The Aging Prom Queen’s Promise Isn’t The Only One That Has Been Broken

Of late, we have brought you a couple of stories on Kay Bailey Hutchison’s broken promise that she’d only serve two full terms in the United States Senate.

Hutchison, first elected in a special election in 1993, earned her first full term in the post-”Contract With America” era, and herself subscribed to many of the promises put forth in the Contract with America—including congressional term limits.

But, the Breck Girl/Aging Prom Queen’s promise isn’t the only “Contract With America” promise broken by Republicans. Matt at Just Another Blog touched on some of these broken promises, and I’d like to expand on that a bit.

First, though, some background on the “Contract With America,” from Wikipedia:

The Contract with America was a document released by the Republican Party of the United States during the 1994 Congressional election campaign. Largely written by Representative Dick Armey, and in part using text from former President Ronald Reagan’s 1985 State of the Union Address, the Contract detailed the actions that the Republicans promised to take if they became the majority party in the United States House of Representatives for the first time in forty years. Many of the Contract’s policy ideas originated at The Heritage Foundation, a non-partisan but very influential conservative force in the nation’s capital.

The Contract with America was introduced six weeks before the 1994 Congressional election, the first midterm election of President Bill Clinton’s Administration, and was signed by all but two of the Republican members of the House, and all of the Party’s non-incumbent Republican Congressional candidates.

The Contract was revolutionary in its commitment to specific actions, describing in detail the precise plan of the Congressional Representatives, and marked the first time since 1918 that a Congressional election had been run broadly on a national level. Furthermore, its provisions represented the view of conservative Republicans on the issues of shrinking the size of government, promoting lower taxes and entrepreneurial activity, and both tort reform and welfare reform.

You can read the full Contract With America here, where it remains—nearly 12 years later—still hosted on the U.S. House of Representatives’ website.

Republicans to this day claim that the Contract was a success. And, to an extent, it was: no promises were made within the contract that any legislation would ever become law, Republicans needed only to introduce the legislation to fulfill their “contract.”:

The contract did not, as some pundits later argued, promise that all 10 items of legislation would be approved; merely that they would be voted upon. Nevertheless, nine of the 10 items were approved by the House — a constitutional amendment to limit congressional terms being the lone exception — and sent to the Senate for further action.

Even more amazingly, as Gingrich and others have pointed out over the years, every legislative element of the contract that was not a constitutional amendment eventually became law in some fashion.

But, the fact remains that the “contract” was really a deceptive document. The GOP made promises. Some of those promises were delivered on but the “reforms” of the Contract With America necessary for the GOP to deliver on its promises have been either devastating to America or have had little or no impact on the areas of law and public policy they were designed to revolutionize.

So, let’s take a look at the Contract With America. As with a regular, binding legal contract, the CWA has numerous provisions. First, it notes:

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.

Let’s see how some of those items turned out:

Require all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply equally to the Congress: It does not appear that the Republicans have done too well in this regard. Take, for example, Tom DeLay. Tom DeLay and his numerous supporters in the U.S. House continue to act and speak as though Tom DeLay has done nothing wrong in spite of the fact he is under indictment in Travis County and may be a target of the Abramoff investigation. Yet, they defend Mr. DeLay. How is defending DeLay and his actions ensuring that the same laws that apply to everyone else apply equally to those in Congress?

Though it wasn’t my intention to use DeLay as an example of everything that is wrong with the Contract with America, DeLay sparks yet another example of how Congress is failing on its first point of the Contract: Ethics reform.

One needn’t look too far to figure out that the Republicans in Congress don’t believe they need tougher ethics reforms, though tougher ethics reforms would go a long way toward fulfillment of this portion of the Contract.

Now, let’s take a look at some of the other provisions of the Contract:

Fiscal Responsibility: Congress promised to end last-minute riders to bills that would fund “pork” projects or make special changes in laws. though portions of the Act passed the House, Republicans broke their promise on fiscal responsibility relatively quickly. Nine months after the Contract, a budget bill failed to pass Congress because Republicans loaded it with abortion-related amendments.

Fiscal responsibility, period, has become non-existent in the Republican Party. Save deficit and spending hawks like Texan and Republican Study Committee member Jeb Hensarling (R-Dallas), the Republicans seem content to have eaten away at the surplus built during the Clinton administration and force upon our nation the largest federal budgets and largest deficits the nation has ever seen.

