{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.hatch.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/releases?ContentRecord_id=49248332-9172-4eeb-b12e-7dbaf51ef9db", "Hatch at the Reagan Ranch Center: GOP Must Promote a Conservative Vision for America, Enact Positive Reforms, and Demonstrate it's the Party of Solutions", "2014-10-08", "2014", "2014-10", "Republican", "House", "UT", "Orrin Hatch", "H000338", "www.hatch.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "SANTA BARBARA, CALIFORNIA \u2013 U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the most senior Republican in the Senate, today spoke at the Reagan Ranch Center in Santa Barbara, California, to promote meaningful policy reforms rooted in enduring constitutional principles.\u00a0 Hatch outlined five key priorities where Republicans must offer solutions: health care, tax reform, regulatory relief, innovation and tech policy, and a social mobility agenda.\u00a0\r\nIn his remarks, Hatch said \u201cNow is the time for Republicans to tell America how we will right the ship, how we will solve the problems [President] Obama has wrought.\u00a0 We have an opportunity to present a positive, conservative, reform-oriented agenda that will show the American people that we are the party of solutions, the party that can bring our nation out of its current malaise and restore it to growth and prestige and prosperity.\u201d\r\n\u201cGovernment\u2019s role is not to provide universal social and economic support, but rather to create opportunities and remove obstacles.\u00a0 A vigorous, dynamic constitutional conservatism will return government to its proper role\u2014that of supporter, not director,\u201d Hatch added.\u00a0 \u201cBy keeping the Constitution as our guide and working to conserve our founding principles, we can offer a hopeful, reform-oriented agenda that will unite the conservative movement and win the hearts and minds of a broad majority of Americans looking for change.\u201d\r\nA PDF of Hatch\u2019s full remarks can be found here, and they are also pasted below:\r\nIntroduction and Overview\r\nI\u2019m honored to be here today.\u00a0 Ronald Reagan was a great hero of mine.\u00a0 His influence looms large over both our nation and my own personal political life.\u00a0 In 1976 I was locked in a tight primary race in my first Senate campaign.\u00a0 The polls were close, and it was anyone\u2019s race.\u00a0 A few days before the primary, Governor Reagan endorsed me.\u00a0 I\u2019m told it was his only pre-primary endorsement ever.\u00a0 I\u2019ve always been grateful for his support in that race.\u00a0 In my Senate office, we have a Reagan conference room, which displays the telegram formalizing his endorsement, as well as memorabilia from several of my bills that he signed into law as President.\r\nPresident Reagan made tremendous contributions to American conservatism.\u00a0 He implemented a conservative agenda that led to a renewal of American greatness, helped create millions of new jobs, and defeated an evil empire.\u00a0 He showed that conservatism is a winning philosophy.\r\nPresident Reagan also recognized the signal importance of the U.S. Constitution.\u00a0 Time and again he returned to the Constitution as the basis of our government and the source of our guiding principles.\u00a0 He referred to the Constitution constantly in advancing his conservative agenda\u2014an average of 16 times in each State of the Union speech.\u00a0 In his First Inaugural address he made the Constitution\u2019s opening words a key focus, emphasizing that government\u2019s role is to serve \u201cWe the People,\u201d and not the other way around.\u00a0 He returned to this theme in his farewell address, in words worth quoting here: \u201cAlmost all the world\u2019s constitutions are documents in which governments tell the people what their privileges are.\u00a0 Our Constitution is a document in which \u2018We the People\u2019 tell the government what it is allowed to do.\u00a0 \u2018We the People\u2019 are free.\u201d\r\nMy goal today is to explain how a conservatism rooted in the Constitution\u2019s enduring principles\u2014what some call constitutional conservatism\u2014provides a framework for practical solutions to many of our most pressing challenges.\u00a0 I believe such an approach can serve as a foundation for successful Republican governance in the next Congress and beyond, just as it did under President Reagan.\r\nWe\u2019re at a critical point right now.\u00a0 The flaws in President Obama\u2019s agenda are increasingly clear.\u00a0 The economy remains sluggish nearly six years into his presidency.\u00a0 Millions of Americans are still unemployed or underemployed; millions more have given up looking for work altogether.\u00a0 The President\u2019s signature achievement, Obamacare, has caused premiums to spike and kicked millions of Americans off their health plans.\u00a0 Our national debt continues to grow.\u00a0 At home and abroad, our nation appears adrift.