Contract with America

During the 1994 elections, Republican candidates for the House of Representatives took the unusual step of signing a “contract with America.” They pledged to enact this legislative agenda if their party won the majority. Rarely has a congressional election been waged on such a specific program. The Contract promised a balanced-budget amendment and a line-item veto to control federal spending; tougher anticrime legislation; welfare reform; a tax credit for families with children; reduced federal regulation; enhanced national security; reforms in product liability laws; and term limits for members. The Contract helped Republicans win control of the House for the first time in 40 years and elevated its primary author, Georgia Representative Newt Gingrich, to Speaker of the House.

During their first hundred days in the majority in 1995, House members passed most key elements of the Contract. But the Senate moved more slowly. Since Senate Republicans had not campaigned on the Contract, they felt freer to amend and even reject some of its provisions.

See also “First hundred days”; Gingrich, Newt

The Contract with America, a ten-point legislative program spearheaded by Newt Gingrich, the minority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, served as a Republican blueprint for reform entering into the 1994 midterm election season. Candidates who signed the Contract agreed to support a balanced-budget amendment, welfare reform, and congressional term limits, among other items. Implementation of the provisions of the Contract became the rallying cry of the new Republican majority in the House in the spring of 1995. The work to enact the Contract resulted in modest legislative victories and pushed congressional politics in a more conservative direction. However, congressional Democrats successfully worked to block passage of most of the Contract's initiatives, there by blunting its impact as a major issue in the 1996 federal elections. The polarized, partisan atmosphere created by fights over the Contract set the context for the impeachment of President Bill Clinton in 1998.

Bibliography

Balz, Dan, and Ronald Brownstein. Storming the Gates: Protest Politics and the Republican Revival. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1996.

—Richard M. Flanagan

In the historic 1994 midterm elections, Republicans won a majority in Congress for the first time in forty years, partly on the appeal of a platform called the Contract with America. Put forward by House Republicans, this sweeping ten-point plan promised to reshape government. Its main theme was the decentralization of federal authority: deregulation, tax cuts, reform of social programs, increased power for states, and a balanced federal budget were its chief ambitions. With unusual speed, all ten items came to a vote in the House of Representatives within one hundred days, and the House passed nine of the ten measures. Yet, even as House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) compared the plan to the most important political reforms of the twentieth century, progress on the contract stalled. Senate Republicans were slow to embrace it, Democrats in both chambers denounced it, and President Bill Clinton threatened to veto its most radical provisions. Only three of the least controversial measures had become law by the end of 1995 as Congress and the White House battled bitterly over the federal budget.

On the surface, the contract differed little from other modern Republican platforms. It began with a statement of three "core" principles in the form of an argument: the federal government is too big and unresponsive (accountability), and big government programs sap individual and family willpower (responsibility)— and thus an overtaxed and overregulated citizenry cannot pursue the American Dream (opportunity). Republicans had been saying as much for at least two decades. Although Democrats had controlled Congress for more than forty years with an almost opposite view of government's duty to its people, Republicans had held the White House from 1980 to 1992. The election of President Clinton in 1992 was a striking setback for Republican party strategists. Yet, they took encouragement from voter discontent with the pace of Clinton's legislative plans, two key provisions of which — an economic stimulus package and health care reform — failed to pass even with a Democratic majority in Congress. For the mid-1994 congressional elections, they intended to capitalize on this discontent with a platform that promised quick and dramatic change.

Toward this end, the Contract with America made two promises "to restore the bonds of trust between the people and their elected representatives." First, it promised to change the way Congress works by requiring that lawmakers follow the same workplace laws as the rest of the country — notably, sexual harassment laws— and by strictly reforming the sluggish committee process in the House of Representatives. Second, it promised that the House would vote on the ten key planks of the contract within the first one hundred days of the new Congress. The contract gave these ten planks names such as the Fiscal Responsibility Act, the Taking Back Our Streets Act, and the Personal Responsibility Act. The contract promised action on the following issues: the federal deficit, crime, welfare reform, family values, middle-class tax cuts, national defense, Social Security, federal deregulation and capital gains tax cuts, legal reform, civil law and product liability, and term limits for federal lawmakers.

