House Freedom Caucus To Release New “Contract With America”

The Contract With America, you may recall, was the brainchild of Newt Gingrich for the 1994 elections. Gingrich decided to nationalize the House of Representative election, allowing GOP candidates to run on an array of poll tested propositions — all Contract provisions had at least 60% approval — rather than local issues:

1. require all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply to Congress;
2. select a major, independent auditing firm to conduct a comprehensive audit of Congress for waste, fraud or abuse;
3. cut the number of House committees, and cut committee staff by one-third;
4. limit the terms of all committee chairs;
5. ban the casting of proxy votes in committee;
6. require committee meetings to be open to the public;
7. require a three-fifths majority vote to pass a tax increase;
8. guarantee an honest accounting of the Federal Budget by implementing zero base-line budgeting.

It was a resounding success as a campaign tool, giving the GOP control of the House for the first time since 1953. How it worked out in practice is a different discussion.

Now the House Freedom Caucus is in the throes of drafting a Son-of -Contract-With-America for the 2016 campaign.

U.S. House Republican hard-liners who helped force out former Speaker Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) N/A% are readying their next act: a multi-point manifesto demanding quick action on long-time conservative priorities.

Members of the House Freedom Caucus are preparing a “Contract With America II” that would call for House votes in the first 100 days of 2016 on replacing Obamacare, overhauling entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, and repealing the estate tax.

An early draft of the plan obtained by Bloomberg News also calls for legislation to slash government regulations by 20 percent, cut corporate tax rates and expand offshore oil drilling. Efforts are still under way to finalize contents of the “contract,” which lawmakers say they hope will become the basis of House Republicans’ 2016 agenda.

 The plan is tentatively named after the “Contract With America” that Newt Gingrich and other Republicans used to describe their pledges in the 1994 elec­tion campaign that swept the party into the House majority.

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