\u00a0 Equally important, it feels adrift.\r\nNow is the time for Republicans to tell America how we will right the ship, how we will solve the problems Obama has wrought.\u00a0 We have an opportunity to present a positive, conservative, reform-oriented agenda that will show the American people that we are the party of solutions, the party that can bring our nation out of its current malaise and restore it to growth and prestige and prosperity.\u00a0\r\nThe Current Challenge\r\nEven in the face of such opportunity, this is a time of significant challenge for conservatives.\u00a0 Many commentators, across the political spectrum, have identified what they describe as a Republican identity crisis.\u00a0 Republican voters and elected officials, the narrative goes, are angered at the President\u2019s overreach and opposed to his agenda, but have offered few constructive policy proposals of their own.\u00a0 According to these commentators, today\u2019s Republican party knows what it is against\u2014the Obama agenda\u2014but is unable to articulate what it is for.\r\nA related narrative suggests that there is an ongoing GOP civil war, a political fight, not only between the Tea Party and the Republican establishment, but between competing ideologies.\u00a0 Between libertarians and social conservatives, populists and elites, hawks and isolationists.\u00a0 Even among those on the right who are seeking to identify an affirmative policy agenda, there is a sense that today\u2019s GOP lacks a unified governing philosophy.\r\nOur challenge as conservatives, then, is to develop a positive, reform-minded agenda that will both unify our party and present a compelling vision to voters searching for a way out of our current problems.\r\nThis is not a new challenge.\u00a0 Because conservatism includes a diverse set of ideological commitments, the GOP\u2019s successes over the last 50 years have all included a similar effort.\u00a0\r\nBeginning in the 1960s, Frank Meyer, who for many years was an editor of National Review, undertook to unite the two often disparate wings of conservatism\u2014traditionalist and libertarian\u2014by showing how each needs the other.\r\nRonald Reagan was among the most ardent advocates of this view, known as fusionism.\u00a0 In a 1981 address to the Conservative Political Action Conference, President Reagan lauded Meyer\u2019s effort to \u201cfashion[] a vigorous new synthesis of traditional and libertarian thought\u2014a synthesis that is today recognized by many as modern conservatism.\u201d\r\nThe effort to reconcile liberty and tradition was manifest in many of President Reagan\u2019s programs and much of his rhetoric.\u00a0 He taught that it is not the state, but rather families, churches, neighborhoods, and communities that foster the virtues liberty needs to survive.\u00a0 For President Reagan, liberty and tradition were not competitors, but complements.\u00a0 Each needed the other to thrive.\u00a0 This remains true today.\r\nOur current challenge, however, is not merely to unify.\u00a0 We must also present a compelling vision.\u00a0 It is not enough simply to offer a set of policy proposals.\u00a0 We must root our agenda in principles, and explain to the American people why those principles\u2014and the policies that flow from them\u2014offer the best way forward.\r\nConstitutional Conservatism\r\nThe fundamental insight of conservatism lies in the root of the word: conserve.\u00a0 To be a conservative means to appreciate that our established institutions and inherited traditions reflect the accumulated wisdom of those who have come before.\u00a0\r\nAmerican conservatism thus contains an important protective element.\u00a0 It involves a commitment to conserve the principles and institutions that have made our nation so great and so free.\u00a0 As conservatives, we recognize that the Constitution gave us a precious gift\u2014a system of government that is both active and restrained.\u00a0 That has the necessary authority to meet challenges, but contains within its interior structure checks on that same authority.\u00a0 That gives families and communities space to thrive, but is attuned to the imperfections of human nature.\r\nOur commitment to the Constitution leads us to resist programs or ideologies that would cast aside our constitutional principles in favor of novel theories or untested designs.\u00a0 In the 1950s, conservative heroes like Russell Kirk and Whitaker Chambers urged Americans to stand strong against Communism and other collectivist impulses, and to conserve our liberties by restoring traditional faith and morality.\u00a0 More libertarian-minded thinkers such as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman argued passionately against the New Deal as a misguided reordering of the state and federal spheres, as well as an unconstitutional expansion of federal power.\u00a0 They urged a return to more limited government, and argued that reducing federal intrusion into the economy would free up space for individual liberty and innovation to flourish.