Excuse me?!
The Contract with America: Implementing New Ideas in the U.S. - The Heritage Foundation
Never before had so detailed a document become such an integral part of a congressional election campaign; never had so many innovative ideas been drafted into legislation so quickly; and never in the previous six decades had so much legislation been passed by the House of Representatives in less than 100 days after the newly elected Members of Congress took office. As the chief political columnist for The New York Times, R. W. Apple, wrote in a front page news analysis: "Perhaps not since the start of the New Deal [in 1932], to which many of the programs now under attack can trace their origins, has Congress moved with such speed on so many fronts."
The Contract with America was exciting at the time, and welfare reform was a genuine accomplishment. But, with the subsequent GOPe control of the Executive, the House, and the Senate, it was undone, and GOPe couldn’t even bother to defund the National Endowment for the Arts. It had to build the Rove/DeLay “permanent Republican majority”. Toward that end, the GOPe collaborated with Democrats to undo welfare reform, to launch the largest expansion in entitlement programs since LBJ, to erect the apparatus of the surveillance state, to federalize education, to corrupt the banking industry, and all sorts of rottenness.