Newt Gingrich in Lessons Learned the Hard Way
On Civil Rights:
NEA includes most bizarre & extreme misuse of tax funds
One big disappointment for conservatives was our failure immediately to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts. Certainly any listing of the most bizarre and extreme misuses of taxpayer money would have to include such examples of
NEA artistic grant to a certain HIV-infected “performance artist” whose art consisted of cutting his uninfected fellow performer onstage and dangling the blood over the audience so they could experience the risk of contracting
AIDS, or to two professors standing at the Mexican border and handing out $10 bills to illegal immigrants as they cross over and so on and on. Everyone has his own favorite cases.
There is no question that if the majority of ordinary Americans were to see many of the examples of where NEA money goes, they would favor abolishing the system. Yet in the Senate there has always been strong support for the agency.
Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p. 9
Jul 2, 1998
On Government Reform:
Established systems are inherently hostile to change
A leader engaged in trying to bring about a transformation will find himself living in an environment hostile to his intentions. The system he is trying to reform, after all, is the established one.
The old order, as old orders always do, will be fighting for its life and thus will be engaged in undertaking everything possible to stop any new system from emerging.
If the leaders of an intended transformation relies on the information and judgments made available to him through the various means established in the old order, he will invariably find himself making the wrong decisions and doing the wrong things.
Thus he must keep his vision rightly focused, his will fully engaged, and his self-discipline intact.
Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p. 14
Jul 2, 1998
On Tax Reform:
Opposing taxes is a key conservative value
One of the key values of most conservatives is opposition to tax increases. This is not only right in itself, but helpful as well, because it protects us from all sorts of temptations that the liberals love to place before us.
Conservatives are elected by taxpayers who believe they already pay too many taxes, who want smaller and more efficient government, and who wish to be able to keep more of the money and property they have earned by the sweat of their brows.
They feel betrayed when their own leaders are maneuvered into supporting bigger and ever more intrusive government by agreeing to raise taxes.
If they wanted that, they would have voted for the liberals in the first place.
Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p. 25-26
Jul 2, 1998
On Tax Reform:
Input of public judgement for any major tax reform
The principle of keeping the people on it all the way is my contribution to the great tax reform debate. Some intelligent and persuasive people want a flat income tax. Some other intelligent and persuasive people want to see a sales tax replace any
income tax. So my goal in the great tax reform debate is to make sure that it is carried way beyond the experts and advocates and gets a thorough airing in the minds of the voters. I want them to tell me what they think about this question.
There is a distinction between public judgment and public opinion. The latter is what people tell pollsters off the top of their heads. Public judgment, by contrast, is what develops over time when people pay
attention to something and discuss it with their friends and neighbors. It takes a long time to develop and involves a complex social interaction that is largely unplanned and unprogrammable.
Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p. 27
Jul 2, 1998
On Energy & Oil:
Gas tax sounds OK in DC, but not outside Beltway
When the Bush Administration tried to convince me that a gasoline tax increase would be okay and would barely be noticed, I tested the theory with two phone calls. First I called my mother-in-law in Leetonia, Ohio, and then I called my older daughter in
Greensboro, North Carolina. My mother-in-law is retired, at the time, aged 75. She has a lot of friends who live on limited incomes, and driving happens to be one of their pleasures. She was personally against the idea of a gas tax increase, and she
thought the idea would go down very badly with her friends. Then I called my daughter Kathy. She runs a small business, and her husband is the tennis coach at the university. Her reaction was, to put it mildly, scathing. “What planet do they live on?”
she asked. She thought such a tax increase was the very antithesis of why people had elected the Republicans. After those two conversations, any doubts I may have had simply vanished, and I opposed the tax increase.
Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p. 29-30
Jul 2, 1998
On Government Reform:
Press plays “gotcha”; limit press briefings
It will surprise no one that our press briefings turned out to be an ongoing headache. They got to be little more than a game of “pin the tail on the Speaker.” The members of the press who turn up at these briefings,
are only interested in what they call “gotcha,” that is, they were waiting for us to make a slip, any slip, so they could go back to the newsroom and tell everyone who they had tripped us up that day.
