Contract with America

5 Key excerpts on "Contract with America"

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  After Welfare

  The Culture of Postindustrial Social Policy

  • Sanford F. Schram(Author)
  • 2000(Publication Date)
  • NYU Press

    (Publisher)

  1Contracting America

  The Cycle of Representation and the Contagion of Policy Discourse

  Since I took office, I have worked to craft a new social contract. —President Bill Clinton, July 14, 1999

  The “Contract with America” was proposed by Republican congressional candidates during the 1994 elections. A superficial campaign device, this conservative document became the basis for rewriting the liberal social contract that has served as the foundation of the social welfare state since the New Deal of the 1930s. Within the framework of the ephemeral “Contract,” Congress passed and President Clinton signed into law the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. This law abolished the federal entitlement for poor families by repealing the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program that was originally enacted with the Social Security Act of 1935.1

  While the significance of the 1996 welfare reform law is not to be underestimated, in many important respects the problems of the conservative Contract lie not with the fact that it promoted legislation that rescinded a program of sixty years’ standing but rather with the way it has reinscribed the relations of power implicit in liberal discourse more generally. As reproduced in the New York Times shortly after the November 1994 elections, the “Contract with America” put forth ten promises made by Republican congressional candidates concerning legislative action they would undertake during the first hundred days of the 104th Congress. Here are the Republicans’ promises “in their own words,” to quote the New York Times

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  American Politics - 2000 and beyond

  • Alan Grant(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  This chapter will first discuss the 'Contract with America'. The multiple players behind Republican policy development, adoption and implementation will be identified, together with their policy demands. They include congressional leaders and members, Governors, the Republican National Committee, think tanks, interest groups and presidential candidates. The policy stances of the leading candidates for the presidential nomination for 2000 will be used to exemplify the current debate within the party. Can the party come together with a common agenda and repeat the successes of 1980 and 1994, or are the obstacles too great?

  The Contract with America

  The Contract was a list of ten broad goals presented to voters, supported by over 40 specific proposals designed to achieve those goals.6 The Contract called for balancing the budget, fighting crime, reducing welfare, supporting the family, restoring the American Dream, rebuilding national security, supporting senior citizens, creating jobs, reforming the legal system and limiting legislative terms. Each goal was supported by a set of policies. For example, a balanced budget was to be achieved by balanced budget and tax limitation constitutional amendments and a legislative presidential line item veto for the President.

  It was a difficult process to gain the agreement of nearly all House Republican candidates to endorse this programme. The commitment was only to hold a vote upon each item on the programme, not necessarily to vote for every item. If that had been the case, some would not have signed. Furthermore, the Contract was signed by the House Republicans and not the Senators. After the election, there was controversy over how significant the Contract was in contributing to victory, but there was intense pressure on House Republican members to vote for Contract measures. The system of separation of powers made it impossible to achieve the whole programme, but considering the obstacles created by the political system, the success rate was high. Of the 40 items in the Contract, 23 were adopted. The most significant were welfare reform, a balanced budget, ending costly federal unfunded mandates, the presidential line item veto, and anti-crime measures. There was less progress over constitutional amendments, tax cuts, deregulation and legal reforms. Before the items had even been voted on, there was already a series of proposals from a variety of sources for further policies.

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  Work over Welfare

  The Inside Story of the 1996 Welfare Reform Law

  • Ron Haskins(Author)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Brookings Institution Press

    (Publisher)

