Why the Tea Party's "Contract From America" is Stupid
On April 12, 2010 the loose collection of individuals and organizations known as the "Tea Party" issued its "Contract From America," a document supposed to put forth the basic principles and policy suggestions of the Tea Party.
Unfortunately, though well-intentioned, the Contract From America's ten articles range from the politically naive and fiscally irresponsible to the incoherent and self-contradictory.
Here is an article-by-article debunking of the proposals put forth in the Contract:
1. Protect the Constitution
Require each bill to identify the specific provision of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to do what the bill does.
The single most common former profession of Congressmen and women is lawyer, and even those who have no previous legal experiences have constitutional law attorneys who help them prepare bills.
Everybody in Congress knows how to justify anything they want to do with the Necessary & Proper Clause (USC 1-8-18) or, failing that, SCOTUS constitutional case law, so the practical effect of this requirement would be zilch.
2. Reject Cap & Trade
Stop costly new regulations that would increase unemployment, raise consumer prices, and weaken the nation’s global competitiveness with virtually no impact on global temperatures. (72.20%)
I actually agree that cap & trade should be rejected. Unfortunately, cap & trade is one of the biggest corporate giveaways in decades and hundreds of prominent corporations are supporting it, from Goldman Sachs to General Electric, Coca Cola to Lockheed Martin.
Given the wide variety of potential corporate donors supporting the measure, the chances of it being rejected by enough members of either party to actually fail are slim to none, especially after the Supreme Court's disastrous Citizens United ruling:
3. Demand a Balanced Budget
Begin the Constitutional amendment process to require a balanced budget with a two-thirds majority needed for any tax hike. (69.69%)
Um, no. Haven't any Tea Partiers been paying attention to the situation in California? California requires a 2/3 majority for any tax hike and passed a balanced budget amendment in 2004. By 2009, the state was bankrupt, slashing services right and left and unable to pay its own employees. There's "starving the beast" and then there's hamstringing it and leaving it to blunder around trampling everything in its path until it finally bleeds to death.
A Progressive Rebuttal of the Flat Tax Myth
4. Enact Fundamental Tax Reform
Adopt a simple and fair single-rate tax system by scrapping the internal revenue code and replacing it with one that is no longer than 4,543 words—the length of the original Constitution. (64.90%)
I find this the single most revealing article of this 2010 Contract From America. Here is the ultimate end game of the super-wealthy businessmen and corporations funding the Tea Parties through front organizations such as Freedom Works and Americans for Prosperity.
What the 64.90% of rank-and-file Tea Partiers supporting this article apparently don't realize is that a single rate "flat" tax would amount to a massive tax hike on poor and middle class Americans. Real poor and middle class Americans, not millionaires so out of touch with reality that they try to claim they're middle class.
Under the current system, 47% of Americans pay NO federal income tax. (They still pay payroll taxes, investment taxes, and any other federal taxes they might be eligible for, as well as state and local taxes). By definition, a flat tax would raise the tax rates of nearly half of Americans!
A single rate tax would also eliminate innumerable deductions, incentives, and other types of tax wrangling that are complicated, yes, but also genuinely helpful for many poor and middle class Americans trying to make ends meet.
5. Restore Fiscal Responsibility & Constitutionally Limited Government in Washington
Create a Blue Ribbon taskforce that engages in a complete audit of federal agencies and programs, assessing their Constitutionality, and identifying duplication, waste, ineffectiveness, and agencies and programs better left for the states or local authorities, or ripe for wholesale reform or elimination due to our efforts to restore limited government consistent with the US Constitution’s meaning. (63.37%)
So the way to reduce bureaucracy is to... create more bureaucracy?
Um, okay.
This is especially funny because only Congress has the power to eliminate government programs, so the taskforce wouldn't have any actual power to do anything but make recommendations. Which Congress could ignore at will. Giving the agency any actual power over Congress would be *gasp* unconstitutional!
6. End Runaway Government Spending
Impose a statutory cap limiting the annual growth in total federal spending to the sum of the inflation rate plus the percentage of population growth. (56.57%)
An interesting idea, but not particularly practical. Everything's fine and dandy until we get hit with with an $81.2 billion repair bill from the next Hurricane Katrina, or get attacked by swarthy men with box cutters and start up not one but TWO wars in response, costing a combined total (as of April 2010) of nearly one trillion dollars.