Texas Republicans have been some of the worst pork offenders, too. With a Congressional Delegation in which Republicans are the majority, Texas managed to rank fourth nationwide in “pork-barrel” projects sunk within the depths of the federal budget. Recently, congressional candidate Mary Beth Harrell put Rep. John Carter in the statewide spotlight for his pork-barreling.

Taking Back Our Streets: Congress sent down the pike $10.5 billion for state prison construction grants. In Texas, our prisons are already full. Congress “reformed” the habeas corpus appeals process effectively shutting the doors of courtrooms to many people who have been wrongfully convicted. That’s been a disaster. Prisons are full of non-violent offenders thanks to the Contract’s mandatory minimum sentencing legislation, and the prisons built with that $10.5 billion in grant money are full.

Further, look no farther than some of the Bush and GOP budget proposals which do anything but protect Americans. The proposals cut budgets that affect our police and firefighters, port and border security and aviation security. In one instance, the House (the body that created the Contract) wanted to cut even more from these programs than the President did! One Bush budget cut first-responder funding within the Department of Homeland Security by $648 million. $959 million was cut from state and local law enforcement, including the gutting of President Clinton’s successful COPS program that put 100,000 additional police officers on the streets in American cities.

The Personal Responsibility Act/Welfare Reform: While President Clinton supported some degree of welfare reform, promising to end “welfare as we know it,” his signature on the personal responsibility act portion of the Contract With America was one of his actions which caused a great deal of friction within the Democratic party. Looking back more than 10 years later, we can easily tell why.

The transferring of “welfare” to a block grant system by which the federal government gives sates blocks of money which the states then distribute under their own legislation and criteria has prompted a good deal of contract breaking across the United States. Using Texas as an example once again, let’s look at how Republicans broke the Contract With America.
The Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) is an excellent example of both breaking the contract and block grants gone horribly wrong. It shows just how easily a state can impede the success of a federal program when it involves both block grants and state matching funds.

The initial CHIP program offered to pay for health insurance for children of families earning up to 200 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL), but states could choose any level of family income up to the limit. They also have wide latitude in how the funds are distributed, including funding local health clinics.

With former governor and then presidential candidate George W. Bush as governor of Texas when the Lege convened in 1999 and considered the CHIP program, Texas agreed to fund the program for children in households earning only up to 150 percent of the FPL, equivalent then to about half a million Texas children. Republicans and Bush, who had his eye on the White House and didn’t want to be saddled with signing a massive program into law that could be conceived as “welfare,” actually wanted to shut the door on the program to even more Texans, by lowering the percentage of the FPL that would allow families to qualify for the program.
Because of problems with the launch of the program and problems within its administration, Texas was one of at least 40 states who had to give back a large portion of its CHIP dollars back to the federal government.

In 2003, the Texas Legislature cut CHIP funding by $200 million dollars causing some 151,000 Texas kids to lose CHIP coverage. At the same time, the state added $295 million to a business growth slush fund, the Texas Enterprise Fund, to create a larger corporate welfare program in Texas.

It seems to me that taking money from children and giving it to multi-billion dollar corporations is a pretty good example of breaking the Contract. Surely, it was not the most fiscally responsible move that could have been made by Republicans, who by this point controlled both chambers of the Texas Legislature.

True to predictions, transferring welfare responsibilities to the states through block grants has been a disaster. Furthermore, many predicted at the time that, while the provisions of the Personal Responsibility Act may have worked in a booming economy, they would cause numerous problems in a recession. This has been proved time and time again during the recent poor economic climate.

And, while the decrease in welfare rolls during the period immediately after the Contract was implemented were credited to the contract itself, federal and private studies prove that simply wasn’t the case:

The PRWORA was implemented during the longest boom in post-war history. Researchers have found that 40 to 80% of the fall in caseloads may be attributable to the boom, rather than the policy reforms. (See Council of Economic Advisors (1998); Wallace and Blank (1998); Ziliak, et al (1997) for a thorough review of this literature.) This has important implications for our thinking about TANF reauthorization as the US economy slides into recession. Strong labor demand played an important role in creating jobs for welfare recipients to move into; weakened labor demand in the future may make it more difficult for former welfare recipients to find or maintain employment.

