. Economic conservatives
and social conservatives. All are part of our
movement, and all are vital to our success –
so all should be welcome in this debate.
There are still nearly three years before
Republicans will have a chance to select
a new, unifying conservative leader.
But together we can start debating and
developing a new, unifying conservative
agenda right now.
Where do we begin?
A generation ago, conservatives forged
an agenda to meet the great challenges
facing Americans in the late 1970s:
inflation, poor growth, and Soviet
aggression… along with a dispiriting
pessimism about the future of the nation
and their own families.
I submit that the great challenge of
our generation is America’s growing
crisis of stagnation and sclerosis - a
crisis that comes down to a shortage of
opportunities.
This opportunity crisis presents itself in
three principal ways:
1. immobility among the poor, trapped
in poverty;
2. insecurity in the middle class, where
families just can’t seem to get ahead;
3. and cronyist privilege at the top,
where political and economic elites
unfairly profit at everyone else’s
expense.
The Republican Party should tackle these
three crises head on.
First, we need a new, comprehensive
anti-poverty, upward-mobility agenda
designed not simply help people in
poverty, but to help and empower them
to get out.
Here, my home state of Utah can be a
guide. A recent study found the Salt
Lake City metropolitan area to be the
most upwardly mobile region in the
United States.
In a addition to a well-managed, limited
government where jobs and opportunity
abound, Utah is home to an enormously
successful private welfare system led by
churches, businesses, and community
groups and volunteers.
We understand that, as it is lived in
America, freedom doesn’t mean you’re
on your own. Freedom means we’re all
in this together.
This agenda must include but also
transcend welfare reform. Additionally,
we need to reform education, housing, 16
immigration, health care, and our
criminal justice and prison systems.
CHAPTER NAME
This new agenda must recognize that
work for able-bodied adults is not a
necessary evil, but an essential pathway
to personal happiness and prosperity.
And it should also force Republicans and
Democrats to acknowledge that there is
another marriage debate in this country
– one concerning fatherless children,
economic inequality, and broken
communities - that deserves as much
public attention as the other.
Second, we need a new, comprehensive
anti-cronyism agenda, to break up the
corrupt nexus of big government, big
business, and big special interests.
 Ostler Peak, We need a new corporate tax code and
Uinta Mountains, UT regulatory system to eliminate lobbyists’
loopholes and giveaways, level the
playing field between businesses, big
and small, and foster a dynamic, globally
competitive private sector.
We need to end subsidies that unfairly
favor some businesses and industries over
others. And the Republican Party must
make a fundamental commitment to end
its support for corporate welfare in any
form – including for the Big Banks.
The Left today no longer represents the
“little guy,” but the crony clients of the
ever-expanding special-interest state.
Progressives have become the Party of
Wall Street, K Street, and Pennsylvania
Avenue. We must become the party of
Main Street, everywhere.
Which brings me to the third essential piece
of our new agenda: a new conservatism of
the working and middle class.
17 Today, working families’ take-home pay
is flat.
WHAT’S NEXT FOR CONSERVATIVES?
But the staples of middle-class security and
opportunity – health care, education, home
ownership, work-life balance, and children –
are becoming harder to afford all the time.
Progressives say we just need more
programs to give working families more
government money. But as we have
seen once again over the last five years,
big government creates opportunity for
the middle men at the expense of the
middle class.
And it only masks the broken policies that
artificially raise costs and restrict access
in the first place. Instead, conservatives
need new ideas to address the root
causes of those problems.
The first and most important policy goal
Republicans must adopt to improve the
lives of middle-class families is, and will
remain, the full repeal of Obamacare.
It’s important to understand why.
Health care is one of the main reasons
why the cost of living in the middle class is
increasing too quickly for many Americans
to keep up. At the same time, it is the main
reason why government spending and
debt are out of control.
The law the Democrats enacted on
a party-line vote in 2010 is going to
make both of those problems worse -
accelerating healthcare costs both for
families and the government.
At the same time, Obamacare poses
very serious threats to our constitutional
system, to the relationship between
Washington and the states, to individual
liberty and conscience rights, to the
strength of our economy, and to the
quality of our healthcare system.
That puts healthcare right at the center of
what conservatives need to be thinking
about. And it means our movement
has to be intensely engaged not only in
the fight to repeal, but in the debate to
replace Obamacare.
That debate is not over. It’s only just
beginning.
It took Obamacare to get Republican
healthcare policy innovation off the
sidelines, but we’re finally in the game.
And today, conservative ideas are not only
superior to Obamacare – they are superior
to the old status-quo before Obamacare.
The House Republican Study Committee
has introduced a comprehensive health
reform plan – led by Representatives
Steve Scalise and Phil Roe. The Heritage
Foundation proposed its own healthcare
reform package as part of the Saving the
American Dream plan, which I introduced
in the Senate last year. It included, among
other things, a universal tax credit to buy
health insurance, with extra help for those
with lower incomes.
I know my friend Paul Ryan and others are
working on their own healthcare plans
that will continue to improve the debate.
And this is as it should be.
Too many in Washington seem to believe
that on any issue, Republicans should
either have one plan – one that everyone
supports in lockstep – or no plans. But unity
cannot come at the expense of creativity.
The day will come when Republicans need
a healthcare plan – today we need ten!
Conservatives are supposed to believe in
the wisdom of markets. So let’s trust the
marketplace of ideas. If we want policy
innovation, we need to innovate policy!
On healthcare, we have been. And we
need more of that kind of innovation -
especially to meet the broader range of
problems confronting the middle class.
To do my part, today I want to talk about four
pieces of legislation specifically designed
to address four leading challenges facing
middle-class families today:
1. the cost of raising children;
2. the difficulties of work-life balance;
3. the time Americans lose away from
work and home, stuck in traffic;
4. and the rising costs of and restricted
access to quality higher education.
These bills won’t solve every problem
under the sun. Raising a family isn’t
supposed to be easy.
But each would restore to working
families more of the freedom they deserve
to pursue their happiness: to earn a good
living and build a good life.
Perhaps the most basic challenge facing
middle-class families is how expensive
it has become for couples to simply start
and grow their families: the exploding
costs of raising children.
According to the Department of
Agriculture, the cost of raising a child
to maturity in the United States today
is about $300,000. Even adjusting for
inflation, that’s 15% higher than in our
parents’ generation.
But even that number doesn’t count
foregone wages, or child care and college,
both of which have seen rampant inflation
in recent decades as well.
18
All told, according to demography writer
Jonathan Last, “you’re talking $1.1 million
WHAT’S NEXT FOR CONSERVATIVES?
to raise a single child.”
As Last puts it, for a family making the
median income:
“Having a baby is like buying six houses,
all at once. Except that you can’t (legally)
sell them—and after 13 years they’ll tell
you they hate you.”
Here again, Democrats say the solution is
new programs to give parents more of other
people’s money. I say we let middle-class
parents keep more of their own money!
And so tomorrow, I will be introducing
in the Senate the “Family Fairness and
Opportunity Tax Reform Act.”
 My plan calls for a 15% tax rate on all
income up to $87,850 – or $175,700 for
married couples. Income above that
threshold would be taxed at 35%.
Like any good conservative tax-
reform plan, my bill also simplifies the
code, eliminating or reforming most
deductions.
But the heart of the plan is a new,
additional $2,500 per-child tax credit that
can offset parents’ income and payroll-
tax liability. This last point is crucial.
Many middle-class parents may pay no
income taxes – but they do pay taxes.
Working parents are not free riders.
Actually, when it comes to Social Security
and Medicare, parents pay twice: first
when they pay their payroll taxes, just
like everyone else, and then again, by
bearing the enormous costs of raising
their kids, who will grow up to not only
pay taxes, but cure diseases, and invent
the next iPhone, and most importantly,
19 provide their parents with grandkids!
So my plan eliminates this anti-family
WHAT’S NEXT FOR CONSERVATIVES?
bias in the tax code, while improving
pro-growth incentives for the economy.
Under my plan, a married couple with
two children making the national
median income of $51,000 would see a
tax cut of roughly $5,000 per year.
