Republicans on Capitol Hill are developing an election-year alternative to the Obama administration's agenda. But a Tea Party activist in Texas says the politicians in Washington - including the out-of-power Republicans - don't have the "credibility" to offer a contract.

His solution? Use the Internet, develop a "Contract from America," and make the politicians come to him.

"You are going to be held accountable by us," said conservative activist Ryan Hecker, offering a preview of what Tea Party activists are going to tell congressional candidates later this year. "We have a plan - a proactive reform plan - for you to follow and not the other way around."

Technically, Hecker doesn't have a reform plan yet. He does, however, have one in the works.

He says he came up with the contract idea shortly after Barack Obama was elected president in November 2008. Hecker, a 29-year old lawyer from Houston, spent the 2008 GOP primaries working as an opposition researcher for former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign.

To get his idea off the ground, he launched a website, "ContractFromAmerica.com," which encourages activists to offer possible planks for the contract.

From the original 1,000 ideas which were submitted, Hecker whittled it down to about 50 based on popularity. He is currently in the process of narrowing it to 20 ideas. He is being aided in this process by former House Republican Leader Dick Armey, whose conservative group, FreedomWorks, has established close ties with many Tea Party activists around the country.

When the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), convenes later this month in Washington, DC, Hecker says he will launch an on-line voting phase which will take his document from 20 ideas to the final 10 to 12 most popular.

The completed "Contract from America" will then be presented to the public on Tax Day, April 15, 2010.

Hecker wants to give all congressional candidates - Republicans, Democrats, and Independents - an opportunity to sign onto his "contract."

Tea Partier Tries to Define Group's Agenda

There might be some considerable overlap between the Tea Party agenda and the official Republican agenda. Both, for example, are likely to propose major changes to the U.S. tax code. But there could also be notable differences between the establishment and outsider approaches.

When asked what might be in his contract which would not be in the agenda being produced by the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill, Hecker pointed to term limits as a possible example.

"A lot of congressmen want to hold onto their seats forever," said Hecker. "They may not like term limits."

"You need to be viable for 2010, but I believe it will be a document that's bolder than something Eric Cantor would cook up," Hecker added, referring to the House Republican Whip who joined House Republican Leader John Boehner and many Democrats in voting for the Wall Street bailout in 2008.

As for the scope of the contract, Hecker thinks that it should not include any social issues.

"By putting social issues in, we would immediately be dividing our movement," he said.

Hecker thinks national defense should also be left out.

"It might be somewhat divisive for our base," said Hecker. "Especially libertarians versus conservatives."

Hecker wants the document focused squarely on economic and government reform issues.

"Our movement is free markets, constitutionally limited government, economic freedom," said Hecker.

The "Contract from America" is still a work in progress but one possibility which has a lot of support on Hecker's website is implementing the "Fair Tax" which would sweep away all federal taxes and replace it with a 23 percent sales tax. To offset the impact that the sales tax would have on the poor, the 2008 version of the legislation would offer single adults a monthly prebate of $196 and a family of four a monthly prebate of $525. Because support for the "Fair Tax" is not universal, Hecker's contract might end up calling more generically for fundamental tax reform and leave the details to Congress.

Will Tea Party Contract Hurt Republicans in November?

Other ideas which have been highly rated by visitors of the "Contract from America" site include abolishing the Department of Education, passing nationwide tort reform, establishing an official language of the United States and defunding "activist" groups like ACORN. One reform measure which is very popular states that legislation "shall contain no unrelated amendments."

A balanced budget amendment has garnered some support. Hecker thinks, however, that it will not make the final cut because Tea Party activists worry that such an amendment could become a convenient excuse for politicians to raise taxes rather than to cut spending.

Although Republicans have done a fairly good job thus far of harnessing Tea Party energy since the grassroots movement got started last year in response to the Obama administration's economic agenda, a spokeswoman for House Democrats' campaign arm sees the development of a Tea Party contract as posing potential risks for Republicans in November.

"I think it highlights the division between the Tea Party activists and the establishment Republicans," said Jennifer Crider, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "The Tea Party activists are going to move Republican candidates farther and farther to the right. That's a good strategy for winning a Republican primary but it will hurt them in the general election."