\r\nSubsequent decades brought new challenges.\u00a0 In the 1970s we faced out-of-control inflation, punitive tax rates, and a Soviet menace.\u00a0 It took a committed conservative like Ronald Reagan to show America that we could return to greatness by returning to our founding principles of limited government, individual freedom, and strong defense.\r\nToday we face different threats, and fresh attempts to depart from our constitutional principles.\u00a0 An enormous expansion of the administrative state is now invading core individual liberties.\u00a0 Already the federal government has assumed authority to force Americans to purchase products they do not want; now it presumes to tell them they must violate deeply held religious beliefs.\u00a0 It continues to issue regulations that stifle our economy, impede innovation, and diminish individual freedom.\u00a0\r\nAs conservatives, we must continue to fight all of these attempts to expand government at the expense of our constitutional ideals.\u00a0 But we must not be defined only by what we are against.\u00a0 We must offer an alternative, affirmative agenda that can capture the public\u2019s attention and demonstrate that we are the party, not of shutdowns, but solutions.\r\nAs we develop this agenda, we must take care always to keep the Constitution as our guide.\u00a0 By so doing, we remain true to the title conservative: we conserve our founding principles, and apply those principles to today\u2019s challenges.\r\nRestoring Political Constitutionalism\r\nLooking to the Constitution as our guide must be an active process, and one that each of us has an independent obligation to undertake.\u00a0 In particular, we cannot simply rely on courts to do the job for us.\u00a0 There is an unfortunate tendency these days to think of the Constitution as the judiciary\u2019s domain, to leave it entirely up to judges to decide whether a law is constitutional.\u00a0\r\nThis tendency to leave things to the courts diminishes the other branches\u2019 role in the constitutional system and misses the many lessons the Constitution has to teach.\u00a0 The judiciary\u2019s role in assessing constitutionality is a narrow one.\u00a0 Judges ask primarily whether a law satisfies some legal rule announced in a previous case.\u00a0 Is the regulated activity commerce?\u00a0 Is the punishment for noncompliance a tax or a penalty?\r\nBut fidelity to the Constitution is about much more than narrow legal reasoning.\u00a0 Honoring the Constitution involves looking to the principles that undergird it\u2014values like individual liberty, respect for civil society, and democratic accountability\u2014in determining whether a given course of action is wise.\u00a0\r\nObamacare provides a ready example.\u00a0 I have said many times that Obamacare is unconstitutional.\u00a0 Notwithstanding the Supreme Court\u2019s contortions, the individual mandate exceeds Congress\u2019s powers under the Constitution.\u00a0 It is not a regulation of interstate commerce, and it is not a tax.\r\nBut those are not the only reasons the law is unconstitutional.\u00a0 In addition to flunking formal legal tests, it violates many of the enduring principles made manifest in the Constitution.\u00a0 It invades liberty by compelling individuals to purchase insurance against their will.\u00a0 It undermines federalism by coercing state governments to expand Medicaid.\u00a0 It dilutes the separation of powers by transferring vast legislative authority to the Executive.\u00a0 And so on.\u00a0\r\nWhether or not a law meets whatever legal tests the Supreme Court has set forth does not end the inquiry for those of us who seek the Constitution as our guide.\u00a0 Instead, we must practice what James Ceaser and others call political constitutionalism: the notion that it \u201cfalls mostly to political actors making political decisions to protect and promote constitutional goals.\u201d[1]\r\nConstitutional Conservatism in Practice\r\nThe Constitution has many lessons to teach about good lawmaking.\u00a0 First, through its various checks and balances, it teaches that unrestrained government is a threat to liberty, and that in order to protect citizens from government\u2019s constant tendency to expand its sphere, government must be restrained from both without and within.\r\nSecond, by providing that all powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the states, the Constitution teaches that states and local communities should be equal partners with the federal government, and that most decisions affecting Americans\u2019 lives should be made at the local level, not by some distant, national bureaucracy.\u00a0\r\nThird, the Constitution teaches that good governance consists in deliberation and considered judgment.\u00a0 By dividing and separating powers among many locus points, the Constitution helps avert sudden lurches in policymaking, even as it enables more modest improvements supported by broad coalitions.