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| Dimensions: 9.4'' x 6.3'' x 10'' |
| 272 pages |
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Regnery Publishing
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| Publication Date: January 2005 |
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| Hardcover |
| ISBN: 0895260425 |
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April 2005
Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract with America
By Newt Gingrich
This book summary is also available here as an Adobe Acrobat PDF.
The original Contract with America, which helped elect a Republican majority to both houses of the U.S. Congress in 1994, focused primarily on federal reforms to make our legislative branch of government more responsive and accountable to the voters. Today, the United States faces fundamental challenges to national security and economic prosperity. In his new book Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract with America, Newt Gingrich proposes a series of reforms designed to protect the nation from terror, meet the challenge of baby-boom retirements, and renew American civilization.
Newt Gingrich was the chief architect of the first Contract with America. From 1995 to 1999, he served as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. He is a senior fellow at AEI.
Our generation of Americans received the most blessed inheritance in history. Our parents and grandparents endured the Great Depression, fought the Second World War, contained the Soviet Union, and helped the people of Western Europe, Japan, and South Korea achieve unimagined levels of prosperity. They went to school, took extra jobs, and started businesses. They created a level of prosperity unknown to any other people in history. Out of their idealism they ended segregation. They maintained an open door so that an Austrian-born American could be governor of California and other first generation immigrants could win the Nobel Prize, serve as secretary of state, build companies, create jobs, and enrich our lives in America.
Our generation inherited all these wonderful things. But what will be our legacy? We are now entering a decade that will test our own courage, persistence, and resolve—a decade that will be, in the words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, our generation’s “rendezvous with destiny.”
Threats to America’s Future
Today America is vulnerable to five threats that, taken collectively, are as daunting and difficult as any America has faced. Four of them could undermine, even eliminate, America as we know it, while the fifth could leave us weakened, impoverished, and with much less freedom. The rising threats are that:
- Islamic terrorists and rogue dictatorships will acquire and launch nuclear or biological weapons;
- God will be driven from American public life, reducing us to the civilizational ennui that now characterizes a declining Europe;
- America will lose the patriotic sense of itself as a unique civilization;
- America will yield its economic supremacy to China and India because of failing schools and weakening scientific and technological leadership;
- an aging America’s demands on Social Security, Medicare, and related government programs will collapse the system.
These five threats are real and dangerous. If they are not successfully confronted, they will cripple our nation. Each threat can be overcome, but standing in our way are an entrenched political system and news media that refuse to treat these threats seriously.
Who We Are; Who Our Opponents Are
Traditional politics is dominated and defined by a collection of elites deeply opposed to the solutions America needs to renew its civilization and ensure its economic and national security interests. These elites want a world dramatically in tension with the values and aspirations of most Americans. Consider just a few examples of the chasm that exists between the two sides:
- Most of us believe that 9/11 was enough proof that we have enemies who hate us and who would kill millions of Americans if given the chance. Yet much of our national security establishment continues to operate within a peacetime model. Our liberal national security elites believe that we should defend America only within the framework of an ineffective United Nations and with the approval of a skeptical Europe.
- Most of us believe that America was founded as a nation in which people are “endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights” and that we rightly pledge allegiance to “one nation under God.” But an arrogant judiciary increasingly tries to drive God from public life.
- Most of us believe that America is a good and decent country created by heroes worth studying. But the schools that teach young Americans and American immigrants offer politically correct, multicultural drivel, fail to teach American history, and ridicule what little they are forced to teach.
Over the last four decades, America has been divided into two camps. In the first are those elites who find it acceptable to drive God out of public life and who, in general, also scorn American history, support economic regulation over freedom and competition, favor a “sophisticated” foreign policy led by the United Nations, and agree with the New York Times.
But Americans in the other camp are proud of our history, know how integral God is to understanding American exceptionalism, know how vital the creative and competitive spirit is to being American, and believe that America is worth defending even if it irritates foreigners who do not share our values. Samuel Huntington, in his 2004 book Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity, points out that 85 percent of Americans are proud of their institutions, 78 percent believe children should be allowed to pray in school, and 87 percent take pride in their work. Only 23 percent of Americans believe the United Nations should play a leading role in world affairs and have countries defer to its policies.
