In the beginning, there was the Contract with America. And for the Republican Party in 1994, it was good.

Then there was the Contract from America. And for the tea party movement in 2010, it was largely good.

Now the left wants their own contract, which they are calling the Contract for the American Dream — an attempt to duplicate the tea party movement, but on the opposite side of the political spectrum. The problem with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, say some Democrats and their various interest groups, is that it wasn’t big enough. MoveOn, Rebuild the Dream, the Center for Economic Policy and Research, and U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D–Illinois), are supporting the CAD, which could be thought of as Stimulus Part Deux.

The Hill summarizes its proposals:

In 10 bullet points, the contract calls for massive new spending and taxes. At the top of the list are items [President] Obama has been calling for: investing in infrastructure, clean energy, strengthening public education. These “winning the future” items were included in Obama’s 2012 budget, which was rejected unanimously in the Senate after it become focused on budget cutting.

The contract also calls for a crackdown on corporations to enforce equal pay for equal work, reforming Social Security by lifting the cap on payroll taxes, accelerating the pullout of troops from Afghanistan and overhauling the campaign finance system.

On taxes, the groups are calling for an end to Bush-era tax rates, a new higher tax bracket for millionaires and a surcharge on Wall Street trades of 1/20th of 1 percent. Schakowsky has proposed a 45 percent tax rate for millionaires and a 49 percent tax rate for billionaires.

Here I thought ARRA was about infrastructure investment, clean energy and strengthening public education. The first two years of the Obama administration dumped so much federal money into education that states like Wisconsin had to make budget adjustments for their 2011 budgets because the federal money was gone. (Is that an indictment of the Obama administration or the Doyle administration? You decide.) The fact that the green energy industry has deflated significantly in the past year or so might be an argument about how strong the industry is, or isn’t, without subsidies.

What you will not see is any mention of federal fiscal responsibility. According to one of CAD’s supporters, “We have a jobs crisis, not a deficit crisis.” (Irrespective of the fact that we could have both.) Which puts CAD on a different planet from the political discussion being held today, a discussion that, according to the stock markets, needs to be revisited. (Ponder the irony of CAD’s chief congressional supporter being from a state with worse finances than Wisconsin’s.)

The Contract with America and the Contract from America were about making government more responsible. Anything that puts brakes on what the government can do to you is a smaller-government measure. This is not. A tax on Wall Street trades penalizes every household that owns stock, and that’s half the households in the U.S., not just the “rich” ones. (Then again, it’s interesting to note the degree to which Republicans have indeed won the tax arguments over the years when the highest tax rate they can come up with is 49 percent, which is less than the marginal tax rates of the 1970s.)

Regardless of how you feel about this mishmash of bad ideas, to have the left’s agenda spelled out in one place for easy reference is a good thing. CAD’s supporters are betting that the public supports such an anti-employer and anti-accomplishment agenda, not to mention an agenda not based on anything remotely resembling reality. The difference is that when Republicans used the Contract with America and the tea party used the Contract from America, they were successful. Conservatives lose when they don’t adhere to their ideas. (See Bush, George H.W.)