It’s not quite the Contract with America, but House Speaker John Boehner is preparing to unveil a five-point agenda for the fall elections that includes reforming the tax code and reducing regulations.
The plan is intended to quell conservative criticism that Republicans have not laid out a governing agenda without undermining individual candidates who are trying to run on local issues.
A preview of the five points released Friday showed it sticks pretty closely to familiar GOP issues: Reducing the federal debt, reforming the tax code, addressing the legal system and reducing regulations. The fifth point, improving education, is more of a change.
The agenda follows the template set by the GOP’s “all of the above” approach to energy reform, which has been easy for Republicans of all stripes to embrace.
“This is what members are comfortable with,” a Republican operative said.
Boehner will elaborate on the ideas in a Sept. 18 speech at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. Sources familiar with Boehner’s thinking said the speech is intended partly to answer critics who have argued that congressional Republicans have not given voters specific reasons to give the party a greater hold on the House and control of the Senate.
In recent months, influential conservative thinkers have sparred over whether Republicans should offer a detailed plan similar to 1994’s Contract with America or 2010’s Pledge to America.
Some have said that it’s not enough for Republicans to coast on President Obama‘s poor approval ratings, while Republican operatives have countered that the playing field of competitive elections this fall is too narrow and each race should be fought on its own terms.
In the majority since 2011, House Republicans have passed hundreds of bills that have languished in the Democratic-run Senate. House Republicans have argued that at least dozens of those bills would have boosted jobs and economic growth.
Republicans say the goal of Boehner’s agenda is to show how those bills would work together to improve the economy, so they aren’t seen as simply a bunch of bills passed independently of each other.
