As black conservatives dedicated to rebuilding our neighborhoods and our country, we have come together to call on our government not to do more, but less. While we do not believe the government is an enemy of the citizenry, we know it is not our friend. We do not claim to have some grand new solutions to this nation's problems, but after thirty years of failed social experiments, we know the federal government does not either.

In our endeavors to make this a better country, we have discovered our limits. These limits have been imposed on us by an overreaching government that has refused to recognize that it also has limits. What many of us have echoed in our homes and communities we are now ready to tell the nation: Washington D.C. is not the answer to our problems, it is one of the problems. But we are not taking the path of some of our conservative predecessors by pretending the government does not exist. We will not avoid it any longer.

In the past few years, we have taken measures to help the community service organizations that have strived to offer alternative solutions to government programs. To make these alternatives a reality, black conservatives have been developing ways to restore to Americans the freedom they need to solve their problems. Through political think tanks, political action committees, magazines, and newsletters, we have tried to convince Washington to give the private sector a chance, because that is the best way black Americans will have a chance to prosper spiritually and monetarily. In Black America 1996: A Time For Renewal, we offer example after example of different organizations and coalitions that are trying to make a difference without relying on government.

If people and communities are going to start solving their own problems, then government needs to:

• Reduce Taxes on the American Family. Currently, the average family's expenditures for federal, state, and local taxes now are higher than what it spends for food, clothing, and housing combined. In 1950, the average family with children paid 2% of its annual income to the federal government in taxes. Today, the average family pays 24.5% in federal taxes alone.

   

  These high taxation rates have not only emptied the pockets of many families, but also driven unwilling parents out of the home. A 1988 USA Today poll found that 73% of two-income families would prefer to have one of the parents stay home if they could afford it, despite the fact that over 60% of married mothers with children under six years of age work outside the home.

   

  In 1948, the per-child federal tax credit accounted for 42% of an average family's income. Today, it is worth only 12%. We believe a $500 per-child tax credit is a good first start to providing tax relief, especially to the 4.7 million working families at the lowest income levels that will no longer be required to pay taxes. A reduction in tax rates on personal income should follow. A reevaluation of the estate tax is a must. It is not fair that families who work hard and save money should lose a substantial amount of it when a member of the family dies.

   

  Another consequence of the high taxation rate is the reduction of funds available for charities. Many charities would be able to perform the services government provides less expensively and more efficiently -- if they did not have to compete with the government for resources.

   

• Reduce Taxes on the American Dream. In addition to reducing personal and inheritance taxes, the government should reduce its taxes on entrepreneurship and the American Dream. This can only be done through greater private sector investment in communities by reducing government's investment and taxation. A reduction in the capital gains tax rate would increase investment, make capital more available and cheaper, and create additional jobs. According to the IRS, working class Americans would benefit from such a reduction, since 77% of tax returns filed in 1993 reporting capital gains were from taxpayers making less than $75,000. A significant cut in capital gains tax rate will increase investment by $75 billion, reduce the cost of capital by 12%, and create over 230,000 addition jobs per year.

   

  For economically-depressed areas, there should be no capital gains tax rate. Income tax deductions should be available to those willing to invest in businesses located in economically-depressed areas. We also encourage targeted tax credits for the construction, renovation, and expansion of businesses. Aspiring entrepreneurs should be encouraged by government in their pursuit of the American Dream, not punished by taxation.

   

• Balance the Budget. A child born in 1995 will pay nearly $200,000 in taxes just to pay for their share of interest on the debt throughout their lifetime. Lifetime tax rates surpassing 80% await the children and grandchildren of this generation to pay our bills. Balancing the budget, the Joint Economic Committee estimates, would cause a 2% drop in interest rates. Under such a scenario, the savings would be monumental: the average American family would save $37,000 on a 30-year mortgage of $75,000; $2,160 on a 10-year student loan of $11,000; and $900 on a 4-year car loan of $15,000. Let's balance the budget and stop charging our debts to future generations.

   

  According to a Wall Street Journal/NBC News Poll, 57% of welfare recipients believe the welfare system does more harm than good. These opinions are supported by the facts. Since the institution of the "Great Society" programs almost three decades ago, nearly $5.4 trillion has been spent on welfare. Federal, state, and local governments are now spending $350 billion a year on 89 different welfare programs -- 20% more than the U.S. spends on national defense. If all of those dollars were simply given to the nearly 40 million people living under the poverty line, each poor person would receive $8,939. Yet, not surprisingly, only 35 cents out of every federal welfare dollar is paid in cash directly to the needy. In comparison, of every dollar spent by the Salvation Army, 89 cents goes to charitable services.

