My Opinion
Newt's Contract trims wasteful politics of compassion

Ketchup. That is what President Clinton and the Democrats in Congress are rallying behind. The Democrats have still not gotten the message. In the last elections the American people spoke loud and clear, but the Democrats still refuse to listen.

It isn't hard to see why the Democrats are in denial, after all, they were in control of Congress for more than 40 years. Playing the minority party is something new for the Democrats, and is especially hard since they still want to play the politics of compassion. Now, they can only watch from the sidelines as the Republicans break records and accomplish more reform in seven days than the Democrats did in seven years.

A NEWTron bomb has hit Washington, D.C. and its effects will last for many years if the pace from the last 50 days is kept up by Republicans. For the first time, Congress must obey the same regulatory laws that everyone else does. New rules have been introduced that take away much of the excess power of committee chairmen. Millions of dollars have been cut from the congressional budgets and staffs.

Newt and company also have introduced the line item veto. This would allow good legislation to be approved minus the pork that is usually attached to bills. The line item veto would not solve our entire deficit problem, but would undoubtedly save billions in stopping the pet projects of powerful congressmen.

Newt has also halted unfunded mandates -- laws that are enacted by the federal government but are carried out and financed by the states. Now the federal government must find the funds for the regulations that it imposes on others. State governments no longer have to pick up the bill for Washington's red tape.

Newt Gingrich has also gone forward with many other promises from the Contract with America, like the tax credit for children and the repeal of the marriage tax. Newt and company have also put forward legislation to improve child-support enforcement, tax incentives for adoption, and tax incentives for those who care for a disabled family member at home. Legal reform will make the loser pay for court costs and will cut an estimated 30,000 unnecessary cases.

Term limits will be the final nail in the coffin of what used to be termed the "Imperial Congress." More prisons and less midnight basketball, as well as many other crime control initiatives are on the table. Also, the welfare system will be vastly different under the Newtonian legislation and will hopefully stop the cycle of poverty.

The list of reforms from the Contract with America goes on and on, but most of the changes deal with rolling back the red tape and cutting the Washington bureaucracy by giving power back to the states. Innovations are likely to come from the states as they take on more responsibility and find new ways of cutting costs. The Contract with America is about cutting costs, not compassion.

This brings me back to ketchup. After a week of austere budget cutting ($20 billion worth), the Republicans decided that the school lunch program would be better off and more cost effective if the states could run their own programs. This would cut the Washington bureaucracy that runs the federal school lunch program as well as get rid of a lot of regulatory nonsense. Hundreds of nutrition programs could be consolidated and operated at a fraction of the cost under Republican proposals. The Democrats, seeing this as a political blunder, cried out that the Republicans were going to "starve children."

The truth is that the Democrats are killing us with their politics of compassion. Nothing seems to be too small to be regulated for the benefit of society. For years there was a group of people who were employed by the federal government to measure and regulate the viscosity of ketchup. Who will die from runny ketchup? Now the Democrats are using ketchup as a symbol of the cold-hearted Republicans cutting the school lunch program.

Every problem for the Democrats has a big-government, big-budget answer.

Instead of using taxpayers' money as a scalpel, the Democrats over the last 40 years have used it like a bulldozer, spending way too much with too few results. Democrats must recognize that regulation hurts as well as it helps society, and in many instances it can hurt much more than it helps. If we spend hundreds of millions in the form of new meat inspection regulations and save 10 people a year (who should have cooked the meat anyway), is this a good way to spend resources that could be spent instead on important medical research?

The Democratic Party will not likely come to any consensus until another disaster in 1996. The party must recognize the American people's dislike of government interference in their lives. Most importantly, Democrats must recognize that the most compassionate government of all is the smallest one.