Starting in late November and into early December, we took five days and broke down Newt Gingrich's 21st Century Contract with America. Here it is, all together:
Reforming the Unemployment Compensation System
This discussion has to happen. We do need to reign in judges. Whether it be through ending lifetime appointments or through making it possible to remove judges for moving beyond their Constitutional authority (and, quite possibly, overturning said decisions because of that justice’s removal) we need to reign in this problem. Judges at any level were not designed to make laws…our elected officials do that job. It’s time for us to hold these activist judges accountable.
1. Repeal Obamacare and pass a replacement that saves lives and money by
empowering patients and doctors, not bureaucrats and politicians.
The Obamacare law is unconstitutional, unaffordable, unworkable, and stunningly unfair. Its so-called "individual mandate" is blatantly unconstitutional and an unprecedented expansion of federal power. If the federal government can coerce individuals—by threat of fines—to buy health insurance, there is no stopping the federal government from forcing Americans to buy any good or service.
Boy does Newt nails the problem with Obamacare on the head. I don’t care what the beloved, “nonpartisan” Congressional Budget Office is telling us…Obamacare is an absolute financial fire pit. It creates 1932 new federal expenditures and creates 192 new boards and federal agencies which will make decisions that belong to doctors and patients. It’s a fiscal mess and an absolute attack on our fundamental liberty to choose what we buy.
Secondly, and just as importantly, the Federal government has no authority to mandate a purchase. Unlike auto insurance, which is mandated only if one wants to use the public roads, this is a mandate for all people in order to exist in America. The government has no more right to mandate that we buy insurance than it does to mandate that we eat our vegetables to solve the national obesity problem or buy houses to solve the problem of homelessness. The entire premise is preposterous. Newt is absolutely correct in saying “We must either limit government or we will have government limit us.”
Thirdly, the requirement to provide insurance to all employees has cost jobs. It raises the cost of hiring employees to small businesses and other companies, making the cost of a new employee higher and causing companies to choose to do without a new hire. It also has cost more than a few people their Sickness and Accident coverage that so many companies like McDonalds, Burger King, and others, had previously offered to all their employees (full and part time) which covered their doctor visits when they were ill and accidents (broken limbs, hospital care, etc.) because the new requirements of Obamacare have raised their costs of doing business.
Replace
As I carry the banner in fighting for the repeal of Obamacare, I will advocate for specific replacement health policies that will create a free market framework for healthcare, provide affordable, portable, and reliable healthcare coverage, and establish a healthcare safety net focused on those in need. This system will assure healthcare for all with no individual mandate or employer mandate of any kind.
This alternative to Obamacare begins with patient power and localism and the many
common sense ideas developed over the past eight years at the Center for Health
Transformation.
Replacement legislation must build on these strengths. It must include provisions to make health insurance more affordable and portable by allowing Americans to purchase insurance across state lines. It must increase price competition in healthcare. It must improve patient safety and decrease overhead costs by digitizing all medical records, and it must introduce lawsuit reform to stop the frivolous lawsuits that drive up the cost of medicine.
Portable healthcare is the most important part of this solution. Current regulations stops individuals from buying medical insurance polices across state lines. For those of you from Palm Beach County, FL, that means if you live in say, Florida, you can’t buy an insurance policy in Georgia, no matter how much less expensive it may be. This is going to open up competition and create lower prices across the marketplace. That competition is going to cause prices to drop.
It will cause prices to drop for those who work for small companies by allowing them to buy the cheapest policies as a group available anywhere in the nation, not just in their own state. It will also allow individuals who buy their own insurance to buy the most affordable individual policy available anywhere in the nation. Finally, it’s going to allow major companies with locations across the country, like the media company which I work for, to buy insurance for the entire company and not state by state, raising the total number of policies being bought and thus lower the price. My company, for example, based on current regulations, buys it’s insurance for just the two markets in New York. Now when you buy insurance for over 100 people, you’re still looking at a great rate. But if the company could buy for all 23 markets across the nation, those very affordable rates would go down even more.