If something like that happens with a law like this on our books, we have two options:
1. Frantically reshuffle the federal budget to find enough money to pay for the disaster/war/whatever, cutting other important services in the process (more about the probability of that below), or
2. Tell New Orleans to go screw itself/allow Osama bin Laden to continue plotting the destruction of the American people in comfort instead of a miserable cave/whatever
Now, you can make a case for just abandoning New Orleans to the waters of the Gulf and an even stronger case for staying out of Afghanistan and Iraq (I've done both), but your chances of getting the majority of Congress or even the majority of ordinary Americans to agree with you are, well, slim to say the least.
7. Defund, Repeal, & Replace Government-run Health Care
Defund, repeal and replace the recently passed government-run health care with a system that actually makes health care and insurance more affordable by enabling a competitive, open, and transparent free-market health care and health insurance system that isn’t restricted by state boundaries. (56.39%)
Ugh, the recent health care reform bill creates a system that will be government regulated, yes. Government-funded, even, in some cases. Government-run, absolutely not. Government-run would be a public option, which was not in the final bill. Government-run would be single-payer, like the British system, which was never even on the bargaining table.
So, I guess the idea is to repeal Medicare and Medicaid then, huh?
LOL. WHY DO YOU HATE OLD PEOPLE?
Leaving semantics aside, though, progressives aren't particularly thrilled with the HCR bill either (much happier than socialists, though!), but the same clauses included to appease us are going to make the bill very hard to repeal. These include:
- Allowing adult children to remain as dependents on their parents' policy until their 27th birthday
- The end of lifetime or annual caps on coverage
- Free preventative care for all
- Closing the "donut hole" for Medicare patients, making prescription medications more affordable for seniors.
- No more rescissions! Effective immediately, you can't lose your insurance because you get sick.
Who is going to vote to kick adult children off their parents' health insurance plans again? Or raise drug prices for Grandma? Or let the insurance companies go back to dropping the health insurance of paying customers if they have the gall to actually get sick? (Yes, it really happens.) I'm not seeing many hands.
8. Pass an ‘All-of-the-Above” Energy Policy
Authorize the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries and reduce regulatory barriers to all other forms of energy creation, lowering prices and creating competition and jobs. (55.51%)
In other words, drill, baby, drill!
Obviously, I disagree with the majority of Tea Partiers about the existence of global climate change and its causes, but even if I didn't, this article completely ignores the reality that it would be both physically and fiscally impossible for America to meet its thirst for oil from domestic sources, even if we increased the massive subsidies we already pay to Big Oil and Big Coal even further.
Nuclear is, at best, a stop-gap measure, since the earth's uranium reserves are expected to be depleted within the next 70 years. It's also expensive and dangerous.
Wind and solar energy are better bets in the long term, but not yet at a level of technological innovation capable of filling all our energy needs.
In the meantime, it makes sense to put much greater emphasis on energy efficiency and conservation.
9. Stop the Pork
Place a moratorium on all earmarks until the budget is balanced, and then require a 2/3 majority to pass any earmark. (55.47%)
This one I actually support, but so does everybody else, and it hasn't happened yet. It ignores the reality of how politicians get money (by getting nice stuff for the folks back home) and therefore, how they get elected.
10. Stop the Tax Hikes
Permanently repeal all tax hikes, including those to the income, capital gains, and death taxes, currently scheduled to begin in 2011. (53.38%)
First of all, 98% of Americans have received a federal income tax CUT under Obama.
Second, after all the talk about "balanced budgets" and "fiscal responsibility," this article shows how much Tea Partiers really care about those things. A recent analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities revealed that the Bush-era tax cuts (income, capital gains, and death taxes) that Obama currently plans to repeal in 2011 and this article wishes to extend have added more to the federal deficit than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the TARP program, the Obama stimulus package, and the recession combined.
Oops.
So, you can have tax cuts or a balanced budget. You can't have both, at least not without some truly enormous spending cuts.
Obama's proposed federal budget for 2011 is $3.8 trillion, and it is projected to produce a $1.3 trillion deficit. If you leave defense spending, Social Security, Medicare, and interest on the national debt, as the majority of Tea Partiers apparently think we should, that leaves $1.6 trillion left over. To balance the budget without raising taxes, you have to cut $1.3 trillion. Where are you going to find it? Recent polls have found that the only area of the budget that more than 1/3 of Americans support cutting is foreign aid, which makes up 1% of federal spending. Anybody else foresee a problem?
The blue line is the percentage of Americans willing to cut spending on a particular program.
