It was going to change everything in 1994, this Republican "Contract With America." Did government spending go down? Was fraud and waste a thing of the past? This is what conservatives at The Cato Institute had to say about the effect of the "Contract With America" on government:
Consider: Over the past three years the Republican-controlled Congress has approved discretionary spending that exceeded Bill Clinton's requests by more than $30 billion. The party that in 1994 would abolish the Department of Education now brags in response to Clinton's 2000 State of the Union Address that it is outspending the White House when it comes to education. My colleagues ... found that the combined budgets of the 95 major programs that the Contract with America promised to eliminate have increased by 13%.
Minority Leader John Boehner was behind the "Contract With America," and he's on board with the Tea Party movement. Why? Because they're both great ideas to hoodwink unsuspecting voters (with short memories) into voting for conservative candidates. It will allow him to get back on the House floor to hand out dirty Cigarette campaign checks to other conservatives:
Republicans have dressed up their schtick this time by updating it with interactive components -- you can now wear your own silly hat and wave a sign on behalf of big business -- but it's still the same scam. Like Ralphie joining the Secret Circle and decoding Little Orphan Annie's secret message:
The so-called reforms mentioned by the Tea Partiers and their "Contract With America" forefathers always sought or seek a change that would end up screwing brown people or poor people or disabled people. Will a Tea Partier ever demand a reform that takes money out of the pockets of Big Business? That's what Tea Partiers don't want to admit, and what Americans need to know: To really reform the system, you have to go after the major players, and the "little people" aren't the major players (and sellers) in this system.
The problem with expecting conservatives to reform anything is that it is a foundationally self-limiting enterprise. Conservatives are never going to reform anything that might impact Big Business' bottom line. Instead, Tea Partiers will just get another "DONTFORGETTODRINKYOUROVALTINE" advertisement for reform, but no real reform.
Tea Partiers and other conservatives can only nickle and dime reform because they won't go after the major players. If balancing the budget is a priority, when will Tea Partiers go after Defense Spending, which makes up the largest portion of the budget pie? That would mean going after the jobs of members of the Armed Services and Big Defense Companies. Not gonna happen. What about Medicare and Medicaid? That makes up another large piece of pie in the federal budget, but it would entail going after doctors and insurance companies and pharma, and we saw how much stomach the Republicans had for that. Not gonna happen. The other major portion of the federal budget pie is Social Security, and here we have the only "serious" Tea Party/Republican "reform" idea: Give a portion of the money to their buddies on Wall Street as parts of SS become privatized. Not gonna happen. So, that's over 62% of the Federal Budget, and except for possibly greasing the palms of their Wall Street buddies, there's no chance of reform from conservatives.
To show how the Tea Party has just made an updated, 21st Century, interactive, scam-like "Contract With America," I've developed a new game for Hasblo™ called TeaPartyLand™. It goes a little something like this:
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