Another great free market solution would be removing the regulatory burdens that don’t allow small businesses to group together and buy insurance for their employees at the lower rate. As I mentioned, my company, which purchases insurance for about 100 from the two groups of radio stations we own in two cities in New York State. Now a small business of ten employees is going to pay ten times for their insurance. I know. My last job was for a company with only about 30 employees. Although I had the same salary at both jobs, it was like I received a sizable raise just by going to a larger company and paying far less for insurance. Yet if ten small businesses of ten employees each could combine together to pay the same rate as one company of 100 employees, how much would that save each employee and the company at large? The answer is a great deal.
Furthermore, repealing the frivolous lawsuits that drive up the cost of insurance for individual doctors, of group practices, of hospitals, raises the cost of medicine for all. That’s the reason why your medical bills charge $100 for a band-aid and $150 for a dose of Extra Strength Tylenol. It’s covering the cost of those high insurance premiums and lawsuits. Remove the frivolous lawsuits and enact Loser Pays requirements wherein an individual who files a frivolous lawsuit and loses would be required to pay for the defendant’s legal bills. That means medical practices won’t decide to settle frivolous out of court rather than fight them because the cost of fighting it would be more than the cost to settle out of court. So they settle. If the loser was required to pay, all of a sudden you’ll see less frivolous suits and practitioners willing to fight those suits.
Instead of an individual mandate penalty for not buying government approved health
insurance, the federal tax code should be reformed to provide every American the choice of a generous tax credit or the ability to deduct the value of their health insurance up to a certain amount. The federal tax code should provide the same tax relief for the individual buying his own insurance as the employer providing health insurance to its employees.
It is a well known adage that if you want to discourage an activity, you tax it. This aspect of the Contract turns that adage on its ear by applying a positive incentive instead. This is taking an activity that most people are doing anyway, and making it more affordable by giving a tax credit for that purchase or a tax deduction, whichever is ultimately more affordable for that individual or family, just like mortgage deductions often make buying a home more affordable.
Repealing Obamacare is a cornerstone of every single Republican candidate. Newt has further explained the why as well as the common sense solutions to replace it in the 21st Century Contract with America. Tomorrow, we’ll deal with Newt’s tax plans and reforms to bring about robust growth in the economy.
Government does not create jobs. The American people create jobs.
Amen!
Ronald Reagan understood this truth. His bold series of tax cuts and deregulatory measures upon taking office ended the economic stagnation of the 1970s for good by freeing American businesses to create nearly 20 million new jobs in less than a decade. In
September 1983 alone the Reagan recovery led the American people to create 1,100,000 new jobs, more jobs than the first eight months of 2011 combined.
We understood these principles when we won the first Republican majority in the House in 40 years in 1994. Balanced budgets, streamlined government and the biggest capital gains tax cut in history led to unemployment falling to under 4% by 2000.
My administration will build on this time-tested model: A profound restructuring and reduction of the tax and regulatory burden on Americans, with the very achievable goal of 4% unemployment and millions of new jobs within only a few years.
Newt’s plan is to go back to what works: Get the heck out of the way of business and let them do what they do best, create products and services that people want or need by solving a problem or providing a better product to serve our desires and sell it, creating jobs in the process. Yes, my friends, it’s time for some good old tried and true Supply Side Economics!
First, I pledge to veto any tax increase. American families and businesses deserve certainty and predictability, and I will work to make permanent all current rates of taxation that would otherwise increase automatically in 2013.
Businesses don’t know what their cost of doing business will be after 2013 when the current tax rates expire and taxes are raised on all Americans. Make the rates that have now stood for eleven years permanent, and that uncertainty disappears. Along with the repeal of Obamacare, this alone would do wonders to get Americans back to work.
My Jobs and Prosperity plan will then make four major tax cuts:
- Reduce the Corporate Tax to 12.5%.
As it sits now, our corporate tax rate is the second highest in the world. For those of you who honestly believe that the corporations pay those taxes, they don’t. They roll that cost into every item we buy. It’s a cost of doing business. It goes into the price. I’d prefer 0%, but 12.5% is very reasonable. It will reduce the incentive for businesses to take their production overseas and reduce the cost of the products we buy.