The red line is the percentage of the budget actually spent on the program.
If the Tea Party wants to be taken seriously, it needs to put forth serious, workable solutions to the problems facing this country. Unfortunately, the Contract From America doesn't.
Related
Comments
Oh Kerry, thank you for taking the time to wade through the actual statements of this group and rebut them with facts. How can the real sponsors of such inflammatory ideas keep themselves hidden from the general public for so long? Your hub is a true service to your readers.
Well, Kerry...I've talked to a few of the Tea Partiers and I think you've hit the nail on the head here...they clearly don't understand what they are asking for in their 'agenda'. Ever stood back and really looked at a crowd of Tea Party participants? All white folks and old...the only young people are the grandkids they drag with them who are forced to dress in patriotic garb and carry signs they don't understand.
Good article.
Your biases are showing. You are not taking into account that the budget is being busted by over a Trillion dollars every time you turn around. There is no return on investment for most of the money being spent! You are totally misrepresenting who the tea partiers are. Your biases are showing there also.
Interesting read but no comment.
you say
Here is an article-by-article debunking of the proposals put forth in the Contract:
I say
Pure hogwash, the tea party has no power in Washington, is not a political party and simply are the public venting their frustrations on our elected officials who are ignoring the people who sent them to washington.It appears that our elected officials are more loyal to their parties rather then the people.
In your mind your comments regarding tea party activities hold no importance to the majority of the people.
The main street news media needs to report fair and balanced opinions on the truth of the movement.
It is really difficult for liberals to understand that the constitution allows citizens to protest peacefully.
This article is a much truer observation of tea partiers than the one you present:
- Author
DiamondRN, please read more carefully. I specifically addressed the issue of "the budget being busted by a trillion dollars every time we turn around". The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analysis has shown that the Bush-era tax cuts, which overwhelmingly benefited the top 2% of the population and which the Contract From America wishes to extend, contributed and will continue to contribute more to the federal deficit over the next ten years than the trillion dollar wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the trillion dollar TARP package, the trillion dollar stimulus package, and the recession combined.
I opposed and continue to oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the TARP program, and thought the Stimulus package focused too much on tax cuts and not enough on job creation, but be that as it may, the loss in revenue is apparently hurting us more over the long term than the spending packages themselves. The health care reform is also supposed to have a net deficit reduction effect over the next ten years.
Additionally, I read the New York Times poll quoted extensively in the Townhall article you linked, and linked to it myself in the discussion of budget cuts. If Tea Partiers want to cut spending without touching defense, Medicare, and Social Security, they are going to have their work cut out for them.
- Author
Jon Ewall, I am perfectly aware that the Tea Party is not a true political party. All I'm saying is that if it every wants to be taken as seriously as one, it needs to gets its act together and propose realistic, workable alternatives. The Contract From America doesn't.
The comment about *liberals* not understanding the right of Americans to protest peacefully is pretty rich considering the number of times I and my friends were told to "love it or leave it" by right wingers when we were peacefully protesting Bush-era policies. :P
HI kerryg,
you've missed the boat on who the tea partiers are and what their intentions are. We are going to boot the democrats out of office and put a stop to the wreckless spending. 1.6 trillion dollars per year is unsustainable, all according to the cbo. these guys don't get it. they're GOING to get it. we're going to roll back these crappy ideas and throw their butts out.
cap and tax is an idiotic notion no matter how you slice it. these dolts who are proposing this legislation live like sultans and expect us to ride bicycles around. they are bankrupting our country and bankrupting our kid's futures.
the plan is to defund the health care bill and get obama to the bargaining table. these people have lied every time they've opened their mouths. they said that all this would be transparent. it was the farthest thing from being transparent. the only transparent thing they offered was who they are. they are statists and marxists. that's VERY transparent.
california is in financial trouble because they spend too much money on free services. I'm not wanting to pay for their free stuff. they should tax the snot out of hollywood elitists who make zillions and vote for this crap.
Nice hub, lot of good thought in there. The tea party has always said that they want smaller govt and less taxes but doing so would lead to many items that they do not want. (Cut taxes = increase national debt, smaller govt = no medicare, etc)
Informative hub.
lrc,
how does cutting taxes increase the national debt? it creates more commerce and more revenue.
Kerry
While I don't follow the Tea Party, I also don't follow your reasoning.
The bottom line is that the way it is now, the country is doing poorly. There has been no real progress on improving the economy and employment problem.