Crider cited partial privatization of Social Security as an example of the kind of issue which may get endorsed in a Tea Party Contract but which will be less popular with general-election voters.

The idea of offering voters a contract was popularized by then-House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., in 1994. In September of that year, the Georgia Republican staged an event in front of the U.S. Capitol in which Republican House candidates promised to vote on a specific set of legislative proposals. In November of 1994, Republicans took control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years.

In a recent article for NewsMax, a conservative publication, Gingrich offered his own ideas for a new Contract for America. Looking back on the 1994 experience, he explained the power of the "contract" idea.

"A contract is not a platform," writes Gingrich in NewsMax. "A platform says we are for something and we may or may not get it done. A contract is an explicit commitment to act."

GOP's McCarthy: We're Not Just the Party of 'No'

Although Gingrich used his Contract for America to claim that he had a mandate to act following the election, some Republican strategists concede in private that the GOP owed its substantial gains that year to frustration with then-President Bill Clinton and not to voters yearning to implement an agenda with which most were not acquainted.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the California Republican who has been put in charge of developing the GOP's official 2010 agenda, told ABC News in an interview that he welcomes the Tea Party activists' effort to develop their own "Contract from America."

McCarthy, who is also in charge of recruiting GOP congressional candidates, declined to comment on any of the specific proposals that Hecker is considering, saying that the Agenda that he is crafting will develop organically from conversations he is having around the country as well as from feedback which he will receive on the web.

McCarthy did, however, refute the idea promoted in private by some Republicans that the GOP could succeed in 2010 simply through a strategy of opposition.

"There are a number of seats that you get just by being 'no,'" said McCarthy. "But you don't get a majority by just being 'no.' You've got to say what you're for."

<p>SALEM, Ore. Jan. 18 — Now that the Republican-controlled Congress has endorsed President Bush's tax cuts, former U.S. House majority leader Dick Armey and other national anti-tax leaders are zeroing in on Oregon.</p>
<p>On Feb. 3, Oregonians will vote on an $800 million tax increase that legislators passed last August in their latest attempt to patch holes in the state budget.</p>
<p>Armey's Citizens for a Sound Economy, which was instrumental in putting the Oregon tax increase before voters by collecting 118,000 petition signatures, argues that state government needs to reduce spending rather than raise taxes.</p>
<p>The Washington-based group believes a resounding defeat of Oregon's Measure 30 will make an influential statement.</p>
<p>"When Oregon voters block the tax increase, then the legislatures and governors in other states will be forced to deal with spending cuts," the Texas Republican said in an interview.</p>
<p>Armey's group also worked to defeat a $1.2 billion tax increase package that Alabama Gov. Bob Riley proposed to erase that state's budget shortfall and pay for new education programs. Alabama voters overwhelmingly rejected the package in September.</p>
<p>"Opposition to tax increases is total at the national level," said Grover Norquist, president of another Washington-based anti-tax group, Americans for Tax Reform.</p>
<p>Social services advocates, fighting to preserve funding for programs they say are essential to society's neediest citizens, are also closely watching the Oregon election.</p>
<p>"People are talking about the Oregon vote as a sort of a bellwether on whether broad-based taxes are politically possible," said Matt Gardner of the Washington-based Citizens for Tax Justice, a Washington-based advocacy group.</p>
<p>Measure 30 gives voters a choice between accepting an $800 million tax boost or having the Legislature cut state spending by that amount. The main part of the package is a three-year income tax surcharge that would cost an individual in the $40,000-$50,000 income range $105 more per year.</p>
<p>The plan also proposes a smaller medical tax reduction for senior citizens, an increase in corporate minimum taxes and a reduction in the discount for early payment of property taxes.</p>
<p>Voter rejection of the package would trigger automatic funding cuts for schools, law enforcement and benefits for the elderly and needy. It would carve more than $200 million from the Oregon Health Plan, which would eliminate health insurance for more than 55,000 low-income people.</p>
<p>Public opinion polls have shown the tax hike is opposed by a majority of voters.</p>
<p>"People don't necessarily buy the doom-and-gloom predictions," said Portland pollster Tim Hibbitts. "Whether it's true or not, they have a perception that government has enough money if only they would manage it better."</p>
<p>Hibbitts said he wasn't surprised by the poll numbers, given Oregonians' traditional aversion to taxes and voters' rejection of a smaller tax hike a year ago.</p>
<p>Tax activist Bill Sizemore long led an anti-tax movement in the state, pushing ballot initiatives to limit the government's take from the state's residents, though he hasn't had a visible role in the move against Measure 30. He is appealing a $2.5 million jury verdict against his former organization, Oregon Taxpayers United, in a civil racketeering lawsuit, but still filed another ballot initiative earlier this month that would limit residential property taxes in Oregon to $2,400 a year.</p>
<p>The Yes on 30 campaign began a statewide radio advertising campaign this past week warning that further budget cuts may force many school districts to end the school year several weeks early.</p>
<p>The director of the campaign, Morgan Allen, said groups such as Citizens for a Sound Economy only represent the interests of big businesses.</p>
<p>"Oregonians aren't going to listen to Washington, D.C., lobbyists and out-of-state interest groups," Allen said. "They know what's at stake in this election, and they will be able to make up their own minds."</p>
<p>Another supporter of the tax is former Gov. Vic Atiyeh, a Republican, who recently warned that defeat of Measure 30 will mean suffering for schools and social services recipients.</p>
<p>Armey said he doesn't think most Oregonians believe such "horror stories."</p>
<p>"What's happening here is that the voters are calling their bluff," Armey said.
</p>

