Tea Party Contract From America: Activists Unveil 'Blueprint For 2010 And Beyond'

Tea Party groups across the country unveiled the movement's "Contract from America" on Wednesday, one day before proponents plan to rally and protest in honor of Tax Day.

The "Contract from America" is the Tea Party activists' "legislative blueprint for 2010 and beyond" -- a document of ten principles and priorities outlining the movement's agenda for the road ahead.

Who was responsible designing the "Contract?" According to the coalition behind its construction, "Grassroots activists from across the country visited the website to choose their top ten priorities from a list of 21 action items that committed Americans from all walks of life proposed. The top ten issues comprise the final Contract."

Below -- the ten principles outlined in Tea Party's contract:

• “Require each bill to identify the specific provision of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to do what the bill does.”
• “Stop costly new regulations that would increase unemployment, raise consumer prices, and weaken the nation’s global competitiveness with virtually no impact on global temperatures.”
• “Begin the Constitutional amendment process to require a balanced budget with a two-thirds majority needed for any tax hike.”
• “Adopt a simple and fair single-rate tax system by scrapping the internal revenue code and replacing it with one that is no longer than 4,543 words -- the length of the original Constitution.”
• “Create a Blue Ribbon taskforce that engages in a complete audit of federal agencies and programs, assessing their Constitutionality, and identifying duplication, waste, ineffectiveness, and agencies and programs better left for the states or local authorities, or ripe for wholesale reform or elimination due to our efforts to restore limited government consistent with the US Constitution’s meaning.”
• Impose a statutory cap limiting the annual growth in total federal spending to the sum of the inflation rate plus the percentage of population growth.”
• “Defund, repeal, and replace the recently passed government-run health care with a system that actually makes health care and insurance more affordable by enabling a competitive, open, and transparent free-market health care and health insurance system that isn’t restricted by state boundaries.”
• “Authorized the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries and reduce regulatory barriers to all other forms of energy creation, lowering prices and creation competition and jobs.”
• “Place a moratorium on all earmarks until the budget is balanced, and then require a 2/3 majority to pass any earmark.”
• “Permanently repeal all tax hikes, including those to the income, capital gains, and death taxes, currently scheduled to being in 2011.”