1984 Democratic Presidential Primary


                         Friends of Gary Hart
 



Brochure

Democrat
Gary Hart
For President
 
Gary Hart Speaks Out On:
 
  • Taxes
  • Arms Control
  • Education
  • Jobs

Authorized and paid for by: "Friends of Gary Hart."



ECONOMY
One of a few senators to vote against every element of President Reagan's economic program, Gary Hart has developed a compre­hensive alternative to Reaganomics.

Employment
Senator Hart has proposed a plan to create more jobs by:

  • Achieving overall economic growth by bringing interest rates down, making existing industries globally competitive and developing new industries.

IT'S A CRIME THAT SO MANY ARE UNEMPLOYED WHEN THERE IS SO MUCH WORK TO DO.   G.H.

• Training new workers and retraining displaced workers to take advantage of employment opportunities.

• Accelerating reconstruction of our deteriorating infrastructure and creating a new jobs-in-energy program to make American housing more energy efficient.

Industrial Revitalization
Gary Hart has called for a new industrial strategy to make our industries — basic manufacturing as well as high technology and services — globally competitive by:

  • An aggressive trade policy which promotes the export of U.S. goods and services abroad and enforces U.S. trade rights under international agreements.
  • Promoting new assistance for entrepreneurial small businesses.
  • Using more pension funds — America's largest pool of capital — more creatively to provide venture capital and investments in needed areas such as affordable housing.
  • Increasing federal investments in basic research and develop­ment to maintain the United States' world leadership.
  • Reforming the tax code to encourage more productive invest­ments by corporations.

Interest Rates
Gary Hart believes we must bring down the high interest rates that have led to record bankruptcies, farm foreclosures and the near collapse of the auto and housing industries. Senator Hart proposes reducing the Reagan administration's record deficits by cutting defense spending and repealing or capping the 1983 tax cut. He believes the Federal Reserve Board should give lower interest rates higher priority and should manage the money supply consistent with long-term growth rates adopted by Congress in the budget.

Cities
Gary Hart understands that our cities are bearing the brunt of the Reagan administration's failed policies. While recognizing that each city has unique problems requiring unique solutions, Senator Hart has proposed to help improve the quality of life for urban residents by:

  • Reauthorization of general revenue sharing for cities, and full restoration of such modest but vital programs as urban develop­ment action grants and community development block grants.
  • Rebuilding through a new national plan our crumbling infra­structure of roads, bridges, sewers, and water mains.
  • Reform of regulations to free some of the nearly $6 trillion in banks and pension plans for investment distressed communities and their businesses.

Agriculture
Representing a state where agriculture is the second leading indus­try, Gary Hart is a strong supporter of American farmers. He has proposed:

  • Reductions in interest rates and extension of emergency credit programs for cash starved farmers.
  • Paid diversion and other incentives to reduce production and reduce reserve stocks.
  • Discouraging the use of food as a political and diplomatic weapon.
  • Active support for expanded, viable markets for American agricultural exports.


WOMEN'S RIGHTS
Senator Hart has vigorously endorsed and actively supported equal rights for women and the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment.

THE QUESTION IS NOT WHETHER EVERY WOMEN SHOULD HAVE EQUAL RIGHTS, BUT RATHER WHY THOSE RIGHTS STILL REMAIN IN QUESTION.

Senator Hart has also been a strong advocate of measures to ensure women economic power in the marketplace. He is a leader in the movement to establish pay equity.
Senator Hart has also promoted women's interests in the areas of child care, family violence and Title IX programs. He supports the Supreme Court Roe vs. Wade decision on abortion.
According to the National Women's Political Caucus, Gary Hart has voted right on all key votes (except one missed vote).

EDUCATION
Gary Hart believes the United States must recommit itself to establishing excellence in our educational systems and to providing quality education for every American. He has:

  • Led the fight in the Senate against cuts in education funding and introduced legislation to preserve the Title I and the school lunch programs.
  • Sponsored major legislation to revitalize curricula in the critical areas of science. mathematics and foreign languages.
  • Helped lead the Senate opposition to tax credits for private school tuition.

