The Contract from America

So where do we go from here? Recently, I read a summary of nearly every aspect that our leadership is failing at. This morning I sent a copy to every Representative and both Senators from the great state I call home, and I challenge everyone reading this blog to do the same. Our leaders in Washington have forgotten that we the people are the boss and millions were polled and spoke loud and clear that these are the top ten things that need to be changed about our country.

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.

2. Reject Cap & Trade

Stop costly new regulations that would increase unemployment, raise consumer prices, and weaken the nation’s global competitiveness with virtually no impact on global temperatures.

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.

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.

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 US Constitution’s meaning.

6. End Runaway Government Spending

Impose a statutory cap limiting the annual growth in total federal spending to the sum of the inflation rate plus the percentage of population growth.

7. Defund, Repeal, & Replace Government-run Health Care

Defund, repeal and replace the recently passed government-run health care with a system that actually makes health care and insurance more affordable by enabling a competitive, open, and transparent free-market health care and health insurance system that isn’t restricted by state boundaries.

8. Pass an ‘All-of-the-Above” Energy Policy

Authorize the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries and reduce regulatory barriers to all other forms of energy creation, lowering prices and creating competition and jobs.

9. Stop the Pork

Place a moratorium on all earmarks until the budget is balanced, and then require a 2/3 majority to pass any earmark.

10. Stop the Tax Hikes

Permanently repeal all tax hikes, including those to the income, capital gains, and death taxes, currently scheduled to begin in 2011.

No that you've read this, take it all in. Look at where we are as a country and where we need to be. These steps outlined above can help us get there and they represent important steps that must be taken to correct the downward spiral we find ourselves in as a nation. If you've read them, understood them, and believe in them visit the Contract from America website and do as I have done and sign the petition for change. Then, do something that many people in America have never done. Visit the websites of you representation in Washington and send them a link to the Contract and let them know that the ideas outlined in it should be as important to them as they are to you. Washington has forgotten their place in this country, and it is a place of servitude. It's time that we remind them.