Word: contract
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...House of Representatives approved by a vote of 234 to 199 the G.O.P.'s basic "Contract with America" plan to overhaul welfare. Passage came after one of the most raucous and vituperative debates of the new Congress, during which angry Democrats accused Republicans of rushing to passage a cruel and immoral plan, and infuriated Republicans blasted Democrats for trying to preserve a failed and unconscionable system. The bill, which now goes to the Senate, would convert current welfare entitlement programs into capped block grants to the states...
...hunger to know what life would be like if the Republican revolution succeeds, here is a tangible example: small children would eat more Raisin Bran and less Cheerios, at least in Michigan. Of course, the libertarian Republicans would not insist. Their "Contract with America" would simply hand the choice to the states, where, they say, it belongs. But to the maker of Cheerios, the provision that passed the House last week is nothing less than a cereal killer...
FRANK LUNTZ, THE BABY-FACED POLLSTER who helped Newt Gingrich draft the "Contract with America" last year, looked a little frazzled as he rushed around the Capitol last Thursday night. And no wonder: all week normally loyal Republicans in both the Senate and the House had balked at key Contract with America provisions ranging from term limits for lawmakers to cuts in welfare for unwed mothers. More than 100 House Republicans declared independence from a once sacred $500-per-child tax credit, claiming the give-away was too generous to upper-income taxpayers. Stories detailing Republican "disarray" were beginning...
Live by the polls, die by the polls. The same surveys Luntz and Gingrich employed to stitch the contract together last summer are now compelling some Republicans to think about unraveling it. Nearly five months after the midterm election, Americans are worried more about reducing the deficit than reducing taxes, jeopardizing what Gingrich calls the "crowning jewels" in the contract. The popularity of spending cuts in general remains high, but the prospect of cutting school lunches and welfare benefits for indigent parents is distinctly less so--a harbinger of trouble when deeper and more specific cuts in middle-class programs...
Nowhere is the public's doubt about the contract so visible as on tax cuts. The contract includes $188 billion in new reductions, deductions and credits for corporations, small businesses and families. But in a TIME/CNN survey of 800 adults last week, 62% said reducing the federal budget deficit was "more important" than cutting taxes--a larger number than recorded in 1992. That sentiment helped explain why 102 House Republicans--including 10 of 20 committee chairmen and 35 of 73 freshmen-asked the leadership to revise the contract's proposed $500 per child tax credit and limit it to taxpayers...