  Many candidates used this material, often in combination with local and state issues, in the conduct of their campaigns. Even if voters did not know much about the Contract with America, they could certainly recognize a candidate who stated clearly what he intended to do once he got to Washing-ton. The second indirect effect of the contract was that it provided informed voters with a vision of a political party that stood for something. Especially in a time when voters were showing high levels of dissatisfaction with politicians, even the term Contract with America had the tone of something serious and eth-ical. Republicans offered to enter into a deal with voters: You elect us and here are the ten returns we provide in the bargain. No matter what those ten legislative items were, the entire approach may well have influenced some voters. the Contract with America / 71 Regardless of the contract’s effects on voters, it certainly became a focus of attention and a repository of many thousands of hours of work by House mem-bers and staffers, both before and after the election. Drafting ten pieces of legis-lation, especially when the bills were intended to represent consensus among House Republicans, was a major undertaking. Throughout the summer and late into September 1994, in many cases up until the event on the Capitol steps on September 27, staff and members were hard at work drafting the legislation. I doubt that any of the ten were as divisive or difficult to write as the welfare reform bill. Some of the members of the work group that had produced HR 3500 resented having to work on another bill. After nearly a year of intense effort and of lobbying their colleagues, especially as the bill ran the gauntlet of the Republican Policy Committee and then the Republican Conference, the work group had produced a bill that enjoyed—at least for a nanosecond—nearly uni-versal support among House Republicans.

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  Ending Welfare as We Know It

  • R. Kent Weaver(Author)
  • 2000(Publication Date)
  • Brookings Institution Press

    (Publisher)

  18 The political dynamics of the 104th Congress encouraged states to seek maxi-mum discretion and weakened the Clinton administration's ability to veto state initiatives. Congressional Republicans, in short, had critical allies in the states for promoting policy change, but also important rivals who preferred state discretion to deterrence-oriented mandates. Initial Bids The 1994 election expanded the number of protagonists in welfare reform and forced on them difficult strategic choices as they looked toward the presidential election year of 1996. A First Republican Bid: The Contract with America The main policy and political objectives of the new House Republican lead-ership can be summarized succinctly. They hoped to use control of the A NEW C O N G R E S S , A NEW D Y N A M I C 26l House to push through a thoroughgoing transformation of welfare that emphasized work requirements and deterring out-of-wedlock births and long-term welfare receipt. Many members also pushed for devolution of authority to the states. In addition, they sought to reduce expenditures in means-tested programs to pay for the tax cuts promised in the Contract with America. Politically their objectives were to prove their effectiveness at governing by enacting as much of the Contract with America as possible and to force President Clinton to choose between signing a Republican-inspired welfare reform initiative and appearing to betray his campaign promise. The most critical choice facing House Republicans when they began formulating the Contract with America in the summer of 1994—long before it seemed likely that they would win control of Congress in the fall election—was how radical a path of welfare reform to attempt. Clay Shaw (Republican, Florida), Nancy Johnson (Republican, Connecticut), and other Republican moderates on the Ways and Means Committee's Human Resources Subcommittee preferred building on H.R.

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  Taking the Initiative

  Leadership Agendas in Congress and the "Contract With America"

  • John B. Bader(Author)
  • 1996(Publication Date)
  • Georgetown University Press

    (Publisher)

  Gingrich saw no benefit to being bipartisan, although this has made enactment of the Contract very difficult. These leaders also added an ideological dimension generally missing with Democrats. The Con-tract with America is a conservative plan of action based on conserva-tive principles. It helped unite Republicans on common themes. Demo-crats have shown little desire to apply ideological litmus tests to issues, largely because they lack consensus on ideology in the first place. They cannot point to an experience like the Salisbury Conference because they could never agree on principles. Although Democratic priority decisions would be highly strategic, the resulting lists lack the cohesive-ness of the Contract. That may serve them poorly as they try to convince voters to support them. THE IMPACT What impact will the Contract with America have? Was it a success? It may fit a tradition of priority-setting in Congress, but will it change Figure 3 Distribution of Primary Leader Goals in the Contract with America (Percentage of Cases) 200 Familiar Strategies, New Faces: The Contract with America the way policy is made in America? Will it build trust and restore confidence, as Republicans hope it will? Will the Contract become a template for future elections? Some of these questions can be answered now. Republican leaders promised action within the first 100 days of the 104th Congress, so we are free to evaluate their efforts immediately thereafter. But the more important questions concerning changes in the political system can only be answered tentatively. In the strictest sense, the House leadership successfully fulfilled the entire Contract with America. The Contract states that a Republican-led House will vote on each of the Contract items within the first 100 days of the 104th Congress. They did just that, with several days to spare, itself an impressive task. The House of Representatives is not known for such quick action.

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