One of the more controversial but less discussed aspects of the Personal Responsibility Act cut off benefits from various recipients or potential recipients if they were convicted of various crimes:

Under Title 1, Section 115 of the Personal Responsibility Act, eligibility for temporary state assistance is denied to individuals who are convicted of a federal or state felony for possession, use, or distribution of a controlled or illicit substance. Worse yet, the individual’s family is penalized because the amount of assistance a family might receive is reduced by the amount that would have been otherwise available to the family member who is convicted of the felony.

Clearly, if the Republicans had wanted to do more to move people off welfare and toward work (or off the streets from selling drugs), this provision would have been handled much differently. For one thing, one way to insure that someone isn’t on the streets selling crack for money to buy food is not to cut them off welfare if they have a previous conviction or, worse yet, penalize their families for that.

The act was also a precursor to the modern “faith based initiative,” in that, under Title I, Section 104 of the Act, a state could contract with a charitable, religious or private organization to have them administer services which were established or modified in Titles I and II of the Act.

The Family Reinforcement Act: One of the biggest blunders of the Contract With America, which I didn’t even realize until I started looking at this particular provision, was the addition of millions of dollars to the federal budget to fund block grants for abstinence education. In the ten plus years since the Contract, it’s been proven time and time again that teaching just “abstinence only” doesn’t work, period. If Republicans had actually wanted to do something about teen pregnancy, perhaps better funding for real sex education or family planning programs would have been a better idea. Instead, the government promoted a program which has proven to be a dismal and utter failure.

As a result of the provisions of this portion of the contract, many Americans found themselves receiving different treatment from “welfare” and “social service” offices within their own state and sometimes, within the same offices because the FRA failed to address important issues of equity within the welfare system. This disparity and inequity exists to this day, and was predicted shortly after the provisions of the FRA were made law:

But some differences in treatment are more justifiable than others — and some cannot be justified at all. To address these issues, states may have to decide exactly where some sort of rough equality is needed as well as where it is not. For example, we see significant differences in administrative resources between urban, suburban, small city, and nonurban sites within states — differences that could affect the quality and equity of signals and services provided to families.

Generally, one of the major ways in which Republicans have broken their “Contract” is by claiming to pass an act which “reinforces” the family that does nothing concrete to do so. From its title, it sounds as though it should be some great piece of “moral legislation,” truly aimed at reinforcement of the family unit. But, it’s not. It was a conglomeration of tax breaks and shifts in services to make the federal government appear less “big and bloated.”

A truly great Republican hypocrisy, however, is that, while promoting an act entitled “Family Responsibility,” many Republicans were being less-than-responsible when it came to their own families. Take Contract promoter and ex-speaker himself, Newt Gingrich:

The Family Reinforcement Act. We will continue to encourage the central role of families in American society. Sometimes dumping your dumpy spouse in favor of a hot young thing is unavoidable. Sometimes dumping that hot young thing in favor of a hotter young thing is irresistible. But we will do our best not to leave a paper trail that can allow the left to paint Republicans as frisky and hypocritical. We must learn from the spectacular crash of our former leader.

Even as he was in the midst of a five-year affair with a Capitol Hill aide, Callista Bisek, Newt dedicated his 1998 book, “Lessons Learned the Hard Way,” to his wife, Marianne, and praised her as “the woman I love . . . my best friend and closest adviser.” Ouch.

How’s that for family responsibility? That’s not the only example.

Another great hypocrisy in “reinforcing the family” is the GOP’s continued attack on gay and lesbian lifestyles. Many gays and lesbians have strong, loving family units that need no government “reinforcing.” Yet, the Republicans in Congress today desire to make it impossible—even criminal—for these families to benefit from civil unions, insurance benefits of their partners, and more. Promoting family responsibility and reinforcing families should apply to all families, not just those families cast as “traditional” families according to the Republican Party Platform.

The American Dream Restoration Act: If you are single and feel that you pay too much in taxes, you can thank the American Dream Restoration Act. In order to cut the “marriage penalty,” the Republicans stuck it to single adults by making us pay more in taxes than married couples.

