"Happy 10th birthday CONTRACT WITH AMERICA!"

[Bluebear]

Bwahahaha "GOP Shuns Talking Contract With America"

NEW YORK - Instead of a birthday cake for the Contract With America's 10th anniversary, Republicans at their national convention have given it a cold shoulder.

The cavalcade of speakers addressing this week's GOP gathering has not mentioned the campaign manifesto that House Republicans used in 1994 to end 40 years as the chamber's minority party. Republicans captured the Senate as well but did not use the contract.

"This convention is about the future. The contract is about the past," said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., the driving force behind the contract, who said he agrees that it should be ignored this week.

A decade ago, House Republicans rallied behind the collage of poll-tested promises to do everything from applying all laws to Congress to amending the Constitution to require a balanced federal budget.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040901/ap_on_el_pr/cvn_contract_with_america

[klook]

1. "It's 10 years old"

OK, so they're not going to discuss anything that happened before 1994? That would include Reagan, right?

[Bluebear]

2. And Vietnam?

[klook]

3. Saddam gassing his own people

That was more than 10 years ago, too, wasn't it??? (Not to mention that he was America's ally at the time.)

[TahitiNut]

4. The past is all about GOP failures; the future is only about GOP fictions.

Another word for the "past" is the "record." It's the same every four years: they're "born again" ... and again, and again, and again.

[sofa king]

5. Ah, the Contract on America

It's public domain, but I don't see the point of printing it whole here. Check it at:

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

Here's one relevant part, dealing with Congressional rules and procedure:

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.

I've only followed Congress closely for the past six years, but I can say this. I think that promise the FOURTH is actually in place now, limiting committee chair terms. That move screwed Alaska out of its chair of the House Resources Committee. Maybe proxy voting in committee is banned as well in the House, but I saw the Senate do it last year. The others look to me as much like new ideas today as they did in 1994.

There was another major House reform, one which was kept well below the radar by the Republicans. In 1995, the Republican party immediately revoked all floor voting privileges of delegates to Congress--DC, Guam, PR, AS, USVI. It was a symbolic privilege only, because delegate votes only counted if they did not change the outcome.

It's symbolic in another way, because revoking that benign right underscores the Republican theory of democracy: restrict voting wherever possible. That part of the Contract is as alive and well today as it ever was.