After six years of the worst presidency in American history, and six years of the first rubber stamp Congress in American history, it’s hard to know where to start fixing the damage.
I think we should start with these nine priorities:
1. Establish a Truman Commission — styled after the Truman Commission of WWII — to target war profiteering and Halliburton-style abuses.
2. Raise the minimum wage. We can dare Bush to veto it.
3. Expand Medicare to cover the first 18 months of life. Pay for it by eliminating the Bush tax cuts on the rich.
4. Allow any US Citizen at any age to purchase full Medicare coverage. Encourage US businesses to offer this “paid” Medicare as a health benefit option for employees. Subsidize the fees for small businesses. This would increase Medicare’s bargaining strength, lower costs, and improve efficiency.
5. Fix Medicare Part D. Bush and the GOP prohibited Medicare from negotiating with the drug companies for lower prices. Let’s flip it, and require Medicare to negotiate with the drug companies for lower prices.
6. Election reform to ensure that the people trust the process. Mandate that all voting machines have voter verifiable paper ballot. Establish federal voting standards to stop partisan state officials from manipulating voting process and procedure to favor one party.
7. Congressional ethics reform, including major reform of Congressional earmarking. Legislators are selling their votes and are throwing away our tax dollars on worthless pork (e.g., the Bridge to Nowhere“).
8. Investigate what happened to the 8+ billion dollars “lost” by Bush’s Coalition Provisional Authority.
9. Roll back the Bush “reforms” at the Environmental Protection Agency.
Comments? Additional items?
UPDATE (11/9/2006):
10. Fully fund body armor for all US Forces overseas.
11. Immediately apply all US worker protection laws to businesses in the US Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and criminalize the practice of intimidating or forcing any female employee to have an abortion. The GOP has knowingly tolerated the practice of forced abortion and other abuses of immigrant workers in this tiny US jurisdiction in the name of creating a “perfect Petri dish of capitalism.”