- Abolish the Capital Gains Tax
Capital Gains is one of the most ridiculous taxes in America. We pay taxes on money that was wisely invested. It’s a tax on successful investment. A tax on money that has already been taxed, essentially, when you received it as income. It disincentivises investment. People don’t want to invest if they’re going to lose 15% of their gain if they succeed. Those investments create jobs.
- Abolish the Death Tax
President George W. Bush used to say that it was wrong to tax the same money twice. It was taxed as income each time that person received a paycheck. Now the government has the nerve to tax it again at death? It’s immoral.
- 100% Expensing
Essentially this means giving businesses a write-off each year for every new equipment purchase they make. Buy a new drill press? Write it off. Buy a new company car? Write it off. It makes investment in new equipment more affordable for businesses. It’s a smaller thing but still helpful.
JOBS AND PROSPERITY PLAN: TAX SIMPLIFICATION WITH AN OPTIONAL FLAT TAX
My legislation will also include an optional flat tax. All tax filers would be given the option to pay their income taxes subject to current income tax provisions or to pay under a lower single rate of taxation with limited deductions. A revenue neutral flat tax reform would save hundreds of billions of dollars in compliance costs each year and would eliminate the need for taxes on savings, dividends, and capital gains.
This optional flat tax system will create a new personal deduction of $12,000 for every American. This deduction is well above the current poverty level, ensuring that this new system does not unfairly target the poor. The current $1,000 tax credit for each child aged sixteen or younger would also apply, as would the current earned income tax credit
(EITC).
An optional flat tax reform will be simple: tax returns can be done on one sheet of paper. Subtract from income a standard deduction and deductions for charity and home ownership, multiply the result by the fixed single rate of taxation of at most 15%, and the process is over.
I loved the Flat Tax as Rick Perry proposed it. I love it here as well. It’s a little different…Newt’s deduction per person is a little less and the child credits work out differently but his Flat Tax rate is 5% lower as well. I’ll give a detailed breakdown of it in the future, but it’s a good plan. As I said when breaking down Perry’s Plan (need link), an American family with two parents and two children with an average mortgage deduction and 5% charitable donations would be paying $5841.39 in taxes annually. Under Newt’s Flat Tax they would be paying $4041.38 in taxes. It’s a full $1800 less in taxes each year than the current system. It’s a great tax cut to each American. That’s $150 more dollars monthly in their budgets. It’s huge.
JOBS AND PROSPERITY PLAN: FEWER AND SMARTER REGULATIONS
To empower job-creators, we must get rid of regulations that prevent them from growing and hiring. This means taking decision-making power away from bureaucrats who don’t understand how job creation works.
Regardless of what liberals want to tell you, workers were plenty safe and the environment was well protected before Obama and the Democrats came along and decided to fix what wasn’t broken.
My Jobs and Prosperity package would repeal the Dodd-Frank legislation, a 2,300-page law passed in 2010 that mandates 400 new regulations written by unelected bureaucrats. Dodd-Frank is paralyzing lending to entrepreneurs, killing small banks, crippling small businesses, driving down the value of housing, and creating corrupting Washington controls over the biggest banks.
Regardless of what you’re being told by liberals when they blast Bank of America and other companies, it’s regulations like Dodd-Frank that even caused the $5 Debit Card fee that was so maligned by creating new costs of doing business. Getting rid of it will create jobs and lower prices.
Repeal the Sarbanes-Oxley law, which has crippled American start-ups with burdensome compliance costs, driven publicly-traded companies private, and forced American companies overseas.
See Dodd-Frank.