For middle-class families, that’s money –
their own money, right away – to get out
of debt, move into a new neighborhood
with better schools, afford child care,
help a mom or dad scale back from full
time to part time, or even to stay at
home with young children.
That is pro-family, pro-growth conservative
reform.
Another struggle facing working families is
the constant challenge of work-life balance.
Parents today need to juggle work, home,
kids, and community. For many families,
especially with young children, their most
precious commodity is time.
But today, federal labor laws restrict the way
moms and dads and everyone else can use
their time. That’s because many of those
laws were written decades ago, when most
women didn’t work outside the home.
Because of these laws, an hourly employee
who works overtime is not allowed to take
comp-time or flex time. Even if she prefers
it, her boss can’t even offer it.
Today, if a working mom or dad stays late
at the office on Monday and Tuesday, and
instead of receiving extra pay wants to get
compensated by leaving early on Friday to
spend the afternoon with the kids… that
could be violating federal law.
That sounds unfair, especially to parents.
But how do we know for sure? Because
Congress gave a special exemption from
that law for government employees.
This is unacceptable. The same work-
life options available to government
bureaucrats should be available to the
citizens they serve.
In May, the House of Representatives
passed the “Working Families Flexibility
Act of 2013,” sponsored by Representative
Martha Roby of Alabama, to equalize flex-
time rules for all workers.
And this week I am introducing companion
legislation in the Senate.
There are real problems in this world,
some of which must be addressed by
government action. The fact that most
working parents would prefer to spend
more time with their families is not one
of those problems. And Congress needs
to stop punishing them for trying to do so.
The federal government also needs to
open up America’s transportation system
to diversity and experimentation, so that
Americans can spend more time with their
families in more affordable homes, and
less time stuck in maddening traffic.
House-hunting middle class families
today often face a Catch-22.
They can stretch their finances to near
bankruptcy to afford a home close to work.
Or they can choose a home in a more
affordable neighborhood so far away from
work that they miss soccer games, piano
recitals, and family dinner while stuck in
gridlocked traffic.
The solution is not more government-
subsidized mortgages or housing
programs. A real solution involves building
20
more roads.
More roads, bridges, lanes, and mass-
WHAT’S NEXT FOR CONSERVATIVES?
transit systems. Properly planned and
located, these projects would help
create new jobs, new communities, more
affordable homes, shorter commuting
times, and greater opportunity for
businesses and families.
Transportation infrastructure is one of the
things government is supposed to do –
and conservatives should make sure it is
done exceptionally well.
Unfortunately, since completing the
Interstate Highway System decades ago,
the federal government has gotten pretty
bad at maintaining and improving our
nation’s transportation infrastructure. The Subway, Zion National Park, UT
 Today, the federal highway program is
funded by a gasoline tax of 18.4 cents
on every gallon sold at the pump. That
money is supposed to be going into steel,
concrete, and asphalt in the ground.
Instead, too much of it is being siphoned
off by bureaucrats and special interests
in Washington.
And so Congressman Tom Graves and I are
going to introduce the “Transportation
Empowerment Act.”
Under our bill, the federal gas tax would
be phased down over five years from
18.4 cents per gallon, to 3.7 cents. And
highway authority would be transferred
proportionately from the federal
government to the states.
Under our new system, Americans would
no longer have to send significant gas-tax
revenue to Washington, where sticky-
fingered politicians, bureaucrats, and
lobbyists take their cut before sending it back
with strings attached. Instead, states and
21 cities could plan, finance, and build better-
designed and more affordable projects.
WHAT’S NEXT FOR CONSERVATIVES?
Some communities could choose to build
more roads, while others might prefer
to repair old ones. Some might build
highways, others light-rail. And all would
be free to experiment with innovative
green technologies, and new ways to
finance their projects, like congestion
pricing and smart tolls.
But the point is that all states and localities
should finally have the flexibility to develop
the kind of transportation system they
want, for less money, without politicians
and special interests from other parts of
the country telling them how, when, what,
and where they should build.
For the country as a whole, our plan would
mean a better infrastructure system, new
jobs and opportunities, diverse localism,
and innovative environmental protection.
And for working families, it could mean
more access to quality, affordable homes,
less time on the road… and making it
home in time for dinner with the kids.
And finally, there is perhaps no barrier to
middle-class security and opportunity
more frustrating than those surrounding
higher education. While it’s true that
college has never been for everyone… as
we transition from an industrial economy
to an information and service-based
economy, post-secondary education
cannot be a luxury available only to a
select few.
Some combination of higher education
and vocational training should at least
be an option for just about everyone who
graduates from high school.
Yet today, the federal government restricts
access to higher education and inflates
its cost, inuring unfairly to the advantage
of special interests at the expense of
students, teachers, and taxpayers.
The federal government does this though
its control over college accreditation.
Because eligibility for federal student
loans is tied to the federal accreditation
regime, we shut out students who want
to learn, teachers who want to teach,
transformative technologies, and cost-
saving innovations.
And so, in the coming days, I will be
introducing the “Higher Education
Reform and Opportunity Act.” Under this
legislation, the existing accreditation
system would remain unchanged. Current
colleges and universities could continue
to use the system they know.
But my plan would give states a new
option to enter into agreements with the
Department of Education to create their
own, alternative accreditation systems
to open up new options for students
qualifying for federal aid.
Today, only degree-issuing academic
institutions are even allowed to be
accredited. Under the new, optional state
systems that my bill would authorize,
accreditation could also be available
to specialized programs, individual
courses, apprenticeships, professional
credentialing, and even competency-
based tests. States could accredit online
courses, or hybrid models with elements
on and offcampus.
These systems would open up
opportunities for non-traditional
students – like single parents working
double shifts - whose life responsibilities
might make it impossible to take more
than one class at a time.
They would also enable traditional
students to tailor a degree that better
reflects the knowledge and skills valued
by employers.
Innovations in vocational education and
training would open new opportunities
in growing fields that are hiring
right now.
Qualified unions, businesses, and trade
groups could start to accredit courses
and programs tailored to their evolving
needs. Churches and charities could
enlist qualified volunteers to offer
accredited classes and training for next
to nothing. States could use innovative
systems to attract new opportunities
and businesses, investing in their own
future by investing in the human capital
of their citizens.
Imagine having access to credit and
student aid for:
• a program in computer science
accredited by Apple or in music
accredited by the New York
Philharmonic;
• college-level history classes on-site at
Mount Vernon or Gettysburg;
• medical-technician training developed
by the Mayo Clinic;
• taking massive, open, online courses
offered by the best teachers in the
world, from your living room or the
public library.
Brick-and-ivy institutions will always be the
backbone of our higher-education system,
but they shouldn’t be the only option.
If these new models were to succeed, they
would create a virtuous cycle. Traditional
colleges would be impelled to cut waste,
refocus on their students, and embrace
innovation and experimentation as part of
their campus cultures.
This reform could allow a student to
completely customize her transcript –
and “college” experience – while allowing
federal aid to follow her through all of
these different options.
Students could mix and match courses,
programs, tests, on-line and on-campus
credits a la carte, pursuing their degree
or certification at their own pace… while
bringing down costs to themselves, their
families, and the taxpayers.
This is what conservative reform should
be trying to create: an open, affordable,
innovative higher education system to
better serve and secure all Americans in a
global information economy.
Taken together, some more take-home
pay, more time with the kids, a shorter
commute, and more access to college
won’t necessarily revolutionize our
society, or cause the oceans to recede, or
make everyone rich.
What they – and other conservative
reforms – could and should do is make
our economy a little stronger, our society
a little fairer, and life a little better for
America’s moms, and dads, and children.
And that’s a mandate for leadership in any
generation.
There is obviously much more to be done.
But the point I’ve tried to make – and the
lesson I hope we take – is that the Republican
Party, at its best, is a Party of Ideas.
It is ideas that unite and inspire conservatives.
The leaders of Reagan’s generation
understood that. And we must, too.
Especially in the wake of recent
controversies, many conservatives are more
frustrated with the establishment than ever
before. And we have every reason to be.
But however justified, frustration is not
a platform. Anger is not an agenda. And
outrage, as a habit, is not even conservative.
