Ten years after the Gingrich revolution
UNION-TRIBUNE
September 17, 2004
Ten years ago this month, Newt Gingrich transformed the landscape of American politics.
The defining moment occurred when he gathered his fellow House Republicans on the Capitol stairs, along with GOP House candidates from around the country. Together, the unveiled their "Contract with America."
It was a revolutionary document. It promised the American people that if they elected a Republican majority to the House of Representatives, the party of Gingrich would bring a host of congressional reforms and legislative initiatives to floor votes within its first 100 days in power.
Democrats, who in 1994 controlled the White House and both houses of Congress, were smug. They simply could not imagine that the Gingrich Republicans might somehow end 40 years of Democrat rule in the lower chamber.
They dismissed the "Contract with America." "It's all slogans and hot buttons," scoffed House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt. "It's really a contract on America," sneered President Bill Clinton.
The American people did not share Gephardt's contempt for the "Contract with America;" did not accept Clinton's mockery of the House GOP's proposed legislative agenda.
Indeed, the vast majority of Americans agreed with the three congressional reforms the Gingrich Republicans proposed:
That Congress abide by the labor, health and safety and civil rights laws that applied to the non-elected; that a third of congressional committee staff positions be eliminated; and that all congressional accounts, including the scandalized House Post Office, be privately audited.
The House GOP's 10-point legislative platform also enjoyed substantial public support.
Its planks included, among others, fiscal reform (notably a balanced budget and a line-item veto), an anti-crime package and welfare reform. It also included aid to seniors and tax relief for small businesses and families.
Six weeks after Gingrich and his fellow Republicans unveiled their "Contract with America," the voters gave them a nationwide landslide. The GOP posted electoral gains in the 1994 midterm election of historic proportions.
Indeed, when the last ballot had been counted, Republicans not only had regained the majority in the Senate (which they'd surrendered a decade earlier), they also had wrested control of the House for the first time in four decades.
And in tribute to Gingrich's vision, in gratitude to the Georgia lawmaker for leading them out of the political wilderness – after 40 long years of minority status – House Republicans awarded the former backbencher the speaker's gavel.
The Gingrich Republicans did not rest on their historic triumph at the polls. In fact, their first 100 days in power were the most productive since the New Deal era.
As promised, House Republicans brought each and every plank in the "Contract with America" to a floor vote. And although Gingrich never promised that each and every plank would be approved by the full House, he did win passage of nine of 10 planks (term limits being the exception).
And despite unrelenting attacks on the contract by the Clinton White House, by the bitter out-of-power Democrats in Congress, the public liked what Gingrich and his fellow Republicans accomplished. Because they returned a GOP majority to the House in 1996, the first time that had happened in 60 years.
And while Clinton was loath to give the Gingrich Republicans any credit, they are responsible for the biggest achievements of his presidency.
For they forced him to accede to the balanced budget (which he had previously vetoed). They compelled him to acquiesce to welfare reform (which he previously rejected).
Indeed, in selecting Gingrich its 1995 "Man of the Year," Time magazine wrote, "Not so long ago, the idea of a balanced budget was a marginal, we'll-get-to-it someday priority. Today, because of Newt Gingrich, the question is not whether a balanced-budget plan will come to pass, but when."
And in 1996, Time columnist Margaret Carlson appeared on CNN lamenting that "the welfare bill," cobbled together by Gingrich and his fellow Republicans, was "a terrible bill." And that "the only reason that Clinton would sign it is that Republicans are pushing him into a corner."
Gingrich retired from Congress in 1998 but his legacy endures. For 10 years after he gathered his fellow Republicans on the Capitol stairs, 10 years after he introduced the revolutionary "Contract with America," Republicans continue to control both houses of Congress. |
