:smack: Religious, even.
I don’t remember the specifics, but according to the Wikipedia article on the Contract, it was voted on and failed 227-204 (needed a 2/3 majority.)
I don’t believe any elements on the Contract with America were dropped. The Line Item Veto Act of 1996 was passed, then found unconstitutional in Clinton v. City of New York. This Heritage Foundation article doesn’t go into detail, but says that the audit happened, and that “[the Republican majority] made all the laws that applied to the rest of the country apply to Congress itself” (whatever that means.) I don’t know for sure about zero base-line budgeting, but I do recall hearing at the time that the Republicans had passed everything they’d said they were going to do on their first day.
I list a lot of them in my original post:
- National healthcare
- Increased funding for public education
- A balanced budget
- A plan for dealing with global warming and oil shortages
- Increased taxes for the priveleged
- More funding for counterterrorism
There’s more up above … .
LHoD, thanks for the great thread.
I just wanted to put in a word about the line-item veto. I see that **cckerberos **already beat me to pointing out its legal status. But I also think it’s not a good idea (for either party).
The line item veto gives the office of the President too much power. As written in the Contract with America, it would only allow the veto of “appropriations” sections of legislation, but this is still an awful lot of ground. Many of the appropriations that get tacked onto bills are added as compromises – the dems want additional funding for drug treatment programs in a crime bill, for example. It allows the President to essentially edit legislation as he/she sees fit. Instead of hurrying legislation, I think it would have a dramatic freezing effect – what would be the point of reaching a political compromise if the President can just cancel out the appropriations provisions you wanted?
A line-item veto might limit pork spending (but probably just the pork spending of the party out of power), but at what cost? Can you honestly say you rather a President like Bush be even more powerful?
National healthcare: How does this help the center? Whats in it for them that they don’t already have…save more taxes? I’m thinking of the ‘center’ as ‘middle class’ on this issue…and most middle class folks HAVE insurance already. So…whats in it for them?
Oh, I agree something needs to be done with health care in this nation…but where is the traction with the center going to come on this issue, since its never gotten much traction in the past with them?
Increased funding for public education: IIRC the budget today is something like $800 billion for education. You want to put more into it. What kind of return on investment can the center expect for dumping MORE money into what seems a failed system. I note I’m speaking from my perspective here…perhaps the center wouldn’t mind pouring in more money to education. But I think that unless the left is willing to give up some of this sacred cow and agree that very deep reforms are necessary you are going to have a hard sell on simply pouring more money down this drain.
A balanced budget: Couldn’t agree more…I’d vote for your guy just based on this if I thought s/he was serious about it. Problem is when I start hearing the above I start seeing dollar signs so…how do you propose to balance the budget while putting in a National Healthcare system and increasing funding to the Department of Education? Whats going to give here…or are you talking about higher taxes?
A plan for dealing with global warming and oil shortages: That sounds great, but the devil is in the detail. HOW are you going to address the problem of global warming…and whats it going to cost me, Joe Citizen? Same with oil shortages…thats a great buzzword but HOW are you going to deal with this…and whats the bottom line dollars wise?
Increased taxes for the priveleged: This is the standard battle cry of the left…but it doesn’t really play well with the center who know better (or think differently about it, generally speaking). How are you going to sell this concept where its never gotten traction before? I’ll tell you that when I start hearing this one I take a hold of my own wallet, though I’m far from priveleged…to me its a slippery slope leading to the kind of taxation they have in the worst (or best if thats your perspective) European countries today. Who is ‘priveleged’…and where do you draw that line?
More funding for counterterrorism: Well, this is always a good one…but again, if you are planning on balancing the budget and putting in all these new programs where is the money coming from? Oh, I’m sure you have it in mind to soak the rich, and I doubt many (except the rich) are going to shed too many tears…but you can only soak them so much. Then you are going to have to start coming down the ladder to the almost rich and the not quite rich…and then to the well off, etc etc.
I’m far from a typical ‘centrist’ in the US…I admit freely. Gods know exactly what I am but probably not that. And I’m not trying to be insulting or aggressive here…just giving you my take on how those kinds of proposals will fly with what I think of as ‘the center’. Most of those items have never really done well outside of the left so its going to take some excellent packaging (and a lot of folks pissed as hell at Bush and the Republicans) to win on that kind of platform. IMHO of course and YMMV and all that. 
-XT
Here’s the thing, though: I don’t really think that many of those people exist. Oh, sure, they say that, because they want to think of themselves as openminded, or because they aren’t really happy with the Pubs and want an alternative, or whatever reason.
But if you turn around and say “well fine, then; we stand unambiguously for gay marriage, for partial-birth abortion, for raising taxes, and for immediate withdrawal from Iraq,” I think those same voters are gonna congratulate you on finally clearing things up and articulating your message … and then still vote for the other guys.
I think these people are more realistic. Bottom line: the Democratic base is smaller than the Republicans’, and thus they need moderates more; and thus they need to adopt moderate positions. It ain’t complicated.
Oh, and XT’s last post is dead-on. Most of that stuff is exactly what hasn’t been working already.
I’d like to see any evidence for the political center being primarily middle class, but until then:
Even though most middle class folks have insurance, many do not. In fact, of those who make between $50,000 and $75,000 (a rather generous reading of “middle-class”), %11.8 are uninsured. Groups that have been particularly hard hit by health care costs and lack of insurance are southerners and hispanics – two groups that often find themselves in the political center and among whom Democrats could fare much better. Cite.