Outrage, resentment, and intolerance are
gargoyles of the Left. For us, optimism
is not just a message – it’s a principle.
American conservatism, at its core, is about
gratitude, and cooperation, and trust, and
above all hope.
It is also about inclusion. Successful
political movements are about identifying
converts, not heretics. This, too, is part of
the challenge before us.
In his 1977 CPAC speech effectively kicking
off that era’s great conservative debate,
Ronald Reagan said:
“If we truly believe in our principles,
we should sit down and talk. Talk with
anyone, anywhere, at any time if it
means talking about the principles for
the Republican Party. Conservatism is
not a narrow ideology, nor is it the
exclusive property of conservative
activists.”
Do we have the same spirit of charity
and confidence in our ideas today? If we
do not, this moment and opportunity
will pass us by. We will lose, and we will
deserve to lose.
And rest assured, in that unfortunate
event, it will not be the indifferent
Republican establishment that profits
from our failure. It will be a parade of
progressives who will continue to lead
our country, unabated, further away
from our hopes, and our values, and our
ability to do anything about it. 22
If our generation of conservatives wants
WHAT’S NEXT FOR CONSERVATIVES?
to enjoy our own defining triumph,
our own 1980 – we are going to have to
deserve it. That means sharpening more
pencils than knives. The kind of work it
will require is neither glamorous nor fun
– and sometimes it isn’t even noticed.
But it is necessary.
To deserve victory, conservatives have to
do more than pick a fight. We have to win
a debate. And to do that, we need more
than just guts. We need an agenda.
Our generation of conservatives has big
shoes to fill, and a lot of lost time to make
up. So, let’s get to work.
Thank you very much.
 Mesa Arch, UT
- AN AGENDA FOR OUR TIME -
Bring Them In
It has been more than 50 years since
President Johnson declared the federal
government’s “war on poverty,” yet for all the
trillions of dollars spent to create a dizzying
array of national programs, the poverty
rate has hardly budged. Standards of living
have improved, and government transfers
have made poverty more tolerable, but far
23 too many families, neighborhoods, and
communities remain stuck at the bottom of
our economy, often for generations. While
BRING THEM IN
the Left clings to the same big government,
top-down policies that have failed since
the 1960s, conservatives are in a position
to offer a new, comprehensive anti-poverty
and upward-mobility agenda designed
not simply to help people in poverty, but
to help and empower them to get out.
Because true poverty is not so much an
absence of money as it is an absence of
opportunity, an effective anti-poverty
agenda must focus on helping the most
vulnerable and underprivileged Americans
access those social and economic networks
where human opportunities are created—
our free enterprise economy and voluntary
civil society. This means reforming the 24
poverty traps put in place by misguided
government policies, including those that
BRING THEM IN
penalize marriage, discourage work, shut-
out families from affordable housing, trap
low-income children in failing schools, and
leave reformed offenders languishing in
prison rather than helping them transition
back into their homes, their communities,
and the economy.
 Bryce Canyon National Park, UT
“Bring Them In”
“FREEDOM REMARKS TO THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION’S ANTI-POVERTY FORUM
U.S. Senator Mike Lee
November 13, 2013
DOESN’T MEAN Thank you very much.
YOU’RE ON YOUR
It’s always great to join with the Heritage
Foundation in any context. But being a part
25 of this Anti-Poverty Forum is a true privilege.
Members of my staff have been here all
OWN. FREEDOM
day, taking copious notes, and hopefully
BRING THEM IN
collecting all the business cards and white
papers they can get their hands on.
It is of course a tragedy that we have to be
here at all. Though the Bible says the poor
MEANS WE’RE
will always be with us, it’s still hard to accept
why, in a nation with a $15 trillion economy,
the poor are still with us.
And yet, as we approach the 50th
ALL IN THIS
anniversary of President Lyndon
Johnson’s famous “War on Poverty”
speech, we all know the statistics.
Despite trillions of taxpayer dollars spent to
eradicate poverty since the late 1960s, the
poverty rate has hardly budged. And just
last week, the Census Bureau reported that
today, more than 49 million Americans still
live below the poverty line.
Today, a boy born in the bottom 20% of our
income scale has a 42% chance of staying
there as an adult. According to the O.E.C.D.,
the United States is third from the bottom
of advanced countries in terms of upward
economic mobility.
A recent study in Oregon found that the
Medicaid program – which provides health
insurance to the poor – produces basically
no health improvements for its beneficiaries.
A study last December on the Head
Start program, issued by the Obama
Administration itself, found that what few
academic benefits three- and four-year olds
do gain from the program all but disappear
by end of the first grade.
We know that poor men and women are
less likely to get married and stay married,
that 30% of single mothers are living in
poverty, and that their children are less
likely to rise out of poverty themselves 26
when they grow up.
We know that participation in civil society,
BRING THEM IN
volunteering, and religion are deteriorating
in poor neighborhoods – compounding
economic hardship with social isolation.
And we know these trends cut across
boundaries of race, ethnicity, and geography.
All of this might lead some to the depressing
conclusion that – 50 years after Johnson’s
speech - America’s war on poverty has failed.
But the evidence proves nothing of the sort.
On the contrary, I believe the American
people are poised to launch a new, bold,
and heroic offensive in the war on poverty…
if a renewed conservative movement has
the courage to lead it.
 First, let’s be clear about one thing.
The United States did not formally launch
our War on Poverty in 1964, but in 1776:
when we declared our independence, and
the self-evident and equal rights of all men
to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
For more than two hundred years, the
United States – through trial and error,
through good times and bad – has waged
the most successful war on poverty in the
history of the world. The United States has
become so wealthy that it is easy to forget
that, as Michael Novak once noted, most
affluent Americans can actually remember
when their own families were poor.
Upward mobility has never been easy.
It has always and everywhere required
backbreaking work, personal discipline,
and at least a little luck. But if upward
mobility was not universal in America, it
was the norm.
From our very Founding, we not only
27 fought a war on poverty – we were
winning. The tools Americans relied on to
overcome poverty were what became the
BRING THEM IN
twin pillars of American exceptionalism:
our free enterprise economy and
voluntary civil society.
We usually refer to the free market and civil
society as “institutions.” But really, they
are networks of people and information
and opportunity.
What makes these networks uniquely
powerful is that they impel everyone –
regardless of race, religion, or wealth - to
depend not simply on themselves or the
government, but on each other. For all
America’s reputation for individualism
and competition, our nation has from the
beginning been built on a foundation of
community and cooperation.
In a free market economy and voluntary civil
society, no matter your career or your cause,
your success depends on your service. The
only way to get ahead is to help others
do the same. The only way to look out for
yourself is to look out for your neighbors.
Together, these twin networks of service-
based success enabled millions of
ordinary Americans to make our economy
very wealthy and our society truly rich…
long before Lyndon Johnson tried to
do better by growing and centralizing
government authority.
These human – and humane – networks
empowered Americans, unlike any people
on earth or in history, to protect not just
themselves but each other from both
material want and social isolation.
Now, progressive ideologues reject all this.
They do not trust individuals to join together
voluntarily and organically to improve each
other’s lives and meet common challenges.
As President Obama said in his second
inaugural:
“No single person can train all the math
and science teachers we’ll need to equip
our children for the future, or build the
roads and networks and research labs
that will bring new jobs and businesses
to our shores. Now, more than ever, we
must do these things together, as one
nation and one people.”
But by “together,” of course, he meant only
“government.”
This discredited mindset – which insists
collective action can only mean state
action - is itself a kind of poverty. It rejects
social solidarity in favor of political
coercion, and voluntary communities
for professional community organizers.
It distrusts and denies the bonds of
cooperation and service that represent
the highest expression of our dignity.
Look at any thriving marriage, friendship,
church, charity, Little League, historical
society, theater company, PTA,
neighborhood or business. What makes
America exceptional – and life worth living
- is not simply individual freedom, but the
heroic, empowering communities that
free individuals form.
Free enterprise and civil society operate
in the natural human space - between the
isolated individual and the impersonal
state - where we live, and love, and
flourish… where everyone can earn a good
living and build a good life… where the
strong and the vulnerable alike can pursue
their happiness, and find it… together.
