# Contract with America A campaign document unveiled by House Republicans on September 27, 1994, six weeks before the midterms, signed on the Capitol steps by more than 300 GOP candidates. Drafted under [[Newt Gingrich]] and [[Dick Armey]] — drawing language from [[Ronald Reagan]]'s 1985 State of the Union and from [[Heritage Foundation]] policy — it listed eight reforms and ten bills the party promised to bring to a House floor vote within the first 100 days if given the majority. It is the party-platform-as-manifesto in its modern American form: a public, signed, numbered commitment device. ## What it promised The Contract split into procedural reforms and ten named bills. The opening-day reforms targeted Congress itself — applying federal workplace laws to Congress, auditing the institution, cutting committee staff, term limits for committee chairs. The ten bills then bundled the era's conservative wishlist: - A balanced-budget amendment and line-item veto (the Fiscal Responsibility Act) - Anti-crime measures (the Taking Back Our Streets Act) - Welfare reform requiring work and capping benefits (the Personal Responsibility Act — the seed of the 1996 [[Welfare Reform Act]]) - Tax cuts including the $500 child credit and capital-gains cuts (the American Dream Restoration Act / Job Creation and Wage Enhancement Act) - Tort reform, a defense/missile-defense build-up, Social Security tax relief, and congressional term limits Conspicuously, it stayed economic and procedural — no abortion, school prayer, or other social-conservative hot buttons — a deliberate choice to keep the broad coalition intact. (On the older synthesis it drew from, see [[Fusionism]].) ## What happened The [[1994 Midterm Elections]] delivered the "Republican Revolution": the GOP gained 54 House seats and took the chamber for the first time in 40 years, making Gingrich Speaker. The House passed almost all of the Contract's items in the first 100 days — but the Senate and [[President Clinton]]'s veto pen blocked much of it. The balanced-budget amendment failed in the Senate by one vote; the line-item veto passed but was struck down by the Supreme Court in 1998; term limits never cleared the House. Welfare reform was the signal substantive win, signed (in altered form) by Clinton in 1996. The confrontational posture led to the 1995–96 government shutdowns, which damaged Gingrich politically. ## Why it matters for the KB The Contract is the bridge document between [[Ronald Reagan]]'s fusionist conservatism and the harder partisan style that followed. It nationalized a midterm election around a single platform — an innovation in message discipline — and modeled the "100 days / numbered promises" format echoed by everything from the Tea Party's later "Contract from America" to the implementation blueprint logic of [[Project 2025]]. Within the manifesto cluster it sits opposite [[Against the Dead Consensus]]: the Contract is fusionism at its electoral high-water mark (market economics, limited government, broad coalition, social issues parked), while the Dead Consensus, a generation later, declares that very settlement dead. Read together they bracket the rise and repudiation of the Reaganite synthesis. [[Manifestos and Founding Documents Hub]]