CONTRACT WITH AMERICA

CONTRACT WITH AMERICA

In the historic 1994 midterm elections, Republicans won a majority in Congress for the first time in forty years, partly on the appeal of a platform called the Contract with America. Put forward by House Republicans, this sweeping ten-point plan promised to reshape government. Its main theme was the decentralization of federal authority: deregulation, tax cuts, reform of social programs, increased power for states, and a balanced FEDERAL BUDGET were its chief ambitions.With unusual speed, all ten items came to a vote in the House of Representatives within one hundred days, and the House passed nine of the ten measures. Yet, even as House Speaker NEWTGINGRICH (R-Ga.) compared the plan to the most important political reforms of the twentieth century, progress on the contract stalled. Senate Republicans were slow to embrace it, Democrats in both chambers denounced it, and President BILL CLINTON threatened to VETO its most radical provisions. Only three of the least controversial measures had become law by the end of 1995 as Congress and the White House battled bitterly over the federal budget.

On the surface, the contract differed little from other modern Republican platforms. It began with a statement of three “core” principles
in the form of an argument: the federal government
is too big and unresponsive (accountability),
and big government programs sap individual
and family willpower (responsibility)—and thus
an overtaxed and overregulated citizenry cannot
pursue the American Dream (opportunity).
Republicans had been saying as much for at least
two decades. Although Democrats had controlled
Congress for more than forty years with
an almost opposite view of government’s duty to
its people, Republicans had held the White
House from 1980 to 1992. The election of President
Clinton in 1992 was a striking setback for
REPUBLICAN PARTY strategists. Yet, they took
encouragement from voter discontent with the
pace of Clinton’s legislative plans, two key provisions
of which—an economic stimulus package
and HEALTH CARE reform—failed to pass even
with a Democratic majority in Congress. For the
mid-1994 congressional elections, they intended
to capitalize on this discontent with a platform
that promised quick and dramatic change.
Toward this end, the Contract with America
made two promises “to restore the bonds of
trust between the people and their elected representatives.”
First, it promised to change the way
Congress works by requiring that lawmakers follow
the same workplace laws as the rest of the
country—notably, SEXUAL HARASSMENT laws—
and by strictly reforming the sluggish committee
process in the House of Representatives. Second,
it promised that the House would vote on the
ten key planks of the contract within the first
one hundred days of the new Congress. The
contract gave these ten planks names such as the
Fiscal Responsibility Act, the Taking Back Our
Streets Act, and the Personal Responsibility Act.
The contract promised action on the following
issues: the federal deficit, crime, WELFARE
reform, family values, middle-class tax cuts,
national defense, SOCIAL SECURITY, federal
deregulation and capital gains tax cuts, legal
reform, CIVIL LAW and PRODUCT LIABILITY, and
term limits for federal lawmakers.
The actual proposals represented a mixture
of old and new ideas. Republicans had long supported
deregulation of industry, TORT reform,
and middle-class tax cuts. As a deficit reduction
solution, the line-item veto was an old idea: ever
since the 1980s, Republicans had called for a
PRESIDENTIAL POWER to veto specific parts of
federal spending bills (rather than the entire
bills). More revolutionary was the contract’s
related proposal: a constitutional amendment
requiring a balanced budget. In the same sense,
the welfare reform proposals reflected a longrunning
debate and yet offered ambitiously
strict limits on spending, eligibility, and administration,
and even sought to transfer authority
over traditionally federal programs to the states.
Other proposals grew out of more recent concerns.
The crime reform measure was a Republican
effort to scale back social spending and
increase law enforcement spending, in reaction
to the Clinton crime bill of 1994; and proposals
to curb U.S. military involvement in the United
Nations’ peacekeeping missions reflected
Republican criticism of Clinton’s decisions to
send troops to Somalia and Haiti.
The contract met with mixed results in 1995.
The House Republican leadership did indeed
put each item to a vote within the first one hundred
days. It divided each item into one or more
bills, and thirty-one of the resulting thirty-two
measures passed—only one, for congressional
term limits, failed. The Senate moved much
more slowly. In part, this was because the Senate,
as a debating body, customarily proceeds more
cautiously.Another reason was that the senators,
unlike their first-year counterparts in the House,
were far less eager to pass sweeping reforms: the
Senate killed the proposal for a constitutional
amendment on the budget, for example, and
simply delayed action on several other bills.
President Clinton’s promise to veto any farranging
welfare and budgetary proposals also
crimped Republican plans, and by November
1995 this threat had produced a bitter standoff
that resulted in the temporary closing of the federal
government.
Three contract proposals became law: the
Congressional Accountability Act of 1995 (Pub.
L. No. 104-1, 109 Stat. 3), which requires Congress
to follow eleven workplace laws; the
Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995 (Pub.
L. No. 104-4, 109 Stat. 48), which restricts Congress
from imposing mandates on states that are
not adequately funded; and the Paperwork
Reduction Act of 1995 (Pub. L. No. 104-13, 109
Stat. 163), which reduces federal paperwork
requirements.