ABSTRACT
In Congress, the Republican transformation was rooted in Newt Gingrich’s House insurgency of the 1980s. Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cut, mainly benefiting corporations and the wealthy, came right out of the 1981 and 2001–2003 Republican playbook, while his annual budgets bore the distinctive mark of his Office of Management and Budget director, former congressman Mick Mulvaney, a founder of the House Freedom Caucus. The impact of the 1994 Republican victory and the Gingrich speakership on House operations—“the most sweeping overhaul in almost fifty years”—superseded by far any and all reforms advertised in the Contract with America. If modern campaigns reveal a dangerous decline in democratic accountability, so does modern governance, but not always in the way one might think. It is important for elected officials and citizens alike to see the expectations and demands with respect to Congress and other democratic institutions in the context of the citizenship.
