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OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 7/20/16

50 Shockingly Extreme Right-Wing Proposals in the 2016 Republican Party Platform

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Steven Rosenfeld
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Reprinted from Alternet

What Trump, a GOP Congress and GOP-appointed Supreme Court would do to America.

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The Republican Party platform is a wish list for what Republicans in Congress and Donald Trump would like to impose on America. What's surprising is that it goes further to the right than what's even been heard on the campaign trail from Trump as he has promised to build a wall along the Mexican border and embrace the religious right's long-held tenets opposing abortion, LGBT rights and more.

The GOP 2016 platform would make Christianity the official American religion, English the official American language, replace sex education with abstinence-only advice for teenagers, privatize almost all areas of federal services, cut taxes and regulations for the rich and titans of industry, and impose a belligerent foreign policy and military build-up.

Here are 50 excerpts from the 2016 GOP platform.

1. Tax cuts for the rich: "Wherever tax rates penalize thrift or discourage investment, they must be lowered. Wherever current provisions of the code are disincentives for economic growth, they must be changed... We propose to level the international playing field by lowering the corporate tax rate to be on a par with, or below, the rates of other industrial nations."

2. Deregulate the banks: "The Republican vision for American banking calls for establishing transparent, efficient markets where consumers can obtain loans they need at reasonable rates based on market conditions. Unfortunately, in response to the financial institutions crisis of 2008-2009, the Democratic-controlled Congress enacted the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, otherwise known as Dodd-Frank."

3. Stop consumer protection: "The worst of Dodd-Frank is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, deliberately designed to be a rogue agency. It answers to neither Congress nor the executive, has its own guaranteed funding outside the appropriations process... If the Bureau is not abolished, it should be subjected to congressional appropriation."

4. Start repealing environmental laws: "We call for a comprehensive review of federal regulations, especially those dealing with the environment, that make it harder and more costly for Americans to rent, buy, or sell homes."

5. Start shrinking unions and union labor: "We renew our call for repeal of the Davis-Bacon law, which limits employment and drives up construction and maintenance costs for the benefit of unions... Although unionization has never been permitted in any government agency concerned with national security, the current Administration has reversed that policy for the Transportation Security Administration. We will correct that mistake... We support the right of states to enact Right-to-Work laws and call for a national law to protect the economic liberty of the modern workforce."

6. Privatize federal railway aervice: "Amtrak is an extremely expensive railroad for the American taxpayers, who must subsidize every ticket. The federal government should allow private ventures to provide passenger service in the northeast corridor. The same holds true with regard to high-speed and intercity rail across the country. We reaffirm our intention to end federal support for boondoggles like California's high-speed train to nowhere."

7. No change in federal minimum wage: "Minimum wage is an issue that should be handled at the state and local level."

8. Cut government salaries and benefits: "The taxpayers spend an average of $35,000 a year per employee on non-cash benefits, triple the average non-cash compensation of the average worker in the private sector. Federal employees receive extraordinary pension benefits and vacation time wildly out of line with those of the private sector."

9. Appoint anti-choice Supreme Court justices: "Only a Republican president will appoint judges who respect the rule of law expressed within the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, including the inalienable right to life and the laws of nature and nature's God, as did the late Justice Antonin Scalia."

10. Appoint anti-LGBT and anti-Obamacare justices: "Only such appointments will enable courts to begin to reverse the long line of activist decisions -- including Roe, Obergefell, and the Obamacare cases -- that have usurped Congress's and states' lawmaking authority."

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Steven Rosenfeld  covers democracy issues for AlterNet. He is a longtime print and broadcast journalist and has reported for National Public Radio, Monitor Radio, Marketplace,  TomPaine.com  and many newspapers. (more...)
 
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