In America, government did not invade or
replace that space. Government protected
and expanded it. That is how we proved
to the world that freedom doesn’t mean
“you’re on your own.” Freedom means
“we’re all in this together.”
The conservative vision for America is not
an Ayn Rand novel. It’s a Norman Rockwell
painting, or a Frank Capra movie: a nation
“of plain, ordinary kindness, and a little
looking out for the other fellow, too.”
Organic communities formed within the
free market and civil society’s networks
of opportunity are not threats that poor
families need more protection from. They
are blessings that poor families need
more access to.
And that’s what America was all about.
Since the dawn of time, rich and powerful
men, and friends of the king, always had
access to opportunity. What made America
different is that here, everyone did, and
government’s job was to make sure of it.
This is an important point, for
progressives to learn and conservatives
to remember: the constitutionally limited
but indispensable role that government
played in America’s original war on
poverty. That role was best expressed
by a president who understood poverty
better than most.
In 1861, Abraham Lincoln told Congress
that the “leading object” of American
government was:
“to elevate the condition of men - to lift
artificial weights from all shoulders, to
clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all,
to afford all an unfettered start and a fair
chance, in the race of life.”
In a single sentence, Lincoln explains
precisely what poverty is, and what
government ought to do about it.
As Lincoln knew first hand, true poverty
was not for most people an absence of
money, but an absence of opportunity
– a lack of access to those social and
economic networks where human
opportunities are created.
Then, as now, people were not isolated
because they were poor – they were poor
mostly because they were isolated.
And so, in America’s original war on
poverty, government did not give the
poor other people’s money. It gave them
access to other people.
In Lincoln’s era – even during a cataclysmic
war that was itself a struggle for human
freedom and opportunity – that meant
dredging rivers, building canals and
cutting roads. It meant the Homestead
Act and land-grant universities.
These public goods weren’t designed to
make poverty more tolerable – but to make
it more temporary. They reduced the time
it took to get products to market, increased
access to banks and land, and increased
the speed at which knowledge could be
developed and shared.
Poor farmers and trappers in Lincoln’s
Mid-West were no worse at their trades
than their more affluent counterparts
back east. They just didn’t enjoy the same
access to networks of human, social, and
economic capital.
In the same way, poor children today do not
lack the ability to acquire the knowledge
and skills necessary to flourish in our
market economy and civil society. But they
absolutely lack the same access to the
networks of human opportunity where that
knowledge and those skills are acquired.
Properly considered, then, the war on
poverty is not so much about lifting people
up. It’s about bringing people in.
And so the challenge to conservatives
today is to rethink the war on poverty along
these lines, to bring into our economy
and society the individuals, families, and
communities that have for five decades
been unfairly locked out.
Nineteen-sixty-four wasn’t the year
Americans started fighting poverty; it was
the year we started losing that fight. To start
winning again, conservatives are going to
have to lead the way - not simply by offering
criticism, but alternatives.
Our job is to identify the obstructions that
impede Americans’ access to our market
economy and civil society and clear them.
And if we’re looking for impediments to
mobility and opportunity, we’ve certainly
come to the right place!
Today, many of those obstructions are
themselves government policies. These
policies unintentionally discourage almost
every positive step underprivileged families
can take toward social mobility and
economic security.
Today’s government-centric system
penalizes marriage, which a mountain
of evidence now shows is the single
most empowering social and economic
opportunity there is. It also penalizes low-
income workers for making more money
by drastically reducing benefits at arbitrary
points along the income-scale. Because of
these poverty traps, single mothers near the
poverty line, for instance, can face effective
marginal tax rates of 80 or even 90 percent.
Thus, in poor communities, government
dependence often atrophies community
interdependence, fraying the bonds
between moms and dads and neighbors
and friends and pastors and teachers, old
and young, native and immigrant.
Meanwhile, education policies leave low- 28
income parents and children trapped in
failing schools. Policies ranging from welfare
BRING THEM IN
to health care to criminal justice are only
exacerbating the explosion of fatherlessness
plaguing lower-income communities.
And so conservatives need a new,
comprehensive anti-poverty agenda
that not only corrects – but transcends –
existing policies.
Anyone looking for ideas would do
well to visit my home state of Utah,
where a combination of smart, efficient
government, a growing, prosperous
economy, an active and faithful civil
society, and perhaps the most successful
private welfare system in the world, have
made Salt Lake the most upwardly mobile
region in the entire country.
 But first and foremost, we should at least
pledge to do no more harm.
There is no good reason the federal
government should maintain 79
separate means-tested programs.
There is no good reason why almost
none of these programs feature the
kind of work-requirements that helped
transition millions of Americans into
jobs after the 1996 reform. And there
is no good reason federal policy should
reward states for higher spending
rather than improved results.
And so one of our first priorities should be
to simply get existing federal programs
under control. And I am working with
the Heritage Foundation and several
colleagues on legislation to do just that.
Second, just as we cannot spend our way
out of poverty, we cannot really cut our
way out, either. We need to fundamentally
fix the system so that every dollar we do
spend actually connects underprivileged
29 families to new opportunities in the free
market and civil society.
BRING THEM IN
One way to do this would be to block-
grant Medicaid funds to the states,
eliminating the federal bureaucracy that
today stands between underprivileged
families and their doctors.
We could do the same thing with the
Head Start program, which spends $8.1
billion every year through a federal
bureaucracy without yielding any
lasting educational benefits.
The data doesn’t tell us that pre-K
education and health insurance for poor
families are bad – just that the federal
government does a lousy job of providing
them. So instead, let’s allow states to
implement real reforms that give low-
income families access to educational Tower of Babel Monument,
and health opportunities somewhere Arches National Park, UT
besides the federal bureaucracy.
In Utah, for instance, our legislature has
created a special task force to study the
prospects of “charity care” – affordable
medical services for poor families
provided not by government but by
individuals, businesses, non-profit
groups, and local communities. That
model might not work in every state, but
every state should have the freedom to
solve problems their own way, according
to their own values and priorities.
We need similar reforms to open up our
elementary and secondary schools, giving
underprivileged parents and children
access to the same opportunities that
wealthy Americans take for granted.
We need to expand access to higher
education, to reform our accreditation
system to allow federal aid to follow
students to new and diverse options:
customized courses, programs, tests, on- 30
line and on-campus, even professional
training and apprenticeships.
BRING THEM IN
Another area ripe for reform is the
federal government’s criminal justice
and prison system. The simple fact is
that in America today, we put too many
people in prison for too long, with too
little benefit to our society.
If inmates are violent and threats to
our communities, then we have a moral
responsibility to keep them locked
up. If they are not violent and pose no
threat, however, if they have reformed
and are ready to return to their families
and communities, we have just as much
moral duty to get them re-integrated
into our nation’s networks of social and
economic mobility.
 Double Arch, I’m working on bipartisan legislation
Arches National Park, UT to reform federal sentencing and
incarceration policies, following the
transformative example of innovative
states. If we are serious about access to
opportunity for all, then we have to put
“rehabilitation” back into the vocabulary
of the federal prison system.
There is so much more to do – on issues
ranging from housing to adoption to labor
to mental health.
And of course, the best thing we can do
to help the unemployed find jobs, and
low-income workers find higher-income
work is to finally get our economy
growing again. Reforms to our tax,
regulatory, energy, and transportation
systems that spur private investment
and job creation can do more for
upward mobility than anything else in
government’s power.
And certainly more than any of the
divisive, special-interest pandering that
31 the Washington establishments of both
parties cynically substitute for serious
debate and reform.
BRING THEM IN
Though many Republicans in Congress
are building a serious anti-poverty agenda
the right way – you’ll hear from my friends
Paul Ryan and Jim Jordan and others
today – others are tempted by what they
see as an easier way.
Too many in our party today seem to
have convinced themselves that electoral
success depends on adopting the Left’s
strategy of dividing the American people.
Slice them up into superficial identity
groups, and assume that struggling
African-Americans, struggling Latinos,
struggling Asian-Americans, struggling
whites, struggling single parents,
struggling unskilled workers, struggling
young people, struggling immigrants, and
struggling blue collar workers all want
different things.
