2004 Texas

Democratic Party Platform

2004 Texas

Republican Party Platform

EDUCATION

The Texas Democratic Party:

• Opposes private school vouchers because vouchers would drain resources essential to guarantee a quality public education for all our children.
• Supports raising teacher pay to at least the national average (currently over $5,000 below national average), to help recruit and retrain teachers.
• Opposes Republican efforts to lower teacher certification standards and eliminate class size limits, the minimum salary schedule, and planning and preparation time.
• Supports guaranteeing  every child the educational resources, programs, and services necessary to succeed.
• Supports raising teacher pay and protect and enhance a quality state paid health insurance program for every educational employee.
• Supports improving our accountability system by relying on a more complete assessment than just one standardized test score.
• Opposes efforts by right-wing extremists to censor textbooks. 
• Supports restoration of the funding cut in 2003, so that University tuition and fees may be rolled back to affordable levels.
• Supports retention of the law assuring admission for students graduating in the top 10% at state universities, which provides opportunities for rural students.

EDUCATION

The Texas Republican Party:

• Supports school vouchers that would divert tax dollars allocated for public schools to private, religious, or home schooling.
• Claims there is no funding crisis in Texas schools, but that problems are due to wasteful spending by teachers & administrators.
• Supports a constitutional amendment prohibiting state or federal regulation of private schools.
• Supports censorship of textbooks and the use of books & materials that are not on the state-approved list.
• Supports promoting school subjects with an emphasis on Judeo-Christian principles
• Supports the abolition of the United States Department of Education.
• Is against parental input regarding the administration of corporal punishment and supports current laws prohibiting parental challenges to improper discipline in court.
• Supports amending the United States Constitution that supports school-sponsored prayer in public schools. 
• Opposes the top10% admission law that provides opportunity for rural and urban students. 

ENVIRONMENT

The Texas Democratic Party:

• Supports the preservation of the public health, economic viability, and the quality of our environment for future generations. 
• Supports policies resulting in smarter and cheaper pollution reductions, using choice and markets where appropriate.
• Supports the Clean Air Act
• Supports the repeal of S.B. 1265, the Criminal Polluters Protection Act, signed into law by Governor Perry, which severely interferes with the ability of local officials to prosecute criminals that poison our air and water. 
• Supports requiring polluters to pay for the cleanup of abandoned toxic waste sites rather than impose the costs on the taxpayers (as the Republicans have legislated).
• Supports eliminating the “volume discount” for big polluters. 
• Opposes the establishment of nuclear waste sites in Texas that will line the pockets of big business and saddle our state with large future liabilities. 

ENVIRONMENT

The Texas Republican Party:

• Believes the environment is best served by individuals working in their own best interest.
• Supports the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency.

We Republicans Oppose:  

• The theory of global warming and the Kyoto Agreement.
• The acquisition of Texas land by conservancy groups and government agencies.
• The Endangered Species Act

CHOICE

The Texas Democratic Party:

• Trusts the women of Texas to make their own decisions about personal matters such as when and whether to bear children. We believe that no government, no politician, and no bureaucrat should interfere in an individual's private and personal decisions. 
• Supports comprehensive, responsible, age appropriate sexuality education with an abstinence-based component to replace taxpayer-funded abstinence only education programs initiated by Republicans, that have proven ineffective in delaying sexual activity and preventing sexually transmitted diseases and unintended pregnancies. 

CHOICE

The Texas Republican Party:

• Opposes choice even in cases of rape, incest, and danger to the mother's life. Supports the reversal of Roe v. Wade.
• Supports of the appointment of judges at all levels of the judiciary who respect traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life.
• Supports repeal of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances law.
• Supports the appointment of right-wing activist judges.

HUMAN RIGHTS

The Texas Democratic Party pledges to:

• Fight discrimination based on race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnic or national origin, disability, socioeconomic status, color, creed or age. This protection extends to the ability to contract, work, vote, serve in the military, obtain an education or engage in all other legal pursuits of happiness.
• Enforce laws prohibiting sexual harassment.
• Support strong enforcement of Texas’ Hate Crimes Act. 

