Mercy, Trust, and the Future of the Republican Party

This post originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics.

Though I’ve paused from a lot of blogging about politics this year, I haven’t stopped thinking about it. It’s just that, because there is so much going on that troubles me, it is hard to process it all and remain positive—and I didn’t want to write much again until I could offer something I felt was positive to consider.

What I kept coming back to was a conversation I had with two lawyers during a dinner in New York over 20 years ago. As we paused from discussing the cases we were working on together, our discussion turned to politics—both local to New York and nationally. Both of my colleagues from New York were liberal Democrats, and as I listened to them a thought came to my mind that—being young and a little impetuous—I offered to them. It went something like this:

I think the biggest problem in politics today is that politicians don’t seem to be addressing the issues that government was designed to address, and I think that is because, in part, we’ve forgotten how to show mercy to our fellow man.

Remember that at the end of the Parable of the Good Samaritan, Christ posed the question: “So which of these three do you think was neighbor to him who fell among the thieves?” And the lawyer answered, “He who showed mercy upon him.” Then Christ affirmed the lawyer’s answer by saying, “Go and do likewise.”

I look around and too few people in public life are showing the mercy that truly loving their neighbor requires of them. Today, we still have people walking down the road, like the priest and the Levite, who avert their eyes and keep walking—they’ve always been among us. But now it seems as though the people who do stop to help the stripped and wounded man on the side of the road do one of two things: they either stop others, demand contributions from them (like taxes or tolls), and then give the donations to the man on the side of the road; or they sermonize to the man on how his own mistakes led to his current predicament and how he should change his life to avoid such calamities in the future. Then, both men leave, feeling good about themselves and the help they believe they provided to him; meanwhile, the stripped and wounded man on the side of the road is still left to die.

There are no Samaritans among us today.

I remember my dinner companions stopped and looked at me, and said nothing for what seemed an eternity. Then the senior attorney looked at me and said, “Ed, I can’t find any basis to disagree with you. Sadly, we are all at fault for this.” Then the conversation moved quickly on to a sailing regatta the other attorney would be participating in that weekend, and we never broached the subject again.

Based on this reaction, I rarely tried to express this idea again publicly, but I still believe it to be the primary problem we face today—and it has only gotten worse over the last two decades. I believe that the political party that correctly embraces the ideal of the Samaritan as the core of our society will be the party that captures the imagination and the trust of the voters. The ideal of the Samaritan should be the natural position of American Conservatives and the Republican Party, if only we will embrace it.

Our Settlers and Founding Fathers understood and accepted the challenge of trying to create a society around the Samaritan ideal on this Continent, even though they were woefully blind in their initial application of this ideal when it came to Catholics, Native Americans, Africans, Irish and Women (just to name a few groups)—a blindness that would haunt us for centuries. But the ideal itself became the correcting force that eventually changed our society for the better.

It is the Samaritan ideal that led us to form families, congregations, civic organizations, and private businesses; to create the neighborhoods where these institutions would take root and flourish; to push those neighborhoods across a continent; to form colonies and states to preserve and protect those neighborhoods; to create a nation to protect this societal structure; and, finally, to open our society’s promise to all its citizens.

The limited nature of the federal government wasn’t designed to oppress individuals, but rather to protect the sanctity and vitality of these neighborhoods of free people, in which most of the decisions that would guide day-to-day life would be made and performed.

This model only works, though, if the ideal is taken seriously—that each citizen, in his or her own way, accepts the challenge to show mercy to our neighbors. Unless each citizen accepts this responsibility, the trust necessary for the model to sustain self-governance at the local and state level evaporates and creates a vacuum—a vacuum that is subject to being filled by an expanding federal government that is not institutionally competent to fill it. Forget the express limits written into the Constitution for a minute, and just remember that far-away agents, bureaucrats, and social workers with one-size-fits-all assignments, regardless of their best intentions, will never provide the mercy that our Settlers and Founders believed would be necessary to build and maintain trusting neighborhoods of free people.

