Good Idea, Poor Execution

The GOP's Pledge to America is modeled after the Republican's successful 1994 Contract with America. While the concept behind the Pledge is good (e.g., limited government, procedural reforms) it falls short in a couple of ways.

First, unlike the Contract, the Pledge only contains general statements of intent. It does not include specific bills that will be brought up for a vote in the first 100 days of the new congress. Second, the original Contract was signed by all the GOP candidates. The Pledge is unsigned. If you believe in something you should stand up and commit yourself to it.

Furthermore, IMO the Pledge does not go far enough in promising meaningful procedural reforms and legislative transparency. Granted, it includes a provision that will require that every bill have a citation of constitutional authority (which is relatively meaningless, seeing as how the courts have stretched and deformed the Constitution to justify a whole variety of government nonsense). It also promises to give members at least three days to read bills before a vote. That's all well and good, but what about We the People? Shouldn't we get three (or more) days to read pending legislation? And why not post the bills on the Internet, like obama promised?

(UPDATE: The Pledge does in fact call for posting bills on the Internet for at least three days. I relied on a synopsis rather than reading the actual document. My inner democrat must have taken over for a spell.)

It also fails to eliminate earmarks, a rancid source of pork for the folks back home. The only purpose of an earmark is to help your local congresscritter get reelected.
 
And while it includes a nod of the head towards eliminating omnibus bills (the odious type of thing that Harry Reid tried to pull off when he added an amendment on the Dream Act to the recent defense appropriations bill) it doesn't go far enough, or offer a concrete proposal that would prevent waivers. 

In fact, one big failing of the Pledge is that it only includes the House, not the Senate. The [*sarcasm*] 'world's greatest deliberative body' [*end sarcasm*] desperately needs reform, including but not limited to elimination of earmarks, holds, omnibus bills, and other assorted offenses against man and nature.

(For an excellent, albeit quite lengthy, discussion of the 'state of the senate' there's an excellent article in the August New Yorker. For a pretty good synopsis of the article go here.)

So bottom line, if the authors of the Pledge to America were in my class I'd give them a C: a good analysis of the problem, some reasonable suggestions, but a poor implementation plan.

Then I'd go have a beer...