Replace the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) which is harassing job creators. When businesses are targeted unfairly by government for creating jobs in different states, businesses simply won’t create jobs in any states. We need to stop this unaccountable, activist bureaucratic agency from harassing job-creating companies. The NLRB is currently harassing Boeing, our country’s biggest exporter, because it decided to build a new factory and create hundreds of new jobs in the right-to-work state of South Carolina instead of the forced-unionization state of Washington. We need a new commonsense organization for labor-management relations to replace the NLRB. Later in this Contract, I outline ideas for pro-market, pro-growth, pro-consumer reforms to the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Having a government bureaucracy that stops American companies from opening a new plant on American soil because it would be in a state that disallows forced union membership is not a government agency we need. Unions have enough protections. Get rid of NLRB and replace it and more jobs will come.
The best way to repair our broken unemployment compensation system is to make the problem of perennially high unemployment obsolete through robust economic growth. But in the meantime, 25 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed. They depend on a system that is costly but does not actually help them get a job. It is a system in dire need of reform. Ninety-nine weeks is too long for any American to be dependent on the government.
Agreed. The fact that people are able to stay on unemployment for nearly two years is a major problem. First of all, our system is not setup to fund unemployment for that long. Secondly, many people simply do not look for work while they have government checks coming. I will never forget a moment when I was briefly unemployed in 2009 where I attended a required seminar on tools available for unemployed people and hearing one of the other people in the seminar saying, loudly to anyone who could hear, "I'm just here so I can get some free money for a while." I wanted to deck that guy, I really did.
It is fundamentally wrong to give people money for 99 weeks for doing nothing. That's why we undertook and passed welfare reform when I was Speaker. It is also why I will introduce a training requirement for extended federal unemployment benefits. We can better help these Americans by requiring them to participate in real training programs in private companies, in exchange for temporary unemployment aid.
Our goal is to convert the time and money now lost to a maintenance unemployment program into a human capital investment program that increases the competitiveness of the American worker in the world market in a time of dramatic scientific and technological change.
Translation: Let's make unemployment something that is temporary, while you search for work, and not a lifestyle as it's become for so many people. When 99 weeks is available, it becomes a lifestyle. Period.
This program should be delegated to the 50 states so each can experiment with the best way to use unemployment compensation as a job training program.
Agreed. The states are the laboratories of innovation. A one size fits all solution rarely works, but giving 50 states the chance to create their own system will lead to finding far better solutions because, at least at first, there will be 50 of them. The best ideas will be adopted by the other states.
Unleash America’s full energy production potential in oil, natural gas, coal, biofuels, wind, nuclear oil shale and more, creating jobs, stimulating a sustainable manufacturing boom, lowering gasoline and other energy prices, increasing government revenues, strengthening the dollar, and bolstering
national security.
The United States has more energy resources than any other country in the world – more than Russia, Saudi Arabia, Canada, or Brazil. Expanding the development of these resources could create up to 1.1 million new jobs and deliver $127 billion in new government revenues by 2020, according to a recent Wood Mackenzie study. With the right regulatory policies, the United States could be the largest oil producer in the world by 2017.
Yet we pay nearly $4 per gallon for gasoline and continue to import nearly half of our oil from foreign countries, many of which have governments hostile to the United States. Meanwhile, millions of Americans in energy-rich regions of the country remain unemployed.
It is time to harness the immense natural energy resources our country has, get Americans back to work, and lower gas, diesel, and other energy prices for every American.
Absolutely right. We have more than enough supply available if we'll just go get it. Right now, the liberal mentality is, although we have cupboards and refrigerators full of food and we're hungry, we shouldn't go get it and prepare it, we should go buy more food elsewhere that costs more than simply using what we have. Based on supply and demand, gas prices shouldn't be $4 a gallon (or $3.50 now...the contract was written a few months ago) it should be under $2. Unfortunately government regulations are keeping supply low artificially.
It's also hurting the economy. Canada, our friendly neighbor to the north, got out of their recession back in 2009 by drilling for oil. They harnessed their vast natural resources and created jobs and turned their economy around. Yet here in America we're dreaming about "Green Jobs" that are a waste of time and money.
We have the energy, we should go get it. Plain and simple. Real energy, you know the sort that works. Not these “green energies” that just don’t work. Oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear, these solutions work.
Save Medicare and Social Security by giving Americans more choices and tools to live longer, healthier lives with greater financial independence.
