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2008 COMMON PLATFORM FOR GREEN PARTY CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATES

1. A Major Commitment to Renewable Energy, Energy Efficiency, Conservation and Sustainable Transportation. The twin crises of global climate change and the end of the era of cheap oil demand that our federal government commit public resources, on a scale comparable to the New Deal or the Marshall Plan, to developing decentralized and renewable sources of energy, such as wind, solar and geothermal energy, improving our conservation and efficient use of energy in homes and businesses, and promoting sustainable transportation practices, such as highspeed rail, other efficient public transportation and sensible urban planning.



2. End the Occupation - Immediately. The ongoing occupation of Iraq, like the initial invasion, is illegal, immoral, unjustified and motivated by the agenda of a narrow tier of corporate interests. It is adding to, rather than calming, the chaos and ethnic tensions in that country. It is adding to the death toll, not reducing it, making Iraq less secure today and our own future less secure tomorrow. We will fight for a complete and immediate withdrawal from Iraq, while seeking assistance from the United Nations to help the Iraqi people restore order and genuine self-determination, with reparations from the United States to fund genuine reconstruction.



3. Prevent Future Wars: Address the Causes of War. It is crucial that we resist current pressures to involve us in yet another war against Iran, Pakistan, or some other nation - but being "anti-war" alone is not enough. We need to be pro-peace. The control of our government by multinational corporations, including Big Oil and military contractors, with a strong profit incentive favoring militarism and domination of other nations, is the central issue of our time. It creates constant pressure to engage in new wars for corporate control of resources and markets. It has led to the deterioration of our democratic republic and our civil liberties, in favor of an imperial presidency with an over-powerful executive branch. It has led to a colossal waste of resources on militarism and death, starving our government of funds for public needs that would truly make us stronger as a nation - for education, health care, infrastructure and energy selfsufficiency.
   
   We need to rein in corporate power, with a combination of reforms, including strong campaign finance reforms, corporate codes of conduct, strong chartering laws, ending the status of corporations as a legal "person," and building alternatives to the corporate model. We need to rein in the militaryindustrial complex, and create a genuine peace dividend to fund social needs, instead of passing incredibly wasteful military budgets and authorizing obscene no-bid contracts to favored campaign contributors. The corrupt system that causes unjust wars must be dismantled!



4. Universal Health Care Through a Single-Payer System. Our current health-care system is failing to serve the needs of the people because it is dominated by private, for-profit insurance companies acting as the "middle-man" between patients and their healthcare providers. These companies make more money by denying coverage whenever possible, placing more and more of the burden on working people who can’t afford to bear the cost, and on health-care providers who are drowning in administrative paper-work. The best quality and most efficient health-care systems in the world today are government-funded "single payer" systems that use a single, publicly accountable public agency to pay for health care. So-called universal health-care schemes that actually force employers and employees alike to buy private insurance will not work, and will only compound the problem. Health care is too important to the wellbeing of society to be left in the hands of self-serving profiteers. We will wage an uncompromising fight for a single-payer health-care system, such as the current proposal in the House, H.R. 676.



5. Restore human rights and civil liberties. In recent years, civil liberties in the United States have taken a terrible beating, and our nation’s reputation has been sullied by our government’s disregard for human rights worldwide. Almost all of the incumbents occupying seats in Congress have cowardly allowed an increasingly powerful presidency to spy on Americans while keeping its own dirty secrets hidden from them, detain people without due process, impose an ominous national ID-card system, and otherwise erode the Bill of Rights at home, while committing torture and other atrocities abroad. This may be the single most vital reason to elect Greens to Congress, for the people’s ability to make other necessary changes will be crippled if we continue to lose our democratic rights and freedoms. Greens in Congress will fight to repeal the misnamed Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, the Real ID Act, the socalled Protect America Act of 2007 and other misbegotten legislation. We will fight to put an end to torture and other human rights abuses abroad and restore full civil liberties and an end to the imperial presidency at home. We will also fight for ballot integrity to ensure that elections can no longer be stolen and media reform to break the monopoly corporate stranglehold on news and information.



6. For Economic Health: Fair Trade, a Rebuilt Infrastructure and Investment in Education. As our government has been controlled by the two corporatesponsored parties, one of the casualties has been our economy. So-called free trade agreements, such as NAFTA, CAFTA and Fast Track, that actually promote corporate globalization, have cost us quality industrial jobs and undermined laws protecting our environment. With every taxpayer dollar that our representatives have siphoned into an overbloated military-industrial complex and other forms of corporate welfare, our infrastructure and education system, once sources of economic strength, have suffered in equal measure. This problem has been compounded by misguided policies, such as the expenditure of most transportation dollars on highway projects that promote more over-reliance on the automobile, and the No Child Left Behind program, which has been a millstone around the neck of our public schools. We need to repeal treacherous free trade policies and replace them with trade policies that protect the interests of our own industrial base and the interests of workers, and our environment, at home and abroad. We need to reorder our spending priorities, from subsidizing the merchants of death to subsidizing the quality of life at home. We need to make our lives safer, while generating new economic opportunities, by building a modern, sound, energy efficient transportation and utility infrastructure. In addition – as it has been proved by experience that investment in education is the single best investment government can make in terms of future economic and social health – we need to make a stronger commitment to education at all levels, while removing the encumbrance of the No Child Left Behind program (saving the few provisions aimed at aiding special needs children).

In addition to these specific commitments, Green Party candidates - being representatives of a party based on principles and values, beginning with the Four Pillars of grassroots democracy, ecological wisdom, social justice and nonviolence, a party that rejects corporate campaign money and cannot be bought and sold to the highest bidder - will, if elected, be genuine representatives of the people and of the public good. Voters can have confidence that they will be true and conscientious public servants, devoted to making the policy changes urgently needed to ensure our survival, restore our republic, promote peace, and enhance the health and quality of life of all living things.