We can argue until the cows come home over how and why we got into our present mess, but the time for political change is now and the blueprint for that change has always been within our grasp—the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution (as amended), and the Federalist Papers. What is needed now is the will to embrace the Samaritan ideal and our founding blueprint, and to apply it to our diverse 21^st Century society. What is needed now is the willingness to seriously address the reforms at each level of government—from Washington to our school boards—that is needed to restore the mercy and rebuild the trust needed to apply our American blueprint to the 21^st Century.

We will never corral and control public spending and debt until we make this reform, we will never fix public education until we make this reform, we will never fix both the security of our borders and our immigration policies without this reform, and we will be unable to meet the commitments we promised to the rest of the world after World War II unless we commit to this reform.

If the Republican Party embraces this reform, and explains how it will improve the lives of each of our citizens by giving them the means to control their lives and accomplish their dreams for themselves and their children, we will regain the trust of voters needed to win elections and govern. But to do that, we Republicans must practice what we preach among ourselves, too—we must show mercy and trust among our own factions, for as Lincoln reminded us so long ago, “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”

As a life-long Republican who continues to revere the life’s work of Lincoln, Goldwater, Dirksen, Reagan and Kemp, I believe we can—we must, we will—accept this challenge and embrace this reform.

Reflections on Ethics and Local Government

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics.

This post should not be read as a comment on any specific allegations against any current elected official in the City of Houston or Harris County, or as a recommended course of action in response to those allegations. But with one City Council member having just been investigated for ethics questions related to doing business with the City, and with one County Commissioners having just been tried for bribery, I want to address the larger issues raised by the specific questions involved in those cases.

Specific questions raised by those cases are—

· When should a public official continue doing business through a private entity with the government he or she was elected to supervise?

· Where does a public official draw the line between the intent to accept gifts as part of a continued friendship, and the appearance of accepting payments for influence with the government he or she was elected to manage?

From a broader perspective, these questions, for me, raise more fundamental questions, which have nothing to do with whether a criminal or civil law has been broken:

· At what point does an elected official’s behavior violate the public’s trust?

· What should be the consequences for breaking that trust?

It is these larger questions I will address in this post.

Let’s start with two obvious, yet fundamental, points:

· First, most public officials are just like us—they do their best to be honest and to do their jobs every day with integrity.

· Second, none of us are perfect. We all make mistakes and misjudgments throughout our life—that is part of being human. Being human has never disqualified anyone from serving in public office.

However, mistakes and misjudgments made by public officials, even in matters, relationships, or transactions that normally would be considered private, affect the conduct of public affairs. The real question at the core of this issue is, at what point do arguably private misjudgments of public officials violate the public trust?

This is a question that has vexed our society since the first settlements were formed. Although our Founders addressed this issue in the Federalist Papers, and believed they were creating a national government that reduced the risk of graft and unethical use of public office through the checks and balances built into the system, they recognized that the system was not fool-proof—and history has shown us that our national government has not been scandal-free. But even a cursory review of American History shows that our most enduring problem with ethics has been at the local level of government.

Why have our local governments been so susceptible to this problem over the centuries? I can think of at least three factors that continuously intertwine to perpetuate this problem:

· none of us are angels; even when we have been raised in an atmosphere that prizes the traits and exercise of character and virtue, we periodically will succumb to temptations, fail to exercise self-restraint, and take risks that lead to making wrong choices, especially when such choices seem to benefit us without appearing to directly harm anyone else;

· the greatest external restraint on elected officials in local government was supposed to be the fact that they would not risk the humiliation to themselves or their families of being caught lying to, cheating, or stealing from their neighbors; but as our communities have grown into cities, and our neighbors have become more anonymous “voters” to our elected officials, this fear of humiliation no longer plays a strong role in restraining behavior; and

· fewer and fewer people actually pay attention to local government, know who their local officials are, or know what they do, and those that do are usually those with a financial or political incentive for gain from local government; as a result, a lot of mischief happens when no one is looking.

