Who was the speaker of the house who led the program known as the “contract with america?”

In the historic 1994 midterm elections, Republicans won a majority in Congress for the first time in forty years, partly on the appeal of a platform called the Contract with America. Put forward by House Republicans, this sweeping ten-point plan promised to reshape government. Its main theme was the decentralization of federal authority: deregulation, tax cuts, reform of social programs, increased power for states, and a balanced FEDERAL BUDGET were its chief ambitions. With unusual speed, all ten items came to a vote in the House of Representatives within one hundred days, and the House passed nine of the ten measures. Yet, even as House Speaker NEWT GINGRICH (R-Ga.) compared the plan to the most important political reforms of the twentieth century, progress on the contract stalled. Senate Republicans were slow to embrace it, Democrats in both chambers denounced it, and President BILL CLINTON threatened to VETO its most radical provisions. Only three of the least controversial measures had become law by the end of 1995 as Congress and the White House battled bitterly over the federal budget.

On the surface, the contract differed little from other modern Republican platforms. It began with a statement of three "core" principles in the form of an argument: the federal government is too big and unresponsive (accountability), and big government programs sap individual and family willpower (responsibility)—and thus an overtaxed and overregulated citizenry cannot pursue the American Dream (opportunity). Republicans had been saying as much for at least two decades. Although Democrats had controlled Congress for more than forty years with an almost opposite view of government's duty to its people, Republicans had held the White House from 1980 to 1992. The election of President Clinton in 1992 was a striking setback for REPUBLICAN PARTY strategists. Yet, they took encouragement from voter discontent with the pace of Clinton's legislative plans, two key provisions of which—an economic stimulus package and HEALTH CARE reform—failed to pass even with a Democratic majority in Congress. For the mid-1994 congressional elections, they intended to capitalize on this discontent with a platform that promised quick and dramatic change.

Toward this end, the Contract with America made two promises "to restore the bonds of trust between the people and their elected representatives." First, it promised to change the way Congress works by requiring that lawmakers follow the same workplace laws as the rest of the country—notably, SEXUAL HARASSMENT laws—and by strictly reforming the sluggish committee process in the House of Representatives. Second, it promised that the House would vote on the ten key planks of the contract within the first one hundred days of the new Congress. The contract gave these ten planks names such as the Fiscal Responsibility Act, the Taking Back Our

In September 1994, Newt Gingrich and a group of Republican congressional candidates announced their plans for a platform called Contract with America. The ten-point plan helped the Republican Party win a majority in Congress.
AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS

Streets Act, and the Personal Responsibility Act. The contract promised action on the following issues: the federal deficit, crime, WELFARE reform, family values, middle-class tax cuts, national defense, SOCIAL SECURITY, federal deregulation and capital gains tax cuts, legal reform, CIVIL LAW and PRODUCT LIABILITY, and term limits for federal lawmakers.

The actual proposals represented a mixture of old and new ideas. Republicans had long supported deregulation of industry, TORT reform, and middle-class tax cuts. As a deficit reduction solution, the line-item veto was an old idea: ever since the 1980s, Republicans had called for a PRESIDENTIAL POWER to veto specific parts of federal spending bills (rather than the entire bills). More revolutionary was the contract's related proposal: a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget. In the same sense, the welfare reform proposals reflected a long-running debate and yet offered ambitiously strict limits on spending, eligibility, and administration, and even sought to transfer authority over traditionally federal programs to the states. Other proposals grew out of more recent concerns. The crime reform measure was a Republican effort to scale back social spending and increase law enforcement spending, in reaction to the Clinton crime bill of 1994; and proposals to curb U.S. military involvement in the United Nations' peacekeeping missions reflected Republican criticism of Clinton's decisions to send troops to Somalia and Haiti.

The contract met with mixed results in 1995. The House Republican leadership did indeed put each item to a vote within the first one hundred days. It divided each item into one or more bills, and thirty-one of the resulting thirty-two measures passed—only one, for congressional term limits, failed. The Senate moved much more slowly. In part, this was because the Senate, as a debating body, customarily proceeds more cautiously. Another reason was that the senators, unlike their first-year counterparts in the House, were far less eager to pass sweeping reforms: the Senate killed the proposal for a constitutional amendment on the budget, for example, and simply delayed action on several other bills. President Clinton's promise to veto any farranging welfare and budgetary proposals also crimped Republican plans, and by November 1995 this threat had produced a bitter standoff that resulted in the temporary closing of the federal government.

