Substance abuse in the family is the leading factor and primary driver of many kinds of gun-related crimes, domestic violence, and other offenses.

Substance abuse is tightly bound to domestic violence. Three-quarters of serious domestic violence is associated with substance abuse at the time of violence (Fig 3). This statistic does not include substance abusers who were not “loaded” at the time of violence.

When gun violence takes place, our problem is not loaded guns.  It is “loaded” individuals, most often raised outside marriage, who borrowed or stole a gun from somebody else.

Nearly half of gun-related violence is associated with substance abuse at the time of the offense (Table 28).  We do not know how many of these offenses involve substance abusers not “loaded” at the time of the offense.  Individuals raised by substance-abusing parents, and individuals raised outside intact marriages are 2.5 times more likely to commit an act of gun violence (Table 6).

Two-thirds of other violent crimes involve substance abuse at the time of the offense (Fig 5).   The latest National Crime Victimization Surveys reports find that  drugs and alcohol are a leading factor in many kinds of criminal offenses. Nearly three-fourths of federal prisoners admitted using drugs in 2007 – up from 60% in 1990 (Table 3). Substance abuse rates for female offenders are even higher (Table 6).  Few offenders have ever had substance abuse treatment, and participation in recovery programs has declined since 1991.

Missouri House Bill 764 takes the bull by the horns.  Substance abuse in the family has never been addressed with policy empowering non-substance-abusing spouses the ability to leverage the troubled spouse into recovery.   Spouses have to “live with it” or get a divorce.  Most individuals do not like those options.  They just want their partner to get into recovery.

Our legislation creates a “Family Intervention Order”.   If your spouse is a substance abuser, a restraining order gives control of the family to you.  The substance abuser has only two choices: seek recovery or “lose it all”.   Nothing is more likely to reliably result in recovery than this.  The Family Intervention Order is ideal because it is self-balancing within families and does not give the nanny-state power to interfere in families.

By taking substance abuse in the family seriously, and giving spouses a power tool to save marriages and build future marriages, everybody wins:

• Future gun violence will be prevented.
• Future divorces will be prevented and more cohabiting individuals will marry.  Reducing divorce and improving marriage rates by only 10% in Missouri will save the state $180-million the first year alone – compounding annually.
• With improving marriage rates, we will see corresponding decreases in family violence, violence against women, crime, child abuse, and child neglect.
• Motor vehicle fatalities and accidents will decrease.
• Insurance companies will have fewer claims for accidents.
• Unmarried individuals have significantly higher rates of psychological and stress-related physical disorders. Insurance companies will see significant reductions in claims.
• Health care actuarial metrics will change.  We will see fewer low-income individuals requiring free health care.
• Many individuals will be moved from welfare and poverty to happier and safer marriages.
• Banks, mortgage companies, and credit card companies will benefit from fewer bankruptcies and non-collectables.
• Businesses will see higher employee productivity.  Individuals in troubled families do not perform as well at work and miss more work.
• States will see demand spending needs shrink.  Governors and legislatures will not have to settle for a “buckdancer’s choice” hiking taxes, cutting-off needy individuals, or cutting essential services.

We encourage other states to consider the wisdom of enacting proactive marriage-positive socioeconomic policy.  An ounce of prevention will save trillions in downstream cures.

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David R. Usher is President of the Center for Marriage Policy

Cynthia Davis is Executive Director of the Center for Marriage Policy

©2013, 2015 The Center for Marriage Policy.

Today’s social policy is a very sick donkey.  Social problems, “social issues”, and endless spending are what comes out of the animal.  Democrats rush in to clean up the mess and are seen as being helpful.  Republicans stand around hoping not to spend money – but eventually cave in because of the “Titanic Principle”:  we must rescue women and children before the ship goes down.

Both parties are buried under the consequences. Washington has been deadlocked for decades, for lack of policy that works for Americans.  Obamacare — the largest expansion of the welfare state since the Great Society was invented — is now sinking the ship.  The new Millennial welfare state is a certainly-fatal drag on the economy, the dollar, and the taxpayer.

Supply-side socioeconomics gets in front of our very sick donkey.  It leads individuals out of poverty, crime, and socioeconomic bedlam by establishing positive choices and futures for low-income Americans that do not exist today.

The choices government offers to individuals today penalize attainment of the American dream that most of us want.  Existing policy does not empower individuals – or the Nation — to succeed.  It “suckers” Americans into becoming institutionalized failures of the state.

Welfare is a government-sponsored underground economy producing nothing but crime, illegitimacy, poverty, deficit spending, high taxes, and an overwhelming majority of unhappy voters in all income brackets.

We are all much the same. Everyone, regardless of sex, age, or income wants a reasonable place to live in a relatively safe neighborhood.  We all want food, decent schools, and items such as a television, computer, car, and cell phone.  We all hate waiting in lines, filling out government forms, and waiting for somebody to help us out.  We all want to achieve our dreams.  But today, only the most determined and lucky individuals escape the underground welfare economy and make it to the middle class.

Today, 70% of women and 66% of men still strongly believe in marriage (many more are not averse to it). If socioeconomic policy encourages marriage instead of dependency, sustainable communities will rise with  rebirth of the “contented” middle class (which exists naturally when marriage is the social norm).

How does supply-side socioeconomics work?  Here are four simple highlights of supply-side socioeconomic policies:

• If your spouse has a serious substance abuse problem, a “family intervention” restraining order makes your partner choose between growing up and losing it all. Most individuals do not want a divorce or to end up in a women’s shelter.  They want their partner to recover.  We merely empower the responsible spouse to pull the relationship out of the quicksand. The cost to the state is negligible and reduces annual social spending by at least $20,000 per marriage created or saved.

• “Responsible Dissolution” divorce reform legislation replaces existing predatory divorce laws (famously misused by both Newt Gingrich and John Edwards to replace their wives).  Retooled divorce policy makes mutual consent the norm, except where serious problems exist in the marriage.  When divorce must be a unilateral action, the spouse most responsible to the marriage receives at least 70% of marital assets.  Mutual consent takes the fight out of ending a marriage while making marriage a safe investment to begin with.

• Marriage Savers support group meetings in every community provide very effective free help to troubled couples.  Just walk in the door of your church or civic center and a mentor couple who survived the same problems you have will guide your marriage back on track.  Retired Americans are our strongest asset.  Let us harness their knowledge and willingness to volunteer.
• Welfare-to-marriage policy is a multidisciplinary approach rebuilding marriage culture where it does not exist today.  It provides educational resources for married couples who have time to attend school and increase earning capacity to move into the middle class.  Small economic incentives to marry are offset by decreases in long-term welfare expenditures and increases in taxes from larger numbers married couples.