Furthermore, given that an act was passed to “restore” the American dream, it is quite ironic that, by its actions in the more than ten years since the Contract was given life, that the GOP has done everything in its power to take away the opportunity of the American dream for American families:

Through their actions the GOP is doing everything in its power to take away the opportunity for the American dream. The GOP playbook is nothing short of an assault on the lower and middle class. From slashing Medicaid and Pell Grants, to repealing the Estate Tax for millionaires while cutting taxes for the wealthiest? The math just doesn’t add up. The burden of sacrifice is being placed on those who can least afford it while those who can are being given the breaks. This, friends, is no American dream.

This year alone nearly 45 million Americans are living without health insurance, including nearly 9 million children. Many of these people work hard everyday to make ends meet, to provide for their families and they are being shortchanges by their government. This, friends, is no American dream.

In his 1964 State of the Union address President Lyndon B. Johnson said “Unfortunately, many Americans live on the outskirts of hope—some because of their poverty, and some because of their color, and all too many because of both. Our task is to help replace their despair with opportunity.” Ladies and gentleman of the jury, we started a war with Iraq when we should have declared an all-out war on poverty. We ought to be empowering our fellow Americans, providing hope and helping them get on the road to their American dream. Choosing between groceries, prescription medications, or health insurance is no American dream. We can do better.

The GOP is content to ignore this problem and sweep it under the rug. We turn again to CBS news for Exhibit E. In her September 27 column Katrina Vanden Heuvel sheds light on the truth. “America’s claim to shame is that it has the highest level of poverty in the industrialized world. Bush’s four and a half years of trickle-down theories have failed miserably. The poor have become even poorer. The nation’s poverty rate has climbed from a 27 year low of 11.3 percent to 12.7 percent last year. Thirty seven million Americans are living below the poverty line, a group so large, Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter pointed out in a post-Katrina cover article, that it amounts to “a nation of poor people the size of Canada or Morocco living inside the United States,” said Vanden Heuvel. This is simply not acceptable.

Ladies and gentleman of the jury, this is not the America I grew to love. Cleary the GOP’s vow to help restore the American Dream was like all most of its promises, empty. It is up to us to lead our country in a new direction, a better direction for all people, not just the wealthiest.

Too, in a nation built by immigrants, the Republican Party’s desire to make felonious criminals out of each and every illegal immigrant in this country is a betrayal of everything the “American Dream” has ever stood for. The people coming into this country are simply trying to live their own version of the American Dream. Yet, Republicans would rather build 700-mile walls and make immigrants criminals rather than do what can be done to help these men and women become Americans and contribute to our society. This, truly, is a betrayal of the American Dream and a violation of the contract.

The Job Creation and Wage Enhancement Act: A dismal and utter failure. It’s been nearly a decade since there has been any increase in the federal minimum wage. Furthermore, creation of any jobs fostered by the Act has been eclipsed by the fact that thousands of jobs have been shipped overseas under the watch of a GOP congress and GOP president. President Bush has presided over an era that has seen a loss of American jobs not witnessed since the days of Herbert Hoover.
Since the last minimum wage increase for Americans, Congress has received several pay raises. Republican congresses have approved these increases all the while their constituents are living paycheck to paycheck and struggling to afford housing, gas, electric bills and healthcare.

The National Security Restoration Act: Do you think if Republicans had actually truly “restored” National Security, 9/11 would have occurred? If Republicans wanted to do something about National Security, why did they not act on increasing airport and seaport security before 9-11 when they knew of the dangers America faced?

The National Security Restoration Act also proposed to “maintain our credibility around the world.” To date, Republicans have done a piss-poor job in this department. Our credibility around the world is shot to hell, thanks to the Republicans. We have a president in office who led this nation to war justified by lies and half-truths yet the members of his own party desire to not even censure him. How does this help us maintain our credibility around the world? Further, turning nations the world over (the “Coalition of the Willing,” or whatever it is called these days) into whores by promising them aid (and delivering it) in exchange for sending troops to an unjustified war makes us nothing more than the world’s biggest pimp-nation.

The Senior Citizens Fairness Act: That’s a laugh. One need look no farther than the recent attempts to undermine Social Security or the failing, over-complicated Medicare Drug Program to realize that the Republican Party has no desire to be fair to American seniors. They want only to make sure that whatever programs do exist to help seniors do so while making corporate America richer and richer, while seniors get the shaft.

