Parties to the Contract: Ten good ideas for the next GOP agenda.

National Review Online ^ | February 19, 2010 | Stephen Spruiell

[Delacon]

An organization called the Tea Party Patriots, comprising a number of conservative grassroots groups, has unveiled a list of 20 possible items for inclusion in a new “Contract from America,” and is urging people to visit its web site and vote for their top ten. The list is distinct from another effort to define what conservatives should stand for going into the 2010 elections: the Mount Vernon Statement. Contract from America, like its namesake, 1994’s Contract with America, mentions specifics, whereas the Mount Vernon Statement limits itself to broad principles.

 

Both of these efforts are distinct from an official GOP effort to draft a positive agenda statement for the 2010 races, an effort that Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California is heading up. McCarthy’s process is still in its infancy, and he says he’s not sure whether the final product will look more like the Contract from America, with its list of specific policy proposals, or the Mount Vernon Statement, with its broader focus, but he stresses that the process he has in mind would take both into account.

 

 The problem with specific policy proposals is getting sufficiently broad agreement within the Republican party while still actually standing for something. The Tea Party Patriots present a mixed bag — some proposals that shouldn’t have trouble attracting broad support, some that might be more divisive, and some that could attract all the theoretical support in the world and still not come to pass.

In this last group we find items such as an amendment to the Constitution to require a balanced budget and a two-thirds majority of Congress to increase taxes. There should be broad agreement among conservatives anyway that runaway deficits pose a big problem and that tax hikes are not the appropriate remedy. However, even the audacious budget plan put forward by Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), which would replace fee-for-service Medicare with vouchers and Social Security with private accounts, wouldn’t balance the budget for decades.

The aforementioned core of Ryan’s plan — allowing Americans to opt out of Medicare and Social Security — is also among the Tea Party Patriots’ proposals, but probably falls into the “too divisive” camp. Leading Republicans have actively fought the perception that Ryan’s plan is the GOP’s plan, partly due to bad memories of Pres. George W. Bush’s push for personal accounts. These proposals will probably be left out of any final Republican document, even though it is hard to imagine any other solution to the looming entitlement crisis that does not involve large tax hikes.I would prefer to see bold specifics from the Republicans this year, but I do not want to appear naïve — their list will probably end up looking much different from my ideal, and that of the average tea partier. And it’s not the Tea Party Patriots’ job to maximize the political attractiveness of their Contract. Nevertheless, these are the items from their list that might make it into the GOP’s Contract if it were to focus on what’s both most appealing and most plausible:

 

 

1. Permanently repealing all tax hikes scheduled to begin in 2011. Locks in the Bush tax cuts, but more important, provides stability for businesses and removes some of the regulatory/tax uncertainty that has contributed to weak job growth.

 

2. Requiring every bill in Congress to be made public seven days before any vote can be taken. This isn’t an original idea, but it has the added benefit of serving as a reminder that Obama made a similar promise and broke it.

 

3. Broadcasting all non-security meetings and votes on C-SPAN and the Internet. Ditto.

 

 

4. Placing a moratorium on all earmarks until the process is fully transparent. John Boehner says that, if elected speaker, he would run the House “differently than it’s been run in the past under Democrats or Republicans” — referring to the bad old days of GOP fiscal incontinence, when earmarked spending exploded. Earmarks, while relatively inconsequential relative to the size of the budget, tend to grease the skids on large spending bills, and the process of earmarking legislation ought to be made more transparent, with lawmakers’ names attached to the earmarks they request.

 

 

5. Allowing the purchase of health-insurance plans across state lines, to increase competition and make the market more efficienct. As Tevi Troy and Jeffrey Anderson have explained, a series of small pragmatic steps toward lower premiums will look attractive compared with Obama’s overreaching and unaffordable goal of universal/mandatory coverage.

 

6. Authorizing the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on energy sources from unstable countries, and reducing regulatory barriers to all other forms of energy creation. The administration quietly undid the GOP’s late-2008 victory on drilling as one of its first official acts. Energy prices, on the rise again, could make drilling a winning issue in 2010.