\u00a0 It forces rival officeholders to work together, and is designed to prevent any one person or interest from unilaterally making, changing, or eliminating laws.\u00a0\r\nPerhaps most fundamentally, the Constitution teaches the virtue of prudence.\u00a0 Prudence is a habit of mind that should come naturally to conservatives.\u00a0 It restrains us from seeking immediate and complete vindication of a single, abstract principle.\u00a0 Rather, prudence counsels us to work within our existing circumstances to vindicate the enduring principles upon which liberty depends.\u00a0 Prudent lawmakers make experience, not theory, their guide, and recognize that success requires harmonizing competing values.\r\nThe Constitution is an exercise in prudence.\u00a0 It contains within its structure a clash of many competing principles: the democratic, majoritarian House; the deliberative Senate; the unified and energetic Executive; the independent judiciary.\u00a0 There is tension between individual rights and majority will, energy and stability, limited powers and flexibility to act.\u00a0 The Constitution mediates many rival goods.\u00a0 It is founded on compromise.\u00a0 And it institutionalizes prudence as a signal virtue of our Republic.\r\nAs constitutional conservatives, we must remain true to our ideological principles.\u00a0 But we must also recognize that we operate in an imperfect world where we do not control all the levers of power.\u00a0 We cannot simply charge forward hell-bent, blind to present realities.\u00a0 To do so is the very antithesis of conservatism.\u00a0 It would also jeopardize our hopes for success, because in the messy world of politics, adopting an all-or-nothing strategy usually produces only the latter result: nothing.\r\nThose who demand immediate, wholesale change miss this important lesson.\u00a0 Our task as conservatives is to conserve, to retain what works, what is true to our constitutional structure, as we work to correct the excesses of recent decades.\r\nConstitutional Conservatism and the Senate GOP Agenda\r\nSo, what is it we seek to conserve?\u00a0 We seek to preserve cherished liberties that make us a free people and provide each individual with the autonomy to live a life of meaning and dignity.\u00a0 We seek to safeguard free markets and entrepreneurial opportunities that produce economic growth and enable all to share in greater material prosperity.\u00a0 And we seek to revitalize a civil society in which strong families, churches, and charities thrive; where neighbors look out for each other; where those with means help those in need; where individuals can reach their highest potential and communities flourish.\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But in order to conserve this vision of American society, we must advance affirmative reforms.\u00a0 Edmund Burke famously taught that a state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.\u00a0 Conservatives must offer a principled, forward-looking agenda that addresses today\u2019s challenges in a manner that is consistent with enduring constitutional principles and that heeds the Constitution\u2019s many lessons.\u00a0\r\nFor some programs, such as Obamacare, this means repealing the program root and branch and replacing it with one that is both more effective and more in line with limited government and a free society.\u00a0 For other programs that have become more embedded in the fabric of American society, advancing reforms consistent with the cause of constitutionalism will involve more incremental improvements.\u00a0\r\nAdvancing our conservative vision involves limiting and restraining federal overreach that crowds out voluntary institutions and individual initiatives.\u00a0 But it also requires an energetic government directed at promoting policies that enable individual opportunity and encourage civic engagement.\r\nTo work towards a government of this sort, conservatives must set forth a detailed reform agenda.\u00a0 Some have already begun to do so.\u00a0 In the coming weeks and months, I hope to contribute to this effort.\u00a0 For now, I would like to outline five policy areas that I believe should be central to the efforts of a Republican Senate majority.\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Health Care Reform\r\nFirst is health care reform\u2014real health care reform.\u00a0 Obamacare offends core constitutional principles on multiple levels.\u00a0 It restricts liberty by forcing Americans to purchase products they do not want.\u00a0 It offends federalism by invading a field Congress has no authority to enter.\u00a0 It undermines limited government by transferring massive power to federal policymakers.\u00a0 And it undermines democratic accountability by empowering unelected bureaucrats to micromanage virtually every aspect of health care.\r\nAs a consequence, we are already seeing Obamacare displace private initiative.