Politics / The Future Is Now
Norquist, Grover G.
The Future Is Now by Grover G. Norquist A t 11 a.m. on September 27, Republican candidates for the House of Representatives, both incumbents and challengers, will sign a "Contract With America"...
...deductions on educational expenses, first-time home purchase, and medical expenses...
...Yet even such a forceful opponent of term limits as Henry Hyde (R-M...
...This project might also be labeled "defund the left" reform, as it strikes at trial lawyers who've become as important to the Democratic Party as labor unions...
...Under Armey's direction, some seventy-five Republican members of the House have worked since early June in ten different groups to draft ten sweeping reform bills to be introduced within the first hundred days of the 104th Congress...
...and require a three-fifths majority to raise taxes in the future...
...allow tax cuts to be scored dynamically by using models that allow for supply-side effects of tax cuts...
...But the House Republican Conference and this fall's challengers will go on to promise free-standing votes on something even bigger...
...Putting limits on the chairmen would be the most radical shift of power in Congress this century—no more Dan Rostenkowskis, Jamie Whittens, John Dingells, or Jack Brookses...
...The repeal of the Clinton tax increases on Social Security earnings would be phased in and a dependent-care tax credit established to help Americans care for their.parents...
...But it is important to note that Republican unity has been won by promising a vote on each of the ten: 1. Term Limits...
...Closed committee meetings would be open to the public...
...The Social Security The American Spectator October 1994 51 earning test limit would be increased to $30,000...
...3. Economic Growth...
...This is a stiff marginal tax rate on working older Americans who, interestingly, are overwhelmingly Republicans...
...Representatives' internal spending over the last forty years...
...Most ominously for slush-fund Democrats, Republicans would hire an independent accounting firm to audit the House of Grover G. Norquist is the president of Americans for Tax Reform...
...They are beginning to think like a natural majority," he says...
...8. Defense...
...prohibit retroactive taxes...
...There would be fewer committees and members would be allowed fewer committee and subcommittee assignments...
...To include product liability reform, British-style "loser pays" rules to stop frivolous lawsuits, punitive-damage rewards caps, and changes in expert-witness rules to exclude "junk science...
...A revived Balanced Budget Amendment, requiring that any tax hike receive a three-fifths supermajority, would create pressure for spending restraint, not higher taxes...
...While underscoring the seriousness of the Republican pledge, this commitment also reflects the flexibility that was and willbe required of the Republican leadership to keep 178 present and 218-plus future members in sync...
...In 1980, it was considered revolutionary when President Reagan and House and Senate candidates stood on the steps of the Capitol and promised to support the Kemp-Roth tax-cut legislation...
...In so doing they drove Packwood back into the arms of Republican opponents of Clinton's health reform plans...
...is willing to allow a vote on the amendments, although he plans to vote "no...
...To include a prohibition against placing U.S...
...Trent Lott, Bob Smith, Paul Coverdell, Connie Mack, Larry Craig, and Phil Gramm have brought a more confrontational style to the Senate's Republican caucus...
...The opening-day checklist will include slashing committee staffs by more than a third, forcing several thousand Democratic staffers out onto the streets...
...Republicans promise a vote on two different constitutional amendments: one to limit House members to six years (three terms), the other to twelve years (six terms...
...On October 11, county and local candidates will do the same...
...troops under United Nations command, a renewed U.S...
...Republicans would expand the six-year term limits that already apply to ranking GOP members to committee and subcommittee chairmen...
...As one key staffer notes, having to hash out their agenda has changed the world view of both House and Senate Republicans...
...A regulatory budget would be established to identify, then limit, the total costs of all regulations...
...The takings clause of the Constitution would be given teeth, with a commitment to compensate property owners for regulatory damages...
...Republicans who worried that, post-Reagan, the party would drift left or simply drift are watching the national party come together without any presidential candidate...
...7. Legal Reforms...
...Republicans will pledge to apply to Congress all laws that apply to the public at large: OSHA regulations, civil rights laws, and labor laws, to name but a few...
...Third, without a president to look to for leadership, the Republicans in the House and Senate have been meeting more regularly—every Wednesday morning during the health care fight this summer, for instance...
