"I would like to propose we have an adult discussion, as a country, about where we're going and how we're going to get there," Mr. Gingrich told the Cobb County Chamber of Commerce in Marietta, Ga. "It would be about the same practicality as a discussion on a 20- or 30-year mortgage."

Mr. Gingrich, who mapped the GOP's highly partisan "Contract With America" in 1994, yesterday proposed goals most Americans in both parties would support, leaving the door open for a presidential run in 2000.

But his staff was quick to dampen any notion that his speech was a blueprint for a presidential platform.

"Newt is the leader of the House and of the Republican Party," said Michael Shields, communications director for Mr. Gingrich's re-election campaign. "He is intent on increasing our majority. It has nothing to do with any other aspirations at all."

Mr. Shields said his boss had been ruminating on some of these ideas for years but honed them during conversations with Margaret Thatcher in London last month.

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One of his ideas is a cap on total taxation.

Mr. Gingrich said no American at any income level should have to pay more than 25 percent of his income in local, state and federal taxes during peacetime. The average rate of taxation is now about 38 percent -- depending on where you live and how much you earn. That would mean that government would have to be cut by about one-third.

"We need a smarter, not a bigger government," Mr. Gingrich said. "Every business I know is doing this -- it modernizes, it uses information systems, it downsizes, it rethinks, it restructures." By contrast, he said, government "often acts as though we have not even invented the calculator."

"Is the shape of America's future 'We the people,' or is it 'We the government'?" he asked.

As a specific example of waste, Mr. Gingrich cited the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), an IRS program that offers money to the working poor. For some, the money serves as a rebate for income or payroll taxes. For some, it is an outright subsidy.

The program, assembled during the Reagan administration as a means to help the working poor, will issue $28 billion to them in 1998.

Mr. Gingrich said the program has a 21 percent error rate that, if corrected, would save more than $5 billion -- enough to abolish estate taxes.

Mr. Gingrich decried public schools in Washington, D.C., which spend about $10,000 per student but have a dropout rate of 40 percent.

He also said the nation should identify "bad" schools and then require the heads of those schools to come up with a 30-day plan.

"If we don't like their answer, frankly, we ought to replace the people in charge of them," he said.

Mr. Gingrich said any student who has not mastered English by the fourth grade should be put in an English immersion program.

"The fact is English is the common, commercial language in America," he said. "When we allow children to stay trapped in a bilingual program, where you do not learn English, we are destroying their economic future."

Mr. Gingrich commended Lockheed Elementary in his district near Atlanta as a school that provided cellular telephones to the teachers at no cost to the taxpayer. He advocated more of the same.

Mr. Gingrich also addressed problems with the Social Security system and suggested that surpluses be used to help make it solvent in the coming years.

He suggested that Congress create a commission on retirement security -- composed evenly of baby boomers and younger and older people -- and that every member of Congress set up grass-roots groups that would exchange ideas with the commission via the Internet.

"The challenge we are facing is 30 years out," he said. "It is not tomorrow morning.

"We're on the edge, if we will have discipline, of a generation of surpluses," he said.

Mr. Gingrich added later, "The time has really come for talking about a generation of goals. What should we do over the next generation?"

He took aim at the Clinton administration, which is also wrestling with how to solve Social Security's looming crisis. President Clinton would like Social Security reform to be part of his legacy. Administration officials have referred to the "painful choices" involved in shoring up the program.

Mr. Gingrich said change does not necessarily have to be painful.

"Anyone who tells you we only have painful choices about Social Security doesn't understand the marketplace," he said.

Mr. Gingrich renewed his call for an all-out war on drugs. He noted that Congress recently voted to expand the authority of the drug czar, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, and called on him to map a "World War II-style battle plan" to get rid of drugs. "Just say, now, what does it take to seal off the border? What does it take to go after drug dealers? What does it take, frankly, to raise the cost for drug users?" he said.

Mr. Gingrich tried to make sure that Republicans get some of the credit for the nation's strong economy -- much ballyhooed by Mr. Clinton lately. The speaker noted that since Republicans took control of Congress in January 1995, the country has:

The lowest budget deficit in 23 years.

The lowest unemployment in 27 years.

The lowest violent crime rate in 24 years.

The highest family income in history.

A stock market that has doubled in value.

About 8 million new jobs.

About 25 percent fewer people on welfare.

The speech had its vintage Gingrich moments. At one point the speaker said he plans to encourage "his friends in the legislature" to require every child in America to spend one day every year studying the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Federalist Papers.

"They are a hard thing to read. They make you actually learn big ideas," he said, adding that they are the "core of being American."