Medicare
First, stop paying the crooks. An estimated $70 to $120 billion a year is paid to crooks by Medicare and Medicaid. This is the best place to save money at no cost to honest people. My proposed legislation will offer seniors new choices in Medicare, as well. It will give them the option to choose, on a voluntary basis, either to remain on the existing program, or to transition to a more personalized system in the private sector with greater options for better care. If they select the personalized system, beneficiaries would receive support to cover their private sector premiums. Giving all seniors the option to choose their insurance provider will improve price competition and help lower costs for the program.
Waste and fraud is the obvious part. But also releasing private sector, free market solutions is also a great idea. There are only a handful of things government can do better than the private sector (and most of them fall under a banner that rhymes with "Befense" or "Bilitary.") Voucher systems will open up competition instead of just giving the care to one or two organizations approved by Medicare.
Social Security
Americans work their entire lives to pay for their hard-earned retirement benefits, and as Americans now enjoy longer and healthier lives than ever, these benefits must be protected and made even stronger.
I reject the idea that we can solve our budget and debt crisis by some combination of cutting benefits and raising taxes within the current framework of these two programs. Instead, we need to think outside the box with fundamental, structural reforms that would transform and modernize these two programs, changing how they work to achieve their goals. Any American who wants to enter or remain in the existing Medicare and Social Security programs will be able to do so, but we will also introduce optional alternatives that give Americans more control over their health and retirement.
Agreed. Liberals say we have to raise taxes, pretending as always the problem is revenue, and while I'm inclined to agree we have to adjust the system, I don't know if cutting benefits is the solution either. We need to explore third options.
As president, I will act to strengthen Social Security. My administration will never hold Social Security payments hostage as a bargaining chip against political opponents, as President Obama did in the summer of 2011.
As more Americans live longer and healthier lives, strengthening Social Security also means creating new options for younger Americans. We must therefore consider a voluntary option for younger Americans to put a portion of their Social Security contributions into personal Social Security savings accounts. Other countries, such as Chile, have found that this model creates vast savings while giving beneficiaries more control over when and how they plan to retire. There are many exciting solutions that will both strengthen Social Security and Medicare while tapping the private sector to save costs, and I look forward to discussing these with Americans over the next year.
I've said many times that I don't expect to ever see a penny of my Social Security that I've been paying in since I was a teenager. By replacing it with an individual retirement account, I would trust that I do have a retirement plan waiting for me.
Balance the federal budget by freeing job-creators to grow the economy, reforming entitlements, and implementing productivity improvement systems, such as Lean Six Sigma, to eliminate waste and fraud. Pass a balanced budget amendment to keep it balanced.
Getting to a balanced budget is absolutely vital. When there is a permanent budget deficit there is no reason for any politician to say no to any interest group. That is, in fact, how we ended up with the current, absurdly bloated, undisciplined federal government. If deficits do not matter and spending is open-ended, the most rational strategy for every bureaucracy is simply to ask for more money.
If, however, there is a commitment to balancing the budget, then each agency has to find better ways to do things and more innovative ways to get things done. If you want innovation, better outcomes at lower costs, greater productivity, and a spirit of entrepreneurial public management, the balanced budget creates much more pressure for real innovation.
Over time, the requirement to balance the budget leads to smaller government. Politicians who have to face the voters because they are raising taxes have a much harder sell to make than politicians who can bring home "free" goodies with only some distant deficit to explain.
You mean only spend the money you actually have? Not 50% more? That’s crazy! Crazy like a fox, I mean. Look, I live on a balanced budget. Yes, I have a couple reasonable loans which I am paying down, specifically my college loan and my car. Both have set timetables for repair, and both are budgeted for repayment directly. I am not borrowing 50% of my income because I cannot afford to repay it. My total loans are at 14% of my income, and I have the ability to pay 100% of them off as they are due. I am also not choosing to irresponsibly continue to accrue 50% of my income each year. Many economists expect us to have our debt payments to surpass our tax receipts. (For those of you from Palm Beach County, FL that means the amount of money we have would be exceeded by the debt payments.) That’s a problem. We can either fix it now or be royally screwed in a few years. These are our options.
