Customer Reviews

The Agenda for America

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This was a excellent book that tells of a great nation with a great future. I would suggest borrowing this from your local library if you are not sure if you like the subject matter.

Great book and very inspiring for young republicans and undiciders.

Haley Barbour, a former Republican National Committee Chairman whose recent political tangos with the tobacco lobby are getting him and his buddies in political trouble, here wrote a book which was a kneejerk reaction to his party's 1994 Contract with America victory. In here, Barbour offers few specifics, only generalities('a government closer to the people' and 'smaller government'). The few specifics he does offer, such as on Medicare, are terribly deceptive. He offers the view that the Republican 1995 plan to trim Medicare costs by $270 billion over 7 years through partial privatization, higher premiums, squeezed payments to poor hospitals and more jamming of the elderly into HMO's is not harsh, but in fact in the best interest of the elderly and a 'small government' society. He ignores the need for universal health care instead of cutting Medicare to 'save it.' He bashes labor laws, environmental regulations, civil rights, public education and universal health care investments.

In all, Haley Barbour offers an anti-government view. Government is not the answer, but the problem, Barbour seems to say. To those who want an ideological book which veers to the right excessively and panders to the anti-civil rights and anti-government activism crowd, this one is a winner. Yet, to those who favor compassionate government which gives a darn about the working man and woman and family, then this book is just another proof of how out of touch conservatism truly is.