California is leading the Federal Government and showing them the way they can bankrupt the country, like California went bankrupt.
California like the Federal Government continually increases the size of its workforce and this increases the need to increase taxes. Both California and the Federal Government are run by democrats.
Social Security and Medicare were sold to the country in the same way that the healthcare entitlement was sold to the country. In reality, they all are simply means to tax the people, and invade their personal privacy.
Social Security and Medicare are going bust, and that is because both the democrats and the republicans run through the funds like junkies looking for a fix.
The size of government, Federal, State and Local need to be severely cut, as each superflous government employee is a tax liability to the people.
That is California's problem and not the balanced budget.
Government employee benefits and pensions far exceed to burden of Social Security and Medicare.
There is much more to comment on your hub, but it would fall on deaf ears.
kerryg
THANK YOU FOR YOUR RESPONSE. I am curious as to where you and your friends protested the Bush administration? Fox News is the only station that showed comparable news clips showing protesters against Bush, acorn protesters and the tea party protesters. There was a huge difference on how Bush was treated and how the press treats Obama and company.
A comment to the first graph that '' Bush policies drive deficits '' showing years 2009 to 2019.
Can you explain how Bush is now in charge of the economy when Bush is not in Washington running the country.
Here's the facts: Bush and the republicans were in charge up to 2006. Even with the so-called Bush tax cuts the treasury took in record amounts of funds, unemployment was 4.6%, a barrel of oil was $45.00 and the economy was strong even with 2 wars being fought.
Jan.2007 Pelosi and Reid are in charge of congress. keep in mind that congress sets the budget ( spending and who gets the money )and controls the economy. Recently economists determined that the recession began in DEC 2007. It only took the Dem's 1 year to change things in Washington, not for the better but for the worst. It is a shame that the main street media wasn't reporting what our congress was doing running the country into the dumps. Remember that Senator Obama was in congress, voting on bills that had an impact on the economy.
During the last 2 years of Bush's term, unemployment went from 4.6% to 6.7% and oil went from $45.00 to over $ 125.00 barrel, the housing mortgage market failures ,food prices soared, gas prices went thru the roof and the economy collapsed, all under Bush and a Democrat Congress.
As usual the democrats blamed Bush, the media was biased and the republicans were blamed because of the president. Bush never ever came out and blamed the Dem's, he accepted his responsibility as president.
kerryg ,
You mentioned tarp ($700 billion bank bailouts)in your hub. Are you aware that the money has been paid back with interest and the money should ( according to the bill )be used to pay down the Bush deficits. Bush left with a $ 1.3 trillion deficit, deducting the $700 billion repaid funds would mean that he left only a$ 600 billion deficit.
In 16 months (only in 16 months ) Obama and the Democrat congress deficit is almost 4 x the Bush deficit. The main street media don't report that kind of news.
Knowledge is Power, it appears that Obama and the news media have all the power because they keep the bad news from getting out to the public.
Case closed for now and hoping for your enlightenment some day.
- Author
OpinionDuck, the California budget crisis is the result of a deliberate strategy by conservatives to bankrupt the state and destroy the state government. The root of California's budget crisis is Proposition 13, the brainchild of Howard Jarvis, an anti-tax crusader who advocated for "starve the beast" tax policies. His goal was to bankrupt California state government by allowing taxpayers to continually vote for new government services with a simple majority while requiring a 2/3 majority for new tax raises, ensuring that the tax hikes needed to pay for the services would never be implemented. It's taken a few decades, but it appears he's finally succeeded, and the people of California are now getting a taste of what life is like without government services. I have yet to hear any of them rejoicing in the change. In fact, I know quite a few people who are getting the hell out.
Maybe all you small government types can move there to replace them and enjoy your lives with no roads, no schools, no jails, no police, no street lights, no bus service... Taxes=infrastructure. If you don't have any infrastructure, what's left?
JONEWALL, thank you for sharing your thoughts but there is a lot of factually incorrect information. The blame falls strongly on both sides, republicans and democrats. The republicans had control of congress for quite some time. During this time, record low interest rates fueled massive housing speculation while deregulation led to massive amounts of manipulation and opened the floodgates for abuse by our largest financial institutions. The Dems took control January 3, 2007 long after these details happened. Now, DEMS are certainly share reponsibility and we could go back and forth to point out where, who, at one point, etc. The biggest accomplishment we could make as citizens would be to address money in politics and remove all private campaign funding. Our lawmakers are loyal to corporate America, not it's people.