Marriage is the necessary cornerstone we can no longer afford to waste.  Let us apply supply-side socioeconomics to lift America out of the modern dark-age that has become a national nightmare.

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David R. Usher is President of the Center for Marriage Policy.

“Marriage Equality” is perhaps the most convoluted canard of our time.  Underneath the hood of the homosexual revolution churns the most serious avoidable health problems of our time.

The majority of our most dangerous sexual diseases emanate from the homosexual revolution and are transmitted to wives, infants, children, and men by LBGTQ individuals who are most often bisexual.

Bisexuals are the majority in the LBGTQ movement.   Approximately 1.8% to 4% of Americans are bisexual.  This broad gateway infects unsuspecting heterosexual Americans with serious or fatal diseases. The impact to heterosexual women is serious.  70% of HIV infections in women are attributed to heterosexual contact.

The impact of homosexuality on the rest of us can no longer be ignored:

• Among female adults and adolescents that were diagnosed with HIV infection in 2009, 84.9% were infected through heterosexual contact.
• 25% of new HIV infections are women who are often straight.
• HIV is the #14 cause of infant mortality (Table B). This is most often caused by women who have a bisexual husband or boyfriend.
• There are about 1.2 million individuals infected with HIV in the United States.  About 20% of them do not know they are infected and are spreading the disease invisibly.
• Children raised by homosexual parents are dramatically more likely than peers raised by married heterosexual parents to suffer from a host of social problems.
• The total death impact of promiscuity is difficult to quantify because so many other opportunistic fatal diseases are the final cause of death.
• High rates of psychiatric disorders are well-known even in the Netherlands, where homosexuality is widely accepted.  Substance abuse is also common in the LGBTQ community. The rest of American often bears the costs of treatment for STD’s and endless psychological treatment for confused individuals.

Homosexuality has been “legitimized” in our schools.  It is considered an act of hate to question or oppose sexual perversion.  Why do we teach homosexuality in our schools while strongly encouraging our children not to use drugs or smoke?  Fatality data indicates that promiscuity and homosexuality are at least as dangerous to health and life as smoking or drugs.

In New York City, very high rates of risky homosexual practices are reported.  Nearly 10% of sexually-active New York City high school students say they had at least one same-sex partner.  Children do what they are taught.  “Gay, lesbian, and bisexual students are not born that way. The most recent, extensive, and scientifically sound research finds that the primary factor in the development of homosexuality is environmental not genetic”.

Smoking is banned everywhere in America because of the risks imposed to others.  We are tough on drinking and driving for the same reasons.  We can no longer give homosexuality a free pass because the grave healthcare burden it imposes on the rest of us.  The taxpayers cannot “leave the room” to avoid being harmed.

Incubating a national health problem:

Gay men have between 4 and 100 times more sex partners than heterosexual men.  Lesbians are 4.5 times more likely to have over 50 sex partners in their lifetime compared with heterosexual women. 75-90 percent of women who have sex with women have also had sex with men.  Only 10% of homosexual relationships are monogamous after five years.

• The incidence of HIV in men who have sex with men is 44 times that of heterosexual men, and 40 times greater than women
• Homosexual men are 46 times more likely than heterosexual men to contract syphilis.
• HIV is the #10 cause of death for black males and #24 for white males (Table D).
• While there are far fewer lesbians than gays, lesbians are 4.5 times more likely to have had over 50 sex partners than heterosexual women.
• 63 percent of syphilis cases were among men who have sex with men (cite).
• The majority of lesbians commonly have sex with men.

Gay advocacy overwhelms science

Ryan Sorba’s authoritative history of gay advocacy documents how the homosexual revolution overwhelmed the scientific community in the 1970’s and 1980’s applied aggressive activism and now-debunked “studies” to achieve the impossible:  diagnoses of homosexual disorders are no longer objective.  A psychiatric disorder exists only if the individual subjectively discovers it.  The majority of therapy focuses on solipsistic “affirmative therapy” (helping homosexuals feel comfortable with their behavior) instead of steering them to effective “change therapy” that could save their lives and relieve their mental anxieties.

Since psychiatric science does not recognize homosexuality as a diagnosable disorder, the policy responses of the CDC, psychological and psychiatric professions, and schools are limited to carefully encouraging condom use and spending vast sums of taxpayer monies taking care of ill and dying individuals.

Gay advocates now controlling the American Psychiatric Association created false science far more dangerous than Al Gore’s debunked global warming theories.  Gore’s confabulations did not kill anyone.

Gay advocates blame the consequences of their behavior on us, demanding that science and taxpayers take care of them.  Elton John blames “stigma” for causing the AIDS crisis, asserting that “love can fix the problem”.   If gay leaders truly loved their followers, would be addressing rampant promiscuity to save the lives of their followers instead of blaming everyone else.

Gay politics has become another big-government enterprise.  It forces us to accept it, urges more youth to do it, and creates expensive problems requiring massive funding to clean up the mess.

Kinsey acolytes have perverted politics and science in ways not seen since the dark ages.  The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed a bill that would “protect all 547 forms of sexual deviancy or ‘paraphilias’”. California is considering legislation guaranteeing that many children will die:  S.B. 1172 will bar counselors from helping children recover from unwanted same-sex attractions.

Gay Marriage will not reduce homosexual promiscuity

Gay marriage is an absurd proposition. Dan Savage, a leader of the gay movement, promotes promiscuity. The homosexual revolution is founded on sexual promiscuity.

In states that have gay marriage, few men marry.  Between 2004 and 2008, only 37% of same-sex marriages in Massachusetts involved men.

There is no evidence that “coupling” or gay marriage has notable impact on gay promiscuity.

Marriage becomes a promiscuous government village

Gay marriage is destined to be a three-way marriage between two women and big government.  When Suzie marries Joanie, the kids will most often be born of serial extramarital encounters (where men are unlikely to know that birth control is not being used).

Gay marriage establishes a superior four-income, two-mother, big government family.  Marriage-as-village policy is a lucrative tentacular arrangement:  women keep their own incomes, depending on government to force several men to provide multiple tax-free “child support” incomes.

The tremendous advantages of gay marriage for women are reflected in marriage data. Gay marriage is nearly twice as popular with women in Massachusetts, where 63% of gay marriages involved women between 2004 and 2008.

Gay politics overruns libertarianism and conservatism

Gay conservatism is an impossible concept.  The gay movement will settle for nothing less than hard-core multiculturalist government.

