Insist on an Open Government

Grover G. Norquist is president of Americans for Tax Reform. Here is his advice for President-Elect Obama.

From Reader's Digest

Read more memos to President-Elect Barack Obama.

As the 44th president of the United States, you should work to make American government open government. A movement began in Texas in 2006 where the governor and state comptroller put all government spending online with a proper search engine. The governor of Indiana posts the entire language of all state contracts. Washington should do the same and you should insist on this level of transparency from any entity that receives government funding: states, counties, NGOs, and frankly any foreign government or entity that receives foreign aid.

Transparency should extend to all government-sponsored research. It should be open for all Americans, not just "peer reviewed" by a few experts.The science that tells us if global warming is real or not should be open for all to examine.

All federal legislation should be available for examination on the Internet for five working days before Congress can vote on it. If the legislation is amended, the five day cooling-off period starts again.

Every earmark should have a House member and Senator’s name attached to it—and those politicians and their spouses, children, and staffers should be permanently barred from ever going to work for that entity.

Every 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(4) that takes money from the government should also be completely transparent. All their books should be open.

It has been more that a decade since President Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996—welfare reform. It's time for a president to propose Welfare Reform Two. Let's take the 85 welfare programs that provide housing, job training, funding and health care to low-income Americans and consolidate them into a block grant program to the states. You should propose legislation making all government pensions equivalent to Defined Contribution pensions like a 40l(k) account so there will be no unfunded liabilities for civilian or military pensions. Every federal worker could change jobs without penalty and he or she would own their own retirement savings.

America's children cannot wait. It is past time to allow full parental choice in education. Every child should attend the school his parents pick, not the one the bureaucracy assigns him to. Your administration should push Congress to require states and school districts that want federal education dollars to comply with this policy.

Use the bully pulpit to make it a national policy that every American child without parents be adopted in your first year in office. Give a nationally televised speech and challenge every church, synagogue, or mosque in this nation to have its members choose one child to get adopted in 2009. We would set an example for the world as well. Also, set as a priority of your foreign policy that our trading partners and allies open up their adoption processes.We have millions of couples wanting to adopt—and too many orphans in the world.

Finally, let's work on an anti-nepotism constitutional amendment to prohibit any elected or appointed official from being followed into office by a family member or a spouse. Kings and aristocracy were supposedly left behind in Europe. Let's not bring family dynasties back to life.

From Reader's Digest - January 2009

• Barack Obama
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