 

7. Preventing the EPA from implementing costly new regulations. This item should draw attention to the fact that, even though cap-and-trade appears to be DOA in the Senate, a wrongheaded Supreme Court decision has given the EPA the power to regulate carbon dioxide emissions if they deem them a threat to human health. GOP candidates could remind voters that a Republican majority would serve as a check on the administration’s green extremism.

 

8. Preventing any regulation or tax on the Internet; and

 

9. Prohibiting the Federal Communications Commission from using funds to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. Both of these measures play into a broader free-speech agenda that the tea partiers have adopted. Their potential inclusion has drawn criticism from conservatives on the grounds that America faces bigger problems, but they are both less divisive and more achievable than most solutions to the bigger problems — that’s why those particular problems have gotten so big.

 

10. Making sure the federal government does not bail out private companies, and that it immediately divests itself of its stake in the companies it acquired in recent bailouts: Unwinding the bailouts — and putting the right measures in place to prevent future ones — is crucial to attracting independents and small-government conservatives. Figuring out how to end the era of “too big to fail” will be a difficult challenge, but promising “No more bailouts” is a good first step.

 

The biggest problem with my list is that it does not address America’s large and growing debt. But other than the proposal to adopt something similar to the Ryan plan, I don’t see anything among the options that is specific enough to be credible. For instance, in the absence of specifics, something like Impose a statutory cap limiting the annual growth in total federal spending to the sum of the inflation rate and the rate of population growth savors of Obama’s “spending freeze,” which conservatives rightly criticized as ineffectual.

 

As Ramesh Ponnuru recently wrote, any new Contract that “omits mention of the debt or fights it with platitudes will enrage the tea-party movement.” This is the biggest challenge facing 2010’s Contractors, and the debate over whether to embrace Ryan’s plan demonstrates that there aren’t any easy answers.

— Stephen Spruiell is a staff reporter for National Review Online.

[Delacon]

Some good ideas, and Lord knows that the repubs better start coming up with some actual ideas that we can stand up for. But it comes down to mortgaging our childrens' futures. As the wrtier says, it sure as hell comes down to the debt. And don't lie, almost no cons want an austerity program imposed on them when it comes to social security and medicare. Reagan didn't fix it, the Bushes sure as hell didnt fix it and we always left the door open for the dems to come up with a bigger and better government entitlement than the republicans could come up with. You and I didnt do enough to stop GOP excesses that led to Obama. Plain and simple. Now we have to correct our own mistakes as best we can. Think about it, would we have Obamalism if the teaparties were there in 06?

[knarf]

abortion is murder

A felony paid for with sentence fulfilled does not take away gun rights

10% tax

[Secret Agent Man]

The only caveat for the gun rights issue is that the sentence MUST BE served IN FULL. No early releases for ‘overcrowding’ and other bullsh1t reasons that deny proper justice by unjustly shortening the sentence.

[cripplecreek]

4. Placing a moratorium on all earmarks until the process is fully transparent.

Earmarks could be eliminated altogether if we left the tax dollars in the states, districts, counties, townships etc where the money is earned. After all, earmarks only exist because of a lack of local money and the lack of local money exists because we're forced to throw it down the fedhole.

[Cicero]

It’s better than the Mount Vernon Statement, which is vague and essentially meaningless.

What we really need to do is cut back on the Federal government, BIG TIME. The Education Dept, for instance, should simply be abolished. Just for a start.

[Personal Responsibility]

A winning platform contains not only a committment to hem in what a few agencies do, but an overall effort reduce the size and reach of the Federal government. The right platform would be based on the idea of “Getting government out of your way”.

Everything else should flow from that line. Energy, healthcare, taxes...everything.

[Laserman]

My Top 10

Republicans should come up with proposals for the major issues people are concerned with including:

1. Reducing the size of government
2. Growing jobs
3. Reducing taxes and regulations
4. Dealing with immigration
5. Reducing the cost of healthcare
6. Reducing debt and the deficit
7. Reducing the dependence on foreign energy sources
8. Getting government out of the private economy
9. Reestablishing a commitment to fighting terrorism and keeping our military strong
10. Rebuilding our relations with our allies and holding our enemies responsible for their actions.