To say that the Contract was a success merely because the GOP managed to pass a few half-hearted measures directed toward seniors is a joke. A contract is in force until all of its obligations are fulfilled. Republicans have breached the Contract with seniors.

The Common Sense Legal Reform Act: This legislation emasculated American’s ability to seek damages from corporations in court and gave a great push to the destructive tort reform movement that has reared its head in Texas.
Studies have shown time and time again that insurance companies aren’t increasing their rates because they have to pay out a high number of claims. The number of claims insurance companies and “corporate America” have had to pay out as a result of lawsuits have increased only slightly during the same time insurance rates more than doubled. For the insurance industry, it’s all about profit. The Republicans have fallen hook, line, and sinker for the argument that “tort reform” will have benefits for consumers from easier access to medical care to paying less for goods. No amount of tort reform will ever usurp corporate America’s profiteering.

The Citizen Legislature Act: This is one provision of the Contract that the Republicans were never able to have signed into law. And, for people like our Senior Senator, Kay Bailey Hutchison, that’s a good thing. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be able to break her promise to only serve two full terms.

Though I’ve never agreed with term limits, I do despise politicians breaking their promises. And Republicans across the nation are breaking their term limits promises. Sure, it was a bad idea, but the Republicans bought and sold the goods; therefore they should have to live with the goods.

SUMMARY

In short, the Contract With America sought to do what Republicans have wanted to do for a long time: destroy the programs of the New Deal, the Fair Deal and the Great Society. And, they succeeded to some degree, to the detriment of the American population.

There is clear, convincing evidence that the Republicans have breached the Contract With America time and time again. More than a decade after the “Contract With America” came to light, America is faced with:

•Massive deficits
•More Americans than ever before living in poverty
•Record numbers of Americans (and children) uninsured or underinsured
•The lowest job creation rate since the Depression Era and more jobs being shipped overseas than ever before.
•A Republican Party whose leaders espouse anything but “personal responsibility” and requiring Congressmen to adhere to the same laws, rules and regulations as ordinary citizens.

Republicans tried, and failed, to “reinvent America,” through their Contract. The America that exists in the wake of the Contract is not the America envisioned by the Founders, nor is it the America envisioned by the presidents and Congresses that passed the New Deal and the Great Society Programs.

Instead of a “War On Poverty,” Republicans started a War On The Poor. Instead of a Civil Rights Act, Republicans seek to take away rights from Americans, like a woman’s right to chose, or the right to talk on the telephone without Big Brother listening in. Instead of a Works Progress Administration putting millions to work, Republicans have, through their failed economic policies, fostered a climate where jobs are shipped overseas.

Instead of regulating Wall Street (which was done by the New Deal via the Securities and Exchange Commission), Republicans have created a climate that allowed the Enrons, Tycos, and WorldComs of America to loot their employees’ retirement funds, devalue the stock market and worse—all while they accepted massive contributions from these companies PACs and top executives. Instead of rural electrification, Republicans have created a climate where utility companies can gouge consumers with unfair and unjustified price increases. In lieu of an Industrial Recovery Act, Republicans in Congress allow industries to ship jobs overseas. Thousands of manufacturing jobs in America have been lost since the Contract.

Instead of the elimination of poverty and racial injustice, we have continued poverty and discrimination.

In lieu of true reform like the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (part of Johnson’s “Great Society” programs), we have “No Child Left Behind,” which has been a dismal failure and the continued push by Republicans to legalize school vouchers to fund private, homeschool, and religious-based education to the detriment of our public schools.

Instead of endangered species preservation and pollution control (Great Society initiatives), we have Republicans who want to drill in the barren wilderness of Alaska for oil, disastrous mining operations on protected federal lands, and an administration that has steadfastly opposed any and all attempts to create a national energy policy that is less dependent on fossil fuels or that requires car manufacturers to create low-emission, high-gas-mileage vehicles.

Democrats have always stood for common-sense reform that makes America better. Republicans claim to stand for the same thing. However, the record has shown time and time again that, when it comes to making America better, it is the Democrats and not the Republicans who are successful. The New Deal and Great Society Programs are excellent (but not the only) examples of this. Republicans, on the other hand, take a page from the playbook of their big-business allies and promote “contracts” that they’ll either break or that will unduly burden the people of America.

“Contract with America?” Broken. Battered. Useless.

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