Speaker Slimmed Down, Psyched Up
After a public flogging that would have delighted the Marquis de Sade and some private introspection that might please a clergyman, House Speaker Newt Gingrich is attempting a political second coming. The attempted return is propelled by the ideas and optimism that created the first Republican Congress in 40 years and back-to-back GOP majorities for the first time in 68 years.
In an interview, Gingrich tells me he’s lost 14 pounds and that he intends to drop 25 more as part of a new regimen of discipline.
He concedes there have been dark moments, perhaps none darker than the death of his father over the Christmas season and the bargaining with the House Ethics Committee over how to plead and how much to pay in fines for an ethics violation. But even in such moments, Gingrich is able to see himself as a leader with unique responsibilities.
“I pray before every speech,” Gingrich tells me. “Publicly, I’m not a very religious person, but I have a deeply profound sense of being human, a sinner, not a saint. If I did not have a profound sense that this is about the survival of freedom and faith on the planet, and that it mattered, and if I wasn’t prepared to subordinate myself to the best understanding of what God wants to have happen, I couldn’t do this. It’s much too hard.”
Since the election, Gingrich has been criticized by some conservatives and those who style themselves as conservatives as being on permanent retreat. Gingrich tells me he was making plans and that he is now ready to deliver.
Gingrich promises the following: tax cuts so substantial that “our goal over a generation should be to lower the tax burden so that no one in America pays more than 25 percent in total taxes at all three levels - state, local and federal combined”; either a flat tax (proposed by Majority Leader Dick Armey) or a sales tax (proposed by House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Archer), but whichever emerges from the debate, a new revenue collection system that will eliminate an IRS code that runs 11,000 pages, and substantially reduce the size and cost of the IRS.
On April 15, Gingrich says, two tax bills will come up. One would make it a criminal offense for an IRS agent to browse through your personal and confidential tax files without a reason. The other is a constitutional amendment requiring a two-thirds vote by Congress for tax increases. At least seven states have such a requirement in their state constitution, says Gingrich, tying the hands of politicians and forcing them to live within a budget, like real people.
Not only does Gingrich want to see the deficit eliminated by 2002, he also has a plan for wiping out the national debt. He cites Hong Kong’s “rainy day fund” of $19 billion. Here’s how he sees it working in the United States: “Once the budget is balanced in 2002, the government cannot grow at a rate faster than 1 percent less than revenues, and in about 20 years, you pay off the national debt. Then, we ought to spend three years building up the rainy day fund. The equivalent for America would be $750 billion.
“If you make the shift from our total current interest payment of $355 billion to earning interest on a $750 billion rainy day fund, you can give the American people a $400 billion a year tax cut. That’s about $1,500 per person, or $6,000 for a family of four.”
Optimism is contagious and Gingrich hopes others will catch it. He sees the failure of unionized, bureaucratized institutions, citing one newspaper report that only 6 percent of Philadelphia high school students can read, and adds, “We are winning. We are a world movement (he notes that a Mongolian leader was inspired by his ‘Contract With America,’ printing 350,000 of his own version and winning the election), it’s about ideas, the ideas are bounded by freedom and faith.” He says that while he’s been quiet during the planning phase, the waiting is over and the action (let’s not call it a revolution this time) is about to resume.
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