Newt Gingrich has unveiled his 21st Century Contract with America. You can find all ten points after the jump, but here are the basics: No health care reform, no regulation on anything business-y, no Social Security, no Medicare, no immigrants, no debt, no taxes, no regulations on big pharma, no federal control over states, and more defense. Plus, a creepy pledge to "Restore the proper role of the judicial branch by using the clearly delineated powers available to the president and Congress to correct, limit, or replace judges who violate the Constitution." (Take that, activist judges!)
This is basically a souped-up and fancified teabagger platform, and it's a strong case for Newt Gingrich as vice president for whoever wins the actual nomination, unless you remember all that cheating-during-the-Lewinsky-scandal and divorcing-his-cancer-stricken-wife stuff. Anyway, here are the ten points:
1. Repeal Obamacare and pass a replacement that saves lives and money by empowering patients and doctors, not bureaucrats and politicians.
2. Return to robust job creation with a bold set of tax cuts and regulatory reforms that will free American entrepreneurs to invest and hire, as well as by reforming the Federal Reserve and creating a training requirement for extended federal unemployment benefits to encourage work and improve the quality of our workforce.
3. Unleash Americaâs full energy production potential in oil, natural gas, coal, biofuels, wind, nuclear oil shale and more, creating jobs, stimulating a sustainable manufacturing boom, lowering gasoline and other energy prices, increasing government revenues, and bolstering national security.
4. Save Medicare and Social Security by giving Americans more choices and tools to live longer, healthier lives with greater financial independence.
5. Balance the federal budget by freeing job-creators to grow the economy, reforming entitlements, and implementing productivity improvement systems such as Lean Six Sigma to eliminate waste and fraud. Pass a balanced budget amendment to keep it balanced.
6. Control the border by January 1, 2014 and establish English as the official language of government; reform the legal visa system, and make it much easier to deport criminals and gang members while making it easier for law abiding visitors to come to the US.
7. Revitalize our national security system to meet 21st century threats by restructuring and adequately funding our security agencies to function within a grand strategy for victory over those who seek to kill us or limit American power.
8. Maximize the speed and impact of medical breakthroughs by removing unnecessary obstacles that block new treatments from reaching patients and emphasizing research spending towards urgent national priorities, like brain science with its impact on Alzheimerâs, autism, Parkinsonâs, mental health and other conditions knowledge of the brain will help solve.
9. Restore the proper role of the judicial branch by using the clearly delineated powers available to the president and Congress to correct, limit, or replace judges who violate the Constitution.
10. Enforce the Tenth Amendment by starting an orderly transfer of power and responsibility from the federal government back âto the states, respectively, or to the people,â as the Constitution requires. Over the next year, state and local officials and citizens will be asked to identify the areas which can be transferred back home.