We can pass all the civil and criminal laws we want, and force attendance to as many “ethics” classes as possible, but without some personal restraints applied at a personal level by or on our local officials, no law or class will thwart the temptation for some to seek as much private gain as they possibly can get from public office.

So what are the answers to my questions—at what point do arguably private misjudgments of public officials violate the public trust, and what should be the consequences for that breach?

In answer to the first question, the best I can come up with is to ask our elected officials to envision what our children would think if they knew the behavior you were engaged in, or were contemplating. For instance:

· Would our children think it is right or fair to continue to do business and profit from that business with the very government you were elected to supervise?

· Would our children think it is right or fair to continue accepting gifts from a friend while that friend was seeking and obtaining business and profit from the government you were elected to manage?

· Would our children think that it is right or fair to continue such behavior without at least abstaining from the process of approving or supervising those transactions with the government you were elected to manage?

Better yet, if our children came home and told us that they were engaging in this type of behavior at school, or in an extra-curricular activity or organization, would we condone it?

If the answer to any of these questions is “no,” then a switch should flip in the brain that says “stop.” If you want to proceed with the transactions and continue to receive the benefits, then you should leave public office—there is nothing dishonorable about that choice. On the other hand, if there is no flip of the switch and you continue with the behavior, or if it flips and you still proceed with the behavior, and decide to stay in public office, I believe that the public trust has been breached regardless of whether a law has been violated. In that event, you have created the appearance that you are using your office for private gain—and the public can no longer trust that you have not used your office in this way regardless of your intentions. The consequence for violation of that trust should be exposure and censure, and, eventually, dismissal by the voters at the next election.

In the end, however, the ultimate consequence should be our vigilance as citizens to shine as much light on our local governments as we shine on our state and national governments, and to hold our local officials to the high standard that we are entitled to expect from those who have asked us for the privilege of serving our community. This vigilance is even more important today if we ever want to limit government at the federal and state levels, because we will need highly effective and ethical local governments to serve as tools for helping to rebuild our communities and schools.

If we don’t exercise that vigilance, then we will deserve the behavior and the government that results.

What are we fighting for?

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics.

I think a lot of people around the world could be asking that question right now.

We hear shouts for “returning to the Constitution” or “limited government” or “liberty” or “fiscal discipline” from Conservative activists here at home, just as we hear cries for “freedom” and “democracy” from the streets in the Middle East. If either movement is to succeed, they must move from their chants and slogans, to understanding, visualizing, and then implementing the real future they seek to create.

So, the first question that all of these activists must answer is “what is the future I seek to create?” In essence, they must answer the question: “what am I fighting for?”

I don’t pretend to know what that future could or should look like in countries whose people have formed a society and culture based, in whole or in part, on the teachings of Muhammad (or “Mohammed”), but I do have some thoughts about what that future should look like here. In his Farewell Address in January, 1989, Ronald Reagan finally gave America a glimpse of what he had meant when he said he saw America as a “Shining City on a Hill”:

I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.

I believe that many of us who desire to re-establish a limited, fiscally-sane governmental structure based on the blueprints provided in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, instinctively want to leave to our children Reagan’s Shining City on a Hill. I believe that this has been the desire of every generation of Americans, regardless of whether they are direct descendants of the original Settlers and Founders, their ancestors came here in the many waves of immigration since 1789, or they and their ancestors obtained their freedom from bondage and segregation through civil war and civil protests. Remember that when Martin Luther King, Jr., told us of his “Dream,” it was based on the promise of the Declaration of Independence and the words of the Bible—the same concepts that moved the Founders to strive to form “a more perfect union.”

But, to leave to our children Reagan’s Shining City on a Hill, we must first come to grips with what that effort will require, because the America Reagan saw, that King desired, and that our Founders addressed was a different America, with different attitudes and understandings, than the America of today. The Americans that received the Declaration of Independence and ratified the Constitution saw their obligations to each other far differently than we see them today, and they understood that the limited government they were establishing would not work without those obligations being met. We have to face the reality that establishing that Shining City on a Hill will require a fundamental transformation—a transformation that not only addresses a re-organization of government, but a re-orientation of the way we each see ourselves as citizens—those “people of all kinds living in harmony and peace.”