...2. Tax reform...
...On September 21, Senate candidates will gather on the steps of the Capitol and present the seven key pieces of legislation they would propose in 1995...
...For Republicans, this is unprecedented behavior...
...9. Welfare...
...Newt Gingrich may have won his position as party whip by a two-vote margin in 1989, but in the elections since, the new additions to the House have been much more activist and conservative than the content "old bulls" who've gone into retirement...
...Crime...
...Proxy voting in committees, which allows chairmen to "hold" the votes of many members, would be banned...
...To include removing federal impediments to the death penalty and changing federal habeas corpus rules, strengthening the ability of states to treat juvenile criminals more seriously, and targeting repeat offenders...
...1 52 The American Spectator October 1994...
...In contrast to GOP welfare reform efforts that were positively Clinton-Lite, activist congressmen Tim Hutchison, Jim Talent, Dave Camp, and Rick Santorum have created a package that would return most decisions to the states, cap federal spending, require work, and forbid payments to teenage mothers not.living with their parents...
...5. Spending...
...Rather than seduce Republican liberals like Bob Packwood, left activists tried to destroy him...
...Pete du Pont, 1988 presidential candidate and the former chairman of GOPAC, is replicating the "Contract With America" at the state level...
...There will be a choice of limits because, even though the American public prefers a three-term limit on House members, some congressional Republicans would rather have equal standing with a Senate limit of two terms or twelve years...
...Second, the Clinton strategy of starting from the left and building Democrats-only victories—excluding Republicans and rebuffing bipartisan entreaties—has prevented the emergence of a Republican counterpart to the Boll Weevil Democrats of the Reagan years: an opposition bloc courted and treated as allies by the White House...
...c 6 6 ontract With America," which began as a project for congressional candidates, has spread throughout the Republican Party...
...on September 27, Republican candidates for the House of Representatives, both incumbents and challengers, will sign a "Contract With America" committing themselves to a radical agenda for changing Washington—in the event that they capture forty or more House seats this fall and become the majority for the first time in forty years...
...It would be hard to find a reform that is more popular with American voters and less popular with members of Congress—Republicans included—than term limits...
...6. Senior Citizens...
...To include a $500-perchild tax credit...
...the elimination of the "marriage penalty...
...At present, older Americans who work lose one dollar of Social Security benefits for every two dollars they earn...
...The capital-gains tax would be cut in half by excluding 50 percent of capital gains from taxation and indexing capital gains to inflation...
...Estate taxes would be cut, and businesses allowed to deduct the cost of new capital investment, as our Japanese and German competitors already do...
...Republicans are not promising they can pass each measure...
...Staffers explain that the seven bills will follow the themes of the ten bills to be introduced in the House...
...A series of "honest number" reforms would require "impact statements" for all unfunded mandates, put congressional budgeting on a zero baseline (eliminating the present practice of allowing Congress to "cut" the budget by increasing spending...
...commitment to a functioning NATO, and building the Strategic Defense Initiative against ballistic missiles...
...This potential Republican majority is promising not only to elect Newt Gingrich as speaker to replace Tom Foley, but also to radically shift power away from a handful of committee chairmen and to open up the workings of the House of Representatives to public scrutiny...
...and tax incentives for adoption...
...The contract includes a series of procedural reforms that a new Republican majority will implement immediately upon being sworn in on January 3, 1995...
...On fifty state capitols on October 4, Republican candidates for state office will make similar commitments...
...individual retirement accounts expanded to include equity for homemakers...
...f Newt Gingrich as speaker and Dick Armey as majority leader adjourned immediately after making these changes, the 104th Congress would still make history...
...While the specifics of the reform package may change, the outlines are clear...
...First, party unity is a product of the GOP's becoming more conservative...
...And while Senate rules have allowed individual senators—most notably Jesse Helms—to wage one-man legislative fights, the two dozen conservative senators who make up the Republican Steering Committee have become more and more effective in such fights as this year's health-care contretemps...
...Republican campaign managers and congressional staff attribute the aggressive nature of the Republican fall campaign and its unheard-of unity to several factors...
...4. Regulation...
Vol. 27 • October 1994 • No. 10
