_Market Ticker

by Karl Denninger 

There, I said it.

Many years ago, when a political contribution of the maximum legal size meant much more to me than it does now, I donated to Newt's "army" in recognition of his effort toward Contract With America.

What I got was "The Screwing of America."

Let's go down the list shall we?

We did not get:

• All laws applying to the rest of the nation applying to Congress (insider trading anyone?)
  
  
• An independent and complete audit for fraud, waste and abuse, nor was anything done about it.
  
  
• Commitee staff was not cut.
  
  
• Tax increases did not require a three-fifths majority.
  
  
• There was no balanced budget, which was promised.
  
  
• The Education Department was not abolished, as promised -- it in fact doubled in size.
  
  
• There was no end to baseline budgeting.
  
  
• There was a broad-based tax reduction.
  
  
• There was some reform of welfare -- but in the succeeding years it simply shifted elsewhere in the entitlement "stack."

Now Newt will undoubtedly claim that all he promised was to bring the bills to the floor.  That he accomplished.  But a leader who promises broad-based reforms must actually get them enacted in order to claim success, not simply vote upon them.

On any objective measurement you care to use, Newt failed.

Further, and far more importantly, in 1994 both houses of Congress were placed in the hands of Republicans on the back of these promises for the first time since 1953.  He thus had a bicameral legislature that was entirely his with which to press the agenda.

What sadly followed the 1994 "sweep" was an orgy of government debt as soon as a Republican President was elected to office in 2000 and an unprecedented expansion of government reach that in many ways exceeded the excesses of FDR's "New Deal" and Johnson's "Great Society."  Indeed, it is entirely fair to state that the only reason it didn't happen earlier was that Bill Clinton was President and was able to stonewall some of the attempted expansions!

Any sort of claim that Gingrich was in some way an architect of smaller government or even brought a halt to the expansion of government spending is a bald lie.  Yet Newt continues to spread this factual fallacy wherever he goes, arguing that he's a "conservative."  He's lying - not only did the dollar amount of government spending not decrease neither did the slope.

Read this story at market-ticker.org ...

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WorldNetDaily.com

Aaron Klein

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich was one of the sponsors of the Fairness in Broadcasting Act of 1987, which would have turned the controversial so-called Fairness Doctrine into law.

Gingrich, however, currently states on his official campaign website he opposes the doctrine.

A section of Newt.org entitled "Answering the attacks," states: "Newt does not support the Fairness Doctrine, and he has been vocally critical of the left's efforts to reinstate the doctrine over the past decade, including supporting Mike Pence's bill that prohibited government censorship in radio in 2007."

In 1987, Gingrich was singing a different tune.

At the time, a national debate was raging about whether to abolish the Doctrine.

In June 1987, Gingrich was one of 71 co-sponsors of the Fairness in Broadcasting Act of 1987, which would have codified the Fairness Doctrine in federal law, as Pajamas Media noted last April, before Gingrich joined the 2012 presidential race.

President Reagan vetoed the congressional bill.

In August 1987, the FCC officially eliminated the Fairness Doctrine.

Read this story at wnd.com ...