Jack Kingston: “we hear a lot about the Contract With America, often from Republicans, but often from the other side of the aisle as…”

“we hear a lot about the Contract With America, often from Republicans, but often from the other side of the aisle as well and most of it is criticism. I do not see a solid alternative from them at this point now that we are in our third month almost of being in session. The contract actually asks for very specific things and attempts to address neglected parts of our society and our Government which have not been running well in the past 15, 20, or 40 years, however you want to count. Part of the contract was to pass a balanced budget amendment and line-item veto. This has been done. Another part of it was to stop the unfunded mandate practice of the Federal Government to require local cities and county governments to do certain things but not have us pay for it, and they in turn have to turn around and tax their own constituents, which is basically a tax increase that we are giving people through the back door. The other thing we have been trying to and we have had a debate on it last week and this week was to put the criminal justice system, to focus on the criminal and protect the victim and protect society and not treat the criminal like one more special interest group. It seems in the course of the debate that many people have been saying, oh, you've got to do this for the criminal and you have to look out for him and her and their best interests and so forth. We have had that. That is what we have got now. It is time to lock people up who commit crimes.”