Advancing American Freedom (AAF) founder Mike Pence today announced its Freedom Agenda, a vision for restoring freedom and a framework of ideas and solutions for how to achieve that vision. The Freedom Agenda provides a clear set of ideas that conservative leaders can use to advance a positive vision for the future and addresses the top priorities of the American people: economic opportunity, American strength and leadership on the world stage, and American culture.
“The Freedom Agenda presents a bold agenda focused on the future and offers a clear and compelling choice to the American people,” said former Vice President and AAF founder Mike Pence. “Conservatives across the country can unite around this plan to keep America from further decline and decay brought on by President Biden and progressive policies. America can be as free and prosperous as ever, if we stand firm on our principles and hew to what has always made America the greatest nation in the history of the world.”
In order to create more economic opportunity, restore American strength and leadership abroad, and protect American culture and traditional values, the Freedom Agenda proposes detailed policy solutions under three pillars: American Opportunity, American Leadership, and American Culture.
Under the American Opportunity pillar, the Freedom Agenda includes the following goals and examples of how to achieve them:
- Reestablish policies that promote not just American energy independence, but also American energy dominance.
- Fight policies that discriminate against technology that uses American energy –like coal and petroleum—and favor energy technology that relies on resources from foreign countries, like minerals from China and Congo to make the batteries for electric cars.
- Foster a thriving free market economy.
- Advance the free enterprise system…by reducing regulations and taxes to encourage individual economic freedom over big government socialism.
- Give American families the opportunity to achieve the American dream by having the freedom to pursue the best education options for their children.
- Empower parents so they are always in control of how their children are educated. This should include allowing students to attend the public school of their choice and providing credit for learning outside of the classroom.
- Liberate the American people from oppressive taxation, tyrannical bureaucracy, and overregulation.
- Eliminate special-interest tax breaks and move toward a fairer and flatter tax code.
- Unleash American innovation and make America the most attractive place to do business by reducing barriers and creating a favorable climate for job creation.
- Reshore American jobs by identifying, targeting, and addressing critical gaps in advanced manufacturing that were exposed during the pandemic supply chain collapse, including electronics, communications infrastructure, and pharmaceuticals.
- Pursue reciprocal trade agreements that benefit American workers, manufacturers, and farmers by opening new markets for their products, linking supply chains with key allies, and spreading U.S. standards and values around the world.
- Advance security and resilience in the supply chain by strengthening ties with allies and partners and reducing reliance on strategic competitors.
- Advance labor policies that allow people to choose the jobs they want.
- Protect flexibility in modern labor markets by protecting gig economy workers from overregulation and promoting innovative approaches to entrepreneurship.
- Limit government, empower federalism, and respect individual liberty and economic freedom.
- Reform the federal spending process to make it easier to cut spending, harder to increase spending, and impossible to fund something that has not first been authorized by Congress.
- Advance freedom in healthcare.
- Realign our healthcare system to focus on improving health and health outcomes at a lower cost, rather than focusing on services provided.
- Reform Big Tech to align it with our democratic and free enterprise system.
- Prevent censorship in the modern public square by requiring that Internet companies live under the same liability framework as traditional print and broadcast media companies.
Under the American Leadership pillar, the Freedom Agenda includes the following goals and examples of how to achieve them:
- Ensure a military force ready for great power competition with the Chinese Communist Party and a resurgent Russia, and posture to defend both NATO’s eastern flank and Taiwan.
- Develop and maintain offensive, deterrence-based cyber capabilities.
- Stand Strong Against Russia.
- Create a massive, private sector-led global energy production and export initiative among democratic countries centered around the export of American-produced natural gas to end Europe’s dependence on Russia for its energy security.
- Confront Communist China.
- Pass legislation that revokes China’s “permanent normal trade relations” status with the United States and requires the President to certify each year—subject to a congressional resolution of disapproval—that China deserves to receive “most favored nation” trading status.
- Stand with Israel and Forge a new Middle East.
- Forge new security and economic agreements between the United States and Israel, together with Abraham Accords countries and other allies.
- Counter Iranian Aggression.
- Reimpose the Trump-Pence sanctions, particularly against individual members and organizations of the regime.
- Fortify Alliances in the Western Hemisphere.
- Push back against socialist governments in the Western Hemisphere.
Under the American Culture pillar, the Freedom Agenda includes the following goals and examples of how to achieve them:
- Honor the God-given worth and dignity of all people.
- End federal taxpayer-funding for abortion once and for all.
- Celebrate religious freedom.
- Ensure that the Department of Justice and other federal agencies respect and do not interfere with our First Amendment right to free exercise of religion.
- Promote safety in our homes and our communities.
- Support smarter, safer, and more effective ways to reform our criminal justice system without simply letting criminals out of jail.
- Secure the southern border of the United States and end illegal immigration.
- Finally finish building the border wall and pass a nationwide ban on sanctuary cities.
- Promote patriotic education.
- State and local jurisdictions should require high school students to pass testing on their knowledge of the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Federalist Papers prior to graduation to ensure that high school students are graduating with a basic knowledge of America’s most important founding documents and ideals.
- Protect the exercise and expression of private beliefs without fear of reprisal or censorship.
- Shield professionals from being fired for “wrong-think,” families from government intrusion in their homes or children’s lives, and churches from needing government permission slips in order to meet.
- Protect American freedom and democracy by ensuring the integrity of the democratic election process at all levels.
- Make in-person voting the primary method of voting, encouraged and supported by all levels of government and election administration. Mail-in voting should be rare and only for a very limited set of circumstances, with clear guidelines and procedures for requesting, receiving, casting, validating, and auditing mail-in ballots.
- Honor and protect the Second Amendment.
- Oppose efforts to pass “red flag” or “extreme risk protection order” legislation.
- Save and protect women’s sports.
- Preserve and protect female athletic competition by ensuring that sports competitions are between those who share their God-given gender.
The Freedom Agenda was developed with the input of numerous leaders in the conservative movement including, but not limited to:
David Bernhardt;
Andeliz Castillo;
Kellyanne Conway;
Marjorie Dannenfelser;
Doug Ducey;
David Friedman;
Kay Coles James;
Larry Kudlow;
David Mcintosh;
Scott Turner; and
Scott Walker.
For the full Freedom Agenda and list of contributors, please click HERE.
For the Freedom Agenda launch video, please click HERE.
