The Contract with America: Renewed!

rockyreagan · #1 (**permalink**) 03-09-2006, 12:12 PM

http://www.townhall.com/opinion/colu...09/189158.html

Quote:

Limited-government conservatism is back. You know what I mean: the kind of conservatism espoused by Barry Goldwater and then championed by President Ronald Reagan – the kind of conservatism that the revolutionary congressional class of 1994 brought to the American people in the form of the Contract with America.

It is this brand of conservatism – a brand dedicated to limiting the size and scope of the federal government, a brand that recognizes that big government is not good government just because it is our government – that has sadly been missing of late. But no longer.

On Wednesday, members of the conservative Republican Study Committee in the House of Representatives took it upon themselves to single-handedly resurrect the philosophical heart and soul of the Republican Party.

Led by Representatives Mike Pence (R-IN) and Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), the unabashed band of conservatives proposed a return to fiscal sanity by introducing an austere federal budget proposal modeled after the budget proposal contained in the 1995 Contract with America. The RSC calls their proposal the Contract with America: Renewed.

The RSC has been offering an alternative to the president’s budget for years. Traditionally, that has meant taking the president’s spending blueprint and moving 10-15 degrees to the right. But this year’s proposal is drastically different. In a conference call before the introduction of the budget, RSC leader Pence told supporters why. “We really think that now is the time for much bolder action,” said Pence. “The time has come to level with the American people that we are not living within our means.”

Pence and the RSC lived up to their call for bold action. President Bush’s budget calls for $60 billion in deficit reduction. The RSC budget makes the president’s number look petty by calling for $358 billion in savings over the next five years. Incidentally, this number almost matches the $346 billion called for in the original Contract with America.

"We believe it is time to protect the family budget from the federal budget," Hensarling told reporters yesterday. The Texan acknowledged that many will accuse this budget of being too tough and heartless. But, countered Hensarling, "We believe the tough and heartless budget is the status quo budget" that neglects the mounds of debt we are daily piling on future generations.

Pence, Hensarling, and the others who helped craft this proposal see parallels between now and the mid-90s. The authors of the original Contract with America recognized the need for drastic change. The original Contract budget stated, "America stands at a crossroads. Down one path lies more and more debt and the continued degradation of the federal government and the people it is intended to serve. Down the other lies the restoration of the American dream…we choose the second of these roads.”

History repeats itself. In an open letter to the American people, Pence and Hensarling explain that America has once again come to a crossroads. “Republicans today are confronted with familiar challenges: expanding government, a worsening fiscal position, and an explosive growth in earmarks,” write the duo. “In fiscal year 2005, the federal government spent $2.47 trillion—49% more than it spent in fiscal year 1995…The deficit for the current fiscal year is projected to be upwards of $400 billion.” This makes the deficit the largest in history – and $3.5 trillion bigger than it was in 1995.

Likening the RSC budget proposal to the original Contract with America is not just good policy—it’s good politics.

The original Contract with America was passed with every member of the Republican majority except one voting for it. 108 of those members are still in Congress, and many of them hold influential positions like House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) and Rules Chairman David Dreier (R-CA). It will be hard for a member to explain why they thought such a bold budget was good policy in 1995 but not today – especially given an extra $3.5 trillion dollars added onto the federal deficit.

Furthermore, there are many who are convinced that passing a bold plan like this one is the exact cure for current GOP woes. Former Congressman Pat Toomey (R-PA) issued a statement yesterday praising the RSC Contract with America: Renewed. In his statement, Toomey sought to reassure Republicans who may have doubts. Toomey said, “Adopting the RSC alternative budget would help Republicans in Washington reclaim the moral authority on fiscal issues that they have squandered since the initial successes of the Contract with America through out-of-control spending increases and an explosion in earmarks.”

Pence also thinks the RSC budget is good politics. “The American people know that unbridled growth of government threatens our future and our freedom,” he told attendees of yesterday’s press conference. “They long for leaders who tell it like it is and are honest about the choices we face as a nation.”

