Republicans were on the wrong side of this struggle before, and they are on the wrong side now. We have heard a lot about the casualties of the contract, but the biggest casualty is not a person or a group. It is Americans' sense of values--our sense of fairness. Most of all, it is our fragile but essential belief that if we work hard, we can make a better life for ourselves and our kids.

This ethic, this belief, was ingrained in all South Dakotans. This belief, this value, is essential to our survival as a democracy.

De Tocqueville wrote that it is our values, even more than our laws, that enable Americans to maintain this democracy, and that fundamental insight into our character remains true to this day.

If people do not know the difference between right and wrong, all the prisons in the world will not keep us safe. If children come to school with no sense of discipline, no respect for authority, the best teachers and, the best computers in the world will not make a difference. And if young people grow up in a society that does not reward honest work, no welfare reform plan in the world will work.

We cannot solve our problems with a law or a check--or even the threat of no check. If we want to restore the American dream, we have got to restore American values. And that means

strengthening America's families. Families are where values are taught and learned. But teaching values takes time. It takes time.

And time is something that most families have less of every year. I hear this every time I go home.

One story this year that didn't get perhaps quite as much attention as it deserved was a series of strikes by autoworkers who were protesting mandatory 50- and 60-hour workweeks.

The workers said the extra pay just wasn't worth the price they were paying in burnout and in time spent away from their families.

The conflict many workers feel between trying to be both good providers and good parents was best summed up by a single mother at a GM factory in Michigan who had just put her son in counseling and just learned that her 18-year-old daughter was pregnant.

You know what she said? She said, `I keep thinking that maybe if I'd been able to spend more time with them this wouldn't have happened.'

That is a conflict more parents live with each year. From the late 1960's to the late 1980's, the average workyear for American workers increased by 163 hours. You know what that is? That's an extra month each year.

Today, fewer than one-third of American families have time to eat even one meal a day together. And nearly 7 million children--including half a million pre-school kids--spend at least part of each day all alone.

Why are parents spending less time with their kids? The answer is simple: In spite of an unprecedented effort by the Clinton administration to create more than 6 million new jobs, the real income of most Americans is declining.

Each year, it takes more people working more hours in a family just to afford the basic. Eighty percent of America's families have not seen their incomes rise since the 1970's. Eighty percent. And this is true despite huge increases in two-income and even three-income families.

Even in the 1990's, the richest one-third of Americans are getting richer, while incomes for everyone else keep falling. And let me tell you, that is fundamentally wrong. And Democrats must fight it.

Not long ago I had a young father tell me, `Either I can spend time with my family or support them--but not both.' Those are not conditions for teaching moral values. They are an invitation to moral anarchy. And the extreme agenda of the new majority--despite all its pious and populist rhetoric--is almost certain to make matters worse.

Because it is designed to reward the rich and the well-connected at the expense of America's middle-class families. That is wrong and Democrats must fight it, make no mistake: The new Republican agenda is worse than indifferent to the needs of working families. It is downright hostile to them. It is trickle-down economics with a vengeance. And if it is enacted, it will destroy much of the middle class.

If you doubt it, just look at some of the tax changes Republicans are proposing:

One of the more moderate members of the Republican party is proposing that we repeal income taxes on stock profits. In other words, let's tax only wages.