GoProud pretends that gay marriage is a state issue while actively supporting it at the federal level.  Gay marriage is very much a federal issue because DOMA exists.  An onslaught of litigation intended to demolish DOMA is raining down on the U.S. Supreme Court.  Lawsuits of every possible stripe are headed to the Supreme Court to force homosexuality on America.

The Republican Party is allowed Homocon 2012 to be held at its convention and allowed leftists to participate in writing its 2012 platform – a move that may suppress or alienate a large segment of the conservative and Tea Party vote.

Glenn Beck now supports gay marriage.  He is apparently unaware of the grave damage gay marriage will do to the rest of America.

Dear Glenn: Multicultural marriage divides America into two absolute classes depending solely on reproductive ability — with women entitled and men plantation bondservants to big government.  God-given natural social, parental and economic rights will be fully usurped by government.  Health care costs will soar due to illness and social problem grown due to the numbers of sexually-confused children and adults.  Your pocket will be picked and your children indoctrinated whether you like it or not.

We must rescind irresponsible homosexual public policy from the lawbooks across-the-board and discourage homosexual behavior.  We must not allow pansexuals to take over the conservative movement like they did the American Psychiatric Association.  Their invasion is as dangerous to our socioeconomic fabric as the Occupy movement is to free enterprise.

America is burning down because of the demise of heterosexual marriage. Marriage-absence is the greatest socioeconomic problem we face.   Our focus must be on restoring heterosexual marriage as the social norm.

Certainly, budget cuts are necessary.  We must also learn from the political failure of “austerity” in France. If we do not change what the “Federal Sausage Machine” makes, it will continue generating mass social disaster.  There will be no funding to clean it up, and angry voters will again swing to the hard left as they did in 2008.

“Protecting Marriage Month” is a viral leafleting campaign initiated by the Center for Marriage Policy that every American can easily participate in.  Businesses, politicians, and city councils need to focus on health and safety of women and children.  We encourage everyone who backed Chick-Fil-A to download and actively distribute the Protecting Marriage Month leaflet during the month of September.

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David R. Usher is President of the Center for Marriage Policy.

Cynthia L. Davis is Executive Director of the Center for Marriage Policy.

Media Contacts:

Cynthia Davis: cynthia.davis@centerformarriage.org, 636 240-6369

David R. Usher: david.usher@centerformarriage.org

Scott Lively: http://defendthefamily.com, sdllaw@gmail.com, 413 250-0984

Ryan Sorba: ryanjsorba@gmail.com

The leading hierarchical driver of poverty in America is marriage-absence.  Economic downturns and joblessness play a secondary role.  The following table, compiled by the Center for Marriage Policy from government data proves this is the case.

We see that poverty for married families has consistently ranged between about 5 and 7% since 1975 across five economic downturns. But poverty has averaged approximately 500% to 600% higher for unmarried female-headed households – closely following the unemployment rate.

Bicycles have two wheels for good reason, and fish do not ride them.  Married families consistently have income redundancy required to weather market cycles and the necessary built-in human resources to withstand illness, child-rearing, and retirement gracefully; while paying taxes.  We can no longer afford our failed cultural experiment propping up unicycles on the highway of life.

Marriage guarantees the lowest poverty rates regardless of economic conditions.  Marriage is the best pathway to upward mobility and economic success, most notably for individuals in lower income groups. 

The graph reveals other astonishing truths:

1. Significant reductions in poverty levels occurred during the economic boom prior to implementation of the first “Great Society” programs, when marriage rates were high. Programs implemented since 1964 have demonstrated no impact reducing poverty, but enabled growth of destructive cultural thinking deprecating marriage.
2. The “number of individuals in poverty” statistic widely recited in horror is misleading because it reflects population growth in addition to poverty. The “percent in poverty” is credible.
3. We are nowhere near the poverty level of 23% in 1959. Government programs have demonstrated little or no impact on this metric since 1970.
4. The number of individuals lacking health care coverage has hovered around 15% since 1986.  Lack of coverage is not the pandemic misused to ram National Health Care through Congress.
5. Poverty rates for unmarried women (most often with children) are approximately six times higher than for married women.  Recessions impact unmarried mothers more steeply than the general population, most likely due to the fact that these households have only one income stream.

Two related exponential trends are revealed that track in parallel.  Illegitimacy increased 1000% since 1959, and nearly doubled since 1986. Secondly, the percentage of households receiving some form of government assistance has increased 142% since 1986.

Welfare reforms enacted in 1996 are not a success.  Policy to reverse the trend of marriage-absence did not exist in 1996 and was not considered, but was called for in the PROWRA template.

We have spent 16-trillion on welfare since 1964, and another $953 billion this year.  Budgets must be cut, but only a scrooge would do it by throwing unmarried mothers on the street.  To get our economic house in order, our first priority must be to restore marriage as the structural social norm.

Teachers, lawyers, insurers, doctors, judges, hospitals, real estate companies, banks, Fannie, Freddie, and taxpayers have a profound stake helping restoring marriage.  Their greatest industry problems are substantially caused by marriage-absence.

Eighty-six percent of women, and two-thirds of men still believe in marriage.  Marriage is the most pressing contemporary women’s and children’s issue.  The majority of problems liberals, conservatives, Libertarians, and Constitutionalists abhor can be greatly resolved by restoring marriage.

The Center for Marriage Policy, founded this month, has created the “10 Marriage Values Policies” designed to complete welfare reform, improve the lives of millions of unmarried adults and children, balance budgets without raising taxes, reduce poverty, and restore our core social fabric.

American cannot afford to waste another election cycle multiplying past mistakes.  The time to restore marriage is now.

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David R. Usher is President of the Center for Marriage Policy.

When I (Cynthia) attended Logan Elementary School in Wilmette, Illinois, we students were sent home for lunch with the understanding our parents would feed and send us back for the afternoon session an hour later. It was every family’s duty to ensure somebody provided lunch every day. Far more happened than bodily nourishment. Parents offer nourishment for the soul and transmit family values. Family lunches gave us time to process what was happening in school and reinforce the culture and virtues that make great citizens.

Parents were expected to raise their children, and school teachers were expected to educate. As no-fault divorce and cohabitation swept the nation, marriage began a tumble quickly followed by declining student test scores.

Marriage-absence, whether from divorce or a family that failed to form in the first place, is a key structural problem driving education failure today. Too many children lack the parental guidance necessary for school readiness. Statistically, children raised in intact families have more social and economic advantages.

Parent-Absence Burdens Schools
Between 1970 and 2009, poorly-designed public policies caused marriage rates to decline by 53 percent, while illegitimacy soared 1,700 percent.  Today, 41% of children are born outside marriage.  In poor areas, this percentage is much higher. Many children ended up worse academically, emotionally, spiritually, and mentally. As parents did less, public schools started doing more.