Indeed, the America people appear to want more out of their elected representatives, especially Republicans at this time. The latest Fox News Opinion Dynamics poll shows only 34 percent of respondents plan to vote for a Republican in the upcoming Congressional midterm elections. If you ask the RSC members who are supporting this bold budget, they are likely to tell you that this is about Republicans behaving like Republicans – or in this case, not.

At yesterday’s press conference, Congressman John Shadegg (R-AZ), who voted for the Contract in 1994, said that “virtually every Republican in Congress was elected on a promise to curb government growth and spending.” For Shadegg and his RSC colleagues, this budget boiled down to one thing, “It is time to keep that promise.”

But keeping that promise will require the persuasion of their Republican colleagues. It is not enough that a core group of conservatives get it, although it is a very good start. They must persuade their Republican leadership that principle over politics is the way to go – especially in an election year.

At least one member of the current House leadership team – the newest member – is saying encouraging things. Immediately after the RSC released the Contract: Renewed, newly elected Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) issued a statement calling the proposal “a serious effort to address a serious problem: the runaway cost of government that threatens our children's future.” Boehner acknowledged that the problem can only be solved by “making tough choices.”

For many, voting for the Contract with America: Renewed will be a “tough choice.” But it will be the right one.

Lets hope that it is true! The Conservative Crackdown continues on the Republican Party.

US-Retard · #2 (**permalink**) 03-09-2006, 12:18 PM

Quote:

History repeats itself. In an open letter to the American people, Pence and Hensarling explain that America has once again come to a crossroads.

Here's a radical suggestion for Democrats and Republicans--do what the taxpayers want.

What Do the Taxpayers Want?
Here's a comprehensive study from "the most prestigious institute that studies public opinion in the world", Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA)--but you won't see it published in the mainstream.

Quote:

"There's a reason why those polls are never published, literally. People are not supposed to know that their own attitudes are right in the mainstream. I mean, if you are an individual, you may have your own attitudes, but everything that you are hearing and seeing says you are a nut. So you think, okay, I am a nut. If you knew that's what the large majority are thinking, people would get together and do something about it.

So, intellectual self-defense is not easy, but it's not hard either. The instant you get the idea of it, everything falls apart pretty quickly. Unless there are real barriers, and the more educated you are, the more barriers. After all, it is what education is about. Large part of it is about indoctrination." --Noam Chomsky, Dec. 27, 2005

The study is titled THE FEDERAL BUDGET: THE PUBLIC’S PRIORITIES (PDF).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Program on International Policy Attitudes

[T]he Program on International Policy Attitudes conducted a unique type of survey. Respondents were presented the major items of the discretionary budget, including a breakdown of the proposed funding for each item, and given an opportunity to redistribute the funds as they saw fit. They were also given the opportunity, if they wished, to reallocate some funds to deficit reduction (though the amount of the deficit was not provided). What this reveals is how the budget would look if Americans could each specify where their own tax dollars would go.
…
When presented most of the major items in the discretionary federal budget and given the opportunity to modify it, Americans make some dramatic changes. The largest cut by far is to defense spending, which is reduced by nearly one-third, followed by spending on Iraq and Afghanistan, transportation and justice. The largest increases are to reductions in the deficit, various forms of social spending and spending on the environment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Noam Chomsky

[The study] was very striking. It was the exact inverse of the [Federal B]udget. Where federal spending was going up, the public wanted to go down: military spending, supplemental for Iraq and Afghanistan; where spending was going down, the public wanted to go up: social spending, health, education, veteran's benefits, renewable energy, support of the United Nations peacekeeping missions, on and on.

Furthermore, they were an overwhelming majority; and the scale of cutback and rises…. increases the public wanted, were enormous. Well, in a democratic society, one of the things you want to know is what your neighbor thinks. I mean if each person says "look, I am some kind of a lunatic, everything I read is something else," you are not going to get a functioning democracy. So we, therefore, want to know what happened to this information. I am willing to bet that almost none of you saw it. The reason is it was not published in a single newspaper in the United States, at least a single newspaper that's accessed by the standard database. Well, okay, so people don't know about it. I suspect the same is true of this [2007] budget. And you'll probably have the same study and the same suppression.

That's why studies like this are never published.

