Gingrich says America finds itself at a crossroad

A case in point: While thousands of people are desperate to restore battered homes following Hurricane Katrina, the federal government is paying seventeen times more than it actually costs to repair roofs in Louisiana. Seventeen times.

In a stunning expose, the Washington Post reported that the federal government was paying prime contracts of $1.75 a square foot to cover storm-damaged roofs with blue tarp. But these companies then subcontracted the work an additional two times. The local laborers who actually did the work were paid only ten cents per square foot.

Only a federal government bloated by pork and riddled with bureaucratic inefficiency would do business this way. Taxpayers deserve much, much better. After all, it’s our money, not the government’s. We deserve a government at least as smart as we are when it comes to making spending decisions.

But to have a government that spends money wisely and efficiently will require real change, and real change requires a movement. The kind of country we want cannot be achieved without a grassroots movement of citizen activists that insists on profound change in our government policies and our government bureaucracies. Washington is incapable of reforming itself. By necessity, the country must impose reform on Washington. All the proof you need of that fact came during President Bush’s 2006 State of the Union address. Do you remember the representatives and senators — rich and privileged men and women — who stood and applauded the president’s admission that his effort to save Social Security had failed? Rich and powerful people who delight in the denial of a decent retirement to hard-working Americans are not the kind of people who challenge the Washington status quo.

Change, if it is to come, must come from us.

I know a little something about change. The reform movement that swept Washington in 1994 has been called a revolution. But Washington didn’t create that revolution; America did. In 1994, a bold, ideas and solutions-based, values-led grassroots movement finally arrived in the nation’s capital. This movement had been building for decades, led by a group of legislators who believed in transformational leadership, accountability in government, balanced budgets, lower taxes, stronger defense, and reforming the welfare state.

The challenges we face today are, if anything, more profound and more consequential than those we faced in 1994. They center around three big principles that have traditionally defined us as Americans. Our government, our media, our educational institutions, and too many of our political leaders have drifted away from these principles lately. We must find a way, through a grassroots movement of citizens, to bring our nation back to these truths.

Excerpted from “Winning the Future” by Newt Gingrich. Copyright 2005 by Newt Gingrich.  Revised and updated in 2006. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without written permission from Regnery Publishing Inc.

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