\u00a0 As Jim Capretta notes, \u201cInstead of taking the lead to solve problems and improve care, the major players in the health system\u2014employers, states, providers, and insurers\u2014are now waiting for the latest pronouncements from HHS about what is and is not acceptable under Obamacare.\u201d[2]\u00a0 This is the very type of situation our Constitution was designed to avoid.\u00a0 Instead of promoting innovation and community-based solutions, the federal government is crowding out private actors.\u00a0 It is sapping vitality from our medical profession and quashing opportunities for growth.\u00a0 It\u2019s also massively increasing our debt, threatening to limit the prosperity and freedom of future generations.\r\nRather than simply returning to the conditions that predated Obamacare, we need health reform that facilitates access to care and protects the most vulnerable among us, but that also eschews bureaucratic mandates and profligate spending.\u00a0 We need a market-based solution that government monitors, but does not direct.\r\nEarlier this year, Senators Richard Burr, Tom Coburn, and I offered such a solution.\u00a0 Our plan, the Patient CARE Act, employs market-oriented solutions to cut costs and includes patient-centered reforms to expand coverage.\u00a0 It empowers states to provide coverage and reduce costs; enhances purchasing power through targeted tax credits; strengthens consumers\u2019 ability to choose their own health plans; increases transparency regarding plan costs, quality, and outcomes; and eliminates health-care-related distortions in the tax code.\r\nOur plan achieves many of the same goals as Obamacare\u2014such as expanding coverage and protecting access to care for individuals with preexisting conditions\u2014while ensuring that the federal role in health care remains limited, effective, and respectful of individual consumers.\u00a0 It allows providers to experiment with new types of coverage rather than mandating a one-size-fits-all formula.\u00a0 It keeps costs down by expanding the health care marketplace and empowering consumers to shop around.\u00a0 It incentivizes rather than forces healthy individuals to purchase insurance.\u00a0 And it gives states greater flexibility in how they use Medicaid funds, in keeping with the federal nature of our constitutional system.\r\nObamacare represents a direct assault on many of our most cherished values: individual liberty, prosperity, limited government, federalism.\u00a0 Our alternative avoids all of these problems and represents a real solution to critical health care challenges.\r\nTax Reform\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A second area that demands our attention is tax reform.\u00a0 Our tax code is far too long and complicated for most Americans to comprehend.\u00a0 Its administration alone saps hundreds of billions of dollars each year that could instead be saved or invested.\u00a0 Our current tax system undermines prosperity, discourages entrepreneurship, and gives vast authority to a largely unaccountable IRS.\r\nWe must stop treating the tax code as an instrument for social engineering.\u00a0 Such a strategy is flatly contrary to our constitutional values of liberty and limited government.\u00a0 Instead, we should make every effort to minimize the disruptive impact of our tax burden on growth and opportunity.\r\nSeveral basic principles should guide our efforts.\u00a0 First, reforms should encourage job creation and economic growth by making the tax code more internationally competitive, reducing distortions, eliminating overt obstacles to growth, and lowering both individual and corporate rates.\r\nReforms should also promote simplicity and fairness.\u00a0 The income tax base has become excessively riddled with exemptions, exclusions, deductions, and credits.\u00a0 The amount a person pays in taxes should not depend on the creativity of his or her accountant.\r\nTrue reform must provide permanence and certainty. Temporary, expiring provisions have, over time, significantly inhibited efforts by individuals and businesses to plan responsibly for their future, and any serious solution should remedy this situation.\r\nFinally, tax reform should boost saving and investment.\u00a0 Many aspects of the current code discourage these wealth-building activities.\u00a0 This in turn hinders long-term growth and economic stability.\u00a0 A tax environment that encourages saving and investment will help ensure an improved standard of living for future generations.\r\nAll of these commonsense principles can attract broad support.\u00a0 By streamlining and rationalizing our tax code, we can boost prosperity and encourage the entrepreneurial spirit that has made this nation great.\u00a0 Such reforms would also reign in recent IRS excesses and limit the power of unelected bureaucrats to interfere in our lives and pursuits.\u00a0 By pursuing these reforms, we can make our tax code the province of the people rather than the powerful, while checking government\u2019s continued expansion.