By David R. Usher and Missouri Representative Cynthia Davis

Marriage is one of the top five issues of the 2010 elections.  It will remain a controlling factor in the American dilemma until some form of the “10 Marriage Policies to rebuild America” is enacted at federal and state levels.

Why?  Marriage-absence is driving federal and state deficits.  Health care coverage, personal bankruptcy, and home loan defaults are infrequent problems for married couples.  Children raised in intact families are the last to get in trouble, flunk out of school, join a gang, have babies, become chronic substance abusers, commit crimes, or grow up to be criminals.

Social spending – with government rushing in hoping to mitigate problems arising from marriage-absence — is by far the largest line and fastest-growing item in federal and state budgets.  Social spending does not put out fires, nor does it save the starfish.  It buys another round of marriage-absence and deficits.

Government always creates more of what it subsidizes. Since 1963, we have spent more than the national debt on social spending, and we have nothing to show for it but more marriage-absence and an insolvent America in precipitous political turmoil.

Consider Missouri, which is in much better shape than many other states, but typical in its spending priorities:

The cost of marriage-absence to taxpayers in Missouri is at least $1.8 billion per year.  Missouri had 23,299 divorces in 2009, each costing the state at least $18,000 per year, and as much as $27,600 annually depending on the analysis applied.  Out-of-wedlock births add another 78,624 cases at perhaps similar cost.

Social services spending is the largest growing line item in Missouri’s budget, at 32.7% of total spending (for which there are no visible results).  It eviscerates funding for necessary visible items such as education, roads, and other state responsibilities.  The welfare state is eating Missouri alive.  Only marriage will resolve this problem to everyone’s satisfaction.

In Missouri, social spending is 50% higher than spending on education.  High marriage-absence rates means that schools are shortchanged and saddled with an impossible unfunded mandate – making up for what children lack by not having both a mother and a father in the home.  Under-parented children are predominantly the ones with aggravated behavior problems and low test scores.  If most children came to school disciplined and ready to learn, schools and children would succeed – and so would America.

The cost of criminal interdiction arising from marriage-absence is alarming.  85% of all youths sitting in prisons grew up in a fatherless home. Improving marriage rates will translate into immediate and substantial reductions in spending on crime and prisons.

Many incorrectly assume that recent increases in poverty rates are primarily a result of today’s high unemployment rates. Wrong. The “war on poverty” will be won only by improving marriage rates.  When two adults support one household, high unemployment rates are far more survivable. The latest census income data proves the fact that unmarried households are the highest-risk group for poverty regardless of job availability.  In good times or bad times, their incomes are only 35% to 67% of what married couples earn.

Missouri is facing a $1-billion deficit in 2012.  If sensible marriage policy reduced illegitimacy and divorce by half (also happily resolving the greatest problems many Missourians face), it would today be running significant surpluses and could realistically look forward to a balanced budget or surplus in 2010.  Why continue forking out fortunes cleaning up the marriage-absence mess, when brilliant marriage reforms will satisfactorily end this nightmare for everyone?

America would be a strong nation today had Ronald Reagan envisioned the need for trickle-down social policy interlocked with trickle-down economic policy.  Both are required to create a strong economy on balanced federal and state budgets.  Both are mandatory to rebuild the strength of the dollar and monetize our retirement systems.

For example, existing federal welfare laws ignore the principles of trickle-down social policy. Welfare actively destroys marriage in economic downturns.  Instead of using unemployment insurance for its proper purpose, individuals divorce or simply cohabit to qualify for years of comparatively rich welfare benefits, and then remain unemployed or underemployed for decades.  The corrosive interaction between existing unemployment and welfare policy predicts today’s record cohabitation and illegitimacy rates (and the deficits America is drowning in).

Eight years ago, James Q. Wilson pointed out the nexus between marriage, freedom, and economic success:  “the nation is becoming divided into two nations; not a nation of the rich and the poor, but a nation of the married and the unmarried bearing children.   The effort of the United States to expand freedom and economic opportunity to everybody is now running up against this wall”. Eight years later, we collided with the wall and wonder where our freedoms, economy, and future went.

America is in sociopolitical economic meltdown.  Our freedoms, economy, political and administrative systems, and banking systems are crumbling.  Everyone is desperately seeking answers, but nobody has yet mentioned the one answer addressing the majority of America’s economic problems, human needs, and dreams.

Republicans and Tea Partiers are hopeful that America can be restored solely by executing traditional conservative fiscal and constitutional ideals.  Given the unquestionable hierarchy of America’s contemporary problems, it is naïve to think we can avoid fiscal collapse or re-establish constitutional order without first correcting the underlying social collapse actively driven by federal and state policies.

America must actively engage the new school of trickle-down social policy leaders. The Republic of the United States was founded on the bedrock of marriage before God and civil government.  America’s future depends on a resurgence of policies that will bolster marriages and return government to perform the duties envisioned by our Founders.

“Marriage Values” policies created by the Center for Marriage Policy match precisely with core conservative and libertarian principles. Marriage naturally establishes and ensures the fundamental freedoms, rights, and limited government that Republicans and Tea Partiers now demand.  “Marriage Values” policies will deliver the balanced budgets and low tax rates America requires to continue as a world leader.

“Marriage Values” is not a cultural debate, nor does it force anyone to marry.  It marks the terminus of today’s government-driven gender war, the war on marriage, and the war on church first launched by Betty Friedan.

Marriage is the leading women’s issue of the 21^st century.  Today, millions of unhappy welfare mothers must “do it all”, live in poverty in unsafe streets, while waiting for some politician in Washington to save them.  We are confident that most women will prefer the many benefits Marriage Values policy offers.

How does “Marriage Values” work?

We will establish a non-combative “mutual consent” model as the preferred method of dissolution, while providing an efficacious model of “responsible dissolution” for spouses facing a dangerous or seriously irresponsible spouse.

86% of serious domestic violence involves substance abuse.  Instead of letting families “hit the wall”, Family Intervention Orders will give responsible spouses a long-overdue tough-love tool to convince the substance abuser that getting well is far better than immediately being “shown the door”.

Marriage is the institution establishing one cooperative human race from two remarkably different sexes.  “Welfare to marriage” will happily reduce poverty, build naturally-sustainable communities, end the government-financed gender war and the majority of domestic violence, and make urban cores attractive places for job-creating business to grow and thrive.

Community Marriage Policies will inexpensively provide friendly optional volunteer-driven resources for couples to iron out the common minor problems of marriage and aging, and re-seed marriage culture for young Americans who could not learn how marriage works from their parents.

We have one simple choice to make: Marriage or monstrous quongocratic government.  All grassroots organizations, conservatives, libertarians, and Tea Partiers must focus on real policies that will rebuild America.  Join with us in enacting the 10 Marriage Policies to rebuild America.  The erosions of rights everyone is bemoaning, the high taxes we cannot afford, and the deficits of monolithic helicopter government will naturally abate when marriage is restored as the social norm.

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

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

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