[Prokopton]

Does anyone think a party that is going to meet with the most hardcore liberal dems, without preconditions, to find a way to help them get Obamacare passed, really cares about any of these principles?

[lightman]

Your number 9 would be my number 1.

The primary purpose of government is to protect its people, not provide a check.

Without secure protection none of the rest can happen.

[Delacon]

ping

[steelyourfaith]

Thanx !

7. Preventing the EPA from implementing costly new regulations.

________________________________

EPA: An unelected, flunky bureaucracy wielding rogue powers based in junk science. A cancer on the private sector.

Action against EPA abuse by private enterprises:

• CEI: CEI, Science Groups Petition EPA to Reconsider Increasingly Dubious Global Warming “Endangerment” Finding
• CEI: New Lawsuit, Petition Challenge EPA Global Warming Regulations
• PEC: World’s biggest coal company brings U.S. government to court in climate fraud
• PEC: World’s biggest coal company brings U.S. government to court in climate fraud

Action against EPA abuse by state/federal government:

• TX: A Green Tea Party
• TX: Texas, Skeptics Seek Court Review of EPA's 'Endangerment' Finding
• TX: Texas sues EPA over anti-pollution plan
• TX: Texas to challenge US greenhouse gas rules
• TX: UPDATE 1-Texas to challenge US greenhouse gas rules
• TX: Governor Rick Perry To Sue the EPA
• VA: Cuccinelli, Virginia Attorney General Challenges EPA on Greenhouse Gas
• VA: Va. challenges EPA's stance on global warming
• VA: Virginia challenges EPA ruling on greenhouse gases
• VA: Video: Virginia AG Tells EPA To Go Back To The Drawing Board Over Globaloney
• VA: Cuccinelli seeks to block EPA’s global-warming petition Attorney general disputes climate change...
• VA: Cuccinelli Fights the EPA
• VA: EPA, Countering Critics of Greenhouse Gas Findings, Says 'Science Is Settled'
• UT, TX, VA: Texas, Utah, Virginia Sue over Fraudulent Glo-Bull Warming
• MS: Barbour Lobbies Fellow Governors to Oppose EPA Regulations
• Fed: Effort To Block EPA Greenhouse Ruling Now Bipartisan
• Fed: Senior Democrats floating bill to block EPA on plans for greenhouse gas rules
• Fed: US Reps from Mo. to propose blocking EPA gas rules

 

Beam me to Planet Gore !

[HP8753]

4 a.)Anyone here illegally never gets citizenship.

b.)Children born in the US to people here illegally are not granted citizenship at birth.

[knarf]

That is based on my own 1969 transgression, for which I served full and never got in trouble again ... but 40 years later, a wife and 5 kids, working class hero, etc ... and I carry illegally.

Yep, yoobetcha', I do.

I shouldn't have to be another criminal by excersizing my 2nd ammendment right

[familyop]

1. China will allow the Renmimbi yuan to float or face tariffs. Any US products blocked/taxed by China will be by tariffs on the same products in kind coming from China.

2. All legislation for social programs like the unconstitutional, anti-Second-Amendment, anti-family VAWA must be repealed.

3. Zoning laws against new business starts must be abolished.

4. All special interest lobbies must be stopped having their collective control of our election process. They control our government by being the sole determinants of candidates available for votes.

4. The big default must come before we get leadership good enough to do the above.

[BCR #226]

11. 2nd Amendment infringement by ANYONE against a person who hasn’t committed a felony punishable by mandatory 10 years and $100,000 fine. If you are a Federal employee committing the infringement, 15 years and $100,000 fine with permanent loss of rights.

12. Repeal of 922 (o) and abolishment of the BATFE firearms branch.

Anything less and I’m not wasting my time with the Republicans.

[Laserman]

Agreed. I did not put them in any order.

[Laserman]

Sounds good.

[pray4liberty]

TERM LIMITS

[steveab]

You do not need 10 good ideas for the GOP to focus on to get elected.
Fiscal responsibility
Less taxes
Fight Corruption
It may take electing a lot of new faces in the GOP primaries to get the massage across that the tea party movement means “business as usual” in Washington is no longer acceptable.

[Laserman]

A critical one I forgot - REAL Term Limits