This re-orientation of our understanding of American citizenship will not be easy, because we are far removed from the Americans who first received the Declaration and ratified the Constitution. Let me give you an example of what I mean.

Recently, on one of the Sunday-morning TV talk shows, Republican Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona was on a panel and began a statement with the phrase “government is a necessary evil.” Immediately, the moderator interrupted her with a condescending challenge: “Now, Governor, you don’t really mean evil, do you?” To which, a puzzled Brewer responded, “Ok, it’s necessary,” and then she went on to discuss her point.

Frankly, I initially was stunned by this segment, until I thought about it a little. I am sure that most of you reading this post know that Brewer’s original remark was a quote from one of our Founders. A subset of you can probably identify it as a phrase used by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Paper No. 8 to describe the creation of a standing army, as well as a concept central to Madison’s arguments in Federalist Papers Nos. 10 and 51.

Unfortunately, those of us cursed with the memory of what “necessary evil” means must realize that, after 100 years of learning a different narrative about our country, most of our neighbors couldn’t identify the history of that phrase, would not understand its historical meaning, and would have reacted just like the moderator—in fact, none of the three other Governors on the panel, let alone Governor Brewer herself, attempted to explain or defend her use of that phrase.

But the audience who first read those words in the New York newspapers during the ratification debate over the Constitution—both Federalist and Ant-Federalist—would’ve known, understood, and agreed with those words. They eventually agreed with Madison’s approach to dealing with the “necessary evil” dilemma, because they understood that our liberty would be protected only by combining the promotion of the virtues needed to sustain the fundamental relationships of a free society, with the extended republic and checks and balances of the federal system of government written into the new Constitution.

Most importantly, that audience understood that promoting and sustaining the practice of fundamental virtues among individual citizens was fundamental to the success of their new experiment. They believed that liberty was the freedom from being controlled by a government, an elite class, or a faction; it was not freedom from their neighbors or their neighborhoods, for they understood John Donne’s point that

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main…. Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

To them, citizenship in a free society required active involvement in the life of the community and all its organizations; it was not a license to receive tax-paid benefits, nor a right to delegate community involvement to tax-paid bureaucrats. Democracy is what transpired in town hall meetings and town councils called or elected by the people to govern communities, in service organizations and church congregations, and in schools; while the work of elected representatives in state and national capitols was limited to a few specific tasks outlined in republican constitutions.

As C.S. Lewis observed,

And all the time—such is the tragic-comedy of our situation—we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. … In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

And to his observation, I would now add,

We now promote an isolation from our neighbors and expect them to provide care and charity when help is needed. We create a dependency on government to pay for essential services and are shocked when no one will sacrifice to provide for those services themselves. We call on our national government to address our every problem and need, while we demand that our representatives re-institute limited government and follow the Constitution.

The reality is that we can prune back the branches of the progressive governmental trees we’ve planted over the last 100 years by cutting their budgets to the trunk, but that won’t limit government to what our Founders intended. Eventually, if that’s all we do, the branches will grow back.

The change we want will require uprooting the progressive tree. It will require uprooting our lives from the patterns we’ve created and becoming more involved in the democracy of our communities—our families, our neighborhoods, our schools, our service organizations and churches, and our local governments. I know that this challenge may sound too daunting to even contemplate, or that it is historically too late, or society has become to complex, to make this type of transformation possible—we Conservatives have faced these arguments for decades. As Herbert Hoover observed in a book published a year after he left office as the New Deal was being implemented:

Our problems today are all strongly silhouetted against the background of depression. …And from all this maze of problems and emotions many thoughtful people assume that our difficulties are due to an irreconcilable conflict of Liberty with our complex Industrial Age, …. We must not conclude that ours is the only generation which has thought this, nor the first that has had to meet great perplexities. Men of every generation have envisaged their problems in terms of despair, but the dynamic impulses given to men from Liberty always have found tolerable solutions, so tolerable that a gigantic progress swept onward from generation to generation.