Three contract proposals became law: the Congressional Accountability Act of 1995 (Pub. L. No. 104-1, 109 Stat. 3), which requires Congress to follow eleven workplace laws; the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995 (Pub. L. No. 104-4, 109 Stat. 48), which restricts Congress from imposing mandates on states that are not adequately funded; and the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (Pub. L. No. 104-13, 109 Stat. 163), which reduces federal paperwork requirements.

The story of how Newt Gingrich and his allies tainted American politics, launching an enduring era of brutal partisan warfare

When Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, President Obama observed that Trump “is not an outlier; he is a culmination, a logical conclusion of the rhetoric and tactics of the Republican Party.” In Burning Down the House, historian Julian Zelizer pinpoints the moment when our country was set on a path toward an era of bitterly partisan and ruthless politics, an era that was ignited by Newt Gingrich and his allies. In 1989, Gingrich brought down Democratic Speaker of the House Jim Wright and catapulted himself into the national spotlight. Perhaps more than any other politician, Gingrich introduced the rhetoric and tactics that have shaped Congress and the Republican Party for the last three decades. Elected to Congress in 1978, Gingrich quickly became one of the most powerful figures in America not through innovative ideas or charisma, but through a calculated campaign of attacks against political opponents, casting himself as a savior in a fight of good versus evil. Taking office in the post-Watergate era, he weaponized the good government reforms newly introduced to fight corruption, wielding the rules in ways that shocked the legislators who had created them. His crusade against Democrats culminated in the plot to destroy the political career of Speaker Wright.

While some of Gingrich’s fellow Republicans were disturbed by the viciousness of his attacks, party leaders enjoyed his successes so much that they did little collectively to stand in his way. Democrats, for their part, were alarmed, but did not want to sink to his level and took no effective actions to stop him. It didn’t seem to matter that Gingrich’s moral conservatism was hypocritical or that his methods were brazen, his accusations of corruption permanently tarnished his opponents. This brand of warfare worked, not as a strategy for governance but as a path to power, and what Gingrich planted, his fellow Republicans reaped. He led them to their first majority in Congress in decades, and his legacy extends far beyond his tenure in office. From the Contract with America to the rise of the Tea Party and the Trump presidential campaign, his fingerprints can be seen throughout some of the most divisive episodes in contemporary American politics. Burning Down the House presents the alarming narrative of how Gingrich and his allies created a new normal in Washington.

On top of that, economic growth was 4 percent or higher from 1997 through 2000, an extraordinary four consecutive years, and unemployment rates, which had been above 7 percent at the beginning of the decade, fell to under 5 percent in 1997. By the end of 2000, the rate was under 4 percent. For three consecutive years, 1997 through 1999, the economy produced more than 3 million jobs each year, a record that still stands.

The policy accomplishments of the Republican-controlled 104th Congress were remarkable. Convincing the Democratic president to get on board with a center-right Republican approach to economic growth produced one the most robust economic periods in American history.

Poor choices

But rather than running on this remarkable success, Republican political operatives in 1998 opted to attack Clinton, mired in political scandal, telling voters that the country should not reward him for “not telling the truth.” To say it didn’t work is an understatement.

Exit polls showed Republicans ended the 1998 campaign, despite a great economy, with 41 percent of voters approving of the job they were doing compared to 55 percent disapproving. In contrast, Clinton’s job approval  rating was at 55 percent with 43 percent disapproving, even though he had a personal favorability rating of just 35 percent to 61 percent unfavorable. Those who approved of the job Clinton was doing but had an unfavorable view of him personally (20 percent of the electorate) voted Democratic by a 62 percent to 35 percent margin. The exit polls also showed the electorate opposed impeachment, 33 percent to 63 percent.

In the lead-up to the 1998 election, Republican political operatives insisted the party would win 20 to 30 House seats. Instead, Democrats picked up 5 — a historical anomaly given that sitting presidents usually lose a significant number of House seats in the sixth year of their presidencies.