On Friday, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), slated to replace Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) should the Republicans win control of the U.S. House of Representatives in November, unveiled what he called a “Commitment to America.” The Commitment to America is a list of goals that the Republicans claim they will implement, and reminds one of the “Contract With America” that then-House member Newt Gingrich put forth before the 1994 election, in which the Republicans won the majority of the House for the first time in 40 years.
It is an attempt to “nationalize” the election, hoping that voters will vote for Republican candidates for the House in the upcoming election, as they did in 1994.
McCarthy listed four broad areas of promises that the Republicans are making. The four areas are an “economy that’s strong,” “a nation that’s safe,” “a future that’s built on freedom,” and “a government that’s accountable.”
Certainly those four areas sound great, and in politics, “sound bites” are usually enough to win over voters, but what are the details? For those who believe in a republican form of government, with fidelity to the Constitution and the principle of federalism, the actual proposals are mostly good, but not all.
The Commitment’s promise to eliminate the jobs of 87,000 workers in the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is one of the best proposals. The Biden administration has been pushing for more IRS auditors to, they say, crack down on tax cheats. In reality, these new tax auditors would probably not be looking at the tax returns of the very wealthy — they do that already — but rather will be poring over the tax returns of more middle-income Americans.
Some have noted that government employees that are actually needed are Border Patrol agents, not more IRS agents to harass hard-working American citizens. The Republicans promise to end the Biden administration’s open-border policies with “catch-and-release,” in which individuals crossing the border are not sent back across the border but rather released for a “hearing” later on, a “hearing” that often never happens.
They also promise to cut federal spending and lower the Biden price inflation, the highest since the early 1980s, just after the disastrous presidency of Jimmy Carter. Rolling back the regulations placed upon the domestic production of oil and gas is another promise McCarthy made. And they also promise to nix most of Biden’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which is Newspeak for more federal spending.
“As we went across this country listening, we heard the same thing, at the kitchen table, the dining room table, and inside the factory,” McCarthy said at a warehouse near Pittsburgh on Friday. What did he hear? “Can we afford it? Can we afford to fill up my tank? Can I afford the food, the milk, the baby formula?”
Other proposals that definitely sound good included increasing “accountability in the election process through voter ID,” and making some changes to the Affordable Care Act.
Not all of the proposals are good, however. Representative Elise Stefanik of New York said on Friday that one of the first actions Republicans will take should they regain the House is hire 200,000 police officers across the country. This sounds amazingly similar to President Bill Clinton’s pledge to “put 100,000 more police officers on the street.”
The problem with a pledge to hire 200,000 more police officers is the same as it was when Democrat Clinton advocated putting half that number “on the street.” It is not the business of Congress to be hiring police officers. That is a state and local function. Once the federal government starts hiring police officers — or even just giving grants to localities to hire more police officers — this leads to more, not less, federal control over police departments.
We do not need to federalize police departments, and having Republicans making the proposal does not make it any more constitutional — or wise — than when a Democrat president was advocating it.
Not surprisingly, those on the Left were critical of the proposals. Of course, there would be Democrat opposition if the Republicans were proposing to honor mothers on Mother’s Day. They might even want it re-named Birthing Persons Day.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) was typical of the Democratic Party response. “Long on slogans and short on details,” Hoyer said. “That’s because the true details of the Republicans’ agenda are too frightening for most American voters.”
Meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi offered the opposite criticism, arguing that the details that McCarthy had put forward were just the “latest evidence of House Republicans’ whole-hearted Commitment to MAGA.” Of course, Democrats have — with the cover of their media allies — had it “both ways” in their hypocritical posturing for the past several years.
For example, Nicole Hemmer, an associate professor of history at Vanderbilt University, wrote in a CNN article, “Seemingly modeled after the ‘Contract with America,’ which [Newt] Gingrich used to nationalize the 1994 midterms, the ‘Commitment to America’ is actually a radically different type of document, one that shows how much the party has changed over the past quarter-century.”
If only that were completely true, and the Republican Party had become a party that had complete fidelity to the U.S. Constitution, we would be far better off. The Democrats have certainly changed for the worse. Their commitment is to the most socialist and immoral elements of American society, with policies designed to drag the country ever further to the left.
Right now, the Democrats hold a narrow edge of 222-212 seats in the U.S. House, and they have used their narrow majority to pass legislation clearly harmful to Americans. It is likely that with, or without, the Commitment to America, the Republicans will win enough seats to control the House of Representatives.
Hopefully, after that happens, the Republicans will actually do some of the things they say they will do, but forget about their unconstitutional plan to reduce local control of America’s police.