Interesting that so few of the Tea Party voters seem to support all of these proposals. Some of them have barely more than 50% of the votes. That means that 50% of Tea Partiers support these proposals - a small majority of a very vocal minority.
I think the Tea Party represents a real problem for the Republicans. For the past decade or so the left side of the aisle was divided, and couldn't agree on anything. While they were fighting, Bush and Co. destroyed the country. Now it is the right wing's turn to be divided.
Interesting hub. I really don't understand much about politics. lol
Interesting hub. I really don't understand much about politics
Very interesting and opinionated. One question looms. How would a flat tax hurt the poor and middle class? If I pay close to 40% now, and a flat tax at, say, 30% for everyone, I would argue that the rich would pay much more than they do now and I would pay less. The rich have way too many loopholes to avoid taxation. Those loopholes need to go. It is the over complication of the (unconstitutional) tax code that the tea party wants to do away with. The bottom line is this, the government is not listening. We have a buch of elitists out there that think they know better than the people. The people can be dead wrong, but their job is to represent the people. If we are wrong, we are wrong.
What needs to be addressed is the governments true job-common defense and interstate commerce. That is it. The rest is under the jurisdiction of the states, period. What we face is what we faced 240 years ago, taxation without representation. I hope you are prepared for the comming collapse.
I liked the article, well put and pretty well written.
I must disagree with your analysis of #3, #4, #6, #7, and #8.
#3- I'm not so certain that the current problems in California are so much the problem balancing the budget. Just to be clear, I don't think that the Tea Party's solution would do much: after all, all of government spending is wasteful.
#4- I'm not sure why you hate rich people. First and foremost, I'd love to see a flat tax rate of 0%! That'd be pretty sweet - i could mop up by starting a business offering the same (but better) service than that of what the government had been doing. Rich people aren't evil - they're the ones that make companies run smoothly, innovate something that revolutionizes the world, or just generally help people a lot! (For examples, Bill Gates, Henry Ford, Rockefeller -- yes he helped out a lot. Remember whale oil? ... neither do I, thanks to Rockefeller). You also seem to miss the point that ALL taxes are income taxes - they all affect our real wages; who cares how the government gets my money, it's still one less buck that i can spend.
#6 - Remember, Katrina didn't kill all those people and ruin the survivors' lives - government did. Katrina was... what? a level 3 hurricane that didn't even hit the big easy directly. Those levies were under the control of FEMA and the Army Corp. Of Engineers - these two are the culprits of the mess. You, the tea party, and I seem to be on the same path, but going different directions here: you want to make sure the government can ensure us, and I want to make sure that a private institution is the one that takes responsibility. After all, if Toyota were in charge of those levies... they'd go bankrupt if they were lucky!
#7 - the real problem with health care (the tea party gets it wrong as well) is the fact that the government is already so involved. The AMA is a governmentally granted Monopoly on doctors. Life would be much better, and cheaper, if more VERY qualified people were allowed to become doctors. - no, quacks would not be problem the same way that gas stations are not a problem: bad ones go out of business, or fail to get business in the first place.
#8- This one pretty much shows that the Tea party is actually just a bunch of Neo-Conservatives in Indian's Clothing. (they get it wrong, your analysis seems to be right, but fails to go one step further). Why should I hate getting oil and energy CHEAPLY from abroad? It wouldn't be impossible to produce the energy we need for ourselves in the US - we have so much coal and nuclear energy it's unbelievable. The problem, though, is that other energy is just so much cheaper. Imagine if we had to pay 4 times for energy just because we hate another country!!! that'd be retarded, and borderline racist. Think if everyone everywhere had to produce everything they needed by themselves without trading! Life. Would. Suck. Trading with 'them Aye-Rabs' is no different then when I go to the store and trade my labor for strawberries.
#10 - You said it! we need more spending cuts! I agree! en masse! down to 0%!!
People making the comments are making a few mistakes as well.
Torch Harrison gets a few things right- many tea partiers are idiots. But the REAL tea party started with the passion of Ron Paul, and true Paul supporters would easily be OK with reducing the government spending to near 0% levels.
Jon Ewall seems to claim that the citizens of our country don't have power in D.C. ... whereas I agree, it's ludicrous to make this claim. "The Tea Partiers don't have any power"... we'll see what happens in this next election. HE also seems to think that people who didn't write about how much they hated W a few years ago aren't allowed to insult anyone. ... I hated Bush, but didn't write about it... ... oh well!