The lines started blurring when social engineers assumed that parents were failing and   asked schools to gradually assume more child-rearing duties. Most teachers love teaching and are happy to help when called upon, but requiring them to parent half their students before beginning to teach is an impossible task. When we adopt public policies that build marriage, we will have a winning recipe for improved outcomes for all.

Teachers cannot insist that children brush their teeth, do their homework, wash their clothes, and go to bed. Yet they are expected to educate sleep-deprived, unprepared, and unmotivated children. Public schools are starting to resemble public orphanages. Bigger government programs, such as the free breakfast and lunch programs are a consequence of marriage-absence. Children should be fed by their parents—the norm in married families.

Rewarding Society-Destroying Behavior
No Child Left Behind, the largest federal education law, will go down in history as one of the greatest academic failures ever because it rested upon several false presumptions. Its passage implied that schools can be forced to produce better outcomes with more testing and completely ignored the consequences of the fundamental domestic failures that drive educational failures.

Our system of college funding encourages illegitimacy and discourages marital responsibility. When calculating how to pay for college for Cynthia’s daughter, she noted having a baby now would secure coverage for her college expenses.    This is only one factor driving the disappearance of the middle class.  Middle-class families are punished for responsible behavior while their children are encouraged to join a struggling underclass unlikely to rise into the middle class.

Restore Economic Competitiveness
Governments ought to protect citizens from tyranny, administrate justice, and build infrastructure. Marriage economics is the bedrock of all successful nations. Economic success requires strong marriages: the word “economy” comes from the Greek word oikonomia, or “management of a household.” America’s academic and economic competitiveness with marriage-based Asian countries depends on restoring marriage as the social norm.

How can we accomplish this critical task? Reforming divorce laws, encouraging shared parenting, and eliminating government incentives for cohabitation and marital irresponsibility will help children in our schools and extricate teachers from serving as surrogate parents. The Center for Marriage Policy has a storehouse of policies to end marriage-destructive policies and encourage positive ones.

It is time for America to discard policies dooming the next generation and replace them with marriage-positive policies. We encourage teachers and legislators to join this historic effort at returning schools to their structural purpose by supporting Marriage Values policies. The success or failure of teaching depends on it.

Marriage-absence is a problem caused by decades of breezy liberal “change” agenda for which Conservatives have never had sound socioeconomic policy or legislation.  Liberals attempt to enact ideas into law to give the appearance of solving social problems.  Our culture of honoring marriage has suffered decades of incremental losses for lack of a better policy.  Today’s seemingly unrelated budget battles are the end-stage consequence of years of using “no” as our only social policy, and assuming marriage would survive despite societal erosion and new anti-family policies.

We must now ask ourselves an important question: Why do Republicans usually lose on social issues?

The Limitations of Reaganomics

Reagan knew that “welfare’s purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence.” This directly implies more is needed than budget cuts to deal with massive welfare expansion.  Reagan and his descendants were unable to translate this vision into effective policy.  For this reason, conservative social policy has been a risky exercise in economic crisis management often exacerbating the root causes.

One of Reagan’s biggest regrets, as expressed in his memoirs, was signing the first “no-fault” divorce law into effect as Governor of California.  Passage of no-fault divorce laws by all other states were followed by explosions of divorce, illegitimacy, and uncontrollable social spending, empowering Democrat administrations while Republicans nervously stood aside.

Historically, Republicans fail when it comes to delivering both a strong economy and a balanced budget. Republicans have done well on the economic side, but have had difficulty articulating the right way to accomplish strong social policy.  Democrats have demonstrated incompetence on economic issues, but rely on social problems — powered by class and gender warfare organizers — to escalate welfare spending.

The lack of monetaristic social policy, combined with Milton Friedman’s liberal views on social issues, precluded the invention of technically-sound conservative social policy.  The liberal followers of Keynes hence enjoyed sole control of social policy, and America is nearly bankrupt.

During the Reagan, H.W. Bush, and G.W. Bush years, the debt-to-GDP ratio skyrocketed by 62.7%.  This is partially attributable to a combination of lower tax rates and increased defense spending — but is predominantly the result of out-of-control “War on Poverty” spending.

The 1996 welfare reforms, primarily focused on cutting budgets, aggressively attacked the consequences of marriage-absence instead of addressing problems at the source.   Social expenditures were privatized as aggressive “child support” recoupment programs, and more single mothers were forced to work full time.  This did not lift unmarried mothers out of poverty or resolve their problems.  Many mothers ended up doing double-duty as mothers and full-time workers, while legions of un-parented children failed in school, went to prison, and gave birth to the next unfortunate generation to be raised without married parents.

Recasting “welfare” as a “child support collections problem” also transformed welfare into an inbred policy structure effectively taking from the poor to help the poor — pitting poor women against poor men.  This proved to aggravate the unmarried underclass — still believing it was getting welfare — only to find it taken back four or five years later by the Title IV-D collections system.  The resulting disparity between rich and poor provided powerful ammunition for the “social justice” movement to organize large urban areas during the run-up to the 2008 elections.

A “family values” cultural clash emerged – hallmarked by the policy-free “family values” debate and punctuated by Gingrich’s strident call for more orphanages.  In their efforts to appear politically correct many Republicans became squeamish about social issues.   Between 1998 and 2008, Democrats wrenched social issues away from the Republican Party and positioned themselves as the only ones who care about the hardships of single mothers, retirees, and the ever-expanding cotillion of interests being brought under the “welfare” model.

Budget-cutting is a necessary tool but is not a substitute for well-crafted policy that ends social problems and precludes subsequent spending needs. Cutting builds a backlog of social problems inuring to the benefit of opportunistic politicians and bleeding-heart media.

By 2008, the burgeoning underclass and community organizers leveraged enough energy to provide the rocket fuel for the Democrat’s “free health care” welfare-state landslide.  Once again, Republicans forfeited political power by having weak and incoherent social policy.

Obama entered territory far beyond that charted by Lyndon Johnson and his predecessors by launching a wild social spending spree, doubling the size of the welfare state, on the Democrat scorecard, in full defiance of the values of most Americans.  While social issues elected President Obama in a strong victory, it was his social spending that also purchased Republican victories in 2010.

Republicans celebrated as they regained control of the House in 2010.  The credit for most of the gains belongs primarily to energetic Tea Partiers and Constitutionalists – who focused on cutting budgets and limiting government — not the Republican Party itself.  The lack of enticing, visionary reconstruction agenda prevented a Republican takeover in the Senate, despite a magnificent political opportunity not unlike the Zeitgeist that drove the Republican landslide in 1994.

