Politics/Contract Extension
Norquist, Grover G.
Contract Extension by Grover G. Norquist N ine months ago, Republican candidates for the House stood on the steps of the Capitol and offered America a deal: if voters would give the GOP their first...
...Contract Extension by Grover G. Norquist N ine months ago, Republican candidates for the House stood on the steps of the Capitol and offered America a deal: if voters would give the GOP their first House majority since 1954, the Republicans would enact eight congressional reforms on the first day of Congress and hold votes in the next hundred days on ten major pieces of legislation ranging from the balanced-budget amendment to term limits and legal reform...
...by 1990, 24 percent...
...Tip O'Neill's familiar adage—that "all politics is local"—was less an observation than a strategy for protecting the dozens of incumbent Democrats in conservative districts...
...I n the second scenario envisioned by the press, Republican unity will not last now that the Contract has passed the House and the heady first hundred days are over...
...The Republican commitment to a balancedbudget amendment puts all spending interests in competition with one another, limiting the opportunities for pork-barrel spending...
...In the past they have argued that, while welfare helps the poor, a dedication to good fiscal policy made them cut it...
...Never again will a Dan Rostenkowski or John Dingell accumulate decades' worth of power...
...And the line-item veto, passed in both houses, will give the president the ability to strip out special interest spending...
...and $20 million over seven years in the cost of developing a new drug...
...In the first, the Senate waters down or kills the Contract's measures...
...Republicans never lost more than 40 votes (nor did Democrats give fewer than 8 votes) on any Contract measure...
...It is difficult to imagine a point when voters will not demand such a pledge from political candidates—or when the political party most in sync with voters does not offer one...
...The contract idea has even begun to trickGrover G. Norquist is president of Americans for Tax Reform...
...Mary," born in 1974, will pay $115,724...
...The document also points out that "Robert," born in 1959, will pay $75,851 in interest on the federal debt over a lifetime of 75 years...
...They now argue that welfare is destructive, and that the burden to prove otherwise rests with the Democratic leadership that has allowed this destruction to continue for thirty years...
...Gramm has already announced that if any part of the Contract does not get out of a Republican committee intact, he will introduce it on the Senate floor himself...
...The success of the Contract will thus change the way Congress governs...
...Furthermore, both Dole and Texas Senator Phil Gramm are running for president...
...By 1997, the federal government will pay more for interest on the national debt ($270 billion) than for national defense ($257 billion...
...720 on the purchase of a car...
...At the urging of Pete du Pont, the former governor of Delaware, state and legislative Republican candidates in more than a dozen states proposed their own contracts in the 1994 campaign...
...But in fact, the most radical items in the Contract's agenda—the line-item veto and the virtual ban on unfunded mandates—have already passed in the Senate...
...Now the press is presenting two scenarios for a Republican collapse...
...Dole, meanwhile, has the ability to appoint members to conference committees, where differences between Senate and House versions of legislation are hammered out...
...and each is seeking to prove that he is the best man to guide the Contract's passage through the Senate...
...The briefing also makes it clear that Republicans are changing their stance on welfare...
...Throughout the 1994 campaign, large majorities of the press predicted that the Contract would remind voters of Reaganism and thus repel them...
...Moderates will want to show their friends on the Georgetown cocktail party circuit that they are "independent...
...After the elections, they took to arguing that there would be a schism between social and economic conservatives, freshmen and Old Bulls, reformers and 54 The American Spectator June 1995 newly minted committee chairmen...
...It is the GOP blueThe American Spectator June 1995 55...
...When American voters cast a deliberate ballot for a candidate speaking on national issues, they reliably vote conservative by a 60-40 margin—as they did with Nixon and Wallace over Humphrey, Nixon over McGovern, Reagan over Carter and Mondale, Bushover Dukakis, and Bush and Perot over Clinton...
...le down to local elections, as taxpayer groups have begun demanding that candidates for county and city office make pledges on property taxes and other reform issues...
...On April 7, at another gathering on the same steps, House Republicans announced the Contract With America had been completed—with a week to spare...
...If Americans were still paying taxes at the 1970 level, the average family would have $4,000 more in take-home pay each year...
...Dick Armey's flat tax—that were not ready in time for the 1994 election...
...Committee chairmen will want their pork and perks...
...By 1970 this figure had increased to 16 percent...
...Dole has a strong incentive to appoint solid conservatives who will favor the tougher House versions of the Contract items...
...The Republican party will run on another contract in 1996, one that will include any measures that the Democrats block or Clinton vetoes, as well as proposals—such as Rep...
...Hence the importance of the document Republican congressmen carried home with them over the April recess—a 111-page budget briefing entitled, "Where We Go From Here...
...T he Contract's success also means that future congressional elections will link candidates to their party and pledge, turning the races into national contests rather than a free-for-all of individual races decided on local issues and personalities...
...And the Republican momentum will be stalled...
...These Democrats would mouth conservative rhetoric but cast their decisive votes with the left-wing Democratic leadership...
...Sally," born in 1995, will pay $187,150 during her life—all just in interest on the national debt...
...Had House Republicans not made good on the bargain, the Contract would have gone down in American electoral history as little more than a successful campaign gimmick...
...Meanwhile, the Contract has also undermined the seniority system by restricting the time any one congressman can serve as a committee chairman to three terms...
...Social conservatives will want immediate votes on divisive measures...
...House Speaker Newt Gingrich personally briefed more than 200 Republican members of Congress about this document, and then spoke to their press secretaries and key committee staff in a series of two-hour sessions...
...in 1996, GOP tickets will offer similar pledges in all fifty states...
...This is welcome news for a Republican Party that has enjoyed majority support for its national policies while failing to win congressional majorities...
...Presidential politics and constituent pressure lead a more "reasonable," "seasoned," and "independent" Senate to stop the House's momentum...
...Instead, it has changed the way government will function in the future...
...The briefing—which is vintage Gingrich but was also greatly shaped by Republican committee chairmen—points out that in 1950 federal taxes took five percent of the median household's income...
...The party touted the personal attributes of its candidates—the regional interests, the pork-barrel prowess—while avoiding discussion of the national issues...
...He is even pushing for some toughening of the Contract, especially in the area of protecting property rights.print for the 1996 budget fight, as well as a seven-year strategy to bring the budget into balance by 2002...
...In the future, Democratic candidates will have to stand on their pledges...
...Using Joint Economic Committee reports that estimate that a balanced budget would drop the interest rate by 2 percent, the briefing asserts that bringing thebudget into line would save a family $37,440 in interest payments over the course of a 30-year mortgage on a $75,000 home...
...And the balanced-budget amendment, which was defeated by one vote, will be brought up again this summer by a confident Bob Dole, who now claims he has the 67th vote needed to pass the amendment...
...The predicted strife never developed...
...Control of one house of Congress or the presidency can now effectively wipe out pork...
...Despite desperate hopes from the press that GOP consensus is crumbling, the House Republican team is virtually united behind this plan for the budget battle—a battle that Dick Armey says will "make the fight for the Contract look like spring training...
Vol. 28 • June 1995 • No. 6