This doesn’t even touch on the secondary advantages to business and others that come from having a fully insured populous.
You want evidence for my opinion? 
Well, in the immortal words of a god on this board, ‘my post is my cite!’.
I was just making an observation and painting with a broad brush…no, the center doesn’t equate to the middle class. The middle class is all over the board…just like the lower classes and upper classes are all over the political board. I was merely saying that the majority of the middle class ARE insured…in fact, the majority of American’s are insured (IIRC the percentage of uninsured is something like 15-16% of all Americans). There is no vast horde of uninsured American’s wandering the wasteland in search of healthcare. Even the uninsured are able to get emergency healthcare after all.
Again, I agree that something needs to be done. I MIGHT even agree to a national healthcare system if I could see the nuts and bolts of the thing and if the left was will to scrap the crap we currently have completely and build a more efficient system that would be revenue neutral…i.e. not increase my taxes one bit.
Assuming that this is obvious, my question again would be…why has this issue never gotten traction except with the left? How do you propose to change the perception that nationalizing healthcare (or whatever it is you plan) will be both more effective than the mess we currently have, and more importantly not cost us a lot more money? Do you propose to completely reform the healthcare industry in this country and make it completely revenue neutral? Perhaps revamp it so that it actually costs us less? Then I’m all for it…and I imagine the center would be too. However, every time I’ve seen proposals for universal healthcare its always had a bigger price tag on it.
-XT
I took your point to be that, since the political center was mostly unaffected by a lack of insurance, a national health program wouldn’t have much of a positive effect for Democrats.
My post was merely showing that there are millions of middle-class voters that are uninsured – more than enough to tip the balance of power. Hence the relevance of the issue.
As for the rest of your post, I’m not proposing anything. Health care reform is far too complicated for my limited mind to wrap around. I just wanted to clear up the point about whether or not it was a relevant issue to the winning of elections: by the numbers and demographics, it seems to be.
(For the record, I echo your skepticism of national health care policies. But I think some sort of scheme to widen insurance coverage ala Howard Dean would be very popular and successful).
Yeah, I’m not suggesting eliminating it — just relax things a bit specifically for small upstarts who can’t afford the advisory personnel for compliance. I’m not arguing for unchecked workplaces, just reasonable exceptions like allowing them to store boxes of gloves on the top shelf when they can’t yet afford a forklift.
Plus, it’ll be around for a long long time.
I hate hate hate that quote. It is so incredibly ass-backwards. It should be the liberal ideal that government exists for the benefit of the people, not the other way around.
I think you have to remember here what made liberals unelectable in the first place. Here’s a hint - it wasn’t Ronald Reagan calling them liberals.
In fact, the country was happily electing liberal Democrats and pretty liberal Republicans and ignoring types like Reagan for a good long time. That is, of course, until liberalism started failing pretty badly in the late 1970’s.
It failed on a number of fronts. By that time, the failure in many respects of the Great Society was obvious to most people. So was the Carter era foreign policy. So was our overtaxed and overregulated economy, most of which regulatory and tax burdens had been supported by liberals. And the justice system at the time, which had become far too lax in law enforcement and sentencing, had become so under so-called liberal “reforms”.
Things were pretty damn bad in America in 1980, which is the only reason Ronald Reagan ever got elected. You liberals are responsible for him. You gave him the toehold conservatives have been climbing from ever since.
So if liberalism is a dirty word, it is because liberals have soiled it. We were run by liberals and liberal policies in 1980, and we were miserable.
As opposed to today, when we’re run by conservatives and conservative policies, and we’re ecstatic?
Even if I accept your logic (I was six in 1980, so my visceral knowledge of the politics is a little hazy), liberal ought not be as dirty a word as “conservative” is today. It can be reclaimed, and the tide can be turned.
Daniel
One dollar, one vote, is a bad principle, I don’t care which end of the political spectrum uses it.
It certainly can be. But the reason people were running away from that label for a long time is because of some disastrous and unpopular liberal policies. If you want to recalim the word, you have to repudiate those policies, just as conservatives had to reclaim that word by repudiating racism and nativism, among other things.
As an example, the top marginal tax rate in 1980 was 70%, and that rate kicked in for a single person making more than $41,500 or a couple making more than $60,000. With inflation, those incomes today would be $111,000 and $160,000.
Now, does any Democrat on this board want to propose a 70% tax rate on people making over $120,000 a year? Would this be part of your contract? Or would it be electoral suicide, as well as bad policy?
I agree with the posters who say vague aspirations won’t cut it. Democrats need specific proposals which appeal to the middle class. Here’s one example:
*We will put an end to the practice of credit card issuers making unilateral changes to credit card agreements. Any change in interest rates set forth in the initial cardholder agreement will require the written consent of the consumer.
The first question is the wrong question. The equivalent would be if I asked whether any Republican on a right-leaning board advocated abolishing the income tax altogether.
The right question is whether the proposal I’m putting forth would propose a 70% tax rate on such people. This would not be part of my contract; and as you’ll note, the only person that’s even suggested it’d be part of a Democratic contract is a Republican.
Daniel
Well, that’s fine. But you’ll need to convince most voters that new liberals aren’t high taxers. Unless of course you are. But then you won’t win.
I think telling voters exactly what tax rate you would support would go a long way toward reassuring voters that the days when Democrats supported a top marginal rate of 70% are long gone.
I don’t think anyone wants taxes this high, even on the Democratic side. The problem is that I don’t know what rate you folks would support, and you do have a history as a high tax party.