Newt Gingrich is an annoyance to me; a self-important, puffy little twit, that spews so much bullshit it’s impossible to wade through it all.
Now that he’s running for the GOP nomination, the news is a never-ending stream of his political fantasies and embellishments, with only a handful of the media calling him on any of it. He continually cites his record in office in the ‘80s and ‘90s to make the case for his Presidential qualifications. Fine, let’s take a closer look at it.
Here are several items from Gingrich’s tenure in the House you won't hear him touting:
A Think Progress article recalls Gingrich’s early concerns for the environment:
1989: “Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-GA) co-sponsors the ambitious Global Warming Prevention Act (H.R. 1078), which finds that “the Earth’s atmosphere is being changed at an unprecedented rate by pollutants resulting from human activities, inefficient and wasteful fossil fuel use, and the effects of rapid population growth in many regions.” That “global warming imperils human health and well-being” and calls for policies “to reduce world emissions of carbon dioxide by at least 20 percent from 1988 levels by 2000.” The legislation recognizes that global warming is a “major threat to political stability, international security, and economic prosperity.””
But alas, the political pressure was greater than the man.
1994: The Sierra Club dug into Gingrich’s “Contract With America” and found:
“At first glance, the package has little to say about the environment. But buried within the bills…lie a number of provisions that would indirectly undermine the foundation of environmental, health and safety protections.”
Two examples:
“The Risk Communication Act: Allows "peer panels" of scientists -- including scientists working for the industry being regulated -- to reject environmental and public-health protections by claiming they are based on "bad science."
“The Federal Regulatory Budget Cost Control Act: Creates an upper limit for the total number of all federal regulations. For example, Environmental Protection Agency regulations to protect children from pesticides in food could be blocked because other agencies had already filled the quota of regulations.”
Think Progress looks at Newt's flip-flops: 1995
“Gingrich’s budget shuts down climate action, killing the U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment, NASA’s Mission to Planet Earth program, and NOAA global warming research.”
Fast forward to the years since leaving office, and Gingrich still hasn’t settled on a permanent environmental stance.
2007 In a debate on climate policy with Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), Gingrich says,
“the evidence is sufficient that we should move towards the most effective possible steps to reduce carbon-loading of the atmosphere,” and that we should “do it urgently.”
2011: Gingrich proposes abolishing the Environmental Protection Agency because of its “attempts to regulate greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, and thereby the entire American economy.”
Now let’s talk about the elephant in the room, Newt's ethics:
Mother Jones reported in 1989:
“Records show that Gingrich took members of his congressional staff off the payroll to work on his campaigns in 1986 and 1988 and then gave them big, temporary raises when they returned to congressional work. If the money was meant to compensate for campaign work, Gingrich violated federal law...”
If? Really?
Then we had the House banking scandal in 1992. According to a N.Y. Times article:
“…Gingrich himself was among the 450 members of the House who had engaged in check kiting; he had overdrafts on twenty-two checks, including a $9,463 check to the Internal Revenue Service in 1990.”
(I should note here that while Americans are expected to put up with ridiculous bank fees, the 450 representatives involved in the banking scandal paid no overdraft fees for bounced checks; not even one Republican Rep. who, according to the PBS Newshour, had 996 overdrafts.
Then there were the ethics charges lodged specifically against Gingrich. The N.Y. Times reported in 1997:
“The House ethics subcommittee declared Friday that House Speaker Newt Gingrich's misuse of tax-exempt funds for a politically tinged college course reflected a pattern of years of "disregard and lack of respect for the standards of conduct" a congressman should follow.”
1997 The Baltimore Sun reports that the Republican Good 'Ole Boys Club tried its best to cover Newt's butt:
"A document obtained by the House ethics committee shows that the chief political allies of Newt Gingrich drafted a detailed plan in 1995 to impede and obscure the investigation of the House speaker.
The document, released by Maryland Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin yesterday, offers a window into private GOP discussions to diminish the Gingrich investigation, distract attention away from the speaker and onto his accusers, and resist the appointment of a special counsel."
