More polls. More bad news for Trump. The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll shows Trump losing to Hillary by 12 points. The Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll is a little better, indicating that Trump is only down by 5 points. (An outlier Quinnipiac poll has just come out which has Clinton up by only 2 points.) The good news is, Trump’s had a really tough couple of weeks, so if the race is still this tight, he could win this thing if he could get his campaign back on track.
One of his biggest problems, I believe, is that he really doesn’t have a comprehensive agenda to run on. Making America great again, and building a wall and making Mexico pay for it, doing really great deals, and claiming that whoever his opponent is is a crook or a liar or both, got him through the Republican primaries, but it’s pretty thin gruel for a general election campaign against the Clinton war machine.
So what does he do? Where does Trump get this comprehensive agenda to run on? Let me take you back 22 years. It’s 1994. Republicans haven’t been in the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives for 40 years. 40 years! Republicans in the House have a new leader, Newt Gingrich. He and his lieutenants have put together a comprehensive agenda for all Republican congressional candidates to run on as a team. Virtually all the Republican candidates have come to Washington to sign the document, a “Contract with America”, on the steps of the United States Capitol building. And they make a promise to America. If you elect a Republican majority to the House (remember, for the first time in 40 years), we’ll have an open debate, and a vote, on the 10 principal items in the Contract, in the first 100 days after the new Congress is sworn in. Things like a balanced budget, tax cuts, welfare reform, tough anti-crime measures, and a strong national defense.
Democrats scoffed at the whole thing. They ridiculed it as nothing but a publicity stunt. They even ran attack ads criticizing those who signed the Contract as signing away their independence to Newt Gingrich and Washington party bosses.
But the American people have been listening. And they responded, overwhelmingly. And elected the first Republican majority in the House in 40 years.
I remember all this pretty well. Because I was one of those Republican candidates back then, running to change America. I was about 40 years old at the time, so the Democrats had controlled Congress pretty much my whole life. As a candidate back then, I can attest to how important having an overall agenda was on the campaign trail. I had written out an outline of the Contract with America on an index card, and took it with me everywhere I went on the campaign trail that fall (the Contract was signed in September and the election was in November.) It was the basis for my stump speech for two months. I framed the thing after I won the election, and it sits on my desk in my Washington office to this day.
Okay, so what’s this got to do with Donald Trump’s need for a comprehensive agenda to run on? Well, for months now (since Paul Ryan became Speaker), Republicans in the House have been working on, discussing, debating, and ultimately coming up with a comprehensive plan to guide America in a better direction. Somewhat along the lines of the Contract with America, it tells Americans upfront the direction Republicans would like to take the country. The agenda has a name – “A Better Way: Our Vision for a Confident America.”
There are 247 Republicans and 188 Democrats in the House of Representatives. Speaker Ryan tasked the 21 committee chairmen in the House with pulling together “A Better Way” and as Chairman of the House Small Business Committee, I was very much involved in the effort, particularly in “The Economy” section.
Okay, I’m going to get wonkish for a moment. Here are the six sections of the agenda:
1) To improve the economy, we need to regulate smarter, produce more of our own energy, end bailouts, promote financial independence, keep government interference from strangling internet growth, and crack down on lawsuit abuse.
2) To keep Americans safe and free, we need to defeat radical Islamic terror at home and abroad, secure our borders, stop cyberattacks, take the fight to the enemy, win the battle of ideas, build a 21st century military, strengthen law enforcement tools, care for our veterans, and restore American influence around the globe.
3) To defend and uphold the Constitution, we need to stop executive overreach, rein in unelected regulators, impose new limits on out-of-control spending, and write legislation in plain language so it’s clear and understandable.
4) To reform taxes, we need to make the tax code simpler, fairer, and flatter so that most Americans can do their taxes on a postcard; eliminate the alternative minimum tax; reform the complex savings provisions of the code so more Americans can save; repeal the death tax; and restructure the IRS to put taxpayers first.
5) To improve healthcare in America, we need to give people more control and more choices, not more Washington mandates; health insurance should be portable; health savings accounts should be expanded, not discouraged; health insurance should be allowed to be sold across state lines to increase competition and reduce prices; small businesses should be allowed to band together so they can negotiate lower prices for their employees; pre-existing conditions should be covered; young people up to 26 should be permitted to stay on their parents’ plans; and Medicare’s fiscal health must be improved to preserve it for this generation of seniors and future generations.
6) To lift many Americans out of poverty, we need to prepare people who are receiving welfare benefits for work, and expect them to do so; make sure poor kids have more opportunities to get an education that will prepare them for the workforce; and hold states accountable for helping welfare recipients find jobs and stay employed.
If you’d like to review the plan in more detail, click here.
So there you have it. A well thought-out agenda for our nominee Donald Trump to, adopt all or part, as his own. He of course should still include a healthy dose of criticism of Hillary Clinton’s failures in his campaign rhetoric, but for a positive agenda, you can’t beat “A Better Way.”
Hope someone’s listening in Trump Tower.