Sissychuck44 seems to think that only the democrats are the problem. This is very telling in what the Tea Party actually is - a group of Neo-Cons who hi-jacked an originally libertarian movement.
Wilson's comments are pretty good, but he also seems to think that people who are in the Tea Party loved George Bush. This might be accurate, as I've said before, the tea party members are mostly a bunch of Neo-Cons, but it ignores the simple fact that the tea party is an offshoot of Ron Paul's movement. This helps explain why TP weren't/aren't as vocal about W: they weren't around!
And, Finally, Cedar Cove Farm seems to make the same mistake that Kerryg makes, that paying taxes are a good thing. Man! I wish i had the same powers that some other people had! --- I'd take people's money at the point of a gun, then tell them I was spending it for their own benefit, and then just be a little bit corrupt and blow it on a new house (be sure to spend at least the majority of the money on something the people can say "i'm sure glad i have government to bring me that thing! The free-market could never have delivered me that!")
Anyway, good hub - i liked the content!
This hub is so comprehensive that it will take me some time to digest it. But, I am glad because I really haven't taken the time to research this "Contract" on my own.
I think most of us are for 'change', but we do have to be careful what kind of 'change'. Just because the Tea Party is opposing Obama, doesn't mean they have it right either. It takes level heads to make level heads, not just reactionaries.
I commend you for trying to take on something like this. These days politics are like a hyper-sensitive mouse trap. Even if you're just pointing out that there is cheese on the trap, you still get your hand snapped off. I don't know why anyone is trying to argue against you on this subject; you were providing citations; meaning it was all confirmed by someone else. That would be like saying the sky is blue, and people responding with "That's just speculation, you're biased towards cooler colors." I get the feeling that a lot of protesters (the tea party in particular) are just shouting as loud as they can with their fingers in their ears. It's the mentality that if I yell loud enough, I win (which also happens to be Fox News' primary ideology). The biggest problem here is that the tea party is demanding generalizations. If you want lower taxes, then propose something that would help lower taxes. Just because it isn't happening doesn't mean the government is out to get them. There are countless things that need to be accounted for. It would be like saying you want ice cream to taste better, but when Ben and Jerry ask you what you want, you scream "Make it better!" in their face. Then Ben asks if you would like peanuts in the ice cream and you scream back "peanuts aren't good enough". Then Jerry says they will just add more chocolate and you say "Chocolate is ruining ice cream!" Who is that helping?
Good job taking on something so sensitive to so many! Very informative, and well thought out. It would be nice to see maybe the opposite to your aruments you present, (crazy as they are). Overall keep up your good work, and your good research on this!
kerry I also demonstrated against the Bush era, and am happy its over for one. ^-^
Evan G Rogers
POWER COMES FROM BEING ELECTED TO PUBLIC OFFICE MEANING THAT YOUR VOTE ON LEGISLATION IS THE POWER INVESTED IN YOUR ELECTED OFFICE.
The tea party members are protesting actions by our government officials and expressing a constitutional right of all citizens.
There is a major problem with number 9.
It's an alternative to the fillibuster. Here is what I mean.
Check this.
See the Democrats want to pass what they consider an important piece of legislation. But, they want to tack on something that they know will have to go on the floor for a long serious debate just as much as, oh I dunno, the Healthcare bill. So now they tack their earmark in to make sure it passes. What they want is to make sure that a certain bill cannot pass unless a 2/3 majority says it's okay to pass the earmark. Sounds great in theory to stop this right?
Take the same bill, let's say a financial reform bill, the Republicans hate this bill. There are no earmarks in this bill, but they hate it. A Republican has a clever idea, "Hey let's tack on a junk earmark so it will require a 2/3 vote thus tying up the bill further on the floor. Not to mention we can debate this bogus earmark to kill time until we can garner enough American support to make sure that this just dies on the floor. YAYYY! NOTHING GETS DONE UNLESS WE SAY SO!"
I hated this. It was very rude on my opinion. I was born in a place where a lot of tea is around and was born to love HERBAL tea. Thank you.
A very good try. Trying to figure out a group is like catching a cloud. You'll only find dead air.
I will never understand why libs make crap up. Pelosi tells the people that tax cuts don't create jobs, unemployment checks do. Ok, Libs applaud, conservatives scratch their heads. I never heard of the Tea Party Contract from America.
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Caterino, it's linked in the very first sentence: http://www.thecontract.org/
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