But don’t they all really want the same
thing? To not be struggling?
Special-interest policymaking that pits
Americans against each other, is the
problem, not the solution. The things that
truly fight poverty – economic growth,
education, innovation, voluntary exchange
– create opportunities for everyone.
I have no idea if empowering poor
families – regardless of what they look
like – to overcome poverty through the
cooperative communities of the market
economy and civil society will help the
Republican Party. But I do know it will
help the American people – which is
what the Republican Party is supposed
to be for.
And finally, we simply must begin to
address what we might call America’s
“other marriage debate.”
It is uncomfortable to talk about, and
almost impossible to legislate. But the
fact is, the problem of poverty in America
is directly linked to family breakdown
and the erosion of marriage among low-
income families and communities.
Implicit marriage penalties in our tax
code and welfare programs surely need
legislative remedies. But what we’re really
talking about is a question of culture, not
policy incentives.
For years, politicians on both sides of
the aisle have employed terms like
“family values” and “marriage” primarily
as partisan wedges, cudgels to attack
ideological opponents.
This fact did not create America’s marriage
crisis – but it hasn’t helped, either.
And now, seemingly every week, scholars
are producing more evidence about the
social and economic consequences of this
essentially moral question. We now have
scientific consensus supporting what were
once thought to be merely traditions and
intuitions. According to one study, the
taxpayer costs of family fragmentation are
more than $100 billion per year – a staggering
sum that nonetheless pales in comparison
to the social and human costs, borne
disproportionately by innocent children.
Yet, this data has arrived at a moment
when the controversies about same-sex
marriage tend to overwhelm any political
discussion of the institution.
It could be said that the political sensitivity
of marriage today might be a good reason
not to bring it up at all. But I think the data
makes this the perfect time to begin this
debate precisely because it will require
such sensitivity on all sides.
In an earlier era, our assumptions and
vocabulary might have expressed
judgment instead of compassion, and
closed doors instead of opening them.
Though the foundational importance
of family has not changed – times and
attitudes have. Today, no serious secularist
thinks the institution of marriage is
intrinsically oppressive. And no serious
traditionalist thinks of the children of
single mothers as “illegitimate.”
Even if we remove morality and religion from
the question entirely, a stable, intact family
remains the greatest incubator of economic
opportunity and multiplier of human and
social capital in this world. To say that
children tend to do best when raised by
their married mom and dad is not a political
opinion – it is a demonstrable fact.
Saying so does not demean or degrade other
family structures. And fear of facts does not
make us sensitive – it leaves us ignorant.
Public policy need not incentivize people to
get married – for most people, life already
does. What public policy – and even more
importantly, the people who make and
influence public policy – must do is to finally
accept and embrace and celebrate that fact.
And then see what we can do – together –
to help. Sincerely doing so could do more
to win the war on poverty than anything
else discussed at this conference today.
I want to close with a story from the
history of my church and my state.
In October 1856, two groups of handcart
pioneers on their way to Utah were
stuck on the plains of Wyoming: short
of provisions, with winter coming, the
ground so hard they could not dig graves
for those who expired in the cold.
In what is now Salt Lake City, Brigham
Young stood to open a general
conference of the church, where the
citizens anxiously waited to hear
the inspiring speeches and powerful
sermons common to such gatherings.
Instead, he began by reading the report
sent to Salt Lake by the leaders of the
handcart groups. It told of:
“between five and six hundred men,
women, and children, worn by drawing
handcarts through the snow and mud;
fainting by the wayside; falling, chilled
by the cold; children crying, their limbs
stiffened by cold; their feet bleeding and
some of them bare to snow and frost.”
Brigham Young then called the people to
action, with this simple message: “Many of
our brethren and sisters are on the plains
with handcarts … and they must be brought
here, we must send assistance to them.”
He said he would not wait until tomorrow
or the next day. He called for forty
young men, sixty-five teams of mules or
horses, and wagons loaded with twenty-
four thousand pounds of flour to leave
immediately to rescue those pioneers in
the wilderness.
“I will tell you all,” Young said, “that
your faith… and profession of religion,
will never save one soul of you… unless
you carry out just such principles as I
am now teaching.... Go and bring in
those people now on the plains.”
The rescue party quickly assembled and
headed East.
Days later, they reached the pioneers –
with food and blankets and hope. The
survivors were then carried, some literally 32
on the backs of their rescuers, to Salt Lake
– home at last, where they belonged.
BRING THEM IN
Today, millions more of our neighbors are
still out on the plains. They are not some
government’s brothers and sisters – they
are ours.
And the time has come to do something
about it. As conservatives, as Americans, and
as human beings, we have it in our power –
individually, together, and where necessary
through government… to bring them into
our free enterprise economy to earn a good
living; to bring them into our voluntary civil
society to build a good life; and to welcome
them and their children home to an America
that leaves no one behind.
Thank you, and God bless.
 Owachomo Bridge,
Lake Powell, UT
- AN AGENDA FOR OUR TIME -
Opportunity, Cronyism,
and Conservative Reform
Compounding the shortage of opportunities
among the poor and middle class is the third
part of America’s Opportunity Deficit: our
crisis of crony capitalism, corporate welfare,
and political privilege, in which government
twists public policy to unfairly benefit
favored special interests at the expense of
everyone else. Whereas the free enterprise
system is based on the fundamental equality
33 of opportunity for all to succeed and to fail
on a level playing field, cronyism cements
the status of the politically well-connected,
OPPORTUNITY, CRONYISM & CONSERVATIVE REFORM
making it easier for favored special-interests
to succeed, and harder for their competitors
to get a fair shot. As a result, honest small
business owners, would-be employees, and
investors are unfairly kept on the sidelines of
a rigged game. Given the consequences and
scope of cronyist policies—from subsidies
and loan guarantees to tax loopholes and
protective regulations—the only option for
conservatives today is a clear and simple
zero-tolerance policy toward special-interest
privilege of any kind. An anti-cronyist
agenda would begin with comprehensive
tax reform to get rid of unfair carve-outs and
level the playing field for small and large
businesses, as well as regulatory reform to
reorient the system around transparency
and accountability. It would eliminate special
policy privileges wherever they exist, whether
it’s the health-insurer bailouts in Obamacare,
special tax treatment for politically favored 34
energy producers, the cronyist Export-Import
Bank, or the federally created accreditation
OPPORTUNITY, CRONYISM & CONSERVATIVE REFORM
cartels that restrict access to higher education
opportunities. Taken together, these reforms
would restore fair competition at the top
of our economy, expand opportunity for
the poor and middle class, and drive down
working families’ inflated housing, education,
health care, and childcare costs. Anti-
cronyist reform is an issue that can unify the
conservative movement. It is at once pro-
growth, principled, and popular—unclaimed
political high ground.
 “THE LESSON FOR
CONSERVATIVES IN
ALL THIS IS THAT “Opportunity, Cronyism, and Conservative Reform”
BIG GOVERNMENT REMARKS TO THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION
Of, By and For the People
IS WORSE THAN
April 30, 2014
INEFFICIENT –
Thank you very much.
It is always a privilege to be back at the
Heritage Foundation, the heart of America’s
35 conservative movement. And it is to that
broad, diverse movement that I have come
IT’S UNFAIR.”
to speak today about an issue with the
OPPORTUNITY, CRONYISM & CONSERVATIVE REFORM
potential to unify and revive our coalition.
As I see it, there are two great domestic
challenges facing our country today.
Problem number one is America’s large
and growing Opportunity Deficit. Up
and down our society - which used to
be defined by unmatched economic
growth and social flourishing - a new and
unnatural sclerosis is taking hold. For
millions of working families of or aspiring
to our middle class, the American Dream
is slipping out of reach.
Problem number two is that, for the
Monument Valley, UT moment, the United States still lacks a
political party ready to solve problem
number one. I am here today because
I believe conservatives are in a unique
position to begin to solve both.
America’s Opportunity Deficit presents
itself in three principal ways:
1. First, in the growing crisis of
immobility among the poor, where
families and communities are
trapped in poverty, sometimes for
generations, and are increasingly
disconnected from the networks
of opportunity that more affluent
Americans take for granted.
