The success of the V-chip and the Family Leave Act show that family centric legislation is popular and effective. We do not need to legislate only with budgets and putative measures. We can expand the effectiveness of government by way of family centric legislation. Permit me to offer a few suggestions that could work without impacting the budget.

American families need to synchronize their work and study times. It is anachronistic to have young children warehoused in after school care in the late afternoon because their parents are required to work an inflexible schedule. Parents and children should have synchronized work and study times to allow for parents to be at home when the children leave school.

Since we can not have a single payer health care system, can we at least have a uniform set of health care policies keyed to the person's life cycle? We should have one base plan, common to all insurance companies, and allow the companies to offer a limited set of optional clauses. We should have a standard interface to our insurance companies, both in the technology and in the coverage. The current chaos in the insurance field is totally unacceptable. Set up the Ameriplan as a base plan for all insurance, and let the plan vary by a persons life cycle. In the future, only those insurers who are efficient in maintaining the Ameriplan will survive. This modality of competition by way of IT efficiency is basic to a the new economic paradigm.

Tipping will become more important as we become a two tiered economy. Those in the service sector would be well served by codifying automatic tipping in all those transactions where it can be done. We can not rely on the employers to provide for a better living for those on minimum wage service jobs. Tipping must be made automatic wherever a service is performed, for a standard percentage.

We need a family medical savings account, where all of our employer's contributions, for all of our family members, are stored. Medical savings accounts can be used to pay for our family's health insurance, medicines or other medical services. If there is a remnant on the account from year to year, it can be rolled over. Employers would be required to contribute to the medical savings account on a standard level, per hour of work. In this way, even our teen aged sons and daughters could contribute to the family's health plan from their part time work. Those in temporary employment need this plan urgently, to be able to combine several part time jobs into one affordable medical insurance plan. Medical savings contributions should of course be tax free. Subsidies to the medical savings account should be granted to those families with insufficient funds. Families could therefore be required to obtain insurance using the medical savings account.

The full-time vrs part-time classifications of the past must be eliminated. All employment must be made to be on an hourly basis, from one to 40 hours per week, with overtime or all employees. The benefits must be paid per hour worked to the medical savings accounts, retirement accounts, educational accounts and the like. It would no longer be required that the employer pay the full amount of a benefit, only that the contribution to that benefit's savings account be done on a standard minimum percentage for the work performed on an hourly basis. Portability of all benefits must be maintained, both from one job to another as well as among simultaneous jobs. Vesting must be immediate upon employment for all types of benefits.

Nothing could be more gratifying to the average American family than to end the chaos of bill collection in this country. We need an automated clearing of our bills in such a way that our bank or home computer can pay our bills automatically, even those which may vary from month to month. The clearing houses would receive electronic bill notifications from the creditors and would collect from our designated Bank account automatically, on a pre determined date of the month. If there is an overdraft to the budgeted amount, we should be notified by E-mail, phone or S-mail.  Overdrafts should be covered by our charge card.

The main reason people feel the heel of business in this nation is the fact that the Credit Bureaus are out of control. We have no way to correct the defects which are in the files in a way that is regulated by law. The new credit reporting laws are weak because they provide no way for the consumer to contest the validity of a debt in a court of law. The current law simply requires the creditor to submit a copy of the bill. In most cases, disputed amounts can not be contested and end up as code I9 on the credit report. The effect of a code I9 is tantamount to a sentence of economic chastisement, sent down by a program with which we have no legal redress. We urgently need a way to prevent disparaging information from entering our credit report. In today's world, a credit report has more power over our lives than the government itself, and yet we have no legal rights over our own information. In millions of cases, a credit report has meant that a family has been denied housing, employment or other access, simply because of a contested amount or inaccurate information.

In a nation in which 75% of the economy is based on the handling of information technology, we should create a cabinet level Secretary of Technology. The Secretary of Technology would serve to set interface standards interface between sectors of the economy. All future government reporting must be done electronically, and must be approved by the Secretary of Technology. He or She would be in charge of the "Information Superhighway" and of regulating the various privacy and encryption issues which are arising. Most importantly, he would create new systems which would permit families of the future to enjoy a better life. If the Technology sector of the economy were to be represented by a knowledgeable and conscious individual, we could achieve great strides forward which would benefit millions of families in practical and pragmatic ways.

The "American System" of the future will lead the world into an era of shared prosperity and peace, of this I have no doubt. It is a system where family units are the focal point, not the employers or the government. It is a system whereby a family may sustain itself in harmony with nature, without overburdening the ecology or the economy. It is a system where monetary gain is of little relevance and where the quality of an individual's life is of paramount importance.

A new journey begins by taking one step. Each and every one of us has an "American System" which he dreams of, each of us knows in our intuition that such a dream is now possible. Let us join together in One Mind, to join our dreams into one upward surge, to bring out of this incredibly tragic and inventive century, the final message to our progeny, the lessons we have learned, and the beginnings of our New American Dream.

Atlanta, January 17, 1996