For the Democrats, Back to the Basics

The Democratic Party is in the midst of an identity crisis. The heart of the question is: Do we move toward the center for political expediency or do we continue fighting for our traditional progressive values?

My answer is simple. We must remain the party of investment, of compassion, of working men and women and of choice.

Some have departed from these core values, putting our party at risk of losing its strong, progressive vision. We must not allow this to happen, particularly in light of what we stand to lose in three important areas: choice, education and health care.

First, reproductive choice. I support a woman's right to choose, in every instance. Pro-life forces, having failed to ban abortion outright, have turned to reducing choice bit-by-bit. They have already succeeded in limiting abortion access for poor women on Medicaid, women in the military and female federal employees.

But it's not just Republicans who are attempting to shrink a woman's right to choose. Even some "progressives" compromise about choice, favoring limits on some procedures and not others. If a woman is the best person to decide whether or not to undergo an important medical procedure, then the best person to decide whether or not to undergo an important medical procedure is a woman.

Second, education. During this election season, we've heard a lot about the perceived short-comings of our public schools and the teachers who teach in them. Everyone knows we need to improve our schools; the harder question is how.

For one, we must renovate, expand and modernize our public school facilities. I propose a $22 billion school construction and expansion program to renovate the classrooms we already have and to reduce class sizes, and a $7.5 billion education technology program to put calculators, computers and Internet access in every classroom.

But our teachers also need to be better prepared for the next millenium. I propose a new, national, federally-funded one-year program of special instruction--the Teacher Corps--to recruit the best and the brightest to enter teaching, to train them in the latest technologies and methodologies and to provide incentives to teach in underserved areas. We could better train 750,000 teachers over the next 10 years for $9 billion.

And we must commence the learning process at an earlier age. If we open our public school doors to three-and four-year-olds, we can initiate learning earlier while providing affordable child care to working families across the district. If we invest $5.5 billion in the outreach and diagnosis of early learning difficulties, we can correct leaming problems before they become intractable and cause kids to become disenchanted with learning.

Third, health care. Our current managed care system is a disaster. We need to pass a Patient's Bill of Rights to ensure that medical decisions are made by doctors, not accountants. But simply reforming HMOs does not go far enough. We must take decisive steps to ensure that every American has health care coverage.

I am a proponent of a carefully crafted, single-payer, universal health care system, one which holds down costs while preserving choice and ensuring high quality care. It is outrageous that there are 750,000 uninsured citizens in Massachusetts.

Access to health care is just the first part of the equation. We must also ask: access to what? I advocate covering long-term home health care for seniors under Medicare. This will allow our seniors to stay in their own homes while getting the treatment they need, without becoming impoverished by the expense.

In our struggle to define the future of the Democratic Party, progressives must be prepared to fight for their values. Just as important, they must be prepared to elect a representative who will take this fight to Congress. George Bachrach, a former three-term state senator, is one of 10 candidates seeking the Democratic nomination to represent Cambridge in the U.S. House of Representatives. The primary is Sept. 15.