LaRouche on Newt Gingrich
Lyndon LaRouche made the following statement in an interview with EIR Talks on March 8, 1995. He was responding to a question about the significance of the failure of the Balanced Budget Amendment to pass in the U.S. Senate.
Lyndon LaRouche: Well, look at the entire package. Don't look at the Balanced Budget Amendment as such. That probably was doomed anyway, if not in the Congress, in trying to get it through the states.
Look at the entire "Contract with America" package. They're now pushing on toward that famous date, the One Hundred Days. It's not far distant, just a few weeks away. And let's take a look at that whole "Contract with America," as it was euphemistically called. The President would probably call it "Contract On America."
What have they passed? What have they gotten through? Virtually nothing. It seems to be a hot-air balloon.
So I would think that you have to see what has happened and that the surprising part about that, is the fact that the Republicans as such mobilized everything they had, to get that thing through the Senate. And they came very close, but they couldn't get that last inch. When they went for the last inch, as the cases of Sens. Dorgan and Conrad of North Dakota illustrate the point with their press conferences, and the statement by Dorgan the day following the press conference on various news media, they had to shoot their wad. And the shooting of their wad, was a shot in the foot for them.
They had to come out and say to the other Senators, "We won't say it publicly, but yes, we intend to loot Social Security, and that's what we'll have to do if this budget amendment passes."
So what that shows is that this thing was doomed anyway.
Now, look around the country, and see what's going on. What you see is even in the polls, that the polls show that a certain percentage of the public will say, when interviewed, "Yeah, we're for a Balanced Budget Amendment," or "We're for a balanced budget," which somebody will take to mean an amendment. Or "The Congress should do something about balancing the budget." A very common opinion. But then if you turn around and ask the same people: "Well, how about if it's necessary to cut your Social Security, should we balance the budget?" "No." So only a very small percentile of the total U.S. population is willing to balance the budget if it means cutting Social Security, or a great number of other things.
Now we see the fight that's shaping up on food stamps, on welfare. You see a bunch of Governors who have been told that if they'll shut their mouths and support the "Contract On America," that they will get a sum of money to do with as they choose, from the federal government.
Now, these guys have a problem, because with the kind of austerity legislation coming out of the federal side, this would mean that state and local authorities would have to raise taxes on the state and local side, in order to make up for some of the things which the federal government is cutting.
So the federal government says, "We'll give you a sum of money, use it as you choose," in order to fend off the threat to you, that you're going to be the Governor or the State Legislature that raises taxes. So they had this rotten deal with some of these Governors under the table. It's very much like the deal they tried to make in the Senate. They said, "Look, we will tell you yes, this does mean we have to cut Social Security. But we're not going to say it publicly. We want your vote anyway." And that's the same kind of thing they did with the Governors.
The entire package doesn't really work. In no democratic form of government can "Contract with America" be honestly voted up. Only under a police state or something like a police state, could that package be implemented, because once the people see what the package means, in terms of practice, 80 percent of the American people are going to say, "Get those bums out of there!" And what we're seeing, with the failure of the "Contract On America" operation, of Gingrich, Gramm, and so forth, is two things. First of all, you see in Gramm a savagely vicious greedy person with, as he himself says, no heart. You cannot have a democratic government and a Gramm, Gramm's policies; impossible.
On the other side, you see that the thing is not working anyway, because the smell of what this thing means is getting out to the constituencies, and I guarantee you that before long, 80 percent of the American people will perceive clearly and with great anger, that what this "Contract with America" is, is a contract against them and their families personally, and they're not going to like it. And you're seeing a reflection of that in the failure of the "Contract" package thus far.