Control the border by January 1, 2014 and establish English as the official language of government; reform the legal visa system, and make it much easier to deport criminals and gang members while making it easier for law abiding visitors to come to the US.
The United States must control its border. It is a national security imperative.
Every nation has the right to control its border. Historically, every country that has been determined to control their border has been able to do so. Controlling the border is a matter of resources and will.
As Americans, we can accomplish unimaginable feats when we have the resources and the will. The United States won World War II in 3 years and 8 months. In the 44 months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States mobilized its resources to defeat Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and Imperial Japan.
Unfortunately, we haven’t brought any sense of urgency to controlling our border – even as a drug-fueled civil war now rages in Mexico.
It’s not hard, friends. We need to keep those who don’t belong in our country. We have a right to do so, just as much as I have the right to lock the doors of my house when I’m not home (or if I am home if I desire). If you are not here legally as a citizen, a guest worker, with a visa or whatever, you should not be in America. Period.
This bill will waive every obstacle to controlling the border and would shift resources to achieve virtually 100% control by January 1, 2014. If necessary, we would move one-half of the 23,000 Washington-area Department of Homeland Security bureaucrats to the Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona borders.
Gingrich is absolutely right. If we set our collective mind to it we can absolutely secure the border. It’s not hard. Let’s start with employing some of the same security measures that are in place in so many private institutions. We need to apply those solutions. Use our military and yes, for Heaven’s sake, build a fence.
At the same time we are controlling the border we should make it easier for honest people to visit America honestly.
Our current visa system is inefficient, expensive, and inhospitable and drives people away from visiting the United States. Americans and visitors deserve a system that works.
Americans will benefit from a fairer, more secure, more efficient system, which will ensure that foreign visitors, students, workers and job-creators alike provide as many positive benefits as possible to our economy and society.
It’s been said that we’re a nation of immigrants. To one degree or another, my ancestors were immigrants. Some came to America before the United States became an independent nation. Others came in the 20th Century through Ellis Island. Either way, they were LEGAL immigrants. We’re a nation of LEGAL immigrants. I agree that once we have a secure border, we need to then modernize our immigration system to make LEGAL immigration easier.
Revitalize our national security system to meet 21st century threats by restructuring and adequately funding our security agencies to function within a grand strategy for victory over those who seek to kill us or to limit American freedom.
The current leadership of the United States is severely out of touch with the escalating dangers that threaten our security. If the people’s security cannot be assured, the unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are meaningless, which is why the first responsibility of government is to defend the nation. In the preamble to the Constitution, providing “for the common defense” is identified as a primary reason for forming the new government. As American presidents have traditionally found, our nation’s peace and safety is best maintained through a robust military capacity, tireless vigilance, and a clear strategy for identifying and countering potential threats—a policy widely known as “peace through strength.” Adherents of such a policy do not seek confrontation. To the contrary, America leads the world in spending on the military and on national security precisely to ensure that our wars are as rare and as swift as possible.
This world is in danger of becoming dramatically more dangerous in the not-too-distant future, and we need to overhaul our entire strategy now if we intend to continue being the safest, freest and most prosperous country in the world. It is very dangerous for Washington to consider dismantling key parts of our national security structure during a time of war. When we convey weakness and confusion, we become most vulnerable to attack. As Ronald Reagan warned in 1980, “We know only too well that war comes not when the forces of freedom are strong; it is when they are weak that tyrants are tempted.”
So many people want to put their Happy Imagination Hats on with this subject and talk about giving Miranda Rights to enemy combatants, etc, but unfortunately that won’t work in reality. We can’t be nice enough to Islamic Facists (note: this group encompasses only a portion of Muslims) so that they won’t hate us. They didn’t attack us on 9/11 because we had a base in the Middle East. They attacked us because we’re not Islamic Facists too. Period. They believe the Qur’an tells them to kill Infidels if they don’t convert at gunpoint. We cannot compromise, we can only defeat. And we must. Barack Obama is, in a word, a pansy, when it comes to security. He’s let the ACLU run the CIA, and that is not helping our cause. The fact is we have not had a major attack on American Soil since 9/11. We’ve had a few domestic terrorists go nuts but let’s be honest, and no offense to any victim’s family, but the Fort Hood Shooter is not even close to being an equivalent to 9/11. We need a President who is willing to make the tough decisions.
