Just Undoing Ills Won’t Be Enough

“Conservative” is the wrong term for the new Republican team in Congress. They’re not out to conserve, they’re out to change - radically.

Now that this unexpected political revolution is under way - and after 40 years of Democratic Party dominance, it is a revolution - reasonable minds must respect the judgment of the voters and look for good in the country’s new course.

There is good to be found. There also are reasons for deep concern. But the same system that brought a peaceful revolt also can be trusted, with its checks, balances and accountability, to round off the sharp edges of extremism.

Republicans George Nethercutt and Helen Chenoweth will give the Inland Northwest a voice in the new majority, as it chops the role and size of federal government. They know the voters are watching.

And voters must be pleased. The new Congress’ first step was one of self-improvement. Members cut bulky staff and committee structure, improved access to information, ended the abuse of proxy voting, set terms on the fiefdoms of committee chairpersons and made it harder to raise taxes.

But the most profound steps come next, in the 100-day rush to implement the Republicans’ Contract with America.

The contract has a blind spot: it can’t really erase the federal deficit or significantly ease tax burdens without cutting Social Security. Speaker Newt Gingrich says he’ll tackle other spending cuts first, putting Social Security off for four years or so.

Meanwhile, the contract is about more than budgeting. It seeks a cultural change, and change is needed: Thirty percent of children are born out of wedlock. Predatory gangs infest cities. Prisons are crammed. Corporations export jobs, seeking cheap labor, few regulations, low taxes.

The contract takes aim at some things that contribute to our culture’s woes: litigiousness; the regulatory oppression of business and of state and local government; a tax code hostile to small business and home-based entrepreneurs; social programs that support single parents and alcoholics while deterring marriage and employment.

But the gulf between ideas and implementation yawns wider than the Grand Canyon. At the canyon’s edge teeters a mass of vulnerable humanity. It is simplistic, in a cruel industrial economy with a mediocre educational system, simply to invite the luckless to get a job.

After revolutions destroy, they have to build. In doing so, the new Congress will make mistakes. But so did the old Congress, whose mistakes gave the public reason for its revolt.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Webster / For the editorial board