HUMAN RIGHTS

The Texas Republican Party:

·    Believes homosexual behavior is contrary to the fundamental, unchanging truths that have been ordained by God.

·    Opposes any granting of legal entitlements, recognition, or privileges including, but not limited to, marriage between persons of the same sex, custody or adoption of children, spousal (partner) insurance or retirement benefits.

·    Opposes custody of natural children by homosexual parents.

·    Opposes adoption of unwanted children by homosexual individuals. 

·     Opposes and seeks repeal of the Texas Hate Crimes Act. 

HEALTH CARE

The Texas Democratic Party:

• Support a Patient's Bill of Rights to ensure that Texas families have a right to choose the doctor they want for the care they need. We believe that medical decisions must be made by medical doctors, not insurance company accountants. Families have the right to know all of their medical options, not just the cheapest.
• Support public and private partnerships to provide access to affordable health insurance for the 1.3 million uninsured children in Texas.
• We support implementation of the Texas Healthy Kids Corporation Program and encourage the utilization of all federal funds available through the Children's Health Insurance Program to improve health care for Texas children.

HEALTH CARE

The Texas Republican Party:

• Believes that health care is not primarily a concern of federal government
• Supports abolition of the Health and Human Services agency, and the position of Surgeon General.
• Opposes state funding and oversight of a health insurance program for public school employees.
• Urges the Texas Legislature to repeal the Texas Healthy Kids Corporation.

ADA

The Texas Democratic Party:

·                     Supports choices that promote full and productive lives and initiatives affording equal opportunities to the physically, developmentally and mentally disabled or impaired.

·                     Supports the Americans with Disabilities Act.

ADA

The Texas Republican Party:

·                     Supports amendment of the Americans with Disabilities Act to exclude from its definition those persons with infectious diseases, substance addiction, learning disabilities, and behavior disorders and thereby reducing abuse of the Act.

ECONOMY & MINIMUM WAGE

The Texas Democratic Party:

·    Supports trade policies that consider Texas’ interest in generating jobs, affording dignity to working people, and protecting the environment.

·    Opposes policies that encourage American companies to seek offshore tax shelters and outsource American jobs at the expense of hard-working Americans.

·    Opposes Republican's trade policy that promotes and celebrates the “off-shoring” or “outsourcing” of skilled jobs at the expense of highly trained American workers.

·    Supports health care programs that make it affordable for small business to provide health insurance for their employees.

·    Supports a preference for American and Texas products and local markets, and protection for local wage standards in government contracts. 

·    Supports the guarantee of overtime pay now under assault by Republican efforts to weaken federal overtime pay protection.

·    Supports competition and accountability in state government, but opposes wholesale privatization schemes.

·    Supports the rights of all employees, public and private, to organize, collect dues, designate their income voluntarily to organizations and agencies of their choosing, and to negotiate collectively with their employers through representation of their choice.

·    Opposes the improper use of “no bid” contracts and supports diligent enforcement of fair bidding procedures to provide the best overall value for all government contracts for goods and services. 

·     Supports a meaningful increase in the federal minimum wage, to at least $7 per hour, aimed at giving full-time workers the ability to live dignified lives.

ECONOMY & MINIMUM WAGE

The Texas Republican Party:

·    Opposes the federal minimum wage law and supports its repeal.

·    Believes wages should be determined by free market conditions.

·    Supports the abolishment of the Internal Revenue Service.

·    Supports the abolishment of the Sixteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States (giving the federal government the right to levy taxes).

·    Supports the implementation of a national sales tax, but opposes any sales tax on any kind of necessities of life.

·    Supports the repeal of the Texas Franchise Tax.

·    Supports abolishment of property taxes. 

·    Opposes unions (supports the so-called "Texas Right-to-Work Law") and supports a Constitutional Amendment incorporating the law.

·    Opposes the Prevailing Wage Law and urges its repeal.

·    Opposes any efforts to make Workers’ Compensation mandatory for all Texas employers.