\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Regulatory Reform\r\nA third priority is regulatory reform.\u00a0 The federal bureaucracy continues to grow, further inserting itself into nearly every aspect of American life.\u00a0 The annual cost of regulatory compliance now approaches $2 trillion, to say nothing of the billions lost through foregone business opportunities.\u00a0 Under President Obama, the growth of the regulatory state has accelerated at an unprecedented rate.\u00a0 Approximately 80,000 pages of federal regulations are published each year.\u00a0 And there are now more than a million individual restrictions in the Code of Federal Regulations.\r\nCongressman Paul Ryan has spoken eloquently and persuasively about overregulation\u2019s pernicious effects, particularly on the poor.\u00a0 Many federal rules disproportionately burden low-income households, which must \u201ccontribute a larger share of their income to pay for cost increases resulting from these regulations.\u201d[3]\u00a0 Similar economies of scale disproportionately burden small businesses as they struggle to keep up with the reams of red tape rolling out of Washington.\r\nThe scope and power of the modern regulatory state is plainly inconsistent with constitutional limits and the type of society those limits were designed to support.\u00a0 Regulation is now the primary means by which the federal government burdens our economy, encroaches on our liberties, and crowds out civil society\u2014all without meaningful accountability to the people or their elected representatives.\u00a0 Government is not supposed to be a barrier to prosperity and growth, but an enabler.\u00a0 It is supposed to help lift up, not hold back.\r\nThe current administrative state demands reform.\u00a0 But our efforts must be prudent\u2014carefully calibrated to deliver relief without sacrificing essential health and safety protections.\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 To begin with, we must ensure that all federal agencies follow existing statutes and executive orders, including the requirement to perform meaningful cost-benefit analysis to ensure that new rules do more good than harm.\u00a0\r\nSimilarly, we must not allow outdated, outmoded regulations simply to pile up.\u00a0 This principle\u2014endorsed by every President since Jimmy Carter\u2014has seen much lip service over the years but little action.\u00a0 What we need now is an effective review mechanism to identify outdated regulations still on the books and provide for their revision or repeal.\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We must also ensure that courts are not used to manipulate the regulatory process.\u00a0 We can do this by limiting standing in citizen suits to those parties actually affected by the challenged regulation.\u00a0 This will help prevent special-interest groups from using litigation to accomplish what they cannot do through the ballot box.\u00a0\r\nFinally, we should consider ways to increase judicial oversight of agency action in order to provide a more robust independent check on new regulation.\u00a0 Two ways to do this would be to require agencies to satisfy a heightened standard under the Administrative Procedure Act, and to rein in the enormous deference courts currently give agency interpretations of law.\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 These reforms offer meaningful ways to reduce unjustified, burdensome, outdated, and duplicative regulations.\u00a0 They will protect our economy, our liberty, and our right to democratically accountable government, while simultaneously ensuring legitimate standards for health and safety.\u00a0 They are precisely the sort of prudent, incremental reforms that the Constitution counsels us to seek.\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Innovation Agenda\r\nA fourth area of focus should be implementing an innovation agenda.\u00a0 Innovation increasingly drives employment and economic growth across the nation and around the globe.\u00a0 In most communities, high-tech job growth is consistently faster than in other sectors.\u00a0 In fact, demand for high-tech jobs is expected to surpass demand for jobs generally through at least 2020.\r\nOur constitutional values teach that the federal government has an important role to play in helping to foster entrepreneurship and economic growth.\u00a0 But that role is not one of heavy-handed regulator.\u00a0 Rather, government\u2019s proper role is to act as a facilitator, fostering an environment that encourages the research and development that will drive our prosperity and quality of life in the decades to come.\r\nNow is the time to combat abusive patent litigation and to create a harmonized, uniform system for protecting trade secrets.\u00a0 Bipartisan legislation in these areas is already written and should be a top priority in the next Congress.