… Those who proclaim that in a Machine Age there is created an irreconcilable conflict in which liberty cannot survive should not forget the battles of liberty over the centuries, …. It is not because Liberty is unworkable, but because we have not worked it conscientiously or have forgotten its true meaning that we often get the notion of irreconcilable conflict with the Machine Age.

As daunting as the challenge may seem, I believe that we have not completely forgotten the true meaning of Liberty. Remember that the remnants of our unique society still exist under all of the layers of government we’ve created. Those basic relationships that formed the core of our democratic communities still function every day. Teachers, parents and children still work together to mold productive citizens. Patients and doctors still trust each other to keep us healthy. Neighbors still have local courthouses available where they can resolve their disputes. Police officers and fire-fighters still stand ready at a moments notice to keep us safe. Water and sanitation districts, street and bridge builders, and gas and utility companies still work to make sure we have access to the basic necessities for our homes and neighborhoods to function. Entrepreneurs and professionals still start businesses, employ neighbors, sell products and services, pay taxes, serve on private boards, and support communities. We still have a network of families, churches, homeowners associations, and other private service organizations, ready and willing to address our daily needs, and to build and sustain our neighborhoods. It is the proper functioning of these relationships, over hundreds of years, which has made America exceptional—and none of them need Austin or Washington to exist or to thrive, but they do need us.

On these remnants we can re-build our unique society and re-establish limited and fiscally-sane government. But, we have to be willing to believe that the blueprints provided by the Declaration and the Constitution are still viable, and then re-commit ourselves to this project. We have to re-engage in the democratic life of our communities. We have to start and support local businesses, join our local service organizations and churches, and involve ourselves in our schools and local governments—and then demand that these enterprises shoulder the needs of our communities with our help, rather than look to Austin or Washington for action. Once we make that commitment, then all of the hard work of re-organizing government will have a direction and a purpose—and we can get down to the difficult work that such re-organization will require.

If we re-build society according to these timeless plans, I believe we will leave that Shining City on a Hill to our children. I don’t know about you, but that is what I am fighting for.

We can not wait to re-organize--the time is now!

This post originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics.

This past Tuesday was an active and interesting day. First, I attended the Greater Houston Pachyderm Club’s weekly luncheon and heard the CEO of the Greater Houston Partnership discuss issues related to the future of our community. Immediately after work, I visited with some friends at a fundraiser for a local official, where the key topics were redistricting, the initial proposed budget out of Austin, and the state of our mental-health system. Next, I attended the meet and greet for prospective GOP Presidential candidate Herman Cain in Webster. Finally, I got home in time to see the end of the State of the Union speech and the responses. After absorbing all that I heard I have some thoughts to pass along.

Charles Dickens summarized the era of the French Revolution as follows:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way …

He then went on to say,

in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

I think Dickens’ summary could apply to this moment in our history, too. If we are to avoid the consequences of that time, figuratively and literally, we need to keep in mind some critical points:

• We indeed are at a “cross-roads” (or “tipping point,” or whatever metaphor you want to use to describe it this moment) in our history, and we are going to have to choose a turn in direction—staying on the same path is no longer a viable option;

• The problems we currently face with the current path have been in the making for over 100 years, and will not be fixed by making a quick turn in direction;

• There is no Golden Age or Dark Age in our country’s history, the narrative for which will give us absolute guidance in making our choice of direction, but the principles that helped guide the settlement and creation of this nation are still the most effective guardrails for the continuation of our journey;

• We must be bold and courageous in facing and making our choices, while avoiding reckless decisions that could imperil our future.

With these points in mind, I want to pull together some thoughts I have written about recently into a proposal for action in Texas for each of us to consider. But before I lay out that proposal, I want to digress for a moment to something our Founders said.

