Posted on 02/04/2007 10:33:24 PM PST by Jim Robinson
GulfCoastNews.com February 1 2007
In 1994, the Republicans gained a majority in Congress for the first time in 40 years by offering a set of reforms contained in the Contract with America. Those common sense reforms cleaned up the way the House did its business including making Congress subject to the very laws it passes where they had routinely exempted themselves before. It also contained the first tax cuts in 16 years and provided for the child tax credit we have today. It increased intelligence and defense spending. The Contract led to the first balanced budget in a generation by actually cutting spending in real terms that created surpluses used to pay down the national debt. Of all the reforms, however, the most positive and powerful change for America was welfare reform which moved people off of welfare and into work or school.
In the 1996 election, when the Republican Party was reelected to the majority for the first time since 1928, we knew we had the approval of the American people. It would be hard to argue that the Contract with America was anything but a great success.
However, today we face even greater challenges than the ones we dealt with in 1994, and many of those challenges are indeed a threat to our survival.
In a rapidly changing world with new threats and new competitors, we must implement policies that will ensure America’s leadership, safety, and prosperity. And we must reinvigorate the core values that have made America an exceptional civilization.
The traditional instruments of government will not reform themselves fast enough and thoroughly enough for the information age.
The entrenched lobbyists and bureaucracies will do all they can to minimize the changes no matter how vital those changes are to America’s future. Self interest has and will continue to dominate the national interest if the normal political system operates in its business as usual style. The pressure of daily events will keep both the news media and most politicians focused on the immediate and the trivial rather than the long-term and the profoundly important.
Only a grassroots citizens’ movement can insist on the level of change that is needed for our children and grandchildren to have a successful future. Real change requires real change.
What is needed today more than in 1994 is a comprehensive set of solutions for the 21st Century. We must fight to win the future for the next generation of Americans with the same intensity previous generations fought for ours. We need a generation of solutions big enough to ensure the future for our children and grandchildren. I wrote Winning the Future to begin to chart a path toward meeting the challenges we face and to offer an outline of a 21st Century Contract with America.
Outline of a 21st Century Contract with America
I. To keep Americans safe both home and abroad, we will defend America and her allies from those who would destroy us. To achieve this, we will develop the intelligence, diplomatic, information, defense, and homeland security systems and resources necessary to defeat our enemies and defend our shores.
II. Consistent with our founding document – the Declaration of Independence, we will seek to re-center America on the Creator from Whom all our liberties come. We will insist on a judiciary that understands the centrality of God in American history and reasserts the legitimacy of recognizing the Creator in public life.
III. To strengthen our American culture, we will establish patriotic education for our children and patriotic immigration for new Americans. To achieve this, we will renew our commitment to education about American citizenship based on American history and an understanding of the Founding Fathers and the core values of American civilization. We will insist that both our children and immigrants learn the key values and key facts of American history as the foundation of their growth as citizens. And we will make English the official language of government to ensure a unified American culture.
IV. To meet the triple economic challenges of an explosion in scientific and technological knowledge, an increasingly competitive world market, and the rise of China and India we will implement:
1. A dramatically simplified tax code that favors savings, entrepreneurship, investment, and constant modernization of equipment and technology.
2. Investment in the scientific revolutions that are going to transform our world—particularly in energy, space, and the environment.
3. Math and science learning equal to any in the world and educating enough young Americans to both discover the science of the future and to compete successfully in national security and the economy with other well-educated societies.
4. Transform health care into a 21st Century Intelligent Health System that improves our health while lowering costs dramatically. In the process, American health care will become our highest value export and foreign exchange earning sector.
5. A new system of civil justice to reduce the burden of lawsuits.
V. To ensure that no American retires into poverty, we will transform the Social Security system starting with younger workers who should have the right to choose a personal Social Security Savings Retirement Accounts that will enable them to accumulate the wealth needed for a prosperous retirement while preserving Social Security for today’s retirees and near-retirees.
VI. In order to permit every American the opportunity to pursue happiness their entire life, we will:
1. Develop a system in which those who wish to stay economically active are encouraged and incentivized to do so because active people live longer and healthier and have a greater opportunity to pursue happiness;
2. Develop a system of independent living and assisted living that increases the years in which people can be on their own and in most cases enables people to live their entire lives with freedom and dignity;
3. Develop a new model of quality long-term care in which both the care and the quality of life are compatible with a twenty-first century American expectation of progress and innovation.
4. Use the new technologies and new scientific knowledge to turn disabilities into capabilities and change government regulations and programs to help every American achieve the fullest possible ability to pursue happiness.
VII. To change the mindset of big government in Washington, we will insist upon replacing bureaucratic public administration with entrepreneurial public management so government can operate with the speed, effectiveness, and efficiency of the information age.
VIII. To balance the federal budget, we will insist on the economic policies that foster a lean government, low taxes, and a low interest rate economy to maximize growth in a competitive world.
IX. To create a citizen-centered government, we will insist on congressional reform including the repeal of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance censorship law to make the legislative branch responsive to its voters and not Washington’s entrenched special interests.
X. To protect and ensure the integrity of the election process, we will insist that it is honest, accountable, accurate, and free from the threat of illegal votes or gratuitous litigation.
