CONTRACT FINISHED `AHEAD OF TIME AND UNDER BUDGET'

The much-publicized Republican Contract with America was an unprecedented compact with American voters. After 40 years in the minority wilderness in the House of Representatives, the Republicans promised, last Sept. 27, that if voters gave them a House majority, the new leadership would bring to a vote 10 items during the first 100 days of the new Congress. Moreover, said GOP candidates, keep the list, and if we don't perform, then throw us out. On Nov. 8, in a historic electoral tidal wave, voters swept in a GOP majority in both the House and Senate.

This past week, the majority House Republicans completed their contract, having not only brought to a vote -- but actually passed and sent to the Senate -- nine of the 10 contract items. Time elapsed since the 104th Congress convened on Jan. 4: 92 days. Contract pledged, contract completed, as Majority Leader Dick Armey phrased it, "ahead of time and under budget."

This is a remarkable accomplishment of unmistakably historic proportions. Moreover, its successful completion has begun a much-needed restoration of Americans' trust in their government, a trust that has been broken too often in recent years by leaders of both parties.

Not even the failure to pass a term limits constitutional amendment by the required two-thirds supermajority can dim its luster. (For the record, 85 percent of congressional Republicans supported term limits, while a majority of Democrats opposed this reform, which enjoys lopsided support from more than 70 percent of Americans and wins wherever it appears on local and state ballots. Speaker Newt Gingrich has pledged to make a term limits vote the first item of congressional business when the next Congress convenes in January 1997.)

That single missed opportunity aside, the contract itself was nothing more than a list of mostly common-sense reforms most Americans have long believed to be overdue. To review, the list included:

-- The balanced budget amendment and the line-item veto, the former blocked in the Senate by the Clinton White House and the latter handed to this president by an opposition Congress.

-- Tough new criminal measure to stop violent criminals.

-- Welfare reform, with teeth, to begin dismantling the failed liberal welfare state.

-- Protection for our children by giving parents more control over their children's education, enforcing child support payments and cracking down on child pornography.

-- Tax cuts for families with children: a $500-per-child tax credit.

-- Guaranteeing a strong national defense by restoring essential national security funding.

-- Repeal of the Clinton administration's punishing tax increase on senior citizens who choose to work.

-- A rollback of government regulations, reaffirming property rights and allowing small businesses some much-needed breathing room to invest, grow and create more jobs.

-- And finally, common-sense legal reform to halt excessive legal claims, frivolous lawsuits and overzealous lawyers.

Fulfillment of the GOP contract has, in the words of Missouri Sen. John Ashcroft, already begun to "change the culture of spending in Washington." Much more action on that front will be needed over the next decade. But timely completion of the contract is certainly a heartening beginning.