Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) on Monday unveiled an “America First Contract,” laying out populist policy positions and promises that he would push for during the 118th Congress.
In a message to The Epoch Times, Biggs spokesman Matthew Tragesser called the document “the most comprehensive Republican contract in 25+ years since Newt Gingrich’s in 1994.”
In the first chunk of the contract, Biggs laid out eight policy issues and explained how he would work to address them.
The first on his list was a vow to “Reduce inflation, encourage job creation and higher wages.”
He said he would go about this by introducing “a balanced budget that ends the false promises of big government socialism and irresponsible spending,” as well as “a balanced budget constitutional amendment” and “legislation that eliminates rules, agencies, and bureaucratic regulations that strangle Americans.”
Next up, Biggs promised to “secure our border against illegal immigration and drug, human, and sex trafficking.”
“The Biden Administration has created a humanitarian crisis,” he wrote. “They opened our borders and failed to enforce our immigration laws resulting in millions of illegal aliens entering America, the highest opiate overdose death rates in history, and terrorists and criminals flowing unnoticed into our communities.”
To achieve this, he would “restore the Remain in Mexico Policy. Restore authority to remove illegal aliens under our statutes. Fund the completion of the border fence and other necessary infrastructure. Restore humane, proven, and effective policies and provide constant oversight to ensure government agencies are following the law.”
Next up, drawing from the issue that won Glenn Youngkin the governorship in Virginia last November, Biggs said that he would “Make parental choice in education the standard for school policies” and “incentivize transparency in curricula, teaching materials, and processes in education.”
“Too many education leaders believe parents are irrelevant to the education of children,” Biggs said. “Education elites ignore federal law that requires transparency. Many schools that receive federal funding focus on indoctrination and not education.”
Biggs said he would also work to “stop incentives from the federal government that support the indoctrination of our children with the idea that our country is racist; support local control of education; and eliminate barriers for parents that want different schooling options for their children.”
Biggs next said that Democrats “have fueled” record-breaking levels of violent crime “by defunding the police and releasing criminals onto the streets of our cities.”
Biggs said he would work to oppose the defunding of police “by ensuring that federal money for law enforcement only flows to those states, cities, and towns that adequately fund the security of their own people and uphold the rule of law.”
Biggs added that Republicans would “hold accountable federal officials who have prevented enforcement of our laws,” a jab at prosecutors around the nation who Republicans say have been “soft on crime.”
Moving on, Biggs said that he would work to “restore [and] ensure election integrity by protecting state authority over our elections.”
States’ constitutional power to govern elections in their territory has been a controversial issue during the 117th Congress as states have worked to tighten their election laws amid claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.
Since August 2021, Democrats have tried to push through several bills that would substantially undercut states’ rights to govern their elections. According to proponents of the bills, state laws tightening election requirements constituted a “new Jim Crow.” Ultimately, none of these bills were able to advance through the evenly divided Senate.
Biggs called for the repeal of unconstitutional provisions in past voting bills, including the National Voting Rights Act and the Help America Vote Act, which he said “make it easier to cheat in our elections and prevent voter rolls from being accurately maintained.”
Next, Biggs called for Congress to work to “break up big tech.”
Conservatives have increasingly rallied behind calls to break up tech giants over the past several years as the platforms have faced charges of unfairly targeting conservatives through banning accounts and “shadow banning” content.
“Big tech companies are encroaching on our lives, our privacy, and dominating public discourse,” Biggs wrote.
He said he would end Big Tech’s “control over our lives by ending government-sanctioned intrusions on our privacy and thwarting business practices that inappropriately concentrate those businesses’ power over public and private speech.”
To achieve this, he would work to “Remove liability protections of Section 230, and facilitate enforcement of antitrust laws against these companies.”
Under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, online platforms are shielded from tort liability for content posted on their platforms as long as they do not act as publishers by picking and choosing what stays online.
According to some conservative legal theorists and lawmakers, platforms like Twitter and Facebook have exceeded these standards by targeting conservatives. Since 2020, Republicans—including former President Donald Trump—have pushed for the repeal of the standard.
“The Biden Administration has weakened the United States in international relations, made America energy dependent on foreign oil producers like OPEC and Russia, and sent jobs overseas,” Biggs wrote.
He said he would push for “advancing an America First approach to our foreign policy, energy policy, and trade policy by focusing on the needs and goals of Americans, not the perceptions of foreign or domestic rivals who would have us devalue our own lives and beliefs in service of their ideologies.”
Specifically, he said he would work to “remove the woke policies that have weakened our military, investigate the Afghanistan debacle and the origin of COVID, [and] remove the executive orders that have killed the American energy industry.”
Finally, Biggs called for reinstating “good government practices.”
“Nancy Pelosi has destroyed Congress by centralizing power into the hands of the Speaker’s office and using that power against her political opponents,” Biggs wrote. “The public no longer trusts the institution.”
He said he would work to “change the House rules to spread the power from the leadership to regular members of the House, [restore] members to committees, [exercise] our oversight authority and investigate corrupt practices and abuse of power by members of Congress and federal bureaucrats.”
At the conclusion of the policy promises, Biggs wrote, “As members of the House Freedom Caucus, we understand that we work for the American people. We represent the millions of American voices who have been left behind by elites and the establishment of both parties.
“This is not everything that must be done to secure our nation. But it will set us back on a path that will remind us that we should be proud to be Americans. We will produce legislation that will accomplish these policies and bring it to the floor within the first 100 days of 2023. Hold us accountable.”
The platform laid out by Biggs speaks to a growing split within the party between old guard Republicans and newer, more populist-leaning lawmakers like Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.).
These splits have become increasingly obvious moving into midterm season as candidates like J.D. Vance in Ohio and Blake Masters in Arizona have fought to push a populist agenda moving forward.
Still, the two factions remain relatively gridlocked, and these splits could become more evident in the 118th Congress if Republicans take back the House and Senate.