\u00a0\r\nWe should also consider ways to create a voluntary framework for combating online piracy and for protecting critical infrastructure through public-private information sharing.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\r\nEqually important is equipping our workforce for the new economy.\u00a0 We can do this by investing in STEM training, and by revamping our immigration laws to ease the entry process for high-skilled workers.\u00a0 Many countries, such as Canada, structure their immigration laws to favor such workers, and it is far past time we followed suit.\r\nKeeping the internet open and competitive must also be a priority.\u00a0 We should encourage continued deployment of broadband networks and mobile services and ease the process of expanding wireless spectrum.\u00a0\r\nAs a general matter, we must resist the urge to regulate what is working well according to market forces.\u00a0 Net neutrality is a terrible idea whose time has not, and never should, come.\u00a0 The last thing we need is government telling ISPs how to carve up bandwidth.\u00a0 Keep the internet free and it will continue to drive our economy forward.\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Fostering innovation in these ways will strengthen our economy while keeping government in its proper constitutional role\u2014as a helpful partner, not an all-present planner.\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Mobility Agenda\r\nA fifth priority should be developing and refining a mobility agenda.\u00a0 For 50 years we\u2019ve been fighting a war on poverty.\u00a0 For 50 years we\u2019ve spent trillions of dollars on massive federal welfare programs that have largely failed.\u00a0 The poverty rate has remained essentially unchanged since 1967, and increasing numbers of Americans worry\u2014with some cause\u2014that their children won\u2019t have the same opportunities to get ahead that they did.\r\nThis is a grave problem.\u00a0 Our constitutional system is predicated on the idea of a free and prosperous citizenry.\u00a0 When people remain mired in poverty generation after generation, they may lose faith in the value of hard work, and turn instead to government as the answer to all their problems.\u00a0 This in turn sets up a conflict between the desire for security and the ideal of limited government.\u00a0 Citizens who feel abandoned or left behind may\u2014understandably\u2014be more willing to sacrifice some of their rights and liberties if they believe doing so will save them from economic extremity.\u00a0\r\nOne of government\u2019s legitimate obligations is to create conditions for broadly shared prosperity.\u00a0 For our constitutional system to thrive, we need citizens who believe both in the government and in themselves.\u00a0 Simply throwing more money at failed programs does not do this.\u00a0 Nor does it foster social cooperation.\u00a0 Quite the opposite.\u00a0\r\nI believe government does have an obligation to help struggling citizens, to remove obstacles and create ladders of opportunity to success.\u00a0 What we need today is a concerted effort at serious reform.\u00a0 Bright young leaders in our party from Congressman Ryan to Senator Marco Rubio have developed innovative proposals to expand opportunity and reinvent the safety net.\u00a0\r\nThese proposals highlight the need for adaptability and accountability in our income mobility efforts.\u00a0 In my home state of Utah, such an approach to HUD monies has helped more low-income families find stable housing while reducing federal handouts.\u00a0\r\nLet me offer two additional thoughts on reforms that can help keep the American Dream alive throughout society.\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 First, we must reform our antiquated labor laws to make hiring easier and to enable employees to change jobs more easily in the new economy.\u00a0 We need standards that incorporate part-time work, flextime arrangements for working parents, and alternative methods of compensation.\u00a0 Individuals should have the freedom to negotiate the terms of their work, and federal rules ought not punish law-abiding employers seeking to create win-win situations for families and productivity.\u00a0 And it is past time that we reformed our labor laws to ensure that the rights of workers\u2014not labor unions\u2014come first.\u00a0\r\nSecond, education\u2014the gateway to opportunity in our society.\u00a0 The seeds of reform\u2014from school choice to teacher accountability\u2014are beginning to take hold in states and localities. We must make the Department of Education a facilitator of such reform, rather than an overlord.\u00a0 The federal role should be to assist state efforts through cooperative programs and increased flexibility, not top-down directives.\u00a0 The Department should serve primarily as a clearinghouse for education research and as a means to disseminate best practices to states.\u00a0 Experience shows that education decisions tailored to local needs are better for children than one-size-fits-all nationwide decrees.