IF THIS ADMINISTRATION THINKS EDUCATION IS TOO EXPENSIVE WAIT 'TILL IT FINDS OUT HOW MUCH IGNORANCE COSTS.   G.H.


ENERGY
THERE COULD BE NO GREATER TRAGEDY THAT TO SHED AMERICAN BLOOD IN A FUTILE AND UNNECESSARY ATTEMPT TO GET SOMEONE ELSE'S OIL.   G.H.

Gary Hart recognizes the continued dangers of our dependence on foreign oil — dangers underscored by the Reagan administration's preparations to send the Rapid Deployment Force after oil if our imports are disrupted. Senator Hart believes we must reduce our consumption of foreign oil to a level that could be replaced with other fuels if necessary. He has tried to redirect federal energy priorities away from massive subsidies for nuclear power and synthetic fuels and toward more cost-effective ways to meet our energy needs. He has led efforts to increase energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy resources.


ENVIRONMENT
Gary Hart is a proven leader of the national effort to protect our air, our water and our wildlands.

  • As chairman of the National Commission on Air Quality, he helped produce the first official recommendations for control­ling acid rain and has led the Senate forces trying to preserve and strengthen the Clean Air Act.
  • He has sponsored legislation to prohibit landfill disposal of especially hazardous wastes.
  • He sponsored the provisions of the 1980 Alaska Lands Law that tripled the nation's wildlife refuge system.


CIVIL RIGHTS
Gary Hart supports extension of civil rights and liberties to those who have historically been without the full protection of the law. The American Civil Liberties Union rates his voting record on civil liberties the best in the Senate.

WE HAVE BEEN BUILDING A SOCIETY OPEN ENOUGH TO TOLERATE DIVERSITY. WE WILL SOON BUILD ONE STRONG ENOUGH TO EMBRACE IT AS WELL.   G.H.

Senator Hart believes all Americans must be protected from dis­crimination, whether based on race, color, religion, national origin, language, age, sex or sexual orientation. He supported renewal of the Voting Rights Act and extension of that Act's protection to those whose principal language is not English. When the Reagan administration tried to grant tax-exempt status to schools practicing racial discrimination, he drafted the resolution opposing that change. He has urged reform of our immigration policies to make them more democratic and farsighted. He was one of only eight Democrats to vote against immigration legislation which would undercut the rights of Hispanics. 


FOREIGN POLICY
Gary Hart believes the United States needs a foreign policy based on the new international economic and political realities of the 1980's. He supports effective protection of our historical national security interests, but does not fall into the trap of simplistically dividing the world into two camps, those "for us" and those "against us".
Senator Hart:

•  Opposed the sale of both AWACS to Saudi Arabia and advanced weapons to Jordan and wants to revive the Camp David process for peace in the Middle East.

•  Considers the protection and strengthening of basic human rights to be integral to America's national security interests, and strongly opposes the Reagan administration's policy of accom­modation with South Africa.

•  Favors a regional solution to problems in Central America, opposes open-minded military aid to El Salvador.


DEFENSE
Gary Hart is widely recognized as the nation's foremost advocate of military reform. He would strengthen our military even as we cut defense spending by redesigning our military in line with the critical challenges of today's warfare. His proposals include:

  • Reform of the kinds of weapons we buy. Overly complex weapons cost too much and don't work very well in combat. We need to buy simpler, more effective weapons in larger quantities.

MORE SPENDING ON A MILITARY THAT DOESN'T WORK JUST BUYS A BIGGER MILITARY THAT DOESN'T WORK.   G.H.

  • Reform of the kind of people we promote. We now promote military managers and bureaucrats, when we need strong leaders and imaginative tacticians in key command positions.
  • Reform of the way we make defense decisions. Military policy too often is determined by interservice rivalries or political considerations, rather than by the prospects for success in combat.


