Every important political platform document needs a picture of a cowboy

CBS summary:

Jobs:

– Stop job-killing tax hikes

– Allow small businesses to take a tax deduction equal to 20 percent of their income

– Require congressional approval for any new federal regulation that would add to the deficit

– Repeal small business mandates in the new health care law.

Cutting Spending:

– Repeal and Replace health care

– Roll back non-discretionary spending to 2008 levels before TARP and stimulus (will save $100 billion in first year alone)

– Establish strict budget caps to limit federal spending going forward

– Cancel all future TARP payments and reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

Reforming Congress:

– Will require that every bill have a citation of constitutional authority

– Give members at least 3 days to read bills before a vote

Defense:

– Provide resources to troops

– Fund missile defense

– Enforce sanctions in Iran

Full text pdf (as I write this, I’m waiting for 17 minutes of download to finish)

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A lot of people, including most prominently Don Surber, Erik Erikson, think it is too damned long, too platitudinous, and not what it should be.

Doug Ross offered a superior, and far more concise, alternative version:

We pledge that every action we take will be gauged by the answer to a single question: Does it show fidelity to the Constitution, our highest law?

With that as our guide, we solemnly pledge the following as our first actions:

• We will repeal the Democrat health care bill and, if vetoed by the President, will de-fund every aspect of that bill until such time as the American people have input into a sensible health care reform process.
• We will slash the size of the federal government bureaucracies (Commerce, Education, Energy, the EPA, Labor, etc.) by 20% in 2011 with a goal of reducing each by 50% over the next three years, thereby saving hundreds of billions of dollars.
• We will secure the border with physical fencing suitable to repel drug smugglers, human smugglers, and terrorists, while encouraging legal immigration and enforcement of the law.
• We will confront the entitlement crisis — Social Security and Medicare — by preserving benefits for those who depend upon them and moving to privatized options for younger workers. Anything less condemns future generations to mountains of debt and economic catastrophe.
• We will strengthen our armed forces, space and missile defense programs to retain our unparalleled superpower status.
• We will begin the process of paying down our debts, spending within our means every year.
• We will ban public sector unions, which exist solely to wage war against the taxpayers who fund their operations.

Put simply: we intend to adhere to a strict interpretation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Faith, Family, and the Founding. That is our creed.

And for your support and with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

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The Pledge finally downloaded.

I must say that I find it difficult to believe that the guys who produced this bloviating document, loaded down with pretentious, trite, and irrelevant photographs (the Statue of Liberty! Mount Rushmore! even a cowboy) and padded with quotations from people like Ronald Reagan and Bob McDonnell who actually had something to say, are really going to reduce the size of anything.

Reducing this Pledge to specifics and essentials would have been a better start.