\r\nAnd rather than simply continuing to subsidize the ever-growing cost of higher education, we must incentivize institutions to reduce costs, which they can do by eliminating unnecessary administrative activities or implementing competency-based programs for students who already possess skills and experience in their chosen field.\r\nSummary\r\nAll of these proposals aim to improve our nation\u2019s well-being while taking account of the Constitution\u2019s lessons.\u00a0 They offer incremental reform rather than wholesale revision.\u00a0 They seek to preserve the proper role of the states rather than impose top-down, conform-or-else mandates.\u00a0 They recognize the threat of overbroad government power.\u00a0 And they take account of current political realities.\r\nProposals and principles like these also offer opportunities to unite the various strands of conservatism by focusing on improving economic well-being and restraining government to its proper role.\u00a0 Every conservative can support efforts to get government out of health care and reduce related infringements on religious liberty.\u00a0 We can all get behind efforts to reduce taxes and streamline regulations to promote real growth and opportunity.\u00a0 And conservatives of all stripes can champion efforts to foster innovation and move people from poverty to opportunity in ways that do not swell our already bloated federal bureaucracy.\r\nConstitutional Conservatism and the GOP Vision for America\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I am confident that such policies can win broad support.\u00a0 In the coming weeks and months, I will say more about each of these principles and proposals.\u00a0 But as we appeal to the American people, we must not confine ourselves to reciting a set of policy bullet points.\u00a0 We must also sketch out our vision for America and show how constitutional conservatism can lead us to a richer, more robust society.\u00a0\r\nToday, as we see the federal leviathan reaching its jaws around many of our most cherished institutions, we need an invigorated conservatism that will return the federal government to its proper role in our constitutional structure.\u00a0\r\nA federal government that stops trying to eliminate all the vicissitudes of life will allow more room for family, neighbors, and churches to care for each other.\u00a0 A federal government with narrower, politically accountable regulatory authority is far less likely to order individuals to violate their deeply held beliefs.\u00a0 It also has less capacity to issue mandates that inhibit innovation and economic growth.\u00a0 Such a government will not insinuate itself into all aspects of our lives in ways that enervate our civic institutions and undermine our ability as individuals to choose freely how to live.\r\nConstitutional conservatism is about much more than lowering taxes or eliminating waste, though reducing the size of government does both those things.\u00a0 It\u2019s about returning government to its rightful role in our society.\u00a0\r\nYou may recall the Life of Julia ad from President Obama\u2019s reelection campaign, which tells the story of a young woman who graduates college, has a child, and works until retirement, all with nary a mention of a mother, father, brother, sister, husband, or other family member.\u00a0 Instead, Julia owes all her successes and opportunities in life to the federal government, which is there to support her every step along the way.\u00a0 The ad is a perfect distillation of the ultimate end of the progressive state\u2014government as replacement for family and community, God and priest, mentor and friend.\u00a0 That is not the government our nation\u2019s founders envisioned, nor the one they created.\r\nGovernment\u2019s role is not to provide universal social and economic support, but rather to create opportunities and remove obstacles.\u00a0 A vigorous, dynamic constitutional conservatism will return government to its proper role\u2014that of supporter, not director.\u00a0 As Ronald Reagan said in his First Inaugural, we must make government \u201cwork\u2014work with us, not over us;\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. stand by our side, not ride on our back.\u00a0 Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.\u201d\r\nThat is the vision I believe Republicans must offer.\u00a0 By keeping the Constitution as our guide and working to conserve our founding principles, we can offer a hopeful, reform-oriented agenda that will unite the conservative movement and win the hearts and minds of a broad majority of Americans looking for change.\r\nThank you.", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.hatch.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/releases?ContentRecord_id=49248332-9172-4eeb-b12e-7dbaf51ef9db"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.8055979162454605, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}