·    Supports tort reform with regard to asbestos, permitting an individual to pursue a legal claim only if and when that person meets objective medical criteria, demonstrating impairment caused by that exposure.

·    Believes that Congress should make permanent the recent tax reductions which are scheduled to expire in 2004.

·    Supports privatization of most government services.

·    Supports abolishing:  Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the position of the Surgeon General, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Departments of Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Department of Education, The Department of Commerce, the Department of Labor, and any other federal agency not specifically delineated in the Constitution (e.g, Homeland Security, CIA, FBI). 

SOCIAL SECURITY

The Texas Democratic Party:

• Believes we must keep the promise of Social Security strong and certain for those who have worked and contributed to the system all their lives.
• Believes Social Security should continue to be the foundation for working American’s income security.
• Believes private savings accounts and other pension programs should be additions to the guaranteed Social Security benefit, not a substitute for any portion of it.
• Opposes Republican federal budget plans that spend down and undermine the Social Security Trust Fund, including proposals to carve out private savings accounts, which would drain trillions of dollars and threaten the Social Security program itself.
• Opposes and supports the repeal of the “Government pension offset and windfall elimination provisions” which reduce Social Security benefits for teachers, police officers, firefighters, and others who receive public pensions. 

SOCIAL SECURITY

The Texas Republican Party:

• Supports an orderly transition to a system of private pensions based on the concept of individual retirement accounts.
• Supports gradually phasing out Social Security.
• Supports individual Americans being allowed to purchase directly, and hold Treasury obligations, personally managed investment accounts, and tax free equities.
• Believes that Social Security funds should not be co-mingled or spent with general revenues or invested in private or public corporate stock. 

IMMIGRATION

The Texas Democratic Party:

·   Believes that the United States has been and should always be the land of opportunity.

·   Supports enforcement of current immigration laws. 

IMMIGRATION

The Texas Republican Party:

• Supports returning immigration quotas to traditional levels in practice prior to 1965 of 300,000 per year or less.

ACCESS TO COURTS

The Texas Democratic Party:

• Supports open access to the court system for the weak as well as the powerful, including the right to fair and impartial jury trials and respect by the courts for jury verdicts.

ACCESS TO COURTS

The Texas Republican Party:

• Strongly supports continuation of comprehensive tort reform.
• Supports loser pay for frivolous lawsuits.

CHILDREN

The Texas Democratic Party:

·    Believes domestic violence threatens the health and safety of too many Texas families.

·    Supports programs, education and centers for battered women and children; Enhancement of adequate protective services for the victims of child, spousal, adult and elder abuse, and

·    Supports expansion of sexual assault crisis centers to the unserved and underserved areas of the state.

·    Supports strong child support enforcement through increased field staffing, complemented by workforce development and programs that help low-income, non-custodial parents take responsibility for their children’s needs.

·    Supports an increase in the federal child tax credit. 

CHILDREN

The Texas Republican Party:

• Believes the Texas Legislature should rescind no-fault divorce laws.
• Opposes local, state, and federal laws, regulations and policies that limit such rights of parents to rearing and discipline children
• Supports corporal punishment and encourages the legislature to strengthen existing immunity laws wherever possible, respecting corporal punishment.

DEMOCRACY

The Texas Democratic Party:

• Supports the Voting Rights Act.
• Supports a requirement that electronic voting systems deploy a voter verifiable paper printout to ensure our votes are counted, and can be accurately recounted.
• Supports the Help America Vote Act and revisions to the Act that will prevent the all-too frequent practice of purging qualified voters from registered voting lists.
• Supports protections to prevent the abuse of the legislative process … in redistricting efforts that place partisan considerations above all legitimate redistricting principles.
• Supports funding of voter education programs that promote voter participation in Texas. 

DEMOCRACY

The Texas Republican Party:

• Supports a republican (representative) form of government
• Opposes any effort to attempt to introduce direct democracy (initiative & referendum)
• Opposes mobile voting
• Opposes and supports the repeal of the Help American Vote Act