Read some of the comments left at the end of a Fox News story about Fred Thompson. Made me want to go back and review the Republican criticisms of the state of American domestic policy in 1964. Quite a few words, but I think some might find themselves reading on:
Failures at Home
Inability to Create Jobs
This Administration has failed to honor its pledges to assure good jobs, full prosperity and a rapidly growing economy for all the American people:
—failing to reduce unemployment to four percent, falling far short of its announced goal every single month of its tenure in office; and
—despite glowing promises, allowing a disheartening increase in long-term and youth unemployment.
This Administration has failed to apply Republican-initiated retraining programs where most needed particularly where they could afford new economic opportunities to Negro citizens. It has preferred, instead, divisive political proposals.
It has demonstrated its inability to measure up to the challenge of automation which, wisely guided, will enrich the lives of all people. Administration approaches have been negative and unproductive, as for example the proposed penalties upon the use of overtime. Such penalties would serve only to spread existing unemployment and injure those who create jobs.
It has failed to perform its responsibility under Republican amendments to the Manpower Training Act. It has neglected, for example, the basic requirement of developing a dictionary of labor skills which are locally, regionally and nationally in short supply, even though many thousands of jobs are unfilled today for lack of qualified applicants.
Failing the Poor
This Administration has refused to take practical free enterprise measures to help the poor. Under the last Republican Administration, the percentage of poor in the country dropped encouragingly from 28% to 21%. By contrast, the present Administration, despite a massive increase in the Federal bureaucracy, has managed a mere two percentage point reduction.
This Administration has proposed a so-called war on poverty which characteristically overlaps, and often contradicts, the 42 existing Federal poverty programs. It would dangerously centralize Federal controls and bypass effective state, local and private programs.
It has demonstrated little concern for the acute problems created for the poor by inflation. Consumer prices have increased in the past three and a half years by almost 5%, amounting in effect to a 5% national sales tax on the purchases of a family living on fixed income.
Under housing and urban renewal programs, notably in the Nation's Capital, it has created new slums by forcing the poor from their homes to make room for luxury apartments, while neglecting the vital need for adequate relocation assistance.
Retarding Enterprises
This Administration has violently thrust Federal power into the free market in such areas as steel prices, thus establishing precedents which in future years could critically wound free enterprise in the United States.
It has so discouraged private enterprise that the annual increase in the number of businesses has plummeted from the Republican level of 70,000 a year to 47,000 a year.
It has allowed the rate of business failures to rise higher under its leadership than in any period since depression days.
It has aggravated the problems of small business by multiplying Federal record-keeping requirements and has hurt thousands of small businessmen by forcing up their costs.
This Administration has curtailed, through such agencies as the National Labor Relations Board, the simple, basic right of Americans voluntarily to go into or to go out of business.
It has failed to stimulate new housing and attract more private capital into the field. In the past three years it has fallen short by 1,500,000 units of meeting its pledge of 2,000,000 new homes each year.
It has sought to weaken the patent system which is so largely responsible for America's progress in technology, medicine and science.
It has required private electric power companies to submit to unreasonable Federal controls as a condition to the utilization of rights-of-way over public lands. It has sought to advance, without Congressional authorization, a vastly expensive nationwide electrical transmission grid.
Betrayal of the Farmer
This Administration has refused, incredibly, to honor the clear mandate of American wheat farmers, in the largest farm referendum ever held, to free them of rigid Federal controls and to restore their birthright to make their own management decisions.
It has strangled the Republican rural development program with red tape and neglected its most essential ingredient, local initiative.
It has broken its major promises to farm people, dropping the parity ratio to its lowest level since 1939. It has dumped surplus stocks so as to lower farm income and increase the vicious cost-price squeeze on the farmer.
It has evidenced hostility toward American livestock producers by proposals to establish mandatory marketing quotas on all livestock, to fine and imprison dairy farmers failing to maintain Federally-acceptable records, and to establish a subsidized grazing cropland conversion program. It has allowed imports of beef and other meat products to rise to an all-time high during a slump in cattle prices which was aggravated by government grain sales.
Neglect of Natural Resources
This Administration has delayed the expeditious handling of oil shale patent applications and the early development of a domestic oil shale industry. It has allowed the deterioration of the domestic mining and petroleum industries including displacement of domestic markets by foreign imports. It has failed to protect the American fishing industry and has retreated from policies providing equitable sharing of international fishing grounds.
Fiscal Irresponsibility
This Administration has misled the American people by such budget manipulations as crowding spending into the previous fiscal year, presenting a proposal to sell off $2.3 billion in government assets as a cot in spending, and using bookkeeping devices to make expenditures seem smaller than they actually are.
It has, despite pledges of economy, burdened this nation with four unbalanced budgets in a row, creating deficits totaling $26 billion, with still more debt to come, reflecting a rate of sustained deficit spending unmatched in peacetime.
It has failed to establish sensible priorities for Federal fluids. In consequence, it has undertaken needlessly expensive crash programs, as for example accelerating a trip to the moon, to the neglect of other critical needs such as research into health and the increasingly serious problems of air and water pollution and urban crowding.
This Administration has continued to endanger retirement under Social Security for millions of citizens; it has attempted to overload the System with costly, unrelated programs which ignore the dangers of overly regressive taxation and the unfairness of forcing the poor to finance such programs for the rich.
It has demanded the elimination of a substantial portion of personal income tax deductions for charitable and church contributions, for real property taxes paid by home owners, and for interest payments. The elimination of these deductions would impose great hardship upon millions of our citizens and discourage the growth of some of the finest organizations in America.
This Administration has impeded investigations of suspected wrongdoing which might implicate public officials in the highest offices in the land. It has thus aroused justifiable resentment against those who use the high road of public service as the low road to illicitly acquired wealth.
It has permitted the quality and morale of the postal system to deteriorate and drastically restricted its services. It has made the Post Office almost inaccessible to millions of working people, reduced the once admired Parcel Post System to a national laughing stock—and yet it is intimated that Americans may soon have to pay 8ў for a first-class postage stamp.
It has resisted personal income tax credits for education, always preferring the route leading to Federal control over our schools. Some leading Democrats have even campaigned politically in favor of such tax credits while voting against them in Congress.
Contrary to the intent of the Manpower Training Act, it has sought to extend Department of Labor influence over vocational education.
