File photo by Jim Rider,, APProtesting Obama speech: Anti-abortion activists fly a banner over the University of Notre Dame in 2009, when President Obama was the commencement speaker.
File photo by Jim Rider,, APProtesting Obama speech: Anti-abortion activists fly a banner over the University of Notre Dame in 2009, when President Obama was the commencement speaker.
A modern, retooled GOP should be a genuine party of fiscal responsibility. During President Bush's administration, the national debt nearly doubled, as the party undertook a reckless program of tax cuts combined with runaway spending such as the prescription drug entitlement. The GOP squandered a big budget surplus in 2001, in part by spending nearly $1 trillion in Iraq, and turned it into an intractable deficit by 2008. But suddenly, after President Obama's inauguration, Republicans noticed the debt had gotten out of hand. Yet candidate Mitt Romney's fiscal plan includes $6 trillion in tax cuts with few details about how to pay for them. This fiscal irresponsibility can't continue.A reformed GOP would be a party of fiscal discipline and shared prosperity. Shared prosperity means returning to the Republican wisdom of an earlier age: the support of our industrial base against unfair foreign competition, and better wages for working Americans. The GOP of the past 30 years has thrown that tradition overboard for the sake of discredited theories of "free trade" and, as a result, middle-class incomes have stagnated. Our present tax policies actually incentivize leveraged buyouts, outsourcing and offshoring. This must end.But while better tax policy towards domestic manufacturing will help, we cannot be fully competitive in a global economy without educated citizens. Abraham Lincoln founded the land grant colleges that became our state university system. After the launch of Sputnik, Dwight Eisenhower created science and engineering scholarships. But now, Republican politicians routinely denounce climate science, stem cell research for new disease cures, and even the teaching of evolutionary biology. But the rest of the world is not standing still, and an anti-intellectual party can neither devise workable education policies nor lead America into a prosperous future.Finally, a retooled GOP would advocate a more rational foreign policy. Candidate Romney has not learned from the debacle in Iraq: He advocates spending an additional $2 trillion on the Pentagon— which will be added to the nation's credit card — while he carelessly declares Russia our "No. 1 geopolitical foe." We can afford neither the expense nor the enemies that his policies would bring us.Columns
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In short, the Republican Party needs to shed its military belligerence, cease confusing religion and politics, and ditch its failed economic dogmas. It should devote itself to the hard work of rebuilding America in peace.Mike Lofgren, a congressional staff member who retired in 2011, is author of The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted. For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.