May 25, 2011

Will Today's GOP Repeat the 'Contract with America' Bait and Switch?

By Chuck Rogér
In the first year as a majority in both Houses of Congress, the GOP generally satisfied the language of 1994's Contract with America.  Most of the Contract's actionable items were brought to a House vote.  But Republicans' delivery on the Contract's core promise of fiscal responsibility took on a different tone.  After a budget-cutting 1995, Republicans began a steady backslide into big-spending ways.Two GOP-engineered government shutdowns from November 1995 to January 1996 were seized-upon by the liberal media to blast Republicans as reckless.  The shutdowns provided President Bill Clinton with political capital.  Clinton used the capital to get congressional Republicans to increase discretionary spending in a big way from 1997 onward.  In 2000, Cato Institute's Stephen Moore and Stephen Slivinski wrote:In 1995 [Republicans] courageously tried to unplug, all at once, a multitude of federal government programs that don't work or are...(Read Full Article)