On Day One – Jan. 4 – the contract promises votes on key House-keeping reforms like term limits for committee chairs. GOP leaders expect the balanced-budget amendment to be voted on Jan. 19. In February comes a vote on reforming unfunded mandates (making states do things without giving them the money) and then the line-item veto. Term limits and defense are due in late February or March. The most contentious issues – welfare reform and tax cuts – will be put off until April.
Of course, this is only part of the process. The contract faces what GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch calls an “uphill battle” in the Senate. And the GOP doesn’t control enough House seats to override vetoes by President Clinton. One early sign of the new tone will be whether the GOP makes good on its refreshing promise to end the use of double negatives and other incomprehensible legalese.
A balanced budget/tax limitation amendment and a legislative line item veto to restore fiscal responsibility to an out-of-control Congress, requiring [it] to live under the same budget constraints as families and businesses
An amendment to balance the budget will almost certainly pass the House this year. It’s “a bad idea whose time has come,” writes columnist Michael Kinsley. Clinton says lawmakers still haven’t made the hard choices needed to really balance the budget. But the president doesn’t sign or veto constitutional amendments. They require ratification by 38 states, which can take years. An amendment allowing the president to delete specific spending items, which Clinton supports, would be ratified more quickly. But the line-item veto has cut spending only slightly in states where it’s on the books.
No U.S. troops under U.N. command and restoration of the essential parts of our national security funding to strengthen our national defense and maintain our credibility around the world
According to the House Republican Conference, this bill doesn’t add a dime; it merely prevents raiding the Pentagon’s budget for social spending. The U.N. provision could affect multilateral peacekeeping operations, but most of this is likely to be uncontroversial.
A $500-per-child tax credit, begin repeal of the marriage tax penalty and creation of American Dream Savings Accounts to provide middle-class tax relief
Tax cuts for families are all the rage these days. The House Democrats’ proposal, announced by Rep. Richard Gephardt, would stop at those families making $75,000 a year, while the Republican plan would apply to everyone up to $200,000. President Clinton has his own plan for tax cuts and college and homeowner tax credits. The question with all of these proposals is whether the gain to individuals ($20 a week in many cases) and negligible economic benefits for the nation are worth saddling the next generation with more debt. Both parties say they will pay for their tax cuts with spending cuts, and this time they might actually have to do so. Still, tax cutting essentially means giving up on deep deficit reduction.
Raise the social-security earnings limit, which currently forces seniors out of the work force, repeal the 1993 tax hikes on social-security benefits and provide tax incentives for private long-term-care insurance to let older Americans keep more of what they have earned over the years
Social security has never been taxed as regular income. It’s like getting a paycheck without the taxes taken out. In 1993, the amount of social security that can be taxed was raised to 85 percent for comfortable and wealthy seniors. Many are grumpy about it, and say it discourages them from working. In a sop to seniors, the contract promises to bring taxability back down to 50 percent. The cost is an eye-popping $25.1 billion over five years, and the contract offers no clue where this money will come from.
Discourage illegitimacy and teen pregnancy by prohibiting welfare to minor mothers and denying increased AFDC for additional children while on welfare, cut spending for welfare programs and enact a tough two-years-and-out provision with work requirements to promote individual responsibility
This will likely be the major policy debate of 1995. The original GOP welfare bills looked similar to Clinton’s two-years-and-out proposal, but the Republicans are moving the goalposts rightward. The big battle will likely not be over orphanages (which are prohibitively expensive) but jobs. The GOP wants to end welfare for unmarried mothers under 18 – without giving them a job. The White House says 5 million children will suffer. It wants welfare mothers to have a job – or a training program – to go to when benefits end. Other areas of conflict include how much of welfare should be turned over to the states and whether legal immigrants should be denied welfare, as the contract advocates.
Small business incentives, capital gains cut and indexation, neutral cost recovery, risk assessment/cost benefit analysis, strengthening of the Regulatory Flexibility Act and unfunded mandate reform to create jobs and raise worker wages
This is the purest Reaganomics in the contract, and it will cause much partisan wrangling. The GOP believes as an article of faith that a capital-gains tax cut would help the economy; the Democrats see it as more trickle-down economics. The big question is how hard Clinton will fight. Though he is said to be open to a “targeted” cut, confronting the GOP on this issue would help define him as a defender of the middle class against more giveaways for the rich. Reforming unfunded mandates to the states would both lift a burden and slow the regulatory process. It’s likely to become law.
Child-support enforcement, tax incentives for adoption, strengthening rights of parents in their children’s education, stronger child-pornography laws and an elderly-dependent-care tax credit to reinforce the central role of families in society
These bills are mostly uncontroversial and should pass quickly. In fact, Democrats note that they have already introduced many of them. The biggest obstacle will be finding the money to pay for the $500 tax credit for those who care for a disabled parent or grandparent, which would cost $8 billion over five years.
“Loser pays” laws, reasonable limits on punitive damages and reform of product-liability laws to stem the endless tide of litigation
Trial attorneys are big supporters of the Democrats, while doctors, insurers and business executives tend to be Republican. The lawyers will try to convince the public that raising the stakes on lawsuits (by making the loser pay the legal expenses of both sides) will infringe on the rights of ordinary people seeking justice through the courts. But the GOP makes some good arguments that these changes will weed out frivolous cases and even discourage delaying tactics by wealthy defendants. If this part of the contract passes, all of those Americans who are fed up with lawyers will finally have their day in court.
An anti-crime package including stronger truth in sentencing, “good-faith” exclusionary rule exemptions, effective death-penalty provisions and cuts in social spending from this summer’s crime bill to fund prison construction and additional law enforcement to keep people secure in their neighborhoods and kids safe in their schools
The Republicans want to roll back Clinton’s big crime bill and cut crime-prevention programs (like midnight basketball), which they consider pork. “Good faith” exemptions to the exclusionary rule means that evidence obtained in inadvertently illegal, warrant-less searches would be admitted in court. But without measures ensuring that police respect constitutional rights, this could effectively repeal the Fourth Amendment. Provisions making it easier to deport illegal aliens convicted of felonies and limiting lawsuits by prisoners should face easier passage. The contract does not mention repealing the assault-weapons ban, but some NRA-backed members in the House may try to gut the ban with technical amendments. Watch for a battle here.
A first-ever vote on term limits to replace career politicians with citizen legislators
The most likely version would limit House members to six 2-year terms and Senators to two 6-year terms for a total of 12 years’ service in each chamber. Republicans can’t back away from the idea, but they aren’t ready to go home either. So they want to start the clock with passage, meaning that someone like Sen. Strom Thurmond, first elected in 1954, would still have another 12 years. Clinton, trying to have a little fun, may oppose any term-limits bill that isn’t retroactive. Term-limits foes worry about throwing out the good with the bad. An Arkansas case before the U.S. Supreme Court will determine whether the concept is constitutional.