Immediately after the reference to our inalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote the following sentence:

That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Unfortunately, because the Declaration was written in the context of a revolution, whenever this sentence is quoted in the context of a policy debate, some people begin to fear that the speaker is advocating violent action against our government. But the Founders’ own use of this quote tells of a different intent. In at least three of the Federalist Papers, Madison and Hamilton both refer to this right “to alter or to abolish” the government, or even the Constitution itself, as a basic political right essential to republican government. In Federalist Paper No. 39, Madison discusses the provision in the Constitution providing for amendments as creating a blended process for altering or abolishing the Constitution involving both the people and the States. In Federalist Paper No. 40, Madison cites this right “to abolish or alter their governments” as providing the Philadelphia Convention with the authority it needed to draft a new Constitution, rather than just amend the Articles of Confederation. In Federalist Paper No. 78, Hamilton explains that, while the right to alter or abolish the Constitution rests with the people, neither the legislature, nor the courts can make laws that would violate the Constitution even if they say they are acting on behalf of a majority of the people.

Consistent with what the Founders said, I believe it is time for the people to demand that their elected representatives alter and re-organize government at all levels in a manner consistent with the original federal framework provided in the Constitution, which emphasized the primacy of local governance. This demand must be made knowing that the process will not be easy, and that it will take years—but it must start now. And Texas is the best laboratory in which to start the process.

To start this process, I urge the legislature to consider taking the following steps before the General Session ends in May:

• Adopt a budget based on the $72.2 billion revenue projection and on the current structure of our state and local governments through the next biennium; and, then,

• Begin the process of re-organizing the role of state and local governments from the bottom-up.

To accomplish the re-organization, I propose that the House and the Senate appoint a joint committee for re-organization, with sub-committees to address physical and mental health care, education, infrastructure, and the judicial and penal systems. Then, each sub-committee should work with a task force constituted as follows:

• For health-care, the task force should be comprised of county government officials, public hospital district administrators, and administrators of key charitable and educational hospital systems; and its focus should be on creating or maintaining community-centered hospitals and clinics as the primary vehicle for providing all public health care and financial assistance for health care in this state, and for establishing a local revenue stream for such a system to be administered at the county or regional level;

• For education, the task force should be comprised school board trustees and district superintendents, and community college trustees; and its focus should be on re-structuring the educational delivery system from the classroom up, on streamlining the school district network by breaking-up districts that are too large and combining those that are too small, on establishing a fair revenue stream derived from local or regional taxes to be collected and administered by the local governing bodies for the schools;

• For transportation, the task force should be comprised of city and county officials and transportation and flood control administrators; and its focus should be on streamlining the process for identifying local infrastructure needs and providing the local revenue streams and administration for such projects, and for the coordination of such projects with the transportation and infrastructure needs for the entire state; and

• For the judicial and penal systems, the task force should include county officials, judges, sheriffs, and jail administrators; and its focus should be on streamlining the appellate judiciary, reforming judicial selection, creating innovative monitoring systems for first-time offenders, and other issues to reduce the overall cost and increase the overall efficiency of the systems.

Then, based on the work of these sub-committees, a blueprint should be created for the next biennium that would redirect the administration, costs and taxes to as local a level as possible with as little state involvement or administrative overlap as possible. Each school district and county, as well as the state, should then be encouraged to create zero-based budgets based on this new blueprint, while the proper legislative committees should prepare enabling legislation or constitutional amendments that may be needed to implement the blueprint. This legislation should include a new sunset-review process that requires zero-based budgeting for each biennium at the state level, and zero-based budgeting at all levels of government.

I know, you’re now probably thinking that this can’t be done, so why even consider what I’ve just outlined. Well, consider this—three years ago, did you ever think we would win back the U.S. House of Representatives and gain a 101-seat majority in the Texas House? You see, the improbable can be accomplished if we have the will to do it.

If we don’t choose a path this bold, another path—the path of continued muddled, expensive and ever-expanding government—will destroy our economic future. The status quo is not only unacceptable, it is no longer viable. We must start down another path now. If we in Texas take this lead and show it can work, the nation will follow.

On the other hand, if you think we shouldn't take the path I’ve proposed, then what do you propose?