GOP Agenda

Washington Post, Nov. 7 2002, A32

Here are key issues that White House officials and GOP lawmakers said they plan to tackle in the next Congress:

• Health Care
  • Pass a Medicare overhaul that adds a prescription drug benefit provided through private insurers and injects more competition into the system.
  • Resurrect the Republican version of a patients bill of rights governing managed care.
  • Expand federally funded community health centers to serve the uninsured.
  
  
• Homeland Security
  • Pass a reorganization of government that creates a Department of Homeland Security, with new curbs on employee collective bargaining that had been opposed by Senate Democrats.
  • Approve languishing spending bills to fund new biodefense programs, aid rescue workers and bolster port and airline security.
  • Pass terrorism insurance legislation that would provide insurers billions of federal dollars to cover claims resulting from future terrorism attacks and would ban punitive and limit economic damages stemming from lawsuits related to terrorism.
  
  
• Tax Cuts and Economic Policies
  • Enact legislaiton to make last year's 10-year, $1.35 trillion tax cut permanent.
  • Accelerate income tax rate cuts scheduled for 2004 to stimulate the economy.
  • Speed up and make permanent the repeal of the setate tax.
  • Pass an economic package that includes new investment tax breaks for businesses, higher limits on retirement savings account deposits and an increase in the amount of stock losses that can be deducted from taxes.
  • Enact modest pension protection legislation.
  
  
• Social Policy
  • Extend welfare reform legislation with tougher work requirements.
  • Approve the president's conservative judicial nominees.
  • Ban an abortion method known by opponents as "partial-birth abortion" and bn human cloning.
  • Approve legislation freeing the federal government to provide aid to "faith-based" charities.
  
  
• Energy
  • Pass a long-stalled, comprehensive energy bill that would open Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration, offer tax breaks for energy conservation and high-mileage hybrid vehicles, promote the building of pipelines and electricity transmission lines, and extend legal protections for nuclear power operators.

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