Posted by Jim Lindgren:
Rahm Emanuel: Time for a new contract with America.
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2008_11_02-2008_11_08.shtml#1225908208
Rahm Emanuel is widely rumored to be Barack Obama�s choice for White
House Chief of Staff. As a Chicagoan, I�ve seen a fair amount of news
coverage of this local congressman. The picture that emerges is very
consistent: very smart, very substantive, and very partisan � as one
person put it, a man with a sharp mind and sharp elbows.
I doubt that Obama could find a more competent chief of staff, someone
who would be part administrative director and part Karl Rove.
We know a lot about Barack Obama�s agenda, but what about Rahm
Emanuel�s? He laid out his �Plan for America� in a 2006 book with
Bruce Reed.
Excerpt from Emanuel and Reed�s [1]The Plan/Big Ideas for America:
America has plenty of unfinished business, and all of the reforms
we'd like to see -- some of which appear in this book -- would make
for a very long list. But if we're going to turn the country
around, we need a bold agenda that can be counted off on one hand:
1. A new social contract -- universal citizen service, universal
college access, universal retirement savings, and universal
children's health care -- that makes clear what you can do for your
country and what your country can do for you.
2. A return to fiscal responsibility and an end to corporate
welfare as we know it.
3. Tax reform to help those who aren't wealthy build wealth.
4. A new strategy to use all America's strengths to win the war on
terror.
5. A Hybrid Economy that cuts America's gasoline consumption in
half over the next decade.
THE PLAN
A new social contract, or what you can do for your country and what
your country can do for you
The economy of the twenty-first century demands new skills and will
require all of us to live up to new responsibilities. We believe
that four mutual obligations that follow should represent the first
terms of a new contract between the people and their country.
Universal Citizen Service
If you forget everything else you read in these pages, please
remember this: The Plan starts with you. If your leaders aren't
challenging you to do your part, they aren't doing theirs. We need
a real Patriot Act that brings out the patriot in all of us by
establishing, for the first time, an ethic of universal citizen
service.
Universal College Access
We must make a college degree as universal as a high school
diploma. More than ever, America's success depends on what we can
learn. We have an education system built in the last century, with
a school year left over from the century before that. In this new
era, college will be the greatest engine of opportunity for our
society and our economy. Just as Abraham Lincoln gave land grants
to endow our great public universities, we will give the states
tuition grants to make college free for those willing to work,
serve, and excel.
Universal Retirement Savings
From now on, every job ought to come with a 401(k). An aging
society cannot afford to keep saving less and risking more. We need
new means to create wealth, based on the needs and responsibilities
of twenty-first-century employees and employers. Employers should
be required to offer 401(k)s, and workers will be enrolled unless
they choose otherwise. If they switch jobs, they can take these
accounts with them. When their paycheck goes up, so will their
savings. Instead of a work force in which only half the workers
have retirement savings plans, every American will have one.
Universal Children's Health Care . . .
A return to fiscal responsibility and an end to corporate welfare
as we know it . . .
Tax reform to help those who aren't wealthy build wealth . . .
A new strategy to win the war on terror . . .
A hybrid economy that cuts America's gasoline use in half . . .
Ask what you can do for your country
The premier component of the new social contract The Plan promotes
between citizens and their government is universal citizen service.
. . .
John Kennedy was right: A nation is defined not by what it does for
its citizens but by what it asks of them. If your leaders aren't
challenging you to do your part, they aren't doing theirs. We need
a real Patriot Act that brings out the patriot in all of us by
establishing for the first time an ethic of universal citizen
service. All Americans between the ages of 18 and 25 should be
asked to serve their country by going through three months of basic
civil defense training and community service. This is not a draft,
nor is it military. Young people will be trained not as soldiers,
but simply as citizens who understand their responsibilities in the
event of a natural disaster, an epidemic or a terrorist attack.
Universal citizen service will bring Americans of every background
together to make America safer and more united in common purpose.
Chief of staffs don�t set policies, presidents do. Nonetheless, both
Obama and Emanuel have proposals to use universal service for young
people to remake American society, though their plans differ. If
Emanuel ends up running the White House staff, one should expect a
universal service proposal that is at a minimum competently worked out
and well presented.
References
1. http://www.jessejacksonjr.org/issues/i082106748.html
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