Click the link (PDF). See the study for yourself.

Chaney · #3 (**permalink**) 03-09-2006, 12:32 PM

There is nothing endorsed by Noam Chomsky that could bode well for the United States of America.

On a personal note, Mr. Chomsky has been thoroughly repudiated in more venues than one can number. I would heartily suggest you find someone else to revolve around.

Now, on to more serious matters.

I'm pleased to see the resurgence of Fiscal Conservatism in my party. Let's hope this thing gets some serious traction.

BuckNaked · #4 (**permalink**) 03-09-2006, 12:33 PM

then it's back to business as usual!!! Dictating to American public what is best for them, and ignoring any of their concerns, desires, or wishes!!! Thank goodness they don’t adhere to the notion that as public officials they are required to carry out the will of the people, or stand by that silly oath they are required to take!!! Where would we be if they actually did their job???

Buck S. N.

nawbut · #5 (**permalink**) 03-09-2006, 12:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chaney";p=&quot

Mr. Chomsky has been thoroughly repudiated in more venues than one can number

Where was this substantive repudiation? At what venues''?...the car park outside your local tavern? Just curious - usually its a host of right wing hate sites spewing long discredited 'facts'...

rockyreagan · #6 (**permalink**) 03-09-2006, 12:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nawbut";p=&quot

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chaney";p=&quot

Mr. Chomsky has been thoroughly repudiated in more venues than one can number

Where was this substantive repudiation? At what venues''?...the car park outside your local tavern? Just curious - usually its a host of right wing hate sites spewing long discredited 'facts'...

Having read many of his books, I find it curious how many of his "facts" are constantly from "top secret" documents that can never be found or check on the average male. I have seen Chomsky in multiple debates predominately on C-Span, and every time his argue hinges upon a top secret document that he has read and recorder, but yet suspiciously is now unaccessible by the public. Moderate Liberals reject this "expert" every time his sticks his linguistic noise into a topic, and I have seen some of his best debates against men who I would not agree with on many topics but always state their opposition to and the craziness of Chomsky. Yet every time he gets in a debate a group of communist lackeys also show up and always starts screaming and yelling when someone tries to make a point against Chomsky. Their are some liberals "intellectuals" (if that is even a compliment) who prove their points using actual facts that can be verified. Why in the name of God would you support someone, who constantly brings up "Top Secret" information to make his point, and when someone address that he calls a "sheep" or "droid". All at the same time his followers follow him blindly, believing in his promises and the information that somehow only he has the ability to access. He is a sad joke.

Chaney · #7 (**permalink**) 03-09-2006, 12:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nawbut";p=&quot

usually its a host of right wing hate sites spewing long discredited 'facts'...

You would expect left wing hate sites to repudiate Chomsky? Talk about tautological. If one would only accept those who sympathize with Chomsky to authoritatively differ with him....well....one must live in an isolated world.

ForceoftheTruth · #8 (**permalink**) 03-09-2006, 01:18 PM

I already brought up his support of Pol Pot and Mao Zedong, and here is Chomsky's support of an anti-Semitic Holocaust denier. This is a petition he signed in 1979 (emphases mine):

Dr. Robert Faurisson has served as a respected professor of twentieth-century French literature and document criticism for over four years at the University of Lyon-2 in France. Since 1974 he has been conducting extensive historical research into the "Holocaust" question.
Since he began making his findings public, Professor Faurisson has been subject to a vicious campaign of harassment, intimidation, slander and physical violence in a crude attempt to silence him. Fearful officials have even tried to stop him from further research by denying him access to public libraries and archives.
We strongly protest these efforts to deprive Professor Faurisson of his freedom of speech and expression, and we condemn the shameful campaign to silence him.
We strongly support Professor Faurisson's just right of academic freedom and we demand that university and government officials do everything possible to ensure his safety and the free exercise of his legal rights.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faurisson_affair

Here is a bit on Faurisson the "respected professor" and his "extensive historical research" and "findings":

