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Pledge to America
In setting the tone for the November midterm elections, House Republicans announced an expansive agenda called "A Pledge to America." It proposes to shrink the size of government and reform Congress, offering a conservative plan of action they will pursue if they win a majority. The "Pledge to America" is similar to the strategy put forth by Newt Gingrich and the Republicans, the "Contract with America," that helped them gain a Congressional majority from the Democrats in 1994 during the Clinton administration.
In a series of speeches at a hardware store in Sterling, Va., the GOP members of Congress attacked key elements of President Obama's domestic agenda and promised, among other things, to work for the repeal of his landmark health-care legislation and the permanent extension of the controversial "Bush Tax Cuts" passed by a Republican Congress during the George W. Bush administration. They also called for the honoring of "traditional marriage" and an end to "federal funding for abortion."
The agenda is designed to give voters a broad outline of what proposals House Republicans will push if they regain the majority and to give their candidates specifics to cite on the campaign trail. It also aims to answer a favorite attack line of Democrats: that Republicans have no new ideas and are merely the "party of no."
House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) described the pledge broadly as an effort to restore "fiscal sanity" to Washington. He said Republicans are promising to put the nation on a path to a balanced budget and to paying down the national debt. Critics counter that just one of the proposals, the extension of the Bush tax cuts, would add almost $4T to the deficit over 10 years, making a balanced budget without Draconian spending cuts impossible.
Under their plan, Republicans would slash $100 billion in government spending on nonmilitary agencies and replace Obama's landmark health-care legislation with a scaled-back version. Small businesses would be able to deduct up to 20 percent of their annual income from taxes, and the Pentagon would receive increased funding to more quickly implement a ballistic missile defense system.
The plan would also eliminate any unspent money from last year's $814 billion stimulus package and from legislation that authorized hundreds of billions of dollars to prop up failing Wall Street firms.
There are no specifics about how the spending cuts would be carried out, and the agenda does not outline how Republicans would deal with Social Security and other expensive federal entitlement programs, saying only that lawmakers "will make the decisions that are necessary" to cut costs.
Learning Activity
The "Pledge to America" is a campaign strategy the Republicans are currently using and is similar to the "Contract with America" they used successfully to gain a Congressional majority in the 1994 midterm elections. Students can learn more about the Pledge to America and how it affected the outcome of the midterm election and how it may be implemented in the new 112th Congress that will be sworn in on January 3, 2011.
Assign students to write a report of at least 150 words or a presentation of at least seven slides (see links to ProQuest models below) that cites at least three resources. Students should use the pathfinder listed below to save time and ensure relevance of results. They should also address the following essential questions for critical thinking (you can create or substitute others):
- What are the major priorities of the "Pledge to America"?
- How effective was the Pledge in getting more Republicans to be elected?
- How is the Pledge similar to the "Contract with America" used during the 1994 campaign?
- What priorities in the Pledge do you support and why?
- What priorities of the Pledge don't you support and why?
Learning Activity
Select Advanced Search option > Type "Pledge to America" in the first box > Enter "Pledge" in the second box > Select Document Title option > Type "America" in the third box and the Document Title option
Your students can use our custom ProQuest models for written and PowerPoint-style reports.
Teachers may be interested in a ProQuest flexible rubrics model for evaluating inquiry-based learning activities.
Educators may also wish to employ the Quizinator Web tool (free, but registration required) for creating a variety of printed resources, including short assessments.
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