Mario Cuomo in Reason to Believe
On Principles & Values:
Laissez-faire replaced by pooled common resources
The soul of America has developed in two phases: the first, 150 years during which our staunch individualism was reflected in our laissez-faire government, and the second, the last six decades during which we created a modern America by learning to use
our common resources more intelligently. With what seems a sudden spasm, America has been shoved onto a new political course that heads us backward toward our nation’s first century. In the 1990s, we’ve watched a new syndrome develop: an economy that
is very good for investors but punishing to our workers with moderate or low skills.In our second century as a nation, we began to pool our resources, through government, to cushion ourselves against the unavoidable perils of the free market.
We improved our living standards and working conditions, provided services that benefit and strengthen us, and protected and nurtured our most vulnerable members. In doing so, we amplified our potential for greatness.
Source: Reason to Believe, by Mario Cuomo, p. 7-8 & 17
Jul 2, 1995
On Principles & Values:
GOP Contract With America philosophizes a “New Harshness”
The Contract With America espouses a new political philosophy that ignores many of the nation’s real needs and real potential, makes negativism an operating principle, and celebrates punishment as the instrument for restoring civility. This New Harshness
is a philosophy that takes pleasure in “tough-minded” phrases like “There’s no such thing as a free lunch”-and can even justify a certain hard-nosed pride in proposing no lunch at all for some people.Republicans claim that the social safety net
woven during the New Deal and the Great Society has become a “hammock”-fostering the image of lazy poor folk lolling about while the rest of America sweats.
[My main criticism] of the Contract is: it demands no more of our political leaders than that
they set sail in whatever direction the political winds seem to be blowing. The Contract essentially abdicates any responsibility for genuine political foresight, offering us instead the top ten popular complaints and top ten appealing home remedies.
Source: Reason to Believe, by Mario Cuomo, p. 9-10 & 39
Jul 2, 1995
On Principles & Values:
Underlying principle: We’re all in this together
To deal effectively with our problems we must understand, accept, and apply one fundamental, indispensable proposition. It is the ancient truth that drove primitive people together to ward off their enemies and wild beasts, to find food and shelter,
to raise their children in safety, and eventually to raise up a civilization. Now, in this ever more complex world, we need to accept and apply this basic truth: that we’re all in this together, like a family, interconnected and interdependent, and that
we cannot afford to revert to a world of “us against them.” It is the one great idea that is indispensable to realizing our full potential as a people. It is also the ancient wisdom. The Hebrew sages told the Jews that their role in life is to repair
the entire universe: tikkun olam. Christians are taught that their task is to complete God’s work in the world, that we are all, no matter how small, “collaborators in creation.”
Source: Reason to Believe, by Mario Cuomo, p. 11-12 & 81
Jul 2, 1995
On Education:
Smaller classes, more teachers & class time & resources
The kind of commitment our public schools need requires that we work toward four goals:- Smaller classes. Compared to their counterparts at private institutions, teachers in our public schools are asked to handle up to twice as many students at a
time.
- The best possible teachers. [We need] intelligent ideas that would make it less cumbersome for new teachers to get certified and would expose existing staff to rigorous ongoing training and evaluation.
- A longer school day and school year.
While the US breezes along with a 19th-century 180-day school calendar designed to free up the kids in the summer to work on the family farm, the Germans send their children to school for 220 days, the Japanese for 240.
- Decent school facilities.
American public education is really composed of two systems-an excellent one that serves the children of the already comfortable and a wretched one that barely serves the rest. [We need especially to repair] our schools’ physical facilities.
Source: Reason to Believe, by Mario Cuomo, p.107-8
Jul 2, 1995
On Technology:
Invest in & regulate infrastructure, both hi-tech & lo-tech
like harbors & airports that encourage trade & tourism. In some cases we need to focus on direct government investment and control. Public service commissions made sure that rural areas were wired for phone service, whether or not it seemed economically
appealing to the phone company. In the same way, it will take both direct government investment and thoughtful regulation to make sure that everyone in our society has at least minimal access to computer technology and advanced telecommunications.
Source: Reason to Believe, by Mario Cuomo, p.116-17
Jul 2, 1995
On Welfare & Poverty:
Support workfare, enforce child support, state flexibility
Let’s correct the things wrong with the current welfare system. Here are a few ideas and guiding principles:- We should encourage states across the country to build on the most promising reforms already at work in places like New York, Maryland,
and Colorado.
- Pass tough laws to hold absent parents responsible for child support.
- Make work a requirement for receiving benefits.
- provide skills training and child care so recipients can get and keep outside jobs.
- Remove the perverse
incentives. Perhaps the most important factor in the success of the CAP program in New York was that we eliminated the rule that said to welfare recipients, “For every dollar you earn in the marketplace, expect to lose a dollar in benefits.”
- Continue
to give the states flexibility to experiment with sensible new reforms.
- Establish federal safeguards to protect the poor from the possibility of cutting contests between the states.
- Use every means we have to fight fraud, abuse, and waste.
Source: Reason to Believe, by Mario Cuomo, p.137-38
Jul 2, 1995
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