Time for a new Contract With America

Looking back, 10 years later, I think it's time for us to build a new contract with america, and I want everybody to design it, toegether. I plan on building a website for it, and circulating to members of congress. contact me at: bradleytn001@hawaii.rr.com

Here's a rough draft (I'm putting the number at 10 right now, but we can work on it):

1. implement constitutional controls on non-defense spending; non-defense spending cannot exceed a growth equal to that of the rate of inflation plus annual cost-of-living adjustments.

2. Defense spending must remain within set brackets: 4 -7% of GDP; Defense spending never exceeded 7% of GDP during the Cold War and is only roughly 3.5 - 3.75% of GDP right now in the war on Terror.

3. Financially assist any state that wishes to switch to a fully-privatized public school system; This is necessary to allow a "transition" perion in which massive droves of students leave poor schools for better ones. Once schools reach an ultra-low capacity level, states should begin shipping remining students to surrounding schools and begin finding a buyer for the public school.

4. Shift as much of the budget down to the state level as possible; the only excluded items should be national security, infrastructure, and Science and Technology (Space exploration, nanotechnology/fuel cell R&D, etc.); States, and their local voters, know best when it come to whether they want health care, education, farm subsidiesce, or anything of the ilk. Local governments should decide whether or not to have a large budgets, high-tax welfare state or a low-budget, low tax state built on rugged individualism and the entrepenurial spirit.

5. Create a agancy, similar to the Federal Reserve Board, that will decide when -- and when not to -- expand or contract the immigration labor pool. To achieve this, we must also control our borders. This can be achieved through rigorous enforcement of current anti-illegal immigration laws and using advanced technology, namely Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to patrol the US-Mexican border. Also, reintorduce assimilation policies that worked so well before the 1970s. Our nation cannot be both multiracial AND multicultural.

6. Tort Reform; work to ensure that malpractice rates dramatically drop. This can be done in many ways. One way is to "lock-in" malpractice insurance rates to the level of frivilous lawsuits in a given county. Malpractice insurers will have a "base-line" rate, and any county that has an above-average number of lawsuits will have to make their taxpayers pay the difference. Simply put, everytime a juror approves a frivolous malpractice lawsuit, he of she will be raising their OWN taxes. This way, only the truly deserving cases will be approved.

7. Demand massive reform at the State Department and the CIA; an increase in political appointees will help achieve this objective; As it currently stands, the CIA has literally no political appointees and those at STATE are marginalized by the career beaurocrats. STATE should stop represening their client states to the US and start representing the US to their client states. All issues regarding immigration should be removed from STATE's imcompetant hands

8. The Coast Guard, the Army and Air National Guards, and "enforcement" departments of the INS should be incorporated into the US military's Northern Command (NORTHCOM, based out of Peterson AFB, Co). This new-and-improved NORTHCOM (still in it's infancy anyway) should also develop a strong relationship with it's civilian sister organization, the Department of Homeland Security.

9. the FBI should spin off all intelligence gathering assets into a new domestic intelligence agancy, along the lines of the UK's MI-5. The intelligence and law enforcement arms of the FBI were fearful of stepping on each other's toes for years, which in part was responsible for 9-11. This will no longer be an issue.

10. reinforce America's moral standards. There should be a constitutional amendment preventing Gay marriage. A constitutional Amendment to ban partial-birth abortion should be introduced if the court system once again snares our latest efforts. Activist judges who are trying to implement a state-enforced religion, ATHEISM, should be removed from the bench.

I Wrote all of these off the top of my head. I need your help. Please contect me at Bradleytn001@hawaii.rr.com, or post what you can do. We are the core of what's right in America. We can make a difference.

Straight from House.gov

REPUBLICAN CONTRACT WITH AMERICA
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. (Bill Text) (Description)

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. (Bill Text) (Description)

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. (Bill Text) (Description)

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. (Bill Text) (Description)

5. THE AMERICAN DREAM RESTORATION ACT: A S500 per child tax credit, begin repeal of the marriage tax penalty, and creation of American Dream Savings Accounts to provide middle class tax relief. (Bill Text) (Description)

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. (Bill Text) (Description)

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. (Bill Text) (Description)

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. (Bill Text) (Description)

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. (Bill Text) (Description)

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

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.

http://www.house.gov/house/Contract/CONTRACT.html

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