From America, with Contract

Newt Gingrich, seeking both to recall his glory days as a freshman Congresscritter (before getting the boot from his own party) and his famous “Contract with America,” is banding together with the Tea Partiers with a new “Contract from America.”  Unlike the vague “Mount Vernon Statement” from more mainstream Rightists (“Motherhood is good. Also, apple pie.”) the CfA has specific policy goals in alignment with the TP/Reagan Mantra that “government isn’t the solution, it’s the problem.”

Twenty-two ideas are up for balloting starting at CPAC tomorrow.  Ultimately, the top ten will become the new Tea Party Conservative Political Agenda Contract Thing.

Let’s take a look.

DEMAND A BALANCED BUDGET: Begin the Constitutional amendment process to require a balanced budget with a two-thirds majority needed for any tax hike.

Enjoying the current 40 (now 41) vote obstructionism in Congress keeping anything from happening?  Great — let’s replace it with a 34 vote obstructionism.

Balanced budgets are good, in principle.  And certainly pols have a tendency to spend as long as they can milk funds from wherever.  But that’s like saying, “People speed too much, so we’re going to put 55mph regulators on all vehicles.”  That’s great, until you have a legitimate need to go faster in an emergency and discover you have to call your local city countil to get permission to override it.

STOP THE TAX HIKES: Permanently repeal all tax hikes, including those to income, capital gains, and death taxes, currently scheduled to begin in 2011.

Only in America is letting a tax cut lapse called a tax hike.

The goal here, of course, is to essentially shut down the federal government, by further cutting taxes and making it impossible to raise them again.  Never mind that the primary beneficiaries are the (NewtGingrich) rich, or that tax rates currently are significantly lower (esp. for the rich) than they were even under the reign of St Ronnie of Blessed Memory.  It all goes to welfare queens and piss artists, don’t you know?  Just ask the folks in Colorado Springs!

COMMIT TO REAL GOVERNMENT TRANSPARENCY: Every bill, in its final form, will be made public seven days before any vote can be taken and all government expenditures authorized by any bill will be easily accessible on the Internet before the money is spent. (Proposed by: Steve Kulik, Gonzales, Texas; and Steve Hollis, San Francisco, Calif.)

I tend to be in favor of transparency.  I suspect 7 days is way too long for Congress to actually get anything done (see general meme of “gridlock”), but there is possibly something to be said for public disclosure of bills before final passage and revelation of how money is spent.

PROTECT THE CONSTITUTION: Require each bill to identify the specific provision of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to do what the bill does.

Silly.  If you think a bill is unconstitutional, the courts are the only way to actually argue that.  Most bills go through covered by the “General Welfare” clause and some of the other broad powers the Constitution gives Congress.  The idea that bills are being passed with no constitutional basis is popular with the libertarian set, but doesn’t have much substance to it.

PASS REAL HEALTHCARE REFORM: Greatly improve affordability of health insurance by permitting all Americans access to all health insurance plans sold anywhere in the United States through the purchase of insurance across state lines and allow small businesses and associations to pool together across state lines to buy insurance.

A/k/a, “Let insurance companies bypass state insurance regulations with the promise that pricing will come down which, of course, always happens in the insurance industry.”

ENACT FUNDAMENTAL TAX REFORM: Adopt a simple and fair single-rate tax system by scrapping the Internal Revenue code and replacing it with one that is no longer than 4,543 words — the length of the original Constitution.

Ah, the illusory joy of the flat tax.  The irony is that it’s not the folks protesting at Tea Parties who are going to be the main beneficiaries of this, but the wealthiest.  We have an intentionally regressive progressive tax system.  The ones who want that changed are the ones being regressed progressed against, in the top income brackets.

END RUNAWAY GOVERNMENT SPENDING: Impose a statutory cap limiting the annual growth in total federal spending to the sum of inflation rate plus the percentage of population growth.

Statutory caps are a nice idea, but Congress can bypass such caps any time they want.  This also assumes that the need for government spending is strictly linear and in proportion to the above factors.  Two counter-cases: the current wars being fought, and the widely accepted value of government stimulus spending.  File this under the “strangle the government” meme.

LET US SAVE: Allow all Americans to opt out of Social Security and Medicare and instead put those same payroll taxes in a personal account they own, control, and can leave to whomever they choose.

So the folks most able to forego (or at least so they think) SSI and Medicare leave the system, making the system that much less sustainable.  And, of course, let us remember the points of these programs was to provide a safety net for those to whom calamity befalls.  Given the execrable level of saving among the American public (those who can afford to save), we’d fairly quickly return to the 1920s life of Old Age / Illness = True Impoverishment.

PROTECT INTERNET FREEDOM: No regulation or tax on the Internet.

That sounds fine when you think it means, “I should be able to browse wherever I want and not pay sales tax on my purchases.”  What it means in the eyes of the Big Business Right is, “telcos and network providers should be able to do and charge and restrict Internet traffic and access in any way they find profitable, and not be taxed on anything they do there.”  Guess which is most likely to prevail?

GIVE PARENTS MORE CHOICES IN THE EDUCATION OF THEIR CHILDREN: Improve American education by reforming the broken federal role through eliminating ineffective and wasteful programs, giving parents more choices from pre-school to high school, and improving the affordability of higher education.

