Head to Head: GOP’s Pledge to America

‘A great move’

Jonathan Savitske

This past week the Republican Party released the platform that they plan to run on in this midterm election. It’s called Pledge to America, similar to the party’s 1994 Contract with America that allowed the GOP to win the midterm elections in that year. This year’s document pledges to keep the Bush tax cuts indefinitely while cutting spending.

Personally, I love that the GOP has released this document. After four years of the democrats in control of congress and the past two years with the Obama presidency, the GOP is smart to run on a platform of cutting taxes and especially cutting spending.

The spending of this administration is reckless and out of control, and something must be done to stop it.

The pledge to America is aimed at reminding the American people of this. This is a great move by the GOP, something uncharacteristic of the party over the past few years.

‘A ruse for re-election’

Kahlim Barclay

At face value the Pledge to America seems to be a striking and powerful plan to shrink the federal government, cut taxes and knock back the deficit. Under this pledge, legislation restricting federal funding of abortion is to be placed into action, health care reform is to be repealed, the Bush tax cuts become permanent and much more happens. It’s interesting to see so many ideas coming from the Republicans instead of the two-word solution they have provided Americans for the past two years. However, with ideas, plans should follow closely behind. The Republicans have made large promises to Americans and small business owners, especially in the way of tax cuts and ending the recession. If Republicans were slightly serious about lessening the tax burden on individuals in the United States, then they would be pushing for heavy cutbacks in entitlement programs such as Medicare and costly overblown military spending. If Republicans were concerned about the health care crisis, they would have some plan. If Republicans were adamant about battling the recession and reducing unemployment they would be the leaders in a call for a return to American manufacturing and industry.

It seems as if this is just another re-election scheme created by house politicians who simply desire for their party to gain a majority of the seats in November. I find this attempt by the GOP to regain power to be quite petty. I feel that the Republicans just seem to miss this point. This isn’t a pledge to America; it’s a ruse for re-election.

Posted by Jonathan Savitske on Oct 1 2010. Filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.