   

• End Welfare As We Know It. The consequences of this spending has had a stunning effect on the family unit. In 1994, nearly sixty-five percent of black families included only one parent. The one-parent family is six times more likely to be poor than the two-parent family. Illegitimate children tend to depend on welfare themselves when they reach adulthood, have illegitimate children themselves, commit more crimes, and experience a low level of educational achievement. Furthermore, teenage single-mothering is the greatest contributor to low birth weight babies (in 1989, 90 percent of babies born to black teenagers occurred outside of marriage) which may explain why the infant-mortality rate among blacks was 2.4 times higher than among whites in 1992.

   

  Private charities provided over $176 billion for health, education and welfare in 1991. But money is not all that was provided. The equivalent of nine million full-time employees volunteered for social services. If government's role in public service work were to be drastically reduced, these charities could use the resources formerly absorbed by the federal government to help the poor more effectively and efficiently.

   

  Welfare programs that remain -- and we agree that some government programs are needed -- they should whenever possible operate at the state level. A Gallup poll found that 74% of the public believes states are more likely to administer social programs more effectively than the federal government. Requiring welfare recipients to work, placing limits on the length of times someone can be on welfare, and discouraging unwed parenthood by persons on welfare should be part of any package to reform welfare. Also, all government, social services and tax code disincentives for people receiving government aid to marry or work should be eliminated.

   

• Make Sure the Benefits of Regulations Exceed the Costs. The estimated compliance cost of regulations range from $430 billion to $850 billion per year on state and local governments and the private sector. A U.S. General Accounting Office analysis of existing academic literature surveying regulatory costs estimated $647 billion in 1994 -- larger than the entire economic output of Canada. The Federal Register of regulations in 1994 was the largest in the history of the United States (64,914 pages) except for the last two years of the Carter Administration.

   

  The minimum wage and Davis-Bacon Act are especially costly to African-Americans. A 10-cent increase in the minimum wage has historically resulted in a loss of 30,000 to 50,000 full-time jobs. Black teenagers have suffered severe consequences since the institution of the minimum wage. Forty years ago, during Jim Crow, unemployment for white and black teens was virtually identical. Now, the unemployment rate for blacks in some areas is 67%, dwarfing that of whites.

   

  The Davis-Bacon Act has priced many lower-skilled black construction workers out of jobs since Congress has mandated that inflated wages must be paid to workers on any federal government construction project involving more than $2,000 in funds. A law passed in 1931 to keep black workers from competing with whites for construction jobs, the Davis-Bacon Act is a relic of a racist past that we should be eradicating, not embracing.

   

  An elimination of the minimum wage and Davis-Bacon Act would not only benefit black Americans looking for jobs, but potential black employers who can't bear the current regulatory costs of starting a new business. Incentives by the federal government to local and state governments to eliminate restrictive licensing laws, paperwork costs, rent control, and other regulatory burdens would be a welcome change from Washington D.C.'s previous encouragement of such burdens.

   

• Privatize Public Housing. Since 1980, the number of HUD programs has grown from 54 to over 200, and since its inception, HUD's annual spending has climbed from $2 billion to $26 billion. Nearly $90 billion has been invested by HUD in high-rise complexes. What has been the result? HUD has become the biggest slumlord in America. The housing authorities have been guilty of fraud, mismanagement, misuse of funds, and creating high vacancy rates. The areas themselves are inundated with welfare dependency, drug dealing, and crime.

   

  All public housing should be privatized. One of the beneficial effects would be lower rent since an increase in the available housing in the private sector would increase competition. Additional government involvement in building houses should only be in assisting organizations like Habitat for Humanity with purchasing land and materials. Families who are too poor to pay rent should receive vouchers to live in neighborhoods of their choice, without government forcing landlords to accommodate them any more than other tenants.

   

• Reduce the Government's Role in Education. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, only 12% of African-American seniors were proficient readers in 1994. In 1992, the average black 11th grader scored a 53% on a test given to test writing achievement. Only 21% of black seniors in 1988 could demonstrate broad knowledge on a variety of historical facts, regions, and ideas and demonstrate some knowledge of content of primary texts in U.S. political history. In math, 17-year old black students averaged a 57% on a mathematic proficiency test meaning than most of them still had problems computing decimals, simple fractions, and percents.

   

  The problem isn't a lack of spending on education by taxpayers. The average public school per pupil expenditure in 1993-94 was $5,734, surpassing Japan, Germany, Britain, and France. We spend more on education as a percentage of total public spending than every other nation except for Finland and Switzerland. While the federal government only provided about 7% of elementary and secondary school funding, states relied on federal support for about 41% of the staff for their state educational agencies.

