Pledge to America

Commentary by Dick Young

I urge you all to read the draft version of the GOP’s new Pledge to America, a redux of sorts of the Contract to America offered by the GOP in 1994. Some parts of the pledge are good, some are very good, and some things are missing from the document that would have made it great. The best and most important parts of the document are those that outline the GOP’s commitment to states’ rights. The pledge states, “We pledge to honor the Constitution as constructed by its framers and honor the original intent of those precepts that have been consistently ignored – particularly the Tenth Amendment, which grants that all powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

Another passage from the pledge that is most welcome in these times is “For too long, Congress has ignored the proper limits imposed by the Constitution on the federal government. Further, it has too often drafted unclear and muddled laws, leaving to an unelected judiciary the power to interpret what the law means and by what authority the law stands. This lack of respect for the clear Constitutional limits and authorities has allowed Congress to create ineffective and costly programs that add to the massive deficit year after year. We will require each bill moving through Congress to include a clause citing the specific constitutional authority upon which the bill is justified.”

There are many more good ideas in the pledge, and a few not so good. Over the next few days I’ll be detailing some more of them for you here. A preview of some of the better ideas is a commitment to border security, allowing the purchase of health insurance across state lines, repeal of Obamacare, tort reform, and the return to taxpayers of any unspent stimulus funds.

Stay tuned for more from the Pledge to America.

Commentary by Dick Young on Exodus Could Shift White House Tone by Jonathan Weisman and Elizabeth Williamson, The Wall Street Journal
Like rats jumping off a sinking ship, the Obama administration’s top advisors are heading out the door of the White House. Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, Larry Summers, Peter Orszag, Christina Romer, and more are slated to leave soon, or have already left. It is up to the president to decide in what direction he plans on taking his administration from here. Unfortunately for Americans, many of the advisors leaving the administration were seen as the “moderates” of the president’s cabinet, leaving the more radical elements and pure-bred progressives behind. Will the president get the picture after the mid-term elections that he has to tack to the center, or will he damn the torpedoes and charge full speed ahead with his radical progressive agenda?

Commentary by E.J. Smith
If Republicans win one chamber of Congress in November don’t expect the Obama administration to do a 180 and seek common ground. There’s every reason to believe the replacements are here to win reelection in 2012 for Mr. Obama. That doesn’t bode well for job creation, less spending, lower taxes or the economy in general.