CONSERVATIVE HOUSE REPUBLICANS DRAFTING 'CONTRACT WITH AMERICA II' WASHINGTON (TNS) — Conservative House Republicans who helped force out former Speaker John Boehner are readying their next act: a multi-point manifesto demanding quick action on long-time conservative priorities.
Members of the House Freedom Caucus are preparing a “Contract With America II” that would call for House votes in the first 100 days of 2016 on replacing Obamacare, overhauling entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, and repealing the estate tax.
An early draft of the plan obtained by Bloomberg News also calls for legislation to slash government regulations by 20 percent, cut corporate tax rates and expand offshore oil drilling.
Efforts are still underway to finalize contents of the “contract,” which lawmakers say they hope will become the basis of House Republicans’ 2016 agenda.
The plan is tentatively named after the “Contract With America” that Newt Gingrich and other Republicans used to describe their pledges in the 1994 election campaign that swept the party into the House majority.
Two decades later, members of the Freedom Caucus have been waging war on a Republican establishment they say has gone astray. They’ve already toppled Boehner as speaker and helped quash House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s bid to take over the job.
The plan would help conservatives hold new Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and other Republican leaders to account. Even before Ryan became the new speaker, they extracted promises from him to give more power to rank-and-file House members.
Some Freedom Caucus members say the new “contract” is intended to show the group can do more than throw rocks at the Republican establishment by devising a more positive legislative agenda.
“We’ve been working on that plan and hope to introduce it,” said Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina, a founding Freedom Caucus member.
Most of the three-dozen Freedom Caucus members haven’t signed off on a final version, said Meadows, interviewed this week as he made the rounds of Veterans Day events and other appointments in his district covering the western tip of North Carolina.
“That is accurate,” said Rep. Raul Labrador of Idaho. He called what is now on paper “truly a first draft” that might see changes. He said he’s not sure the final document will ultimately be called another “Contract With America.”
Labrador added in an interview: “You can’t be just against the Obama agenda, or the Clinton agenda.
“There are conservative ideas and policies we want to pitch to the conference and that we want to be for,” he said.
Rep. Dave Brat of Virginia, the Freedom Caucus member who unseated former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a 2014 Republican primary election, is among those who have advocated for the party’s leaders to commit on paper to specific principles and promises. Brat even put out his own list of public commitments in October that a speaker and other House leaders should make, including balancing the federal budget within 10 years and broadening opportunity for members to fully debate legislation on the House floor.
“I said these things had to be put in writing for my constituents,” said Brat in an interview in his east-central Virginia district. “The ‘Contract With America’ was on paper — and it was hugely successful because then you could hold people accountable.”
Gingrich’s “Contract With America” campaign proposal helped Republicans win a landslide election in 1994, gaining 54 seats and winning control of the House for the first time since Dwight Eisenhower was president. While a welfare overhaul was enacted two years later, a number of its other proposals — including term limits for members of Congress — didn’t become law. The 1994 document’s call for a balanced-budget constitutional amendment is repeated in the new draft.
The intent this time, said Meadows, is for the caucus to unveil its plan publicly so it may become at least part of the House Republican agenda for 2016.
Meadows was a key instigator in the 2013 government shutdown fight — he circulated a letter demanding the defunding of Obamacare — as well as Boehner’s decision to leave Congress in October. Meadows filed a procedural bid in July to remove Boehner, who ultimately decided to resign instead of fighting conservatives among his membership.
Meadows said it’s important now for Freedom Caucus members to be “more strategic” in plotting their direction. The proposed contract represents “part 2” of a three-step process, he said.
“Having a new speaker — getting more sensitive Republican leadership to the voice of the American people — was step 1,” he said. The contract represents “step 2 — laying out that positive agenda for what is to be expected, what we want to accomplish.”
“Step 3 will be delivering on that contract,” said Meadows.
Brat and Meadows indicated that, so far, Ryan as speaker has been saying and doing the right things. The speaker has repeatedly said that Republicans must offer specific ideas on matters such as replacing Obamacare with a new healthcare plan. Even if opposition from President Barack Obama and fellow Democrats keep the proposals from being enacted, Americans need to know what Republicans would do if given the chance, Ryan has said.
–Billy House
Bloomberg News
http://personalliberty.com/conservative-house-republicans-drafting-contract-america-ii/
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