2. Second, in the crisis of insecurity
within our middle class, where the
hallmarks of the American Dream –
from family stability and work-life
balance to affordable education and
health care - have grown too elusive
for too many.
3. Third is America’s crisis of crony
capitalism, corporate welfare, and
political privilege: in which government
twists public policy to unfairly benefit 36
favored special interests at the expense
of everyone else.
OPPORTUNITY, CRONYISM & CONSERVATIVE REFORM
On these first two fronts there is some good
news to report.
A new generation of conservative leaders is
emerging to meet these growing challenges
with principled, positive reforms, including
repairs to our welfare, prison, job-training,
tax, energy, and education systems.
Running through each is a recognition that
for many Americans today, especially for
the poor and middle class, the greatest
obstacles to the pursuit of happiness are
actually misguided government policies.
These conservative reformers understand
that to restore equal opportunity to all
Americans, it’s not enough to just cut big
 government. We also have to fix broken
government – to restore and expand access
to America’s exceptional free-enterprise
economy and voluntary civil society.
These reforms aim, in the words of
Abraham Lincoln:
“to lift artificial weights from all
shoulders… clear the paths of laudable
pursuit for all, … [and] afford all an
unfettered start and a fair chance in the
race of life.”
The emergence of this new Conservative
Reform Agenda – while it is still a work in
progress - is an exciting development for
our cause. It harkens back to an earlier
era when Ronald Reagan’s generation of
conservatives turned a moribund G.O.P.
into America’s party of ideas, and built a
national majority that changed history.
But as crucial as this work is, it remains
incomplete. As I mentioned earlier, there
is a third part of America’s Opportunity
37 Deficit that compounds the other two.
For the same kind of dysfunctional big
government that unfairly excludes the
OPPORTUNITY, CRONYISM & CONSERVATIVE REFORM
poor and middle class from earning
their success on a level playing field…
sometimes unfairly exempts the wealthy
and well-connected from having to earn
their success.
This is America’s crisis of crony capitalism,
corporate welfare, and political privilege:
in which government twists public policy
to unfairly benefit favored special interests
at the expense of everyone else.
Cronyism simultaneously corrupts our
economy and our government, turning
both against the American people. It forces
American families who “work hard and
play by the rules” to prop up, bail out, and
subsidize elite special interests that don’t. It
therefore represents a uniquely malignant
threat to American exceptionalism.
And so, the third part of a new, Conservative
Reform Agenda must restore equal
opportunity to the top of our society, too…
to root out cronyist privilege from the law,
and from our party… to re-empower the
American people and restore fairness,
dynamism, and growth to our economy.
Free enterprise works – morally and
materially - because it aligns the interests
of the individual and society. It’s a system
governed by an “invisible hand” that
rewards the creation of value, and by an
“invisible foot” that punishes complacency,
especially at the top.
In the marketplace, personal success
depends on interpersonal service. So even
the most fortunate and successful have to
earn their bread working for everyone else.
Steve Jobs didn’t succeed by rigging the
computer industry – he figured out how to
make technology accessible and helpful to
ordinary people. Oprah Winfrey didn’t try
to bury other talk-show hosts in red tape
– she spent decades perfecting her own
show, informing and inspiring millions of
viewers. Michael Jordan never mandated
us to watch him play basketball – he just
played so well that we wanted to.
On the other hand, the American people
didn’t want to buy Edsels, New Coke, or
Zunes - so those much-ballyhooed products
failed. In America, even giant corporations
like Ford, Coca-Cola, and Microsoft were
powerless over an un-impressed public.
In a properly functioning free-enterprise
economy – in which success can be earned,
and has to be – successful CEOs stay up
nights either obsessing about innovating to
better serve their customers, or panicking
about competitors who are.
Thus free enterprise simultaneously yields
economic growth and cultivates social
solidarity. The system is not perfect, but
it is fair - because its power resides in the
people. And so rewards flow to those who
add real value to the lives of their neighbors
and their nation.
Cronyism turns all of this upside-down.
It empowers and enriches the few by
disenfranchising the many. Like a black
hole, cronyism bends the economy toward
the state, inexorably shifting wealth and
opportunity from the public to policymakers.
The more power government amasses,
the more privileges are bestowed on
the government’s friends, the more
businesses invest in influence instead of
innovation, the more advantages accrue
to the biggest special interests with the
most to spend on politics and the most
to lose from fair competition.
Once profits depend on serving congressmen
instead of customers, the interests of the elite
diverge from those of the nation. Innovation
slows, and true inequality – inequality of
opportunity - emerges. The American people
are forced to work for big businesses instead
of the other way around. The middle class
falls and the middle-men rise.
Far from the rivals of popular mythology, the
elite leaders of Big Government, Big Business,
and Big Special Interests are more often than
not partners, in collusion to help each other
climb to the highest rungs of success, and
then pull up the ladder behind them.
To be clear, the problem I’m describing
is not that there is too much money in
politics. It’s that there’s too much politics in
the economy: three-and-a-half trillion dollars
in direct federal spending, and almost $2
trillion more redirected through regulations.
Exposing even a significant fraction of
that amount to political influence would
distort enough enterprise to pull the
economy off its moorings. And that’s
precisely what has happened.
What we’re left with today is a warped
economy increasingly built on connections
instead of competitiveness. Record
corporate profits and jaw-dropping gains
among elites… but slow growth, stagnant
wages and limited opportunities for
everyone else. Except, of course, in the
Washington, D.C. area, home to six of the
ten wealthiest counties in the United States.
There is a reason opinion surveys show
that America’s largest political and
economic institutions have lost the public’s
trust. Those institutions have ceased to
be trustworthy. Americans across the
ideological spectrum - from the Occupy
Left to the Tea Party Right - are figuring out
that America’s Opportunity Deficit is not a
mystery. It’s a government program.
Or rather, it’s thousands of government
programs. Special-interest privilege has
become so prevalent, it’s a wonder anyone
can make an honest buck anymore.
Cronyist policies come in many shapes
and sizes, but the upshot is always the
same: making it easier for favored special
interests to succeed, and harder for their
competitors to get a fair shot.
There are direct subsidies, like those
that are supposedly necessary to protect
family farmers.
Except every year, 75 percent of the $24
billion we spend on agriculture handouts
goes to the top 10 percent of recipients.
The bulk of these subsidies aren’t going
to the Little House on the Prairie; they’re
going to The Wolf of Wall Street.
(Which I have not seen, by the way. I heard
there’s dancing.)
Cronyism also entails indirect subsidies, like
the loan guarantees issued by the Export-
Import Bank. Here again, more than three-
quarters of ExIm’s billions of dollars in loan
guarantees go to just three corporations
that are perfectly capable of securing private
financing anywhere in the world.
We all know about the booming proliferation
of tax carve-outs and loopholes. Today, the
internal revenue code is about four million
words long. Depending on your brand of
right-of-center politics, that works out to
about five copies of the King James Bible…
or six copies of Atlas Shrugged.
But the tax code is just one of many cases in
which the sheer size and complexity of the
law operates as a cronyist subsidy all by itself.
Complicated regulations – however
imposed - always increase the costs of
doing business. Those higher costs in turn
advantage the largest firms because they
can always afford to hire more lawyers
and lobbyists, while smaller, younger
competitors can’t.
For this reason, very often the most
onerous regulations governing an industry
are endorsed by the largest players in that
sector. The largest light-bulb manufacturers
supported the 2007 ban on incandescent
bulbs. The largest toy manufacturers
supported onerous new testing standards
in 2008. The largest tobacco company
supported 2009 legislation to give the FDA
regulatory oversight over its product. And
lest we forget, the largest pharmaceutical
companies supported Obamacare. In every
case, the resulting regulations helped
cement the incumbents’ dominant market
positions – as intended.
This process – what economists call
“regulatory capture” - is also the stock-
in-trade of state and local cronyism. You
may have heard about local restaurants
lobbying for regulations to drive off food
trucks, or taxi companies trying to bar Uber
and ride-sharing start-ups from city streets.
But the problem is much deeper.
Today, one in three Americans works
in a profession that requires special
government permission to earn a living.
