As enticing as our cradle to grave government programs are, they come at a grave loss of liberty and good paying jobs. For each mandate and tax we place on our citizens and businesses, we burden them and harm the economy. This has been done in New York State for 40 years and the result is stagnation, decay, and an exodus of our young, energetic, and higher taxpaying citizens.

We should tax labor and capital less, as well as make our social safety net more affordable and empowering. Social programs should not destroy employment, make people dependent, nor become a vehicle for politicians to use taxpayer money to buy political support.

The government should borrow, tax, and spend less. This would lift burdens from our citizens and businesses, make us more competitive, and lead to the creation of good paying jobs. In 2009, our deficit of $1.4 trillion eclipsed all others. In fact, it was larger than all of the accumulated public debt from 1789 to 1984. Our total U.S., state, and local government debt is 16 trillion dollars. This is roughly $118,000 per working individual. And according to David Walker, head of the General Accounting Office for the Clinton Administration, the unfunded pension, Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare shortfalls are in excess of $100 trillion or $740,000 per working person. The reckless spending, borrowing, taxing, and printing of money must stop!

We must enact merit pay in our school systems and other work rule reforms so that all children have access to a high quality education. Achieving excellence in education is no different than achieving it in any aspect of life. We need to hire the best teachers and administrators, more generously reward the higher performers, and dismiss the poorer performers.

By firing a few bad teachers and paying good teachers more, D.C. School District Chancellor Michelle Rhee has dramatically improved her city's schools. She has demonstrated good teachers can improve student achievement from some of the worst to some of the best.

Healthcare should be available to all. When government acts responsibly, the economy performs well, and most people receive health care via employment. Making health care costs tax deductible for people with part time jobs and between jobs would substantially improve their access to health care.

Enabling people to have tax deductible health savings accounts and more types of health insurance would improve their access to health care. We could pay for most routine healthcare from these accounts and purchase lower cost catastrophic health insurance. The more health care we buy directly, the better the service and the less fraud and abuse.

Allowing insurers to cross state lines and applying antitrust laws to any insurers and providers with oligopolistic or very large market shares would significantly lower the cost of health care. Enacting caps on pain and suffering awards, as lucrative litigation fuels unnecessary tests, would also substantially lower health care costs.

We need to provide incentives for conservation, as well as wind, solar, and clean coal energy. We need to utilize more domestic natural gas, selectively open more areas to drilling, and build more nuclear power plants. If we did this, we would import less oil, improve our balance-of-payments, reduce our funding of hostile regimes, and need to utilize our military less.

"Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." We would be wise not to let power concentrate across the country and especially in Washington. This was the genius and great gift of our forefathers and mothers. Unfortunately, we have forgotten this, as we now have national unions, and banks and businesses, which are too large to fail. We should apply our antitrust laws to the national unions and these businesses, as well as raise the reserve requirements on the banks that are too large to fail.

Congress needs top-to-bottom reform. Let's start with 12 year term limits. Let's insist Congress gives its members and the public time to read the legislation before it votes. Let's make Congress live under the laws and with benefit packages it imposes on the rest of us.

Process matters. When making policy all stakeholders need to be at the table. As much as possible, Congressional leaders need to seek "First to Understand," and "Win-Win" solutions. We need to find solutions that are affordable, sustainable and supported by most Americans.