The actual proposals represented a mixture of old and new ideas. Republicans had long supported deregulation of industry, tort reform, and middle-class tax cuts. As a deficit reduction solution, the line-item veto was an old idea: ever since the 1980s, Republicans had called for a presidential power to veto specific parts of federal spending bills (rather than the entire bills). More revolutionary was the contract's related proposal: a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget. In the same sense, the welfare reform proposals reflected a long-running debate and yet offered ambitiously strict limits on spending, eligibility, and administration, and even sought to transfer authority over traditionally federal programs to the states. Other proposals grew out of more recent concerns. The crime reform measure was a Republican effort to scale back social spending and increase law enforcement spending, in reaction to the Clinton crime bill of 1994; and proposals to curb U.S. military involvement in the United Nations' peacekeeping missions reflected Republican criticism of Clinton's decisions to send troops to Somalia and Haiti.

The contract met with mixed results in 1995. The House Republican leadership did indeed put each item to a vote within the first one hundred days. It divided each item into one or more bills, and thirty-one of the resulting thirty-two measures passed— only one, for congressional term limits, failed. The Senate moved much more slowly. In part, this was because the Senate, as a debating body, customarily proceeds more cautiously. Another reason was that the senators, unlike their first-year counterparts in the House, were far less eager to pass sweeping reforms: the Senate killed the proposal for a constitutional amendment on the budget, for example, and simply delayed action on several other bills. President Clinton's promise to veto any far-ranging welfare and budgetary proposals also crimped Republican plans, and by November 1995 this threat had produced a bitter standoff that resulted in the temporary closing of the federal government.

Three contract proposals became law: the Congressional Accountability Act of 1995 (Pub. L. No. 104-1, 109 Stat. 3), which requires Congress to follow eleven workplace laws; the Unfunded Mandate Reform Act of 1995 (Pub. L. No. 104-4, 109 Stat. 48), which restricts Congress from imposing mandates on states that are not adequately funded; and the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (Pub. L. No. 104-13, 109 Stat. 163), which reduces federal paperwork requirements.

Representative Newt Gingrich of Georgia addressing fellow Republican congressional candidates ... John Duricka-AP/Wide World Photos
(Click to enlarge)

1994

In November 1994, the Republican Party won control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. It was a victory of historic proportions; Republicans had not held a majority in both houses of Congress since 1954. Moreover, since 1932 Republicans had controlled the House of Representatives only twice. Much of the credit for the Republicans' victory was given to Representative Newt Gingrich of Georgia. A former history professor, Gingrich had spent the better part of two decades laying the groundwork for a Republican congressional majority. When President Bill Clinton's popularity plummeted in the summer and fall of 1994, Gingrich skillfully positioned House Republicans as a viable alternative to what he described as Clinton's "failed" liberal policies. Their program for change was encapsulated in the Contract with America, reprinted below. In the aftermath of the 1994 midterm elections, Gingrich was elected Speaker of the House by his fellow House Republicans. His tenure as House Speaker, however, soon faltered. His abrasive personality alienated voters, and Clinton went on to win reelection in 1996. Although Republicans still held control of the House of Representatives, in December 1998 they rebelled against Gingrich, and he was forced to resign as House Speaker.

As Republican Members of the House of Representatives and as citizens seeking to join that body we propose not just to change its policies, but even more important, to restore the bonds of trust between the people and their elected representatives. That is why, in this era of official evasion and posturing, we offer instead a detailed agenda for national renewal, a written commitment with no fine print.