Most of us believe in doing the hard work that will keep America’s economy second to none. But our efforts are hampered by trial lawyers who seek their own enrichment instead of justice; by labor unions that insist on special deals and protection instead of competition; and by bureaucracies that emphasize process over achievement.
Self-government implies that on these issues, the people should rule, but the liberal elite minority is winning and the popular majority is losing. Since the 1960s, the conservative majority has been intimidated, manipulated, and bullied by the liberal minority. The liberal elites who dominate academia, the courts, the press, and much of the government bureaucracy share an essentially European secular-socialist value system. Yet they have set the terms of the debate, which is why “politics as usual” is a losing proposition for Americans.
The First Contract with America
The first Contract with America in 1994 was a remarkable tool for political and governmental change. Led by the contract, the Republican Party had its biggest congressional victory since before the Great Depression. The results of November 1994 were not only stunning to observers (almost none of whom expected a Republican majority even on election day), but was also a tidal wave of historic proportions. The Republican vote increased by nine million from 1990 to 1994 while the Democratic vote declined by a million. This swing of ten million votes between the two parties is the largest non-presidential voter shift in American history. It had an impact on Senate elections, governorships, state legislative races, and every level of American politics.
What made the contract truly revolutionary was that it had a governmental as well as political purpose. It was the only time in American history a federal legislative party—the House Republicans—adopted a contract instead of a platform. We bound ourselves to do something (a contract) and not simply to be for something (a platform). Because of the energy and spirit built around the contract, the House Republicans (all but three actually signed the contract) kept their word and voted on every single item in the first ninety-three days. The contract accomplished:
- the first major tax cut in sixteen years;
- real welfare reform, reducing the number of people on welfare by 60 percent and insisting
that welfare recipients go to school or look for a job;
- the first four consecutive balanced budgets since the 1920s, enabling our economy to enter a long period of very low interest rates with little risk of inflation;
- the first financial audit of the House by an outside auditing firm in American history, a practice that continues today;
- term limits for committee chairmen in the House;
- application to the House of all the laws that apply to small business so politicians can learn what the self-employed and small business men and women endure from government;
- strengthening the military and intelligence capabilities of the United States;
- the invention of the Thomas system that allows Internet access to the U.S. House of Representatives, bypassing lobbyists and privileged insiders.
The contract was powerful because it outlined ideas that were championed by tenacious and determined leaders. It was Governor Ronald Reagan, for example, who began advocating welfare reform in 1970 at the National Governors’ Conference. Congress passed welfare reform three times. President Bill Clinton vetoed it twice before he finally signed it in 1996—twenty-six years after President Reagan’s remarks. Two seminal books, Charles Murray’s Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950–1980 (1984) and Marvin Olasky’s The Tragedy of American Compassion (1992), helped us win the argument about the need to replace a destructive system of dependency with a system of effort and opportunity. As Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher taught us, “First you have to win the argument and then you can win the vote.”
The contract was effective because it was based on the core values of the American people. We knew Americans valued work over welfare and believed that a balanced budget in peacetime is a moral imperative, even more than an economic one. We knew that Americans believed that the private sector was better at job and wealth creation than were government bureaucrats. We knew that Americans wanted the United States to be strong enough to defend itself in a dangerous world. What made us different from traditional Republican politicians was that, like President Reagan, we were prepared to stand with the American people and ignore the editorial writers and liberal commentators who would predictably scoff at our “simplistic” (conservative) ideas.
We advocates of the contract were also prepared to be “cheerfully persistent” in reaching out to the American people past the biases and the inadequacies of the news media. We used C-SPAN, talk radio, and emails. We gave speeches and visited local radio, television, and newspapers around the country. (Media outside the Beltway were often much more open to new ideas than the elite political press, which focused on insider political trivia.) Our people-to-people efforts to communicate took years, but we gradually built networks or activists who understood what we were doing and supported it enthusiastically.
The first Contract with America proved that it was possible to bring together people from all across America to forge a strong political majority that would keep its word and implement the program it campaigned on. If we have the same persistence and courage, we can win again. The first step is a new twenty-first century Contract with America.
Goals for a New Contract
This is what needs to be done:
- We must commit to a long war to defeat the terrorists and tyrants who would destroy America.
