RIGHT OF CENTER: TIMID VOICES BACK GOP'S AGENDA

House Republicans are marching on in their quest to fulfill their Contract With America. This week the GOP inveighed against welfare, drafting reform bills that will be up for a vote within two weeks. The House also passed a Republican bill that would make it easier for companies to defend themselves against lawsuits alleging securities fraud.

The graphic shows the legislative status of chief contract items as compiled by The Associated Press.

The more House Republicans accomplish, though, the more acute the din of criticism rising from the left, particularly liberals in the press. To conservatives striving for nothing short of a revolution, such criticism is expected -- even welcomed. What is frustrating, though, is the often disjointed and incoherent defense from the party in power.

It isn't enough to dismantle social programs and big government. The collectivists have held sway for too long. Too many Americans have come to think they're entitled to the ubiquitous handouts funded by distributionist schemes that are busting the national budget and breaking the backs of hard-working taxpayers.

Conservatives must usher any effort to cut the federal government with a clear, compelling attestation of the underlying morality of their wanting to do so. And it isn't enough simply to argue that our nation's fiscal survival depends on a balanced budget, thus government must be cut. Yes, we must balance the budget. But the U.S. economy is sufficiently robust to generate $1.4 trillion. Even if the budget is balanced, $1.4 trillion is too much money to take from productive Americans and hand over to ineffective programs to comfort the unproductive.

Fiscal concerns aside, there are moral reasons for wanting to starve the gluttonous state. In his book "The Recovery of Freedom," Paul Johnson writes of wealth distribution's legitimation of envy, the most dangerous of all popular emotions. "The monster state is a source of many evils, but it is, above all, an engine of envy."

So where is the united Republican front eschewing the rightness of welfare programs that not only are costly, but foment envy and smite the very persons that are supposed to be helped?

The voices that are being heard, such as Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, are either too few or timid to get to voters unfiltered by a biased Washington press corps. Gingrich needn't be the only conservative with a reasoned, articulate defense of a second American revolution. For fodder against the left, Republicans ought to read the writings of our nation's founders as they attempted to throw off the oppressive chains of government in that earlier revolution.

They wrote that all men are born with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and "that whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it." What is the state of individual liberty in America today? Thomas Jefferson said: "That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves." I can't help but think he'd side with the Republicans in their modest efforts to strip away government.

Republicans must turn a deaf ear to the howling from the status quo press, ignore the countless public opinion polls, and press on. To quote another great American, Abraham Lincoln, "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."

~Jay Eastlick is the news editor of the Southeast Missourian.

CONTRACT UPDATE

Fiscal Controls

A bill giving the president power to veto individual spending items in a bill has passed the House, and the Senate opened debate. Senate approval is likely.

Balanced Budget Amendment

A Constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget by 2002 passed the House, but was defeated in the Senate.

Unfunded Mandates

Different versions of a bill to discourage Congress from imposing requirements on states and cities without providing funds to pay for them passed the House and Senate and await reconciliation.

Crime

Funds for prison construction, relaxed standards for admission of evidence in trials, block grants instead of earmarked funds to hire police, limit death-row inmates' abilities to appeal cases to federal court have passed the House. Senate prospects are uncertain.

Family Support

Tax breaks for adoptions and elder care, child-support enforcement, and stronger child pornography laws are awaiting committee consideration.

Middle Class

A $500 per child tax credit, a reduced marriage tax penalty, and expanded IRA savings accounts were unveiled this week by the House.

Defense and Foreign Policy

A plan to cut spending on peacekeeping operations, and restrict putting U.S. forces under United Nations command passed the House, although a provision to restore funding for space-based missile defense system was defeated.

Senior Citizens

House hearings have been held on a plan to raise the Social Security earnings limit and repeal the 1993 tax increase.

Jobs and Business

A plan to require federal agencies to assess the risk and cost of new regulations has passed the House, as has a six-month moratorium on new regulations. The House also has completed hearings on a capital gains tax cut.

Term Limits

A Constitutional amendment to limit how long someone can serve in House or Senate is awaiting House debate next week. The measure passed a Senate committee.