Contract with America II

Here's a darned good agenda the House Republican Study Committee has come up with:

1. Make the tax cuts permanent, including the repeal of the marriage-tax penalty and the death tax and pass fundamental tax reform.

2. Pass budget process reform, which includes budgeting for emergencies with a rainy day fund, instituting a sunset commission for federal programs, instituting a constitutional line-item veto, and making the budget resolution carry the force of law.

3. Pass another deficit reduction bill in the form of budget reconciliation, to reign in autopilot spending, which has risen from 25% of all federal spending in 1963 to 54% today, and is expected to reach nearly 60% in 2014.

4. Pass ethics reform that requires transparency and earmark reform that permits Members of Congress to strike earmarks on the House floor.

5. Pass the Marriage Protection Amendment, to ensure that marriage, the union of a woman and a man as husband and wife, is not redefined by activist judges.

6. Pass a Balanced Budget Amendment to put our fiscal house in order.

7. Offset all emergency supplemental spending with spending reductions and offset all new programs with simultaneous, equivalent reductions in, or eliminations of, existing programs.

8. Defend the sanctity of human life, which includes banning all human cloning, passing the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act, promoting ethical adult stem cell research, and preventing federal funding for destructive embryonic stem cell research.

9. Pass protections for religious freedom, such as the Pledge of Allegiance, the Ten Commandments, and religious expression in the public square.

10. Pass legislation that stops the raid on the Social Security Trust Fund and allows Americans to own a Personal Social Security Account.

With the Democrats still dithering on trundling out their long-promised 2006 agenda (three months and counting), what better time for 'Pubbies to pre-empt them yet again with another Contract guaranteed to send the entire Left into paroxysms of rage and electrify the alternately lukewarm and disgruntled GOP base?

Or will the RINOs - and the always domestically pliant Bush White House - snatch defeat from victory's jaws once more?

UPDATE 3/8: Here are more details. AmSpecBlog opines, "The quick synopsis: it's great, but it has the chance of a snowball in hell."

Alas, inertia is a powerful thing. It keeps us from recognizing the need to take action before it's too late. Does that need exist for the GOP in 2006? Same say no, some say yes. I tend toward the "no" side, but why take chances? "Swat a fly with a Buick," I always say. And the Pence budget is an Abrams tank.