<p>Senator Edwards' first in a series of New Hampshire town hall meetings went just swell last night, despite the sauna conditions in the room; the presence of former Republican state party chair Chuck McGee (who has an impressive ability to keep his hand raised); the aggressive efforts of the Citizens for a Sound Economy (whose shark-suited man behind Edwards at one point was about as good as it gets in political hijinks); and an inordinate focus on what The Note would call non-kitchen-table issues from the questioners. </p>
<p>Above and beyond all those kinks, the crowd was huge (The political press is horrid at crowd count, but there were somewhere between 100 and 180 people there.), and this format clearly plays to Mr. Edwards' strength. </p>
<p>But for whatever cosmic reason, the New York Times , the New Hampshire papers, and the North Carolina papers decided to use the Senator's speech on corporate responsibility and the town meeting as pegs to pound him. </p>
<p>Yesterday, the Edwards campaign put out a press release headlined "South Carolinians Continue to Line Up Behind John Edwards for President." </p>
<p>Today, the New York Times ' David Halfbinger has a story which could have been headlined "Senator Edwards Needs More North Carolinians to Line Up Behind Him." </p>
<p>Halbinger trotted aside Senator Edwards on Wrightsville Beach and came away with one of the first, extended blind quotes from a veritable "Democrat familiar with Mr. Bowles's thinking." LINK </p>
<p>That is, of course, Erskine Bowles, who very much wants Senator Edwards to make up his darned mind about running for the Senate or running for president. </p>
<p>"'As much as he is loyal to Edwards, every week that goes by that he's unable to engage fully in the campaign, he sees as a disadvantage,' said one Democrat familiar with Mr. Bowles's thinking. 'He's a former White House chief of staff, he's got a record of getting things done, and he wants to do this. He's not likely to sit around waiting for long for someone else to make a decision.'" </p>
<p>"The tension between the two, who are friends and have supported each other's campaigns, is likely only to grow: Mr. Edwards's loyalists say that Mr. Bowles received the lowest percentage of any Democratic Senate candidate in generations, while Mr. Bowles's note that he also got more votes than Mr. Edwards did." </p>
<p>Halfbinger concludes that the anxiety about Edwards's true intentions are hurting him in the state; many of constituents admire him as their Senator but are puzzled by his presidential run, which they appear to regard as a distraction. </p>
<p>"'He needs to decide,' said Brick McDermott, 26, a mortgage broker from Charlotte who was relaxing in the sand when Mr. Edwards walked by and said hello. "'Having it both ways right now — that isn't working.'" </p>
<p>"The senator clearly does not agree and is sticking to his own timetable for his decision. 'It's going to depend on what I think is best for North Carolina and what the dynamic is in the presidential campaign,' he told the reporters trailing him.'" </p>
<p>As that drama plays out, the coverage keying off of yesterday was — and there is no other way to describe it — negative. </p>
<p>Edwards could not have been happy when he saw this headline: "N.H. voters puzzled by Edwards' campaign." </p>
<p>Mark Johnson's story for the Charlotte Observer indicates that many believe the Senator from North Carolina is not living up to his potential as a presidential candidate. LINK </p>
<p>"Edwards already proved himself as a fund-raiser, siphoning up $12 million this year to put him second among the candidates' bank accounts. His numbers in name recognition and apparent public support in New Hampshire, however, remain anemic." </p>
<p>"'Where's he from?' asked Dan Samodai, a Concord auto parts dealer, when asked about Edwards outside the state Capitol. Samodai paused from reading the Daniel Webster statue inscription to his 4-year-old son, Cameron, and said he has seen 'a ton' of advertising on the presidential bid of Senator John Kerry, from neighboring Massachusetts. 'I don't know if he's going for the saturation thing or what, but everywhere you turn it's "Kerry."'" </p>