ARMS CONTROL
Gary Hart believes nuclear arms control must be our highest national priority and has long advocated reductions in atomic weapons. He was an advisor to the SALT II talks and continues to urge ratification of that treaty. He has proposed refocusing current negotiations with the Soviets on preventing the use of nuclear weapons as well as on limiting their numbers and has supported a mutual, verifiable freeze on all nuclear weapons. He opposes production of the MX missile and led the fight against production of new chemical weapons.

A NATION WHOSE CHILDREN HAVE NUCLEAR NIGHTMARES IS NOT A SECURE NATION.   G.H.

Senator Hart is also a leading proponent of strict non proliferation measures to prevent the further spread of nuclear weapons.

 

GARY HART – THE RECORD
Our nation is being tested in the 1980's. This test should recon­firm the best of our national character — our commitment to equal rights and opportunity, to real improvements in our standard of living and quality of life, to justice, hope, and the promise of a better tomorrow for all our people. We cannot meet that test with the tools of yesterday. The more we care about fulfilling our historic commitments and meeting our traditional agenda, the more we must adapt to change, the more we must innovate, the more we must create.
Gary Hart

Current Service
U.S. Senator- Colorado
Elected 1974 Re-elected 1980
Committee Assignments
Senate Armed Services
Senate Budget
Senate Environment & Public Works
Legislative Activities
Founder and Co-chair, Congressional Military Reform Caucus Congressional Advisor, SALT II Negotiations
Former Chairman, National Commission on Air Quality
Former Chairman, Subcommittee on Nuclear Regulation's investigation into the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident.
Policy Initiatives
Author, "The Case for Military Reform." Author, "Economic Strategy for the 1980's." Author, '' A New Arms Control Agenda.'' Author, "Becoming An Energy Efficient Nation." Coauthor, "A White Paper on Defense," 1978. 

Biographical Information
•  Born in Ottawa, Kansas, in 1937. One of two children, he grew up in a farming community where his father was in ranching and the farm implements business.

•  Attended Bethany College in Oklahoma.

•  Attended Yale Divinity School and earned an L.L.B. degree from the Yale Law School.

•  Worked for three years in Washington at the Department of Justice, then as a special assistant to Secretary of the Interior Stuart Udall.

•  Joined a law firm in Colorado in 1967 and a year later established his own practice to focus more heavily on resource issues.

•  Worked as a volunteer in the Presidential campaigns of John F. Kennedy and
Robert Kennedy.

•  Ran Senator George McGovern's Presidential campaign in 1972.

•  Gary and Lee Hart have been married for 25 years and have two children. Andrea is 18 years old and a freshman at the University of Maryland. John is a junior in high school. Lee is a real estate agent in suburban Maryland, where the Harts live.


WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT GARY HART . . .
"Hart calls for renaissance of the Democratic Party, not just telling people what you've done for them in the 30's, 40's and S0's but offering new solutions for the 80's and 90's. He suggests that although the nation has tilted to the right, those who have cut back support of the traditional party position of caring for people will lose in the long run."
     Louise Sweeney, Christian Science Monitor
     December 9, 1982

"He is the favorite of party thinkers, who feel Hart is best at successfully searching out new answers within the Democratic tradition."
     Washingtonian, November, 1981

"(Hart's) political evolution mirrors a broader shift among Democrats in Congress, who are less idealistic and more hard­headed toward generous minded, expensive programs but who are still dedicated to protecting individual liberties and the little people in America and still averse to big business and now big government."
     Hedrick Smith, The New York Times December 28, 1981

"One of 50 Leaders for America's Future."
     Time Magazine, July 1979

"One Democrat who has at least made a start in that direction ( offering an economic alternative) is Senator Gary Hart of Colorado, who has released a 33-page 'Economic Strategy for the 1980's,' that spells out in considerable detail his idea of how the United States got into the present mess and how we can get out of it."
     Editorial, San Jose Mercury March 9, 1982

"One of the 10 best senators."
     Washington Monthly, February, 1982

"He is going well beyond the gimmicks that often pass for new ideas in politics . . . he deserves credit for advocating thought provoking approaches to some basic issues."
     Norman C. Miller
     Wall Street Journal, May 4, 1982