There is a lot to be done and every American can play an active role in winning the future for the next generation. I invite you to become involved and share your ideas for solutions to our great challenges by visiting and joining American Solutions for Winning the Future. (www.americansolutions.com)
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is author of Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract with America and chairman of American Solutions for Winning the Future.
Editor's Note: GCN requested an article by Gingrich for our readers on the subject of a new Contract for America. Gingrich was largely the architect of the first Contract for America in the 1990's when he was in Congress. He was kind enough to respond with the article above.
Lost me at II., I have no interest in promoting a theocracy.
I also note that the original CWA included support for the second amendment RKBA, which is missing from this version.
Newt must be joking. If the State Dept weren't actually Constitutionally mandated I'd be calling for its outright elimination. Giving more money and power to those clowns would be disastrous.
The President should ask the bipartisan leaders of Congress to cooperate in establishing a joint Legislative-Executive working group on winning the war...
And I'm sure Hillary, Ried, and Pelosi will get right back to you on that one.
Would February 2009 be alright?
L
I hestiate on II because I just am not comfortable with trying to legislate religion in any way, shape, or form
Funny, I thought that was the best one.
RE: Education, I agree completely.
I have what I call the "T.L.C. plan." "True Local Control."
Putting aside the advisability of giving the state control over the minds of our children for a moment, on a purely practical basis it makes no sense to take our education dollars, send them to Washington or our state capitals, run them through a huge bureacracy, and then send a fraction of them back to us with strings attached.
IMO, no education dollar should ever leave the locality in which it originates. In other words, all control over education should be in the hands of parents, taxpayers and teachers, in that order. (The massively growing numbers of administrators can take a hike - they've never educated a child yet.)
Lots of folks don't realize the huge percentage of state budgets that go to K-12 education...well over 50% in most cases.
And finally, the idea that the state should control the minds of the up and coming generations is a statist, socialist one.
One more thing: The whole system of bringing kids into a huge central facility and trying to educate them en masse is an outmoded and completely inefficient one. With the advent of the internet, more information is available to every one of us, young and old, then any previous generation ever dreamed of having access to.
Me too. Reverence for, and reliance on, the Creator, is the basis for American republican governance.
It's the premise for everything else.
(see my homepage by clicking on my screen name)
The Founding Fathers weren't theocrats. Neither is Newt. Newt wants to help America find its moral compass, get back to its basic concepts. Newt wants the USA to return to its fundamental roots, whereby government is a tool of the people and not the other way around. The growth of secular progressivism over the last 40 years, has worked to undermine this nations religious foundations. But America remains a Christian nation and recognizing God has always been at the center of our society and our politics.
And it's already established. In 1776, by the Founding Fathers - The Declaration of Independence. Those who wish to do away with it should try to do so by the same means used by the Founders. But they'd better come with their lunch and a lantern - and loaded for bear.
Amen.
I agree wholeheartedly on that.
Perhaps we should try some of that stuff that actually worked in the past. You know, like maybe conservatism.
In 1994 Newt was talking about eliminating Departments. Now he's talking about new ones.
And people wonder why the Republicans got their butt cheeks taped together last November...
Newt's a really, really bright guy. That's what's so disappointing about hearing him say stuff like this. More money for State? My God they're doing incalculable damage to the war effort now. Just imagine what they would do with even more funding.
The Republicans lost last November for the same reasons the Bears lost tonight.
They lost because they forgot the fundamentals.
The Bears have Grossman and the Republicans have Trent Lott and Denny Hastert.
I think there are some parallels there.
When people are faced with a choice between huge amounts of Federal largess and only slightly less huge amounts of Federal largess and then get told by both sides that it's 'free', which side do you suppose will garner the most votes?
That's why the Republicans lost. They lost because once again they became the Party of "Us too, just not soo fast." That'll get your ass kicked in an election every time.
Somebody needs to articulate why an overreaching over spending out of control Federal government is a fundamentally bad thing in a way an average voter can understand.
Reagan had that gift.
He could say "A government that's big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take it all away" and people understood it. More importantly people believed it.
I just can't say the same for Newt, McCain, Guliani, or any of the others right now. At least I haven't heard it and I pay pretty close attention.
I'll give Newt some props for hanging this out there, but there are only about 3 things in there I can agree with. The rest is either pap, fluff, or worse yet more Federal spending.
L
A big bump to your absolutely on-the-money remarks.
That was actually said by Gerald Ford. He was correct.
Regards, Ivan
Well, like I said above. I'm hoping he will appreciate (and consider) our feedback. Rudy and McCain aren't even in the same league, much less the same ballpark. Maybe even a different game.
They're playing the same game. It's just they're playing for the other team.
L
Thanks for the correction.
L
see my homepage by clicking on my screen name
Your home page, good stuff, I added it to my favorites.
Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration, President of the United States:
"God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure if we have removed their only firm basis; a conviction in the minds of men that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever." - from Query XVIII of his notes on the State of Virginia
And someone should remind Newt that in these areas, "...government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."
Ronald Reagan - http://www.reaganfoundation.org/reagan/speeches/first.asp
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