Nov. 8
What Democrats Can Learn From the Republican Revolution: Gingrich Gutted Congress on Day One and Held the House for 12 Years
House Democrats have until Jan. 3, 2027 to do the same.
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Democrats have both chambers of Congress and a president of the other party. Newt Gingrich had the same setup in January 1995 and turned it into a 12-year majority. The man is a ghoul. He was also very, very good at this, and whoever House Democrats elect Speaker takes the same job on Jan. 3, 2027. So we read the early 90’s GOP “Contract with America,” along with the Congressional Record from the 104th Congress, the legislative branch budget that paid for it, and the letter Jeffries sent his caucus the morning after Nov. 3, 2026. Below, we go through what Gingrich did in 1994 and 1995, what became law, what he broke on purpose and which parts of it Democrats should copy before January.
On Nov. 8, 1994, Republicans picked up 54 House seats and eight Senate seats, their first House majority in 40 years. Gingrich had been working toward that night since 1990, when his training operation GOPAC mailed Republican candidates a memo titled "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control," written with the pollster Frank Luntz. The memo told candidates to memorize two word lists, one for talking about themselves and one for talking about Democrats, and to use them in every speech and every piece of mail. "Pathetic," "lie" and "traitors" went on the list for Democrats. Four years before the election, one party decided it would speak with one voice and trained its people to do it. That is the boring part of a revolution, and it is the part that worked.
The Contract came next. On Sept. 27, 1994, more than 300 Republican candidates stood on the Capitol steps and signed a one-page document promising floor votes on 10 bills in the first 100 days of the new Congress. The bottom of the page read, "If we break this contract, throw us out. We mean it." Nobody signs a platform. These guys signed a contract with a return policy.
Then, on their first day holding the gavel, they took a chainsaw to their own building. On Jan. 4, 1995, the new House cut committee staff by a third and eliminated three committees. The same day they took away the floor votes of the five nonvoting delegates, including the District of Columbia's. By the fall spending bill, the Republican chairman's own summary in the Congressional Record showed committee staff cut 33 percent and the Office of Technology Assessment eliminated for a $22 million savings. The General Accounting Office was slated for a 25 percent cut over two years. Congress fired the people who read the bills for them. Social scientists call this Congress's self-lobotomy, and the cuts were never reversed. A dumber Congress depends on lobbyists and on leadership for information, and Gingrich was leadership. None of this needed a Senate vote or Bill Clinton's signature. A House rules package passes by majority vote in one chamber on day one.
The House brought every item in the Contract to a floor vote inside the 100 days; the only failure was congressional term limits, which needed two-thirds. Gingrich told CNN on April 6, 1995, "We voted on all 10. We passed nine out of 10." The Senate slowed almost all of it, and Clinton vetoed the Balanced Budget Act of 1995 on Dec. 6, 1995, saying "I am vetoing the biggest Medicare and Medicaid cuts in history," and vetoed welfare reform twice before signing the third version in August 1996, so the laws signed in that first year were modest. Clinton signed the Congressional Accountability Act on Jan. 23, 1995, and the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act on March 22, 1995, per the constitutional scholar Louis Fisher's review in the New York Review of Books. The securities lawsuit limits became law over Clinton's veto on Dec. 22, 1995. The line-item veto and welfare reform followed in 1996. By the Contract’s second anniversary, in September 1996, Republicans were telling the House that two-thirds of the Contract was now law, and Clinton had already stood up at his 1996 State of the Union and declared the era of big government over. That November they became the first House Republican majority reelected since 1928, and they held the chamber for 12 years.
Gingrich was never trying to pass laws in those 100 days. He was building attack ads. Every House Democrat had to vote against poison pilled items such as the “balanced budget amendment,” against “welfare reform,” against a tax cut and against a “crime bill,” on camera, in the first spring of a presidential election cycle.
Democrats swept the House and the Senate on Nov. 3, 2026, with the House majority well past 218 and Senate Democrats holding at least 54 seats. On Nov. 4, 2026, Jeffries, who is running for Speaker, sent his colleagues a letter laying out a 100-day agenda to reverse the Medicaid cuts, restore SNAP funding, extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits, end the tariffs and stop the war in Iran. House Democrats say they will start in the first 100 hours of the new Congress, with new war powers votes in the mix. When reporters asked about impeachment, Jeffries said it is neither on nor off the table. Nancy Pelosi ran a 100-hour agenda too, in January 2007, and got a minimum wage increase out of it; though many felt disappointed by a lack of landmark legislation around voting rights, civil rights, and reigning in white collar crime.
Gingrich promised votes, which he controlled, and let the country watch him pass nine of 10. Donald Trump's veto pen means most of the Democratic list dies on his desk, and 1995 says that is fine if every Republican is made to vote against health insurance subsidies and against ending a war and in support of the same policies that destroyed them in the midterms.
Ultimately, the public wants to see a fight, that is sufficient even in the face of failure to pass a law under an oppositional regime. For our incoming Congress, the message may just be that we want to feel like you’re actually trying, and that matters more in retaining our support, than what actually gets past the POTUS.
The main advantage Dems can pull to show that fight though, is the rules package. That’s the one document Trump cannot veto. The Senate cannot touch it either, and in 1995 it did more lasting damage than any statute. The GOP changed the rules of the house so they could get their agenda around the other parties President, they didn’t care about playing nice and their voters lauded them for it. A Democratic House can use the same instrument to bring back the Office of Technology Assessment and the committee staff Gingrich cut, and to write its subpoena and contempt powers into the standing rules before the first hearing.
Gingrich's twelve years came from a signed list of ten bills, a 100-day deadline, 31 recorded votes by April and a rules package passed on his first afternoon. House Democrats have not published anything like it yet. Hopefully they have some sort of plan. We should ask for one, and we should know what it says before the House votes on its rules on Jan. 3, 2027. In today's CALL TO ACTION, you'll see what rules the ER suggests and how to help get them passed.
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CALL TO ACTION
Who you're contacting and how: If a Democrat will represent you in the House on Jan. 3, 2027, reach out to them, through their campaign website if they have not taken office yet. You can do that by email, phone, FaxZero or even a printed letter. You could even go to their office during business hours, bring donuts, and tell the staff you're going to talk to them about an issue you care about if the representative isn't there.
Find your representative by clicking on this sentence.
What you're asking for: Ask whether they have a plan to change the House rules on Jan. 3, 2027, and what is in it. If they want suggestions, here are ours, drawn from the people who study Congress for a living:
Lift the cap of 30 professional staff per committee so committees can have proper staffing.
Create a nonpartisan House Office of Science and Technology with a chief scientist to replace the Office of Technology Assessment.
Write subpoena enforcement and inherent contempt into the standing rules so oversight does not wait years on the courts.
Require 72 hours' public notice before a committee markup and restore proxy voting for childbirth and family leave.
Give the Office of Congressional Conduct subpoena power and one reporting channel for staff misconduct complaints.
Let them know who you are, what you want, and why you care. Offices count identical messages once, so write it in your own words.
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