Haley Barbour offered a sobering bookmark: “Republicans now [only] own one-half of one-third of government“.  The 2010 elections were a step in the right direction, but not the sweep anticipated after two tumultuous years of bankrupt quangocratic rule that sent the nation into a state of horrified uproar. With little more than budget reforms in the toolbox, Republicans are walking a political tightrope that could become a third rail. We won a skirmish, but are a long way from winning the war in 2012.

With a nation drowning in spending driven primarily by marriage-absence we must change our game.  Winning the future still hinges on Republicans’ ability to seize the upper hand on social policy.

The economic necessity of marriage

Conservatives are more outspoken about the importance of marriage than ever before.  At CPAC, Representative Allen West said “We cannot continue in an America where we are making more and more people wedded to government either by subsistence check or by unemployment check… we must hold sacred the privilege of marriage between a man and a woman … because we cannot allow the destruction of the American family.”

Referring to overlapping problems of marriage-absence and education, Governor Mitch Daniels said, “we must never yield to the self-fulfilling despair that these problems are immutable or insurmountable.” Mitt Romney knows that “Liberal welfare policies condemn generations to dependency and poverty.” Most notably, Mike Huckabee expressed a vitally-important point on Stephen Colbert recently when he said, “social issues are economic issues”.

The Heritage Foundation, Family Research Council, the American Family Association, and many other organizations have emphatically recommended a return to marriage decades.

Conservatives uniformly realize that rebuilding marriage, to serve its necessary civilizational role, is an important goal.  Most do not yet understand that rebuilding marriage is also a mandatory cornerstone of economic reconstruction. Without a visionary policy Republicans will never have the ability to reverse the troubling trend of marriage-absence, and America will sink ever-deeper into financial insolvency.

Marriage-absence is the greatest economic problem we face and is the primary driver of uncontrollable spending and deficits at both state and federal levels.  Economic and social conservatives need a unified agenda.  William F. Buckley’s conservative political revolution will be reborn when social conservatives deliver productive socioeconomic policy capable of balancing the budget.

Establishing prevailing conservative socioeconomic policy

The Center for Marriage Policy is launching the science of Marriage Values socioeconomic policy.  Our policy establishes a pillar of “monetaristic socioeconomics” to complement settled conservative economic policy.  “Marriage Values” policy naturally builds marriage, actively deflates social problems driving deficit spending, naturally balances federal and state budgets, reduces poverty, and uplifts the poor.

The principles of the two pillars are very similar.  One builds business, economy, and tax revenues.  The other builds marriage and structural socioeconomic strength while deflating large amounts of unproductive government spending.  Together, jobs and marriage are the two necessary safety nets assuring the best outcomes, even when the job market contracts.

Marriage is social currency, which if invested in, builds nations.  When our social currency contracts, like the money supply shrunk just before the Great Depression, the economic and social consequences are profound.  Today’s problems are compounded because about half of individuals lack the social safety net of marriage in a tough job market.

Marriage is an irreplaceable structural necessity because each family has two incomes, four hands, and two brains to support the household, raise children, and save for retirement, in a healthy form of mutual socioeconomic interdependency.   This fundamental truth is often ignored by trendy social re-engineers who coincidentally believe that government can somehow replace both the social and economic benefits of marriage.

Going forward, we must establish an enduring stewardship of our most valuable national socioeconomic currency — marriage.

Marriage Values policy will transform government from marriage-destructive to marriage-positive activities.  Government must stop financially coercing or baiting citizens into pursuit of bad choices that often destroy their futures.  We will lead Americans from the intergenerational trap of welfare, poverty, and crime to happier, richer, more stable married lives – where temporary employment difficulties are mitigated by the fact that married families have two income sources and only one roof to support.

Our “10 Marriage Values Policies” are founded on scientific knowledge that will deliver improved marriage rates, reduced poverty, illegitimacy and cohabitation rates; and deliver substantial improvements in criminal, health care, retirement, and educational metrics.  Spending decreases will be substantial, answering the most serious state and federal budgetary shortfalls, while we grow the tax base.

The body of reliable studies proves that marriage is the foundation for low poverty rates.  Married individuals and their children are the happiest, are most likely to succeed in work and school, and retire on roughly three times the assets of unmarried individuals.

We cannot end the myriad problems associated with marriage-absence by ignoring or complaining about them, forcing marriage, or solely slicing budgets.  We will succeed by giving Americans better choices leading to personal independence and happier lives, at little or no cost to government.

Marriage Values policy marks a sea-change in approach to “social issues”.  Socioeconomic policy will be empirically defined and measured in non-confrontational scientific contexts.  In the past, social issues have been staged as religious or cultural collisions with class or gender activists – with policy essentially driven by street culture.  This approach may make for exciting headlines, but leaves a lot of people with hurt feelings, ruins political careers, and prevents development of well-crafted policy founded on peer-reviewed science.

Marriage Values policy avoids the third rails of feminism, racism, multiculturalism, and religious debate.  Anti-marriage and anti-American special interest groups cannot effectively challenge science and civil instinct that will deliver what most Americans want and need.

High employment and marriage rates structurally benefit all Americans, and are necessary pillars for any successful society.  This truth speaks to atheists, libertarians, constitutionalists, conservatives, mainstream feminists, women, children, and especially the poor most severely impacted by marriage-absence.  Jobs and marriage are everyone’s issues.  The scientific evidence supporting the benefits of marriage to individuals cannot be deconstructed by progressives no matter how hard they try.

Marriage is the leading women’s issue

All arrows point to the fact that past social policy has tremendously harmed most women caught up in the welfare state.  Mothers who are divorced or never married the fathers of their children suffer many disadvantages.  We must reach out to show poor women the road map to a better life.

Despite years of intergenerational non-marriage, the core belief in marriage remains very strong according to reliable studies.  The human dynamic of Marriage Values policy begins with tapping the unparalleled economic and social benefits of marriage to individuals, and leading them out of the welfare-poverty trap.  Coordinated changes to welfare and family law have the potential to gently transition large numbers of women from welfare to marriage.

Current practices take women who would be winners and turn them into losers by baiting them out of marriage with trinkets and baubles. Winners will pick themselves, avoid troublesome government solutions, and the majority will succeed out of self-interest.  Our policy works by giving Americans better choices – the ones individuals wanted in the first place – pre-empting existing programs and in many cases relegating them to handle much smaller numbers of temporary crises.

Ending America’s silent civil war

Our approach ends the fifty-year battle between the Great Society and Daniel Patrick Moynihan — on a positive note — with everyone emerging a winner. Marriage Values policy is the only road map addressing the root causes of America’s greatest economic and social problems within a single, inseparable policy framework.