- We must reestablish that our rights come from our Creator and that an America that has driven God out of the public arena is an America on the way to decay and defeat.
- We must insist on patriotic immigration and education based on classic American history and the wisdom of the Founding Fathers and Abraham Lincoln.
- We must transform our domestic institutions in order to harness modern science and technology to create jobs and wealth, and lead the world economy into the twenty-first century.
- We must establish the opportunities for personal Social Security accounts, portable personal pension accounts, and personal health savings accounts so the wealth we create during our working lives is wealth we control.
Achieving a More Prosperous Future
In a rapidly changing world with new threats and new competitors, we must implement policies that will ensure America’s leadership, safety, and prosperity. And we must reinvigorate the core values that have made America an exceptional civilization.
The entrenched lobbyists and entrenched bureaucracies will do all they can to minimize the changes no matter how vital those changes are to America’s future. Self-interest will dominate national interest if the normal political system operates with business as usual. The pressure of daily events will keep both the news media and most politicians focused on the immediate and the trivial rather than the long-term and the profoundly important.
Only a grassroots citizens’ movement can insist on the level of change that is needed for our children and grandchildren to have a successful future.
To achieve this future we will:
Defend America and our allies from those who would destroy us. To achieve security, we will develop the intelligence, diplomatic, information, defense, and homeland security systems and resources for success.
Transform the Social Security system into personal savings accounts that will enable all workers to have higher retirement incomes from their own work and avoid the need for financial support from their children.
Re-center America on the Creator from Whom all our liberties originate by insisting upon a judiciary that understands the centrality of God in American history and reasserts the legitimacy of recognizing the Creator in public life.
Establish patriotic education for our children and patriotic immigration for new Americans. To achieve this, we will renew our commitment to education about American citizenship based on American history and an understanding of the Founding Fathers and the core values of American civilization. We will insist that both our children and immigrants learn the key values and key facts of American history as the foundation of their growth as citizens.
Meet the triple economic challenges of an explosion in scientific and technological knowledge, an increasingly competitive world market, and the rise of China and India by implementing a new system of civil justice to reduce the burden of lawsuits and to give young people the incentive to go into professions other than the law; a dramatically simplified tax code that favors savings, entrepreneurship, investment, and constant modernization of equipment and technology; and math and science learning equal to any in the world, inspiring enough young Americans to both discover the science of the future and compete successfully in national security and the economy with other well-educated societies. We will also invest in the scientific revolutions that are going to transform our world—particularly in energy, space, and the environment; and create a twenty-first century intelligent health system that improves our health while lowering costs dramatically. In the process, American health care will become our highest value export and foreign-exchange-earning sector.
Work to include every American in a system of patriotic stewardship so every person has a real opportunity to pursue happiness as the Creator endowed. We must prepare for the aging baby boomers and their children so we can have active and healthy aging with the best quality of life, the longest period of independent living, and the greatest prosperity by developing a system in which those who wish to stay economically active are encouraged and motivated to do so because active people live longer and healthier, have a greater opportunity to pursue happiness, and are less of a burden on their fellow citizens. We must create a system of independent living and assisted living that increases the years in which people can be on their own and in most cases enables people to live their entire lives with freedom and dignity, as well as a new model of quality long-term care in which both the care and the quality of life are compatible with a twenty-first century American expectation of progress and innovation. We must utilize technologies and new scientific knowledge to turn disabilities into capabilities and change government regulations and programs to help every American achieve the fullest possible opportunity to pursue happiness.
Change the mindset of big government in Washington by replacing bureaucratic public administration with entrepreneurial public management so government can operate with the speed, effectiveness, and efficiency of the information age.
Balance the federal budget and insist on a lean-government, low-tax, low-interest-rate economy to maximize growth in a competitive world.
Insist on congressional reform to make the legislative branch responsive to the needs of the twenty-first century.
Enforce an election process that is honest, accountable, accurate, and free from the threat of illegal votes or subsequent litigation.
If we insist on these goals and insist on electing leaders at all levels dedicated to these goals, we will be able to leave our children and grandchildren an America of security, health, prosperity, and freedom that would make our parents and grandparents proud. We too will have done our duty to our country, and our achievements as citizens will be worthy of the America we inherited.
This book summary is also available here as an Adobe Acrobat PDF.