As long as we kept putting ourselves out in the open, we were inviting them to try and score off us.
With the help of our friends and allies, we were finally brought to our senses and closed down the press briefings.
Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p. 37-38
Jul 2, 1998
On Principles & Values:
GOP represents people, but Dems communicate better
Sometimes I think we conservative politicians forget how much the people “out there” are with us. The age of liberalism is over, and millions of Americans are calling on us to figure out how to replace it. We do in fact know how to do that, though people
go on needing to be convinced that there will be no unmanageable hardships for them concealed in our plans. They need to believe that we understand how people feel. This is sometimes an uncomfortable thing for Republicans to make convincing.
Often we tend to talk as if we are a group of managers analyzing some problem in a boardroom. Democrats, on the other hand, whatever their other shortcomings, have a passion for both power and people and instinctively know how to focus in on both.
You might say that they on the whole come on like a party of lawyers making an appeal to a blue-collar jury, while Republicans come on like a party of managers making an appeal to a board of directors. Guess who is more successful at mass communication?
Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p. 40
Jul 2, 1998
On Government Reform:
1995 government shutdown from GOP underestimating Clinton
To underestimate a politician like Clinton is a serious error, and it is an error we committed in 1995-96. In November, we sent him a stopgap spending bill that froze Medicare premiums, and he vetoed it on the grounds that it would hurt seniors.
We sent a new bill without the Medicare provision but with a statutory commitment to a balanced budget. He signed it, ending the first of two government shutdowns. The commitment was later ignored. We passed a bill funding the Department of the
Interior, and he vetoed it, closing the national parks. Likewise, he vetoed bills covering the Departments of Health and Human Services, State, Justice, Labor, and Education, among others. We not only lost the battle over the legislation itself, but the
far more important one for the public’s understanding and approval of what we were trying to do. The second shutdown, with stretched for three weeks over the 1995 Christmas holidays, seared into the public’s mind a deeply negative impression.
Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p. 56
Jul 2, 1998
On Government Reform:
1994 GOP victory destroyed bipartisanship
In 1994, with a relatively modest 230-205 majority, we lulled ourselves into the expectation that the liberals would decide they had to accept the judgment of the people and adjust their programs accordingly. The liberals viewed us as interlopers who
had somehow usurped what belonged to them by right. In their view, they had to attack us and drive us from power by any and all possible means, and in the shortest time possible.
This was a perfectly understandable response for liberals who had
controlled the House for 60 of the last 64 years. Nor did we on our part do anything to mitigate their determination. On the contrary, we spoke and behaved as if there were little ground on which to build any kind of bipartisan cooperation. Sam Rayburn
had famously said that to get along you had to go along. But we were in no mood either to get along or to go along. This principle worked only when people agreed on the basic things, but could not apply in the case of real ideological difference.
Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p. 65-66
Jul 2, 1998
On Jobs:
Unions focus on politics; corporations on doing business
The media have in recent years become fixated on the questions of corporate contributions and what they call “soft” money for financing campaigns, but the truth is, nothing on the right is at all comparable to what the unions do.
First of all, corporations are much less capable of being organized--each of them operates politically on its own--and they are, as profit-seeking institutions, much more inclined to seek accommodation with whoever is in power.
Labor bosses, on the other hand, have a strategic view of politics and spend a great deal of time and effort developing long-term political muscle. By contrast corporate leaders focus mainly on their respective businesses
and spend very little time of effort on politics. When major business leaders do for one reason or another concern themselves with Washington, they usually set up Washington offices or lobbyists and leave matters to them.
Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p. 71-72
Jul 2, 1998
On Principles & Values:
Polls are biased left; GOP wins on the issues
There is another great source of liberal power, not quite the same thing as the press but working hand in hand with it--and that is news media public opinion polls. Polls can be manipulated: through the pools selected for polling and through the
wording of the questions. First of all, if you ask all adults rather than likely voters, your results will be skewed by the responses of people who are not interested in politics and will therefore be more likely simply to parrot
what they have picked up from television. The more likely you are to vote, the more likely you are to pay attention to the arguments. As we’ve lately been discovering, the more you pay attention to the arguments, the more likely you are to vote for us.
Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p. 73-75
Jul 2, 1998
On Principles & Values:
Baby Boomers becoming Republicans while Dems become outdated
Republicans are riding a wave of generational change. Baby boomers and their children are growing more conservative & critical of government failure to deliver services to a standard comparable to those of the private sector. On their side, the Democrats
are being dragged downhill by a combination of their industrial-age institutions, such as the labor unions, government bureaucrats, & trial lawyers, and their ideological base groups, such as radical feminists, homosexual activists, & race politicians.
These all keep the Democratic Party committed to policies & institutions that often violate the public’s sense of decency & that cannot meet their demands for a dollar’s worth of government services for a dollar of taxes.Most of these trends are barel
noted in the media while they are happening, with the result that the view of the world that dominates in Washington and New York and Cambridge Mass, is almost 180 degrees different from the view of the world of everyday practical political leaders.
Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p. 78-79
Jul 2, 1998
On Principles & Values:
Liberals exploit weakness; conservatives offer strength
We must expect liberals to continue to fight us, and where they do so honestly, to respect them for it while continuing to work for our success. If the conservative movement had survived LBJ & Watergate by assuring itself that values were more important
than popularity, we can expect the liberals to do no less. After all, they have something tempting to promise people that we do not, namely, the quick fix & the easy buck. Americans are especially tired of the oppressive politically correct culture that
has grown up around them. But it is well to remember that temptation is something ever lurking, waiting to exploit human weakness, especially in difficult times. What we have to offer people instead is strength and adventure, the experience of a new
level of life-enhancing energy and love of a great country. We have no reason to become distressed--as many members of the House did and as I at some point also did. What we are embarked on is what they call steady work, more than enough for a lifetime.
Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p. 82-83
Jul 2, 1998
On Government Reform:
Elected on anti-corruption platform in 1978
I won my congressional seat for the first time in 1978 and my campaigns focused on discussion of the ethics of elected officials. It was something about which I felt, and still feel, deeply. I accept that there are some people, highly decent themselves,
who think that other problems should take precedence over the problem of corrupt politicians. Such people may have grown tired and resigned themselves or may perhaps be in the grip of some all-embracing ideological passion that for them takes precedence
over any concern about corruption of this kind. I can understand both arguments, but both are wrong. The trustworthiness of our political leaders goes through the heart of our political culture to the very question of how much
allegiance to their country can be demanded of ordinary citizens. Cynicism is corrosive of everything that our Constitution was meant to stand for and hence of our very democratic system.
Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p. 86
Jul 2, 1998
On Technology:
Statistical adjustment of census begets political adjustment
The Constitution requires the census for apportioning House seats and other offices. And population patterns figure in the formulas for distributing federal money. The Founding Fathers intended that the census should be an actual count of people.
The expression in the Constitution is “actual enumeration.” It is almost certainly those in poor neighborhoods who get undercounted. The liberal Democrats have been proposing that we eliminate the present system altogether and substitute for it
something they call “statistical adjustment.” Under this system, the census would count only 90% of the people. Then a statistical adjustment would be made to get to 100%. Republicans are committed to what the Constitution says.
A statistical adjustment would be unconstitutional. In addition, we are convinced that “statistical” adjustment will inevitably lead to “political” adjustment. The incentive to corrupt the census adjustment process would be virtually beyond limit.
Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p.136-38
Jul 2, 1998
On Welfare & Poverty:
Reach majority by better ideas, not by handing out goodies
I dreamed of helping to elect a Republican majority in the House when there had not been one in 24-years, and at the time of which I speak, would not be one for another 16 years.I wanted that GOP majority to be a certain kind of majority, one based on
ideas. I also wanted it to represent a party that would be open and beckoning to a majority of our fellow Americans not because we were handing out goodies to people but because we had better proposals for them and their families’ futures. In short,
I wanted to do nothing less than replace the welfare society with a society full of opportunity. I dreamed of a society that would begin to move the powers of a smothering, overcentralized federal government
back to the states and local governments back into the hands of volunteers much closer to the people and better aware of their real needs and wants.
Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p.16
Jul 2, 1998
On Civil Rights:
ACLU has become eccentric and destructive
The ACLU is an organization with a long and distinguished history of fighting to protect freedom of speech. On the other hand, in recent years, it has carried its mandate to ever more eccentric and often highly destructive lengths.
While is may have been perfectly honorable for Dukakis to belong to the ACLU, it was equally legitimate for Bush to attack him for it. And with what enormous relish he did the job!
Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p.183
Jul 2, 1998
On Health Care:
Ongoing battle against liberals nationalizing healthcare
The Clintons launched a health plan with much fanfare. When the issue was coverage for people who had no health insurance, their advocacy went well, for the government seemed a reasonable answer to the problem. When, however, the issue became one of
Americans turning over their own health care to the government, that was a very different matter. What had seemed a bold gamble in 1993 was by summer, 1994 a complete bust. But liberals never take no for an answer. By 1996 they were back with the
Kennedy-Kassebaum plan. We were able to dilute it and to establish medical savings accounts; nevertheless, they had taken some steps toward more government-run health care. In 1997 the President had the idea of providing care for the poorest children.
We were able to stop the Washington-based bureaucracy proposed and to ensure that any program would be run at the state level. The point is that the liberals one way and another managed to stay focused on expanding government involvement in health care.
Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p.191-192
Jul 2, 1998
On Government Reform:
Government should take management lesson from private sector
Marianne went out to buy something that cost $15 and had to wait an hour and a half in line to do it. What Marianne was doing was renewing her GA driver’s license. Where in the private sector could anyone selling something get their customers to wait in
line for an hour and a half? When she described her wait to me, it occurred to me that we have been conditioned to keep two separate clocks in our heads, a clock with a second hand for private transactions and a clock that moves only in
15-minute increments for government offices.
One of the first things we have to learn is how to apply to the public sector the principles that have made the American economy the wonder of the world. The reason is the bottom line.
The public sector too, ought to be considering its bottom line, measured not in individual or corporate earnings but in terms of meeting goals to ensure a safe, prosperous, healthy, and free future for our children and grandchildren.
Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p.196-197
Jul 2, 1998
On Tax Reform:
EITC is an invitation to fraud
Consider the Earned Income Credit program, one of the biggest scandals in the IRS. This program provides cash to people below a certain income level. The Clinton Administration’s own estimates of waste, fraud, and error indicate that the program has a
21% rate of error. That means that $1 out of every $5 distributed is wrong. There are big problems in a 21% error rate in a government program that gives away money. First it teaches people to commit fraud. A society in which the dishonest gain more
benefit than the honest is one whose very fabric is being frayed. Second, it points up a grotesque double standard in the inner workings of the IRS: when you send them your money, they punish you for anything less than 100% accuracy,
but when they send your money to someone else, they accept their own massive error rate. The IRS sends out an estimated $5 billion annually in wrong payments under the Earned Income Tax program. That is enough money to abolish the entire death tax.
Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p.199
Jul 2, 1998
On Health Care:
Focus on prevention; would save $14B with diabetes
Diabetes can be dramatically diminished as a threat to health by periodic testing & preventive education. The CDC estimates that if [diabetics] learn to monitor their blood sugar, control their diet, and generally take care of themselves,
not only will their lives be immeasurably better, we will save $14 billion a year. The 1997 Medicare reforms include the first steps toward the kind of preventive health program for the nation’s diabetics that will ultimately save both lives and money.
Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p.200-201
Jul 2, 1998
On Government Reform:
Rethink every aspect of bureaucracy
We need to rethink every aspect of our bureaucratized government to make sure it is really necessary. Four tests will help us accomplish this.-
Have we included the enormous potential of new scientific discoveries and their accompanying technologies?
- We must ask of every government effort: is it really necessary for government to be engaged in this?
-
If government ought to be responsible for a particular program or function, is it necessary that the program be centralized in Washington, or would society be better off if it were devolved to state and local government?
-
If it is decided that only the federal government can be in charge of something, are we implementing the program with the best applicable new science and technology?
Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p.202-203
Jul 2, 1998
On Drugs:
Drug-free society focuses on both drug supply & demand
It is essential that we find the means to create a drug-free society for our children. As everyone knows, this has not been an easy matter for us. The Partnership for a Drug-Free America, with its constant efforts at persuasion & education, and Nancy
Reagan’s “Just Say No” campaign had a real effect on drug use between 1984 and 1992. In fact, drug use declined by 2/3 in 8 years. Drug use began to rise again when the educational ad campaigns were dumped by the Clinton Administration. Now we have to
launch a full-scale torrent of antidrug education, in schools, in churches, in youth organizations, in after-school programs, and everywhere else that young people hang out.
We must also raise the cost of buying and using drugs. We must find a number
of economic and social penalties--not just the threat of prison which we know does not work--that will make drug use socially unacceptable. We must seal off the American border by combining [various agencies] into one focused border agency.
Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p.204-205
Jul 2, 1998
On Education:
Support charters; insist on change for failing schools
We should encourage the spread of public charter schools--one of the happiest new developments on the education scene--so parents, educators, & students working together can enjoy the maximum freedom to explore options and innovations until every child
has a genuine opportunity to learn. As a corollary of this, we must identify the worst schools. We should insist on immediate change for bad schools. To start with, there should be no tenure and no binding contracts in the worst 20% of schools.
Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p.208
Jul 2, 1998
On Education:
Private scholarships for students at hopeless schools
If there were families left without an acceptable public school, scholarships should be available for them to find a private one. I am a graduate of a public school, as are my wife and two daughters. All of us remain committed to the idea of public
education. However, if the available public school is one that gives parents legitimate worry for their children’s future, there ought to be alternative to having to stand helplessly watching an incompetent bureaucracy destroy their children’s lives.
Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p.209
Jul 2, 1998
On Social Security:
Show true cost of FICA--double what is shown on paychecks
The social security system was originally based on the principle of a low rate of return per dollar invested because there were so many workers and so few retirees that the system could transfer wealth from the worker to the retiree without anyone
noticing or complaining. It was fine for 1935, when it was devised, but now, we are entering a very different era. The generation known as the baby boomers is so big that if we retain the 1935 system, the boomers will bankrupt the retirement system their
children and grandchildren will turn to in about 30 years. One of the steps we need to take is to amend the law so that an individual’s paycheck reflects the amount of money that is actually being paid into the FICA system.
People will realize that they are paying twice the tax they believed they were paying. For over half the American population the total FICA tax they are paying is bigger than their income tax.
Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p.209-210
Jul 2, 1998
On Social Security:
Convert to IRA-based system
We are now able to develop a personal, modern, social security system. Information technology makes it possible to handle each person’s retirement account separately. For another, the growing understanding that the system we have is in crisis makes
people more willing to discuss new proposals than they used to be. Not that many years ago, few people who understood the true, underlying predicament of the social security system dared to be candid about it in public. Our ability to keep track of
individual accounts combined with the power of compound interest creates the possibility for new workers to have four or five times as much money for their retirement as they would have if we kept the present system. One estimate is that for a 20-year
old today, a system of individual retirement accounts would provide $975,000 in retirement as compared with the current system’s $175,000. Why would anyone want to cheat a young person out of the possibility of one day having an additional $800,000?
Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p.210
Jul 2, 1998
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