America is near insolvency due to socialist expansions of the welfare state by Democrats.  Anti-American activists sense the tipping point is near, and hope to push America over the edge into collapse by organizing class-based civil war on our economic institutions. We must not let Marxists end the American Experiment when we now have the tools to eviscerate their insidious rich vs. poor revolution.

The Republican Party desperately needs the unifying strategic model of Marriage Values policy to achieve landslide victories in Congress and the Presidency in 2012, and to reconstruct America to be the self-determined and self-governing prosperous Republic it was designed to be.  All Americans must heed the Patriot call to win America’s second civil war – a Donnybrook lost by decades of values attacks from the rear – and which will be won by frontal assault with non-contentious sound socioeconomic policy.

___________________________________________

David R. Usher is President of the Center for Marriage Policy

Allen Icet is the former State Representative for Missouri’s 84^th District,

Chairman of The Missouri Club for Growth, and Vice President of the Center for Marriage Policy

Cynthia Davis is the former State Representative for Missouri’s 19th District and Executive Director of the Center for Marriage Policy

© 2011

Every day we read articles bemoaning the lack of marriage and complaining about marriage-destructive Progressive federal law.  Now is the time to move beyond armchair hand-wringing about the demise of marriage and destrucive laws. We must take a firm lead with better policy that will accurately target social problems while restoring marriage for the benefit all Americans.

One way we can win the war on marriage is by working toward workable legislative answers that make more sense than the anti-family ideas being promoted by organized progressives around the Beltway and in state capitols across America.

The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) is an example of government erroneously treating a consequence rather than impacting the source of the problem.  Domestic violence is usually a symptom of a much larger problem brought on by drug and alcohol abuse.  Due to the emotional nature of this issue, we missed the root cause of the problem.

VAWA was pushed through Congress in 1994, despite the fact it was exclusively promulgated by radical feminist Progressives.  VAWA is often misused to unilaterally take over families, destroy marriages and dole out extensive welfare entitlements simply on unverified statements of fear.  Since its passage, VAWA has actually increased family violence that had been on a downward trend since 1976!

How is it possible that over this sixteen-year time period, nobody has proposed better legislation to deal with domestic violence? When will we set forth sensible social policy, founded on substance rather than symbolism, conforming to conservative principles and simple human science?

I entered public office in 1994—about the same time VAWA was passed and have held office on the local and state level, including time as chair of the Missouri House of Representative’s Children and Families Committee.  As a conservative, it frustrates me that there is such a dearth of sound logic to counteract the misinformation being promoted by the left.  By the time a domestic violence bill gets to a vote, legislators from both parties fall all over each other trying to support it.  Legislators from all political parties want the reputation of being the “champions of the poor women and children,” but we are completely amiss on how to accomplish this.  As a consequence, our best intentioned ideas produced the opposite results.

Progressives now want to enact I-VAWA – designed to directly entitle U.N. feminists to destroy marriage, promote abortion, and foster lesbianism worldwide.  This is at the top of Joe Biden’s agenda. Republicans will likely cave-in as they have in the past unless we show them the way on social policy matters.

A simple example of trickle-down social policy

How can we positively impact and prevent domestic violence with trickle-down social policy? We must focus on the leading causes of domestic violence and directly address them. Alcohol and drug abuse is associated with three-quarters of serious domestic violence.  It is by far the leading factor in family violence as well as being a major factor in motor vehicle accidents.   Substance abuse is often the predicator of cheating, squandering marital assets, getting fired, motivational problems, crime to support addiction, and an inability to maintain family relationships. Millions of marriages can be saved, but only when the substance abuser recovers.

We recommend legislation establishing the Family Intervention Order (FIO) to directly prevent domestic violence, effectively leverage the substance abusing spouse into treatment, and save many marriages.

The Family Intervention Order gives a spouse with a substance-abusing partner a powerful tool similar to a restraining order directing the other party to seek evaluation and recovery in a state-approved treatment center.  Treatment centers report to courts so the progress can be measured.  Under current laws, the victim has only two choices: live with the abuse or get a divorce.  With the Family Intervention Order, the substance abuser has only two choices: recover or leave so you can’t continue to abuse. Both of these choices offer support to the innocent one and a more satisfying resolution.

As conservatives, we want our government smaller.  Government often inappropriately interjects itself into human relationships when marriages are in trouble.  While the FIO may seem like a new program, it preempts the need for VAWA, by resolving the leading cause of family problems at comparatively low cost.  The national government decided to involve itself when it passed VAWA in 1994.  Instead of reauthorizing VAWA, we should eliminate it through better ideas that will strengthen families.

While this still won’t guarantee success for every situation, the longitudinal recovery rate for Betty Ford (Hazelden) recovery programs is very high.  Marriage is the safest place for women, children, and men.  It creates taxpayers, and is only institution preventing tragedies driving the necessity for massive social service spending.

We need to get off the misguided path of progressives who seek to erode and minimize the importance of family.  Achieving a sane and prosperous America is inseparably linked with restoring marriage.

By working together to execute trickle-down social policy, our children will not have to pay the price for the financial and societal degeneration that is crippling us now.  It’s time to stop placating pro-homosexual organizations that have no pro-social purpose.  These groups bring to the table dangerous feminist legal principles promising more social problems with a price tag America can no longer afford to bear.

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David R. Usher is President of the Center for Marriage Policy

Cynthia Davis is the former State Representative for Missouri’s 19^th District

www.cynthiadavis.net

© 2011

By David R. Usher

Phyllis Schlafly’s article “America Becomes a Two-Class Society” contains a breakthrough realization for conservatives: where 47% of citizens have a tax-free ride, the precipice of collapse is not far away.  I spoke with Phyllis and asked her if she knew who the two classes are.  Without hesitation, and as I expected, she said “Married and not married”.    After adjusting for disability, joblessness, and retirement, this remains an unequivocal truth.

Phyllis’s discovery proves my long-held hierarchical assessment:  “Marriage-absence is America’s greatest problem”.  Let us examine the reasons why this is true.

Social expenditures (which arise primarily due to marriage-absence) increased last year to perhaps $1-trillion – still the largest federal budget line-item for many years.

National health care – an additional $230-billion annual cost – came about predominantly because of marriage-absence.   Read:  National Health Care in some form, even if ObamaCare, would not be a problem if less than 20-percent of the population needed free health care.

Perhaps as much as 40% the home-loan default financial collapse was precipitated by marriage-absence.  46% of the poor own their own homes.  Two-income married households fare far better making ends meet when joblessness strikes home.