I’m not talking about district attorneys
and anesthesiologists, but hair-braiders,
eye-brow threaders, massage therapists,
and fortune tellers. The true purpose of
occupational licensing – especially in
lower-skilled trades that have always
been avenues of opportunity for lower-
income Americans – is to exclude as many
newcomers as possible while keeping
customer prices artificially high.
38
But a recent study by the Kaufmann
Foundation found that fully 100 percent
OPPORTUNITY, CRONYISM & CONSERVATIVE REFORM
of net American job creation between
1977 and 2005 came from start-up firms.
Thus regulations that favor established
incumbents over younger competitors
specifically hamstring the very businesses
we need to create jobs.
Sometimes cronyist schemes go so
badly, so quickly, that the corruption
actually causes a scandal, as was the
case with politically connected solar-
panel manufacturer Solyndra, which went
bankrupt and lost every dime of a $535
million federal loan guarantee. But more
often, special-interest privilege burrows so
deep into the policymaking process that
the parasite starts to overwhelm its host.
 Consider federal financial regulation.
Prior to 2008, the inflation of the housing
bubble was a bipartisan initiative. Under
presidents and Congresses of both parties,
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal
Housing Authority collaborated with Wall
Street to conceal the risks associated with
subprime mortgages.
Then, when the inevitable collapse came,
the $700 billion TARP program bailed
out the big banks, when the market was
ready to discipline them and reward their
smaller, more prudent competitors. And
now, the Dodd-Frank financial reform law
that was supposed to end “too big to fail”
has instead codified Wall Street’s implicit
taxpayer guarantee – which according to
one study may account for those firms’
entire profit margins.
Under this so-called reform, the biggest
banks have grown bigger than ever, while
community banks are disappearing,
regional banks are being unfairly squeezed,
39 and lower-income Americans are being
locked out of the banking system altogether.
OPPORTUNITY, CRONYISM & CONSERVATIVE REFORM
Or look at the federal sugar program, where
an array of taxes, mandates, and subsidies
conspire to jack up the prices Americans pay
on sugar – by as much as $3 billion every year.
The program hurts economic growth, and
redistributes wealth from the American people
to a handful of corporations who effectively
control regulation over their industry.
Though these partnerships between
big government and big business are
especially offensive, big non¬-profits play
the same game.
The myriad federal laws that advantage
big labor unions can be just as pernicious
as those that privilege corporations. The
auto bailouts and the Davis-Bacon Act are
merely two prominent examples of this
pathology. Another is the Mad-Men era
exclusion of private-sector employees from
popular comp-time benefits.
Even our education system is distorted
by special-interest privilege, breeding
inequality within the very institution
that’s supposed to be our society’s “great
equalizer.” Across the country, lower- and
middle-income families are priced out
of the best elementary and secondary
schools, and denied affordable alternatives.
Meanwhile, our higher-education policies
entitle existing universities to inflate prices
while denying access to non-traditional
students and more affordable schools.
And of course, there is the epic cronyist
disaster movie, Obamacare, which:
• privileges certain corporations by
penalizing Americans who don’t buy
health insurance from them;
• subsidizes the purchase of those
products;
• protects those corporations from true
price competition and market innovation;
• exempts special interests like labor
unions, government employees,
and large corporations from various
mandates under the law; and,
• may even guarantee those corporations’
survival - even if they lose money -
through an open-ended taxpayer bailout.
The lesson for conservatives in all this
is that big government is worse than
inefficient – it’s unfair.
Now the Left, they see Big Government’s
consolidation and redistribution of
economic opportunity as a feature, not a
bug. Liberals have no problem privileging
special interests, so long as they’re liberal
special interests. And if and when it all
blows up in their faces, they can always
advocate… even bigger government.
This kind of corporatism, by which large,
established players in government, industry,
labor, and special interests work together
to “manage” the economy, has always
been part of progressive ideology. Herbert
Croly, one of the intellectual founders of
progressivism, put it bluntly over a century
ago, when he wrote: “In economic warfare,
the fighting can never be fair for long, and
it is the business of the state to see that
its own friends are victorious.” That’s how
liberals today still think.
But for conservatives, this thinking is a
trap. Because properly considered, there
is no such thing as a conservative special
interest. It’s progressives who slice the
country into politically assigned subgroups,
manipulating cooperative citizens into
selfish special interests. It’s big government
that divides us – picking “friends” and
“enemies.” Freedom unites us.
And freedom depends on equal
opportunity for all. To conservatives,
there should be no such thing as “our”
people. There is just the American people,
all in this together, in a free-enterprise
economy and voluntary civil society,
working hard and playing by the rules,
helping each other and especially those
who can’t help themselves.
That ideal is part of what has always made
America exceptional. After all, cronyism
has been the norm throughout human
history. Friends of the king have always
prospered. What makes free enterprise
special is that it allows everybody else to
prosper, too.
And so, just as a new Conservative Reform
Agenda should seek to once again allow
the poor and middle class to compete on a
level playing field, it must once again force
the wealthy and well-connected to do so
as well. The level playing field works only
when it works for everyone.
And I mean everyone, including the rich.
Make no mistake: conservative, anti-
cronyist reform should never be confused
with – or descend into - the cheap, ugly
populism of class warfare. We want
successful Americans to succeed. All we
ask is that they earn their success on a level
playing field, subject to the judgment of
the market – as truly successful Americans
always have.
Just as the real victim of the baseball
steroids scandal was the marginal player
who never got a fair chance because he
didn’t cheat, the true victims of crony
capitalism… are the true capitalists: honest
entrepreneurs, employees, consumers,
and investors who are today unfairly forced
to play uphill in a rigged game.
So it seems to me, given the scope and
consequences of America’s Opportunity
Deficit – and of the benefits of reform -
the only option for conservatives today is
a clear and simple zero-tolerance policy
toward cronyist privilege of any kind.
That means first and foremost tax reform,
to simplify the code and rid it of special
treatment for special interests. One of the
best aspects of the tax reform proposed
by House Ways and Means Committee
Chairman Dave Camp was its simplification,
cutting unfair and unnecessary special-
interest carve-outs.
Last year, I introduced legislation to
eliminate most credits and deductions
from the individual tax code, while
lowering the mortgage-interest deduction Balance Rock,
to $300,000 worth of principal. My plan Arches National Park, UT
also increased the child tax credit to help
equalize treatment for working parents,
who today face an unintended policy
inequity of their own.
I have also begun working with Senator
Marco Rubio on a broader pro-family, pro-
growth tax reform proposal to eliminate
special interest privilege from the
corporate code and level the playing field
for small and large businesses.
We also need a broad regulatory-reform
agenda, to make sure big government
and big special interests are not rigging
the rules for each other and against the
public. Here, Senator Rand Paul’s “REINS
Act” is an excellent start. The REINS
Act would introduce transparency and
accountability to the system by requiring
congressional approval of any major new
executive-branch regulations.
While REINS provides an excellent
solution to new regulations, we need 40
complementary reforms to deal with
cronyist manipulation already in place.
OPPORTUNITY, CRONYISM & CONSERVATIVE REFORM
Toward that end, Senator Rubio has
proposed a Regulatory Budgeting
mechanism to bring more accountability
into the system. And I’m working on
my own plan to create a new, annual
Regulatory Authorization process.
This process would require Congress
to prioritize and approve the cost and
content of all regulations Washington
imposes on the economy every year.
On the other side of the Capitol, House
Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan
has been a longtime champion of anti-
cronyist reform, and made the elimination
of special-interest privilege a point of
emphasis in this year’s Budget Resolution.
 But beyond broad tax, regulatory, and
budget reform, conservatives need to
start identifying and eliminating specific
policy privileges as well.
Some already have.
For instance, Congressman Mike Pompeo
has introduced a bill to end special tax
treatment in the energy sector: to level
the playing field for green energy and
fossil fuels.
Senator Rubio has proposed legislation to
protect taxpayers from the implicit health-
insurer bailouts in Obamacare. A Senate
vote on his proposal could help clarify the
law and the politics, and further the cause
of full repeal.