The next Administration and Congress must decisively address the following realities:
1. There are very, very different challenges emerging simultaneously and each requires a fundamentally different strategic response;
The history of war in America is replete with more bloodshed than necessary because we used outdated technology. The Civil War, for example, used tactics developed by Napoleon for fighting with muskets, and using the new rifle and Minie Ball (which by the way wasn’t a ball, it was one of the first projectiles that was actually shaped like a bullet, not a ball). We’re still trying to fight the War on Terrorism like it is a war with another nation, and ignoring new tactics and weapons.
2. The bureaucracies of national and homeland security, intelligence, diplomacy and space activities are all decaying in their effective implementation capability and are wrapped up in red tape and inefficiency;
Like I said above, Obama is letting the ACLU run the CIA. We do need to get out of the way of our protective agencies and remove bureaucracy to make these programs leaner and more efficient. You don’t do this by getting rid of field agents…you do it by getting rid of bureaucrats!
3. Our military infrastructure has become dangerously outdated, with our arsenal and equipment in urgent need of new investment
People tell us how our infrastructure is outdated (like we need new bridges if the old bridge still works fine) but never take issue with the fact that the 35 year old F-16 Aircraft is still in use with basically the same technology as before, and the F-14 was only retired five years ago.
4. There are new emerging technologies endangering us – for example, electromagnetic pulse weapons, cyberwar, and lawfare, which we are not prepared to deal with;
Being nice enough to new threats doesn’t work. We have to change with the times or we are in trouble.
5. American leaders are tired after seven decades of being the world’s preeminent power, and are very resistant to putting in the time and energy it will take to understand the emerging threats and the necessary responses.
Yes, it is hard work being the big kid on the block because there’s always someone dying to knock you off. But it’s good to be the one who always can defeat those attacks. We are the safest nation in the world, and it’s not because we apologize and grovel.
Maximize the speed and impact of medical breakthroughs by removing unnecessary obstacles that block new treatments from reaching patients and emphasizing research spending toward urgent national priorities, like brain science with its impact on Alzheimer’s, autism, Parkinson’s, mental health and other conditions that knowledge of the brain will help solve.
I have to admit this isn’t in my wheelhouse as an issue. I can tell you that I’ve heard of many issues where potential miracle drugs are being held up for political reasons, like Avastin, which was held up because it was “too expensive.” Excuse me? We can’t treat some people with miracle drugs because everyone can’t afford it? Are you kidding me?
A key first step is to transform the Food and Drug Administration to allow these breakthroughs to proceed rapidly.
Americans deserve a fair and competent regulatory regime that emphasizes both consumer safety and ensures that life-saving breakthrough products get from our labs to our pharmacies and homes as efficiently as possible.
Unfortunately, the current FDA falls well short of this expectation, and its stagnant,
bureaucratic and byzantine regulatory guidelines are scaring off new investment and driving innovators overseas. This is bad news for American jobs and competitiveness, and downright awful news for anyone who wants to ensure that life-saving medicines and devices can get to patients as quickly as possible.
I agree. Do we need the FDA? Yes, we do, but like most government bureaucracies, it’s inefficient and expensive. Reform to fast track more important medicines rather than put them at the back of the line because a new yogurt that supposedly aids in digestion arrived first is silly.
Restore the proper role of the judicial branch by using the clearly delineated powers available to the president and Congress to correct, limit, or replace judges who violate the Constitution.
In the last half-century, a political and activist judiciary has stepped far beyond its proper boundaries.
Click here to hear my response. Seriously though, Newt hits the nail on the head. Left Wing activist judges have spent the past few decades warping the Constitution to say whatever they want it to say because they can’t pass their laws through state legislatures and Congress. So they make up laws and create precedents in the courts.