Nothing will painlessly balance government budgets and reduce poverty for women and children faster than restoring the institution of heterosexual marriage. At least forty percent of children live outside of marriage. Robert Rector pointed out that “Nearly two thirds of poor children reside in single-parent homes; each year, an additional 1.5 million children are born out of wedlock. If poor mothers married the fathers of their children, nearly three quarters of the nation’s impoverished youth would immediately be lifted out of poverty.” This, in turn, drives freewheeling social spending and class-warfare against those who are married.

In states I have studied, social expenditures are by far the largest line item expenditure followed by education – a fantastic policy paradox.

The restoration of marriage as the social norm is prerequisite to repairing our failing educational systems.  Children of intact married families are consistently better prepared and disciplined for school, and motivated to succeed. Much education funding is thrown at an elitist notion that schools can somehow become parents.    So we fire teachers-as-surrogate-parents unable to evoke suitable grade point averages in schools laden with unteachable children of marriage-absence.

Marriage-absence predicts the majority of criminal behavior in youth and adulthood.  Hundreds of billions in deadweight state and federal expenditures are incurred for interdiction, incarceration, and prosecution.  America’s dubious world reputation for having the highest world incarceration rate is our legacy – a surreal situation for which cognoscente and criminologists are mute or claim utter mystification.

The conservative policy problem began with the fact that President Reagan never envisioned the importance of practicing trickle-down social policy with the same vigor as trickle-down economic policy.   We are only now realizing that it is not possible to concurrently enjoy a robust economy, a balanced budget, and low tax rates in a reasonably civil society absent a foundation of heterosexual marriage as the social norm.

When we reverse the trend of marriage-absence through a combination of sound “Marriage Values” policy revisions and Community Marriage Policy programs, nearly every problem of concern to Tea Partiers and the majority of voters will improve to a manageable scale.  “Marriage Values” consists of eight simple and doable legislative items that will restore the institution of marriage to everyone’s mutual satisfaction.

The conservative electoral problem starts with the fact that Republicans have failed to deliver any social policy message to women since 1998.  Democrats sashayed off with the women’s vote ever since.  Given that America has survived and prospered by innovation, it should be noted that Republican campaigns everywhere still serve up the same stale canned spam that squandered the last decade’s worth of elections and bored the grassroots into torpidity.

Tea Parties will not prevail widely at the ballot box.  The principled anger of the Tea Party – also notably lacking passable visionary legislation — is as much directed at an oddly evanescent Republican party as Democrats – all distrusted by voters.  Even Tea party cheerleaders have no message personally touching average voters — who are not sure who to believe — and have largely given up on the political process for lack of sagacious leadership.

In contrast, Democrats are comparatively comfortable believing in their purchase of the votes of women, the poor, liberal churches, unions, academia, government employees, much of the middle class, and the many businesses whose profits revolve around reckless government spending.

Half-measures shuffling the consequences of marriage-absence around will not regain the women’s vote or repair our broken nation.  Only the salutary message of “Marriage Values” will win back the hearty support of the many individuals and businesses cast about in the hurricane of institutionalized marriage-absence.

The emerging Republic of the United States was founded on the bedrock of marriage before God. The caterwauling Democracy of debt it has become teeters for lack of either.  Democrats have been running on Marxism for years.  Where Marxism’s leading goal is to destroy the family unit, only the dynamic centrist message of Marriage will be instinctively understood as exigent by a majority of malcontent voters.

Credentialed leaders and candidates ready to lead America to success should contact me privately for a copy of Marriage Values policies. Those who wish to help take back America are encouraged to partner with us on Facebook.

David R. Usher is President of the Center for Marriage Policy.

You can contact and partner with him on Facebook.

© 2010, David R. Usher

by David R. Usher and Michael J. McManus

Marriage-absence is the greatest domestic problem America faces.  Our most daunting social, economic, budgetary, criminal, and constitutional dilemmas are driven by marriage-absence and will not abate unless traditional marriage is protected and encouraged.

Establishing sensible policies to return America to a marriage-based society will proverewarding, productive, and seminal.  The major problems of most unmarried mothers and their children will be naturally resolved.   A woman’s right to be supported by, cared for, and helped by her husband will be ensured.  Health care coverage will become commonplace without resorting to National Health Care.  Chronic budgetary deficits at state levels will disappear and the federal deficit will drop as the number of single parent families costing taxpayers $20,000 each — plummets.[i] Most children will grow up in intact homes, disciplined and prepared to learn in school.  Substance abuse, child abuse and neglect, and poverty will decrease to manageable norms.  The dollar will regain strength as the currency of world exchange.

The future of the United States is in jeopardy.  Therefore, we must re-create marriage in America now, while we still have time to prevent certain financial and social collapse.

The rewards of Marriage Values policy are certain.  We can reconstitute our nation’s most valuable asset: healthy marriages, the social and economic cornerstone on which all successful nations have been powered.

1. Ensuring heterosexual marriage is the social norm

No-Fault Divorce laws were a mistake that encouraged marital irresponsibility, resulting in a 50% divorce rate, a 51% decline in marriages since 1970, a 16-fold hike in cohabitation, and an 800% increase in out-of-wedlock births. Marriage as an institution is no longer trusted by younger Americans. That’s why the number of cohabiting couples soared from 430,000 in 1960 to 6.8 million in 2008, and unwed births jumped from 224,000 to 1.71 million. The “Marital Responsibility” model presumes it is responsible to remain married and cooperatively work through relationship issues as they arise.

Two new methods of “Responsible Dissolution” will be established.  “Mutual Consent” dissolution will permit divorce with the voluntary consent of both spouses, without hearing or litigation.  Most divorcing spouses will use this method.  “Necessary Dissolution” permits divorce for defined reasons, which must be proven.  Evidentiary standards are changed to conform to rules of Best Evidence.  The spouse who does not want a divorce in a Responsible Dissolution will receive three-fourths of marital assets.  The spouse who files for Responsible Dissolution without cause can leave the marriage, but will be penalized financially for doing so. No Fault Divorce laws will be reformed to require Mutual Consent or Responsible Dissolution.

Where children are involved, move-away laws like that in Missouri will discourage arbitrary relocation, and thus maximize parental resources for children, encourage spousal cooperation, and reduce child abuse and neglect.

2. Impacting substance abuse in the family

At least 70 percent of serious domestic violence involves substance abuse, [ii] and most unhappy marriages suffer from it.[iii] “Family Intervention Orders” will give the responsible spouse a power tool to leverage the abusing spouse into recovery, or face a “Responsible Dissolution.”