This year's election offers the chance, after four decades of one-party control, to bring to the House a new majority that will transform the way Congress works. That historic change would be the end of government that is too big, too intrusive, and too easy with the public's money. It can be the beginning of a Congress that respects the values and shares the faith of the American family. Like Lincoln, our first Republican president, we intend to act "with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right." To restore accountability to Congress. To end its cycle of scandal and disgrace. To make us all proud again of the way free people govern themselves.

On the first day of the 104th Congress, the new Republican majority will immediately pass the following major reforms, aimed at restoring the faith and trust of the American people in their government:

• FIRST, require all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply equally to the Congress;
• SECOND, select a major, independent auditing firm to conduct a comprehensive audit of Congress for waste, fraud or abuse;
• THIRD, cut the number of House committees, and cut committee staff by one-third;
• FOURTH, limit the terms of all committee chairs;
• FIFTH, ban the casting of proxy votes in committee;
• SIXTH, require committee meetings to be open to the public;
• SEVENTH, require a three-fifths majority vote to pass a tax increase;
• EIGHTH, guarantee an honest accounting of our Federal Budget by implementing zero base-line budgeting.

Thereafter, within the first 100 days of the 104th Congress, we shall bring to the House Floor the following bills, each to be given full and open debate, each to be given a clear and fair vote and each to be immediately available this day for public inspection and scrutiny.

1. THE FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY ACT: A balanced budget/tax limitation amendment and a legislative line-item veto to restore fiscal responsibility to an out-of-control Congress, requiring them to live under the same budget constraints as families and businesses.

2. THE TAKING BACK OUR STREETS ACT: An anti-crime package including stronger truth-in-sentencing, "good faith" exclusionary rule exemptions, effective death penalty provisions, and cuts in social spending from this summer's "crime" bill to fund prison construction and additional law enforcement to keep people secure in their neighborhoods and kids safe in their schools.

3. THE PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY ACT: Discourage illegitimacy and teen pregnancy by prohibiting welfare to minor mothers and denying increased AFDC for additional children while on welfare, cut spending for welfare programs, and enact a tough two-years-and-out provision with work requirements to promote individual responsibility.

4. THE FAMILY REINFORCEMENT ACT: Child support enforcement, tax incentives for adoption, strengthening rights of parents in their children's education, stronger child pornography laws, and an elderly dependent care tax credit to reinforce the central role of families in American society.

5. THE AMERICAN DREAM RESTORATION ACT: A $500 per child tax credit, begin repeal of the marriage tax penalty, and creation of American Dream Savings Accounts to provide middle class tax relief.

6. THE NATIONAL SECURITY RESTORATION ACT: No U.S. troops under U.N. command and restoration of the essential parts of our national security funding to strengthen our national defense and maintain our credibility around the world.

7. THE SENIOR CITIZENS FAIRNESS ACT: Raise the Social Security earnings limit which currently forces seniors out of the work force, repeal the 1993 tax hikes on Social Security benefits and provide tax incentives for private long-term care insurance to let Older Americans keep more of what they have earned over the years.

8. THE JOB CREATION AND WAGE ENHANCEMENT ACT: Small business incentives, capital gains cut and indexation, neutral cost recovery, risk assessment/cost-benefit analysis, strengthening the Regulatory Flexibility Act and unfunded mandate reform to create jobs and raise worker wages.

9. THE COMMON SENSE LEGAL REFORM ACT: "Loser pays" laws, reasonable limits on punitive damages and reform of product liability laws to stem the endless tide of litigation.

10. THE CITIZEN LEGISLATURE ACT: A first-ever vote on term limits to replace career politicians with citizen legislators.

Further, we will instruct the House Budget Committee to report to the floor and we will work to enact additional budget savings, beyond the budget cuts specifically included in the legislation described above, to ensure that the Federal budget deficit will be less than it would have been without the enactment of these bills.

Respecting the judgment of our fellow citizens as we seek their mandate for reform, we hereby pledge our names to this Contract with America.

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)