Acorn

Issue date: 4/18/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Charlotte Hammond Former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich speaks to the Drew community about the state of American politics last night in the Simon Forum.

Former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich gave a grim picture of America's future last night in the Simon Forum. Best known as the author of the "Contract with America," which enabled the return of Republicans as the majority in the House in 1994, Gingrich addressed the 2008 presidential election and the need for a smaller government and less bureaucracy in the United States.

President Bob Weisbuch welcomed Gingrich, whose schedule at Drew University included teaching a class in Brothers College, filming a video interview for Drew Magazine and an interview with Fox News show "Hannity and Colms" in addition to his talk in the Forum. Former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, for whom the series is named, attended the lecture with his family.

One of the four challenges Gingrich cited as facing the country was the inefficiency of the government. He compared the shipping company FedEx with the government to illustrate his point. "In the world that works…it's a fact that you can track millions of moving packages a day in real time on the Internet," Gingrich said. "In the world that fails, the federal government cannot find somewhere between 10 and 20 million illegal immigrants that are sitting."

Some of his ideas elicited laughs from the audience but conveyed his view about how bureaucracy cost the government money. "The government estimates $13 to $15 billion is needed to complete the census," Gingrich said. "My idea is to place the census on sites like Ebay and Facebook and pay you $10 to get you to do it yourself. It costs $65 to pay an employee, so you'd be saving money."

"We may be the generation that gives our grandchildren a country that is poorer and less safe than the one our parents gave us," Gingrich said. Gingrich presented education, the world market, and radical Islam as the other three realities he believed Americans needed to understand to set the country on a better path.

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