One of the issues at the heart of the ethics investigation was GOPAC. While most intelligent people recognize the acronym for a Republican pac, Gingrich referred to it as "an educational institution". According to the
National Journal however,
In his GOPAC fundraising letters, Gingrich offered donors the chance to help him “draft the Republican legislative agenda,” and credited the group with helping elect 41 of that year’s 48 House GOP freshmen.
The National Journal also pointed out the similarities between GOPAC and Gingrich's current "American Solutions"
[American Solutions]..."is heavily underwritten by casino and fossil-fuel money. Gingrich has also taken heat for receiving generous consulting fees from the ethanol industry. Reporters are going to enjoy digging into his network of groups and itemizing every penny that comes from ethanol, oil, coal, and other special-interest donors.
Unfortunately, the press thus far has been less than diligent in holding Newt's feet to the fire.
The Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security Doubletalk:
Mother Jones reported in 1996:
"Newt Gingrich outlined his vision for eliminating Medicare funding. "We don't want to get rid of it in round one because we don't think it's politically smart," he said. "But we believe that it's going to wither on the vine because we think [seniors] are going to leave it voluntarily.""
Voluntarily is not the word I would have used. The same article explains how
“… House and Senate Republicans agreed last summer to slash Medicare spending by an astronomical $270 billion over seven years. By cutting spending that much, the Republican plan will dramatically reduce Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals. That, in turn, will collapse the current system of fee-for-service care, because health care providers will no longer be able to care for patients at the lower rates paid by Medicare.”
In 1997 The Baltimore Sun reported:
“…House Speaker Newt Gingrich has seriously compromised the work of a blue-ribbon panel charged with finding a way to keep the Medicare program afloat over the long term. He has so hamstrung the panel -- even before its first meeting -- that there is serious doubt about its ability to do its job effectively.”
The Sun followed up in 1998:
“…voters caught on that the populist rhetoric of the Contract [With America] meant, in practice, giving corporations license to shoot the environment on sight and funding tax cuts tilted to the richest. Voters were victims of a political bait-and-switch…”
Sound familiar? Gingrich then declared
“...Republicans should concentrate on what the public wants -- tax cuts and saving Social Security. But tax cuts are near the bottom of most voter wish lists, and Mr. Gingrich's idea of saving Social Security is to privatize it virtually out of existence, leaving only a politically fragile dole for the elderly poor. More bait-and-switch.”
On the issue of Welfare reform which Gingrich likes to take credit for, you won't hear him championing his original plan:
Newt Gingrich originally included in the Personal Responsibility Act, a part of the “Contract with America,” a provision that would allow states to use federal grant funds “to establish and operate orphanages.” The Chicago Tribune quoted Gingrich in 1994:
..."young, unwed mothers should be denied welfare and if, as a result, they can't provide for their children, the kids should be put in orphanages. They're not bad places, he says. Check out Boys Town."
That's right, he thought orphanages were all like the one in that 1938 feel-good movie; but the welfare system began largely as a solution to the abuse, neglect, and costs that plagued earlier orphanages.
The glaring fact in his "Dickens-like"proposal is that despite Republicans' claims of supporting parents' rights, Newt and his pals would have no problem denying those rights to the poor, or allowing the government to arbitrarily snatch their children.
Gingrich's political and personal activities while in the House deserve a lot of scrutiny. The best descriptions of his political character are best left to those who knew him and worked with him.
One of Gingrich's earliest friends in politics, L.H. Carter (no longer a friend) had this to say in a Mother Jones interview in 1984:
"The important thing you have to understand about Newt Gingrich is that he is amoral," says Carter. "There isn't any right or wrong, there isn't any conservative or liberal. There's only what will work best for Newt Gingrich.
He's probably one of the most dangerous people for the future of this country that you can possibly imagine... It doesn't matter how much good I do the rest of my life, I can't ever outweigh the evil that I've caused by helping him be elected to Congress."
A Close Look at Newt Gingrich Part 1: Wait, What Do I Think?