Article I of the Constitution covers the legislative branch, because the Founding Fathers thought it would be closest to the people and therefore the strongest branch.
Article II concerns the Executive Branch because the Founding Fathers had lived through an eight-year war with the British Empire and knew there were times when there would have to be a strong executive and a competent Commander-in-Chief implementing the law and defending the nation.
The Judicial Branch did not come until Article III because the Founders wanted it to be the weakest of the three branches. The Federalist Papers explicitly recognized that the Judicial Branch would be weaker than the Legislative and Executive Branches. In Federalist 78, Alexander Hamilton wrote reassuringly that the Judicial Branch would lose any confrontation with the two elected branches:
“The judiciary is beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of power; that it can never attack with success either of the other two.”
The Founding Fathers felt strongly about limiting the power of judges because they had dealt with tyrannical and dictatorial British judges. In fact, reforming the judiciary was second only to “no taxation without representation” in the American colonists’ complaints about the British Empire prior to the revolution. A number of the complaints in the Declaration of Independence relate to judges dictatorial and illegal behavior.
Since the New Deal of the 1930s, however, the power of the American judiciary has increased exponentially at the expense of elected representatives of the people in the other two branches. The judiciary began to act on the premise of “judicial supremacy,” where courts not only review laws, but also actively seek to modify and create new law from the bench. The result is that courts have become more politicized, intervening in areas of American life never before imaginable.
I look forward to having a national conversation about a bill that will establish a constitutional framework for reigning in lawless judges, reestablishing a Constitutional balance among the three branches, and bringing the Courts back under the Constitution.
This discussion has to happen. We do need to reign in judges. Whether it be through ending lifetime appointments or through making it possible to remove judges for moving beyond their Constitutional authority (and, quite possibly, overturning said decisions because of that justice’s removal) we need to reign in this problem. Judges at any level were not designed to make laws…our elected officials do that job. It’s time for us to hold these activist judges accountable.
Enforce the Tenth Amendment by starting an orderly transfer of power and responsibility from the federal government back “to the states, respectively, or to the people,” as the Constitution requires. Over the next year, state and local officials and citizens will be asked to identify the areas which can be transferred back home.
The 10th Amendment to the Constitution states “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” There is a reason for this provision: Local governments are infinitely more accountable that state governments and state governments are infinitely more accountable than the Federal government because it becomes increasingly more difficult to directly redress grievances to larger governments that handle larger territories.
I’ve said before that I can visit my local government if needed on my lunch hour, visit my state government in a half a day, but to redress an issue in Washington requires planning. It’s also reasonable to expect that I can speak to someone who is capable of helping me in my local town office or even county office just walking in. State and Federal it becomes harder. Finally, our fifty states are very different entities. I mean, do you honestly believe the problems of California are the same as the problems of Virginia? Do you think maybe Minnesota and Texas have different issues? This is why our nation was set up with a Federalist system. I believe one of the primary reasons our country is in such massive debt is our Federal government is trying to do far more than it should, like healthcare, welfare, etc. Local governments are more efficient because they handle smaller areas. It’s time to get back to our true Federalist roots.
Final Conclusions
In short, I love this plan. From the repeal of Obamacare to the Flat Tax to the Balanced Budget Amendment to Drill Baby Drill to privatizing Social Security to returning the Judicial Branch to its proper Constitutional authority (below the Legislative and Executive Branches) as an interpreter and not as a second legislative branch to respecting the 10th Amendment, it’s like somebody sat down and created the perfect plan for conservatives. Soup to nuts it is just about the most conservative plan being proposed (along with Rick Perry’s Cut, Cap and Balance Plan) and unlike Perry’s plan, Gingrich has the ability to effectively communicate it. While I haven’t 100% made up my mind yet as to who I intend to vote for in my state’s primary, I’m leaning toward Gingrich so far that it’s becoming difficult to keep my balance. It’s a tremendous plan, and I believe the 21st Century Contract with America can do as much to restore this nation as any plan being proposed.