Robert Faurisson (born January 25, 1929) is a French holocaust-denier who generated controversy over various articles he published in the Journal of Historical Review and elsewhere, as well as various letters he has sent in to French newspapers (especially Le Monde) over the years which denied the existence of homicidal gas chambers in Nazi concentration camps and questioned whether there was actually a systematic killing of European Jews using gas during World War II.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Faurisson

Finally, the petition was factually inaccurate:

Vidal-Naquet has also noted that Faurisson was not barred from access to public libraries or archives, and the only archive to ban him was the private Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine (Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation), which Vidal-Naquet argues to be entirely consistent with its declared mission ("the fact that the staff of the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine, challenged in its fundamental activity, that of the memory of the crime, should --after years of forbearance-- refuse to serve Faurisson seems perfectly normal to me.").

raytri · #9 (**permalink**) 03-09-2006, 03:13 PM

Note the lack of hard details in that lengthy piece.

The RSC budget is available in Word format here:
http://www.house.gov/pence/rsc/doc/RSC_2007_BUDGET.doc

It will:

1. Increase defense spending to match Bush's request for 2007.

2. Gut foreign aid. This is insane. The war on terror demands *more* foreign aid spending, not less.

3. Eliminate funding for some high school math and science programs, as well as canceling the Mars initiative and the space shuttle program.

4. Eliminate federal funding for energy conservation research, and arbitrarily cuts the size of the Dept. of Energy by 35 percent.

5. Arbitrarily cuts the size of the Depts. of Interior and Agriculture by 10 percent and imposes a wide variety of cuts in environment and natural resource programs, including eliminating the Energy Star program (that logo that lets you know if you're buying an energy-efficient appliance).

6. Cuts lots of subsidies and programs at the Dept. of Agriculture. This I support.

7. Eliminates Amtrak subsidies, mass transit subsidies, and transfers a whole bunch of responsibilities to the states, including railroad safety and regulation and (the biggie) highway construction spending. Eliminates the subsidies that maintain the U.S. merchant marine. Privatizes the FAA.

8. Eliminates the Neighborhood Reinvestment Program and Community Development Funds.

9. Deep cuts in education spending, including eliminating the Reading Is Fundamental program and eliminating programs to encourage learning a second language -- this at a time when a shortage of foreign-language speakers is hampering our security efforts. Freezes spending for Head Start. Also eliminates the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities and cuts the Dept. of Education by 30 percent.

10. Cuts National Institute of Health budget by 10 percent, eliminates family planning programs and turns Medicaide and SCHIP into a block-grant program -- cutting $36 billion a year from it in the process, largely by capping spending increases without regard to actual need.

11. Cuts $63 billion a year from Medicare, by raising premiums and means-testing benefits. This is actually reasonable, if political poison. But they also propose limiting cost increases to a percentage point below medical inflation. Hospitals and doctors are already reluctant to take Medicare because it pays so little; this will just make that worse. Arbitrary caps make little sense.

12. Save $13 billion a year by arbitrarly restricting eligibility for Section 8 housing (cutting the number of vouchers in half) and eliminating heating-bill assistance for low-income households.

13. Doesn't touch Social Security at all.

14. Mildly raises veteran benefits.

15. On the revenue side, it would open ANWR for drilling -- generating a whopping $1 billion a year.

They also advocate a line-item veto, earmark reform, strict sunset provisions on most federal programs, a discretionary spending cap and restoring pay-as-you-go provisions. I support all of those.

Once you read the budget, you can see why they didn't trumpet the specifics. Budget cutting will require pain, and they do have some good ideas; it's just interesting that Social Security and defense are totally untouched, while all the conservative pet peeves are gutted.

Chaney · #10 (**permalink**) 03-09-2006, 03:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by raytri";p=&quot

it's just interesting that Social Security and defense are totally untouched, while all the conservative pet peeves are gutted.

Philosophically, Conservatism is opposed the the very idea of social "entitlement". Shouldn't be that surprising to anyone who understands the philosophical basis of Conservatism.

Defense of the nation is a Constitutional duty of the President, we are at war. Nothing surprising there.

George Bush declared in both campaigns that Social Security represents a promise to the American people, funded by their own contributions, and that he would not break that promise. No surprise there.

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