<p>The seminal quote, though, comes from the Young Man of the Mountain Top: "'He hasn't been here a lot,' said James Pindell, who runs the politicsNH.com Web site. 'He needs the buzz in this state. It's really been a Kerry and (former Vermont Gov. Howard) Dean show.'" </p>
<p>John Wagner of the Raleigh News & Observer gets Pindell in a slightly more hopeful, reflective moment: </p>
<p>"'New Hampshire activists are saying it's now put-up or shut-up time for John Edwards,' said James Pindell, managing editor of PoliticsNH.com, a Web site that is closely tracking the state's Democratic primary process. 'Edwards has a lot riding on these next couple of months. It's a critical time for him.'" LINK </p>
<p>"Entering a new phase in his campaign, Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards began a series of town hall meetings focusing on broader audiences than just those that turn out for house parties in activists homes," PoliticsNH.com's Pindell himself, switching from pundit to writer, reports: </p>
<p>"Up until today Edwards said his campaign mainly focused on fund-raising, but now, a week after the second quarter of the year has finished, he has embarked on a full-fledged campaign schedule starting with 11 town hall meetings in the Granite State and a number of downtown walks in Iowa." </p>
<p>"It's about time. Edwards has never received more than single-digit support in polls of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina Democrats. The same is true of Democrats nationwide." </p>
<p>"Rival campaigns saw the town hall meetings [as] risky for Edwards. Why, they would argue, would Edwards attempt to hold town hall meetings in the summer, when less than 10 percent of voters are paying attention, and when he seems to have such small support in polls? His campaign staff had spent the last two weeks non-stop on the initial town hall meeting with phone call reminders and dropping literature with the date and time in traditional Democratic neighborhoods in and around Concord, the site of the event." </p>
<p>"But it appears as though the Edwards campaign actually pulled it off. A crowd of 150 showed up to hear the North Carolina senator, although a number of them were activists or staff for various advocacy groups in the state. He was asked about everything from farm policy to software piracy to global warming to prescription drugs to stem cell research to gay marriage." </p>
<p>John DiStaso led with the foreign origin of the pair of shoes Senator Edwards purchased. LINK </p>
<p>The AP's Ramer kept her eyes off of Hunter long enough to focus on the lunch speech and write about Edwards's expense the stock options proposal: LINK </p>
<p>And Ramer beat us to the punch by Noting this: "Despite his weak numbers in New Hampshire polls, Edwards did pass one local test. A Rotary Club member asked him to repeat three words in a New England accent: park, garden and Nomar, as in Boston Red Sox shortstop Nomar Garciaparra." </p>
<p>"'Pahhhk. Gahhhden. Nomahhh,' Edwards enunciated dutifully." </p>
<p>The Boston Globe gave Edwards his own story, too. LINK </p>
<p>The Note may have caused some inadvertent shockwaves between North Carolina and Washington yesterday when we mistakenly Noted Tim Funk's Charlotte Observer story about Senator Edwards' 2003 Roll Call votes attendance record. </p>
<p>We said Mr. Funk reported that Senator Edwards had missed 47 percent of his votes. However, the Observer properly reported that the senior senator from North Carolina has missed 47 actual Roll Call votes … which is only 18% of the year's total. </p>
<p>The mistake was entirely ours, not Mr. Funk's. We apologize for any confusion caused and we promise to leave the harder mathematical reporting (i.e. percentages vs. actuals) to the Googling monkeys and remove all chance of human error. </p>
<p>Though, we have to say, we don't feel quite as bad after reading the first correction in The Paper of Record: LINK
</p>

