Republicans aren't shy about theirs. What could a state-based Democratic agenda look like?

There are opportunities out there to pass better laws. One of the ways the nation's laws keep getting ratcheted backward is that every time Republicans take over a legislative body, they immediately go to work voting through a predictable, awful package of laws'laws restricting women's reproductive freedom, taking aim at unions, cutting corporate taxes, privatizing education, allowing guns in schools, weakening equal pay and workplace safety protections. When Democrats take over a legislative body, their actions are comparatively weak tea. There are a lot of reasons for that. Republicans have ALEC to provide them with pre-written bills, of course. They have far-right billionaires pushing them with promises of big donations and threats of primaries. We recently found out about another reason in the study finding that Republican legislators think their constituents are far, far more conservative than they actually are, while Democratic legislators think their constituents are slightly more conservative than they actually are. So we understand there are reasons for this divergence between how aggressively Republicans push their agenda when in power and how aggressively Democrats do. But the divergence is so extreme it's hard to even say what laws Democrats should be pushing when they gain a majority in a state legislature. And that's the question: What could that agenda look like?

Obviously where Republicans get into office and immediately lower taxes for big corporations and wealthy people, it would be good if Democrats would close tax loopholes or raise taxes, making corporations and the wealthy pay something closer to their fair share. California voters actually did part of that last November, with Prop 30. Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick is also pushing a major tax overhaul to make the tax system simpler and more progressive while raising revenue to invest in education and transportation. And, indeed, when you raise revenue, there are tons of investments that suddenly become possible: education from pre-kindergarten through college, clean energy, public transit, roads and bridges, bike paths, sewer systems and clean water, increased oversight of the environmental and workplace protections you have'so many things that Republicans ignore or say we can't afford or flat-out hate.

Raising revenue and using it to invest in the future is the first and most important thing Democrats could do. But it's not the only thing. Just as Republicans pass bills attacking choice and unions in addition to cutting taxes at the top, there's plenty Democrats could do that's not about taxes but would (unlike all those Republican laws) make people's lives better, as we'll discuss below the fold.