Everyone wants to eliminate “ineffective and wasteful programs.”  Let’s hear specifically which ones you mean.  If “more choices” means taxes (or “vouchers”) going to parochial schools, no thank you.  And if we’re cutting taxes and throttling spending, how is it all of a sudden it’s a fiscal responsibility of the government to make higher ed more affordable?

PASS AN ‘ALL OF THE ABOVE’ ENERGY POLICY: Authorize the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries and reduce regulatory barriers to all other forms of energy creation, lowering prices and creating competition.

Reducing foreign energy dependency has a lot of appeal to it.  If it means “drill where thou willt shall be the whole of the law,” though, not only is that only a (literal) drop in the bucket compared to current demand, but it’s just money in the bank for Big Oil.  It’s not clear what “regulatory barriers” on other energy sources we’re talking about, unless it’s regulations controlling environmental impact of the resource extraction, impact of building stuff wherever an energy company thinks it’s profitable, or impact of waste/pollution from said energy.

PROTECT FREEDOM OF THE PRESS: Prohibit the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from using funds to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine in any form, including requiring “localism” or “diversity” quotas.

This conservative bugbear has been quiescent since the campaign.  Since nobody in the Obama administration has actually proposed doing this, I chalk it up to fearmongering.  Unless, of course, the last bit is code words for “media companies should be able to buy all the outlets they want.”

RESTORE FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY & CONSTITUTIONALLY LIMITED GOVERNMENT: Create a Blue Ribbon taskforce that engages in a complete audit of federal agencies and programs, assessing their Constitutionality, and identifying duplication, waste, ineffectiveness, and agencies and programs better left for the states.

Again the paranoia about “constitutionality.”  I have no problems with a “Blue Ribbon taskforce.” The trick will be who chooses the members, what their philosophy/agenda is, and what is to be done with their report (if it’s like most such efforts, the answer is, “hold a lot of press conferences, and then nothing happens, because everyone has an ox to be gored in this game”).

PROTECT PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS: Block state and local governments that receive federal grants from exercising eminent domain over private property for the primary purpose of economic development or enhancement of tax revenues.

Actually inclined to go along with this one.

REJECT CAP & TRADE: Prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from implementing costly new regulations that would increase unemployment, raise consumer prices, and weaken the nation’s global competitiveness with virtually no impact on global temperatures.

Well, when phrased like that, everyone would agree that would be a bad thing for EPA to do.   Though, of course, EPA can’t actually do it without some legislation from Congress, so consider that a bit of fearmongering.  Of course, that begs the premise that “cap & trade” regulations actually fit the description as given.

STOP THE PORK: Place a moratorium on all earmarks until the process is fully transparent, including requiring a 2/3 majority to pass any earmark.

Again with the ultra-super-majority on spending.

And, of course, one person’s “earmark” is another person’s “critical focused spending.”

I’m not particularly fond of earmarks and pork of this sort, mind you, I just suspect that controlling it is a bit more difficult and fuzzy (and capable of political exploitation) than this sort of simplistic solution.

NO CZAR REGULATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION: All “lawmaking” regulations must be affirmatively approved by Congress and signed into law by the president, as the Constitution requires for all laws.

If the Constitution requires it, then if it’s not happening, file a damned lawsuit.  Give some examples, please.  This looks like more attempt to throttle government, even legitimate regulatory actions as already authorized by Congress.

AUDIT THE FED: Begin an audit of the Federal Reserve System.

To what end?

NO MORE BAILOUTS: The federal government should not bail out private companies and should immediately begin divesting itself of its stake in the private companies it owns from recent bailouts.

Bailouts can certainly be inappropriate and overly-done and poorly managed.  They can also be critical at certain times — and the cost of not doing them (the collapse of companies and the companies around them) must be recognized.  Meanwhile, there’s no sign that the federal government is intentionally holding onto power in any of the bailed out companies (if anything, it seems to be exerting less power to correct the root causes behind the bailouts than it could).  The divestiture can and should only take place as fast as the government gets its (our) money back.

STOP CAREER POLITICIANS & CURB LOBBYIST POWER: Begin the Constitutional amendment process to require Congressional term limits. No person shall be elected to the Senate more than twice or to the House of Representatives more than four times.

Professional politicians are problematic. Amateur politicians are, too.  And, ironically, that increases the strength of the bureaucrats who last longer than the neophyte pols.  It also increases the pool of pols to turn into lobbyists.

SUNSET REGULATIONS: All regulations will be “sunset” after ten years unless renewed by Congressional vote.

An interesting thought, but I suspect more mischief would come of it than otherwise.

LET US WATCH: Broadcast all non-security meetings and votes on C-SPAN and the Internet.

I have no problem with this … in general.  I do think there’s room for “meetings” that don’t take place under the eye of a camera.  I wouldn’t want to work that way (even though I work for a publicly traded company), would you?  That said, increased transparency is a good principle to work from.

So … some interesting ideas, some outright goofy ideas, and some reheated ideas that will effectively make some rich people richer and the rest of the country less secure.  Par for the course for Mr Gingrich and the fiscal conservative Right.  My bet is that, by the time the “balloting” is done, most of the “get richer quick” ideas will be included, with a few libertarian sops thrown to give it the proper Tea Party atmosphere.