<p>Senator Edwards' first in a series of New Hampshire town hall meetings went just swell last night, despite the sauna conditions in the room; the presence of former Republican state party chair Chuck McGee (who has an impressive ability to keep his hand raised); the aggressive efforts of the Citizens for a Sound Economy (whose shark-suited man behind Edwards at one point was about as good as it gets in political hijinks); and an inordinate focus on what The Note would call non-kitchen-table issues from the questioners. </p>
<p>Above and beyond all those kinks, the crowd was huge (The political press is horrid at crowd count, but there were somewhere between 100 and 180 people there.), and this format clearly plays to Mr. Edwards' strength. </p>
<p>But for whatever cosmic reason, the New York Times , the New Hampshire papers, and the North Carolina papers decided to use the Senator's speech on corporate responsibility and the town meeting as pegs to pound him. </p>
<p>Yesterday, the Edwards campaign put out a press release headlined "South Carolinians Continue to Line Up Behind John Edwards for President." </p>
<p>Today, the New York Times ' David Halfbinger has a story which could have been headlined "Senator Edwards Needs More North Carolinians to Line Up Behind Him." </p>
<p>Halbinger trotted aside Senator Edwards on Wrightsville Beach and came away with one of the first, extended blind quotes from a veritable "Democrat familiar with Mr. Bowles's thinking." LINK </p>
<p>That is, of course, Erskine Bowles, who very much wants Senator Edwards to make up his darned mind about running for the Senate or running for president. </p>
<p>"'As much as he is loyal to Edwards, every week that goes by that he's unable to engage fully in the campaign, he sees as a disadvantage,' said one Democrat familiar with Mr. Bowles's thinking. 'He's a former White House chief of staff, he's got a record of getting things done, and he wants to do this. He's not likely to sit around waiting for long for someone else to make a decision.'" </p>
<p>"The tension between the two, who are friends and have supported each other's campaigns, is likely only to grow: Mr. Edwards's loyalists say that Mr. Bowles received the lowest percentage of any Democratic Senate candidate in generations, while Mr. Bowles's note that he also got more votes than Mr. Edwards did." </p>
<p>Halfbinger concludes that the anxiety about Edwards's true intentions are hurting him in the state; many of constituents admire him as their Senator but are puzzled by his presidential run, which they appear to regard as a distraction. </p>
<p>"'He needs to decide,' said Brick McDermott, 26, a mortgage broker from Charlotte who was relaxing in the sand when Mr. Edwards walked by and said hello. "'Having it both ways right now — that isn't working.'" </p>
<p>"The senator clearly does not agree and is sticking to his own timetable for his decision. 'It's going to depend on what I think is best for North Carolina and what the dynamic is in the presidential campaign,' he told the reporters trailing him.'" </p>
<p>As that drama plays out, the coverage keying off of yesterday was — and there is no other way to describe it — negative. </p>
<p>Edwards could not have been happy when he saw this headline: "N.H. voters puzzled by Edwards' campaign." </p>
<p>Mark Johnson's story for the Charlotte Observer indicates that many believe the Senator from North Carolina is not living up to his potential as a presidential candidate. LINK </p>
<p>"Edwards already proved himself as a fund-raiser, siphoning up $12 million this year to put him second among the candidates' bank accounts. His numbers in name recognition and apparent public support in New Hampshire, however, remain anemic." </p>
<p>"'Where's he from?' asked Dan Samodai, a Concord auto parts dealer, when asked about Edwards outside the state Capitol. Samodai paused from reading the Daniel Webster statue inscription to his 4-year-old son, Cameron, and said he has seen 'a ton' of advertising on the presidential bid of Senator John Kerry, from neighboring Massachusetts. 'I don't know if he's going for the saturation thing or what, but everywhere you turn it's "Kerry."'" </p>
