3 out of 4 Americans have no personal financial safety net

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I would really like for someone to emerge from the Republican Party that has something substantive to contribute to this problem.

They don't consider this a problem, but rather the goal.  An desperate and thus obedient and cheap-to-exploit working class is precisely their dream, and they have most definitely achieved it.  The GOP is probably the most successful political party in history.

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Encouraging savings won't help the economy recover, which is something to bear in mind here. Capitalism, in this stage, is dependent upon mass consumption. What you need thus is not policies that increase savings at the expense of purchasing (because the latter is far more important if we want to have a functional economy) but rather policies that substitute debt-generated spending (which is what we have now, with maxed out credit cards and the like) in favor of policies that encourage higher wages, which will create a much more stable spending cycle.

Of course, bear in mind that policies to raise wages and end debt serfdom are policies that will not have an iota of support from the established political forces, because they profit from debt serfdom and mass consumption alike.