I don’t know about you, but I’m excited to go to my mailbox again and have it stuffed with bargain shopping deals instead of political ads. While many of us may be suffering from election fatigue, the real work will begin after election day as our elected officials start the important task of governing and making critical policy decisions.
No doubt there will be an equal number of us feeling hope or despair after the ballots are counted, but one fact won’t change: our government does not belong to Democrats or Republicans but to all American citizens.
It is important for the “winning” side to remember this. Our elected leaders must focus on policy solutions that leave the election political messaging behind and exchange that for the hard work of making fact-based decisions to protect important constitutional rights while working to empower families and businesses to have more control over their individual lives and pocketbooks.
This is one of the reasons Mountain States Policy Center is excited to have our new Policy Manual available to help provide policymakers with the information they’ll need to advance free-market-oriented policies.
While it is critically important to hold government officials accountable, we should not spend our time rooting for the “other side” to fail. As we leave the election behind us, let’s work together to encourage a civil, thoughtful, and fact-based policy debate in our coming legislative sessions so that all of us on Team U.S.A. are in a better position for success.
Jason Mercier is Vice President and Director of Research of Mountain States Policy Center, an independent research organization based in Idaho, Montana, Eastern Washington and Wyoming. Online at mountainstatespolicy.org.
This article was originally published at www.thecentersquare.com