3. Defending marriage from invaders

Marital-interference laws are needed to protect marriages from invasion by young outsiders, who misuse sex and good looks to entice a more-affluent spouse out of a marriage and seize the wealthier position of the former wife or husband.  Marital interference laws will ensure marital assets cannot be touched, result in steep fines levied against the perpetrator, given to charity to prevent statutory abuses, and seize any future income from tabloid stories and “tell alls”.

4. Community Marriage Policies (CMP)

There are two generations of adult children raised outside of intact marriages who have difficulty establishing and maintaining long-term marital relations. Community Marriage Policies are the seed bed for restoring traditional marriage as the social norm. More than 10,000 clergy across denominational lines have agreed to implement five proven reforms promoted by Marriage Savers[iv] in 228 communities:

• Require 4-6 months of marriage preparation that includes taking a premarital inventory and meeting with trained Mentor Couples to discuss the assessment, who also teach conflict resolution skills.
• Organize annual marriage enrichment events such as “10 Great Dates,”“Fireproof” classes to revitalize existing marriages.
  
• Restore troubled marriages by training couples whose marriages once nearly failed to mentor those in current crisis.
• Reconcile separated couples with a self-guided, economical course, Marriage 911, taken by the spouse most committed to the marriage, with a friend of the same gender over 12 weeks, saving half of marriages headed for divorce.
• Enable stepfamilies to be successful parents and partners by creating Stepfamily Support Groups that save four of five marriages that usually fail at a 70% rate

If a group of congregations creates a Community Marriage Policy, Marriage Savers will train Mentor Couples to implement these reforms.

Results: Individual churches that adopt these reforms can virtually eliminate divorce in their congregations.  If scores of churches take this step across a city or county, the divorce and cohabitation rates will drop, and marriage rates will rise.  An Independent study by the Institute for Research and Evaluation, of the first 114 Community Marriage Policies established by 2000 found that divorce rates fell 17.5% in seven years (and 8 cities cut divorce rates in half such as Austin, Kansas City, KS Modesto. Salem, OR and El Paso).[v] The cohabitation rate in CMP counties also fell by a third compared to carefully matched counties in each state.  Marriage rates are now rising after years of decline.  The Institute estimated that 31,000 to 50,000 marriages were saved from divorce by 2001.  With nine more years in the original cities and twice as many CMPs by 2010 (228), probably 100,000 divorces have been averted.  No other intervention has saved so many marriages!

5. Church denominations will be urged to take the lead in fostering Community Marriage Policies.

They are volunteer-based strategies to provide inexpensive marriage preparation, maintenance and restoration programs.  Trained Mentor Couples who have long-term successful marriages, are equipped to assist other couples at all stages of the marital lifecycle.   CMP’s will also help spouses considering mutual-consent dissolution, to either reconsider or to plan for the best outcomes for couples and children.

6. Require Waiting Periods for Divorce.

In cases of Mutual Consent Divorces, parents would have to live apart for a year, before the divorce takes effect.  Why? MD, PA, and IL which require 6 months to a year of separation, and up to two years if contested – have a divorce rate half that of 9 “Hot Head States” with a zero waiting period: OR, FL, WY, ID, KY, MS, TN, NM, NH and OR. In fact, there are an additional 24 Hot Head States with zero waiting for a divorce, or only 30 days, such as MO and AL. Why does a waiting period reduce divorce?  A one-year period allows time for Hot Heads to cool down and for reconciliation to take place.  In cases of “Necessary Dissolution,” couples must live apart for 6 months to allow for reconciliation.

7. Effective Shared-Parenting Laws

Children of divorce or of non-marriage need parenting by both the mother and father, unless a parent is found unfit.  Each parent will get at least one-third time with their children.  Shared Parenting laws will assume a default change of custody from one parent to the other at the half-way point to the date of emancipation, unless the parents voluntarily agree to another arrangement, assuring that the children will receive approximately one-half of their upbringing from each parent.

8. “Poverty to Marriage” policy

Welfare and child support will be modified to discourage long-term non-marriage.  Shared Parenting will be required unless a parent is found unfit, is incarcerated, or voluntarily waives custody.  The emphasis will be on building marriage or remarriage, and maximizing parental access to children.  If a single parent is cohabiting current subsidies such as Medicaid and Earned Income Tax Credit – would not be sharply reduced if the couple marries, as at present, but would be phased down over time.

9. Trickle-down social policy: monitoring and correcting impact of policy on marriage

Trickle-down social policy requires measuring and minimizing impact of social programs on marriage. Six states currently do not tally their number of divorces: MN, LA, IN, CA, HI and GA. Such data is necessary to measure change. Marriage, divorce, and cohabitation rates will be monitored.  Long-term non-marriage rates will be tracked.  Impact of welfare, child support, domestic violence, divorce, and other federal and state policies will be followed to discover and mitigate programs unnecessarily harming marriage.

10. Sustainable manufacturing jobs for working-class Americans

The egress of manufacturing jobs overseas weakened marriage and fostered expansion of welfare.  This was paralleled by the rise of a belief by some that everyone must have a college education to be employable.  However, information and service sectors can not provide enough jobs.  We must maximize competitiveness to repatriate manufacturing jobs for working-class Americans.  Personal and corporate taxes should be waived on all manufacturing jobs that pay $15 an hour or less, with no penalty for marriage.  This will reduce manufacturing costs in the U.S. stimulating the return of millions of working-class jobs needed by millions of Americans.

David R. Usher is the President of The Center for Marriage Policy.

Mike McManus is President of Marriage Savers, has been a nationally syndicated columnist for 33 years, and is author of five books on marriage, most recently: Living Together: Myths, Risks & Answers, and How To Cut America’s Divorce Rate in Half: A Strategy Every State Should Adopt, both of which were published in 2008.

[i] Robert Rector & Christine Kim, “Fiscal Distribution of Single-Parent Families in the United States, FY2004,” The Heritage Foundation, November 10, 2007, Washington D.C.

[ii] Alcohol and Crime, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs (1998), p. 4

[iii] Bank On It: Married Couples Are the Happiest, The National Marriage Project, Jeffery Dew, p. 27

[iv] Marriage Savers is an organization founded by Mike and Harriet McManus to help clergy create Community Marriage Policies, the first of which was adopted nearly 25 years ago in Modesto, Cal, which the divorcer ate has been about half of its 1986 level for the decade of the 2000s. Marriages have doubled, with the result that school drop out rates fell by 18.4% in a decade and teen births by 30%, or double the U.S> decline.

[v] Paul James Birch, Stan E. Weed and Joseph Olsen, “Assessing the Impact of Community Marriage Policies® on County Divorce Rates,” Family Relations, 2004, 53, 495-503.