   

  In comparison to private schools, the public schools prove to be a complete failure. The student-teacher ratio for public schools is 18:1 compared to 15:1 for private schools. The average salary for public school teachers is $31,296 compared to $19,783 for teachers at private schools. The average private school tuition is less than half what the public spends on each student in public school. Public school teachers apparently agree with our assessment: according to a study, public school teachers in urban districts are more likely to send their children to private schools than are other Americans. Overwhelmingly, the general public and parents believe private schools have higher academic standards, better work habits, a safer environment, more discipline of students, and promote more honesty and responsibility than public schools do.

   

  Since the public schools are not doing the job, methods of improvement and alternatives should be considered. Vouchers that would allow students to attend any public or private school their parents choose should be provided. This will give parents the opportunity to pick the best school available for their children while introducing competition into the public education market. Meanwhile, to increase flexibility and decrease overhead and waste, the federal role in education should be scaled back and left to the states. One solution to low test scores we uniformly oppose is to lower the standards school children have to meet to pass. Programs like Outcome Based Education may do a good job at making children feel good about themselves, but they don't deliver a solid education. Introducing technologies such as computers into schools, when done properly, has been successful in some places.

   

• Teach History Without Rewriting It. While we embrace standards that seek to correct past inaccuracies of different cultures and historical events, we oppose revisionist history or standards that neglect historical people or events that are an integral part of American history.

   

• End Forced Busing. We also oppose attempts by the federal courts and county school boards to use children as pawns in an attempt to ensure that each school has an "acceptable" racial and ethnic mix of children. Good public schools do not depend on the race or ethnicity of the children attending them, they depend on the competency of the people running them.

   

• Reject Special Privileges for a Select Few. Whether it is paying for the advertisements of multinational corporations, giving broadcast spectrum potentially worth billions of dollars to a few select broadcasters or giving government contracts to wealthy businesses who don't need them solely based on the race or gender of the majority owner, government should get out of the business of granting giveaways to the elite few at the expense of the multitude.

   

• Stop Racism in Adoption Practices. With 40% of children waiting for adoption being black, and only 31% of families waiting to adopt being black, we oppose state agencies who are content with letting black children languish in foster homes before placing them with the 67% of white families eager to adopt a child.

   

• Promote Adoption Over Abortion. With over 30 million abortions being performed since Roe v. Wade, we support efforts to emphasize adoption over abortion. Tax incentives for families to adopt, and for people to contribute to community and religious organizations that help single parents cope with the responsibilities of work and parenthood are encouraged.

   

• Enforce Immigration Laws. It is unfair to force citizens of the United States, some who are first generation immigrants, to pay tax dollars to a government that uses those dollars to fund the social services of people who have broken the laws of this country by entering it illegally.

   

• Protect Victims, Not Criminals. In the U.S. today a murder is committed every 21 minutes, a rape every five minutes, a robbery every 46 seconds, and an aggravated assault every 29 seconds. The rapid increase in juvenile crime indicates things aren't going to improve sufficiently anytime soon: Murder arrests of juveniles increased by 80% from 1988 to 1991. Despite this, violent criminals only serve an average of 5.5 years for murder, 3.0 years for rape, 2.25 years for robbery and 1.28 years for assault.

   

  Understandably, black Americans who have suffered the brunt of these high crime rates are calling for tougher punishment. According to a poll sponsored by the Family Research Council, eight in 10 black Americans favor requiring convicted criminals to work while serving their sentences. The survey also found that three out of four black Americans favor requiring convicted criminals to pay their victims and their victims' families financial compensation. More than three of every four blacks oppose drug legalization, and 85% favor drug testing to insure that a criminal is drug-free prior to release. A USA Today/CNN Gallup Poll found that 53% of black Americans strongly favor toughening parole possibilities for violent criminals. In high-crime areas, the same poll found that 54% of black Americans favored police authorities holding suspects without the option for bail.

   

  Nearly 130 years ago, the former slave Frederick Douglass advocated what black conservatives are advocating in this report. When asked what society is to do with black Americans, he responded: "...If the Negro cannot stand on his own, let him fall... All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs. Let him alone." But as I have pointed out here, black Americans have not been left alone by the federal government. We have not been given the chance to stand on our own legs. And that is why Black America 1996: A Time for Renewal is necessary: To show that there are already plenty of Americans succeeding in life ready to help others succeed whenever government decides to stop failing us.

Edmund Peterson
Chairman, Project 21 Advisory Committee

(For a copy of Project 21's 27-page Black America 1996: A Time for Renewal, send $7 to Project 21, c/o The National Center for Public Policy Research, 501 Capitol Ct., N.E. Washington, D.C. 20002, 202/543-4110 Fax 202/543-5975, E-Mail project21@nationalcenter.org. Checks, money orders, Visa or Mastercard are accepted.)

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