<p>The seminal quote, though, comes from the Young Man of the Mountain Top: "'He hasn't been here a lot,' said James Pindell, who runs the politicsNH.com Web site. 'He needs the buzz in this state. It's really been a Kerry and (former Vermont Gov. Howard) Dean show.'" </p>
<p>John Wagner of the Raleigh News & Observer gets Pindell in a slightly more hopeful, reflective moment: </p>
<p>"'New Hampshire activists are saying it's now put-up or shut-up time for John Edwards,' said James Pindell, managing editor of PoliticsNH.com, a Web site that is closely tracking the state's Democratic primary process. 'Edwards has a lot riding on these next couple of months. It's a critical time for him.'" LINK </p>
<p>"Entering a new phase in his campaign, Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards began a series of town hall meetings focusing on broader audiences than just those that turn out for house parties in activists homes," PoliticsNH.com's Pindell himself, switching from pundit to writer, reports: </p>
<p>"Up until today Edwards said his campaign mainly focused on fund-raising, but now, a week after the second quarter of the year has finished, he has embarked on a full-fledged campaign schedule starting with 11 town hall meetings in the Granite State and a number of downtown walks in Iowa." </p>
<p>"It's about time. Edwards has never received more than single-digit support in polls of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina Democrats. The same is true of Democrats nationwide." </p>
<p>"Rival campaigns saw the town hall meetings [as] risky for Edwards. Why, they would argue, would Edwards attempt to hold town hall meetings in the summer, when less than 10 percent of voters are paying attention, and when he seems to have such small support in polls? His campaign staff had spent the last two weeks non-stop on the initial town hall meeting with phone call reminders and dropping literature with the date and time in traditional Democratic neighborhoods in and around Concord, the site of the event." </p>
<p>"But it appears as though the Edwards campaign actually pulled it off. A crowd of 150 showed up to hear the North Carolina senator, although a number of them were activists or staff for various advocacy groups in the state. He was asked about everything from farm policy to software piracy to global warming to prescription drugs to stem cell research to gay marriage." </p>
<p>John DiStaso led with the foreign origin of the pair of shoes Senator Edwards purchased. LINK </p>
<p>The AP's Ramer kept her eyes off of Hunter long enough to focus on the lunch speech and write about Edwards's expense the stock options proposal: LINK </p>
<p>And Ramer beat us to the punch by Noting this: "Despite his weak numbers in New Hampshire polls, Edwards did pass one local test. A Rotary Club member asked him to repeat three words in a New England accent: park, garden and Nomar, as in Boston Red Sox shortstop Nomar Garciaparra." </p>
<p>"'Pahhhk. Gahhhden. Nomahhh,' Edwards enunciated dutifully." </p>
<p>The Boston Globe gave Edwards his own story, too. LINK </p>
<p>The Note may have caused some inadvertent shockwaves between North Carolina and Washington yesterday when we mistakenly Noted Tim Funk's Charlotte Observer story about Senator Edwards' 2003 Roll Call votes attendance record. </p>
<p>We said Mr. Funk reported that Senator Edwards had missed 47 percent of his votes. However, the Observer properly reported that the senior senator from North Carolina has missed 47 actual Roll Call votes … which is only 18% of the year's total. </p>
<p>The mistake was entirely ours, not Mr. Funk's. We apologize for any confusion caused and we promise to leave the harder mathematical reporting (i.e. percentages vs. actuals) to the Googling monkeys and remove all chance of human error. </p>
<p>Though, we have to say, we don't feel quite as bad after reading the first correction in The Paper of Record: LINK
</p>