Tea Party Activists Unveil 'Contract from America'
Democratic Party spokesman says contract amounts to 'slogans not a plan'.
April 15, 2010 -- Tea Party activists are once again descending on Washington, D.C., and this time they have a 10-point "Contract From America" that they want the next Congress to follow.
"We want them to listen to us," Ryan Hecker, the conservative activist who spearheaded the contract, told ABC News. "We want to restructure our relationship with elected officials. This is a bottom-up, grassroots, transparent effort to call for real economic conservative reform."
The Contract From America, which was produced through an online voting process, will be unveiled officially at a 7:30 p.m. ET "Tax Day" rally taking place on Thursday, April 15 at the Washington Monument.
The preamble to the Contract From America states that it is based on the principles of individual liberty, limited government and economic freedom.
It then enumerates 10 agenda items that it wants congressional candidates to follow. It also lists the vote percentages that each agenda item received in the online balloting that generated the planks:
"(1) Protect the Constitution: Require each bill to identify the specific provision of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to do what the bill does (82.03 percent).
"(2) Reject Cap & Trade: Stop costly new regulations that would increase unemployment, raise consumers prices, and weaken the nation's global competitiveness with virtually no impact on global temperatures (72.20 percent).
"(3) Demand a Balanced Budget: Begin the Constitutional amendment process to require a balanced budget with a two-thirds majority needed for any tax hike. (69.69 percent)
"(4) Enact Fundamental Tax Reform: Adopt a simple and fair single-rate tax system by scrapping the internal revenue code and replacing it with one that is no longer than 4,543 words -- the length of the original Constitution. (64.90 percent).
"(5) Restore Fiscal Responsibility & Constitutionally Limited Government in Washington: Create a Blue Ribbon taskforce that engages in a complete audit of federal agencies and programs, assessing their Constitutionality, and identifying duplication, waste, ineffectiveness, and agencies and programs better left for the states or local authorities, or ripe for wholesale reform or elimination due to our efforts to restore limited government consistent with the U.S. Constitution's meaning. (63.37 percent)
