The Contract with America was a legislative agenda advocated for by the Republican Party during the 1994 congressional election campaign. Written by Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey, and in part using text from former President Ronald Reagan's 1985 State of the Union Address, the Contract detailed the actions the Republicans promised to take if they became the majority party in the United States House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. Many of the Contract's policy ideas originated at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
The Contract with America was introduced six weeks before the 1994 Congressional election, the first midterm election of President Bill Clinton's administration, and was signed by all but two of the Republican members of the House and all of the Party's non-incumbent Republican congressional candidates.
The contract described the plan of the Congressional Representatives, seeking to nationalize the Congressional election. Its provisions represented the view of many conservative Republicans on the issues of reducing the size of government, cutting taxes, and both tort reform as well as welfare reform.
The 1994 elections resulted in Republicans gaining 54 House and 8 U.S. Senate seats, flipping both chambers. The Contract was seen as a triumph by party leaders such as Minority Whip Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, and the American conservative movement in general.
Content
The Contract's text included a list of eight reforms the Republicans promised to enact, and ten bills they promised to bring to floor debate and votes, if they were made the majority following the election. During the crafting of the Contract, proposals were limited to "60% issues", i.e. legislation that polling showed garnered 60% support of the American people, intending for the Contract to avoid promises on controversial and divisive matters like abortion and school prayer. Reagan biographer Lou Cannon characterized the Contract as having taken more than half of its text from Ronald Reagan's 1985 State of the Union Address.
Government and operational reforms
On the first day of their majority in the House, the Republicans promised to bring up for vote, eight major reforms:
Require all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply to Congress; Select a major, independent auditing firm to conduct a comprehensive audit of Congress for waste, fraud or abuse; Cut the number of House committees, and cut committee staff by one-third; Limit the terms of all committee chairs; Ban the casting of proxy votes in committee; Require committee meetings to be open to the public; Require a three-fifths majority vote to pass a tax increase; Guarantee an honest accounting of the federal budget by implementing zero base-line budgeting.
Major policy changes
During the first one hundred days of the 104th Congress, the Republicans pledged "to bring to the floor the following [ten] bills, each to be given a full and open debate, each to be given a clear and fair vote, and each to be immediately available for public inspection". The text of the proposed bills was included in the Contract, which was released prior to the election. These bills were not governmental operational reforms, as the previous promises were; rather, they represented significant changes to policy. They mainly included a balanced budget requirement, tax cuts for small businesses, families and seniors, term limits for legislators, social security reform, tort reform, and welfare reform.
Implementation
The contract promised to bring to floor debate and votes ten bills that would implement reform of the federal government. When the 104th Congress assembled in January 1995, the Republican majority sought to implement the Contract.
In some cases (e.g. The National Security Restoration Act and The Personal Responsibility Act), the proposed bills were accomplished by a single act analogous to that which had been proposed in the Contract; in other cases (e.g. The Job Creation and Wage Enhancement Act), a proposed bill's provisions were split up across multiple acts. Most of the bills died in the Senate, except as noted below.