House Banking Committee Chairman Jeb
Hensarling is leading the fight in the House
against the reauthorization of the cronyist
Export-Import Bank this year – to level the
playing field for all American exporters,
not just the well-connected few. The fight
41 against reauthorizing the Ex-Im Bank is
probably the most important and winnable
anti-cronyist effort conservatives can take
OPPORTUNITY, CRONYISM & CONSERVATIVE REFORM
up this year.
We also need to break up federally
created cartels that protect insiders and
disadvantage taxpayers and consumers.
Last fall, I proposed legislation to
introduce competition and innovation in
higher education accreditation – to lower
prices and increase access to college.
And Congressman Tom Graves has
proposed a bill to let state and local
governments build their own roads and
infrastructure without having Beltway
bureaucrats, labor bosses, and federal
eco-cronies inflate the costs and skim
off the top.
We need to modernize federal labor law, to
give independent and union workers equal
access to comp-time and the right-to-work.
And we’re also going to have to do
something about “Too Big To Fail,” which
still appears to be providing an implicit
subsidy from taxpayers to Wall Street’s
biggest banks.
How we go about fixing the perverse
incentives in our financial system is still an
open question. But it’s one conservatives
must answer before the next crisis comes.
Perhaps the solution is a new bankruptcy
process - like the one proposed by Senators
John Cornyn and Pat Toomey – that would
transfer authority over failed banks from
political regulators to more impartial
courts. If we can’t be sure there will never be
another bailout request, perhaps changes to
capital-reserve requirements – an approach
supported by Senators David Vitter and
Sherrod Brown – could force big banks to
operate more responsibly, preventing the
next crisis from ever emerging.
But whatever we decide, the purpose of
reform should not be to protect the rich
and powerful in ways that encourage them
to take foolish risks with other people’s
money… but to protect the taxpayer in
ways that encourage both entrepreneurial
dynamism and corporate responsibility.
Taken together, these reforms would
begin to eliminate cronyist privilege,
create opportunity, and drive down the
inflated costs of the staples of middle class
aspiration and security, including housing,
education, health care, and child-rearing.
Anti-cronyist reform is more than good policy.
It’s an issue that can unify conservatives, at
a time when we need more of them. That’s
why, for the moment, the policy specifics
in many ways matter less than the larger
political commitment of the conservative
movement to make this cause our own.
Just like the crises of lower-income
immobility and middle class insecurity,
the crisis of special-interest privilege is
not Barack Obama’s fault. It predates his
presidency. And though his policies have
made it worse, past Republican presidents
and Congresses share some of the blame.
The policies that contribute to America’s
Opportunity Deficit have deep roots and
powerful friends. Reforming them won’t
be easy or pleasant. It will require closing
the G.O.P.’s lucrative branch of the Beltway
Favor Bank, and learning a hundred ways to
say “no” to former staffers and colleagues
with large accounts in that bank.
This may sound like a heavy lift, a
fundamental transformation of how our
party and this city function. But that’s
what they used to say about earmarks. And
much more to the point, this is stuff we are
already supposed to believe.
Every Republican candidate in the
country campaigns on free enterprise,
equality of opportunity, and the rule of
law. Crony capitalism is even singled out
for condemnation in the party platform.
And yet, Republican votes have helped
pass many of the unfair, cynical policies
mentioned above. Too many in Washington
have convinced themselves that special-
interest privilege is wrong only when the
other side does it. But not surprisingly, they
have not convinced the public.
Americans intuitively understand that
crony capitalism is not a form of private
enterprise; it’s a form of public corruption.
To the hundreds of millions of Americans
who believe in a level economic playing
field – most especially to the working
families of the poor and middle class
whose aspirations and opportunities
utterly depend on it – self-dealing among
political and economic elites is not
compromise. It’s a monstrous betrayal.
And from the party that advocates the
moral and material superiority of free
enterprise, it’s rank hypocrisy. Whether
we realize it or not, we are the ones whose
ideals cronyism corrupts, and whose
arguments cronyism discredits.
The Left openly supports special-interest
favoritism, while the Right claims to reject
it. So the fact that both parties engage in
it is a much more powerful indictment of
Republicans than Democrats. As long as
our economic agenda can plausibly be
mocked as “low tax rates and protected
profits for the One Percent,” the American
people have good reason not to trust us.
To win back their trust – and we must - it’s
not going to be enough to merely atone
for past transgressions. We will have to
“go and sin no more.”
To the conservatives who hope to lead
congressional majorities in 2015, or seek the
presidency in 2016, this is more than a matter
of talking points and tactics. It’s about first
principles: the fundamental morality of our
cause, and the purpose of our coalition.
It seems to me that a principled, positive
agenda to remove government-created
barriers to upward mobility and middle-
class opportunity - to level our economic
playing field and put economic elites
back to work creating jobs and growth
for everyone else – represents everything
conservatism should stand for.
It further seems to me that in the twenty-
five years since Ronald Reagan left office,
we have tried it the establishment’s way.
We have tried being a party of corporate
connections and special-interest deal-
making. And we’ve lost five of the six
presidential popular votes since.
And so it is reasonable for conservatives to put
the onus on the establishment to explain why
we don’t need fundamental course correction,
starting with a commitment to basic fairness,
equal opportunity, and a zero-tolerance policy
toward special-interest privilege – consistent
with our own stated principles.
To the professional consultants and
pundits who habitually cast a skeptical
eye on anti-establishment ideas: this is not
some quixotic purity test or fund-raising
gimmick. Anti-cronyist reform is at once
pro-growth, principled, and popular –
unclaimed political high ground.
Substantively, it’s necessary to get the
economy growing again, creating jobs
and opportunities for working families
and communities too short on both.
Morally, a wary American public has ever
right to expect that conservative welfare
reform ought to start with corporate
welfare. And as always, good policy makes
for good politics. Re-aligning our agenda
with our values will realign it with middle-
American aspirations. It would expose
the Left’s addiction to government-
driven inequality, and force progressives
to finally choose between their populist
rhetoric and their corporatist agenda.
For every well-heeled ally a new, anti-
cronyist G.O.P. might lose on K Street, it
stands to make a thousand new friends on
Main Streets, all over the country. It would
signal to the forgotten families of America’s
middle class that someone in Washington
is finally standing up for them again.
That Republican Party could not only unify
and inspire the Right – from libertarian
populists to compassionate conservatives
- but also appeal to hardworking families
in the purple and blue communities that
President Obama’s cronyist economy is
leaving behind.
For three years now, since my
rambunctious class of legislators arrived
in Washington, establishment leaders
have challenged anti-establishment
conservatives to accept political reality…
engage the politics of addition… and
produce a viable plan to make principled
conservatism appealing and inclusive —
to grow our movement into a majority.
Well, here it is: a commitment to economic
fairness and competition at the top of our
economy to help restore jobs, growth,
mobility, and opportunity to the poor and
middle class.
Though what I propose is a change, it’s
not unfamiliar.
People sometimes forget that the British
policies that lit the fuse of the American 42
Revolution did not merely oppress the
colonists. Indeed, the Tea Act of 1773
OPPORTUNITY, CRONYISM & CONSERVATIVE REFORM
actually lowered taxes. The problem
was, it only lowered taxes for one
corporation, the politically connected
East India Company, giving it an unfair,
artificial advantage over smaller, local
American competitors.
That is why the tea went into the Harbor.
In many ways, it was a fight for equal
opportunity against special-interest
privilege that made our nation.
A renewed conservative commitment to
that same fight today can help re-make
our nation… revive our movement, and
rebuild a fair and prosperous American
economy of, by, and for the people.
 Salt Lake City Office
Wallace Bennett Federal Building
125 S State Street, Suite 4225
Salt Lake City, UT 84138
(801) 524-5933

Ogden Office
James V. Hansen Federal Building
324 25th Street, Suite 1410
Ogden, UT 84401
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St. George Office

285 W Tabernacle, Suite 200
St. George, UT 84770
(435) 628-5514

Washington, DC Office
Russell Senate Building
Room 361A
Washington, DC 20510
(202) 224-5444

@senatormikelee
@SenMikeLee
For more information, visit
lee.senate.gov

Monument Valley, UT