Battles heat up on Capitol Hill

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Dec 31, 2001 | by Jennifer G. Hickey

The axiom may not be poetic, but it usually is true: Never let your mouth write a check that your posterior can't cover. On one hand, ABC did carry through with its threat to remake Brian's Song, the 1971 tear-jerking chronicle of the life and death of Chicago Bears running back Brian Piccolo. On the other hand, some still anxiously wait for Alec Baldwin to come through on his promise to depart American shores if George W. Bush were elected.

But a threat made by President Bush has an even greater potential for disappointed tears than the remake of Brian's Song, or for embarrassment and complications than the annoyance that is Baldwin's continued presence.

Despite the further positive signals being sent by the stock market and other economic data, most Americans are feeling the recession rather than seeing the recovery. So, addressing a career center in Orlando, Fla., Bush tried to stay above the fraying bipartisanship by continuing to call for action on an economic-stimulus plan. "I hope Congress does pass legislation that will take care of displaced workers for the short term ... and then put other stimuluses in place to encourage job growth," Bush told the audience, leaving spokesmen more directly to attack the Democrat-controlled Senate for stalling.

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) meanwhile was arguing that the fault for failing to approve a stimulus measure before Christmas solely was that of Republicans, who not only passed a bill through the House in October, but have offered compromise legislation. House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.) weighed in that his caucus "is not going to sign a deal just to sign a deal. We need compromise." Noting reports that an agreement would not be reached without two-thirds approval by the Democratic caucus, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) charged that the Democrats "don't want any real compromise" and are using their very narrow margin to sandbag an almost evenly split Senate.

"Any litmus test ought to go to the substance of the package. After all, isn't that what we all want -- an effective stimulus package with aid to dislocated workers?" asked Grassley as the Senate began debate on a $35 billion antiterrorism plan. It was and it wasn't. The substance of the stimulus package was one thing; the spending bill and the $318 billion defense measure to which it was being attached was another.

On Dec. 4, senators pushed a defense-spending bill through the Senate Appropriations Committee, but additional spending earned a veto threat from Bush. Cognizant of the frequent visits GOP appropriators were making to the trough, the president had from the start iterated and reiterated his intention to block any spending measure above the request. "There is a very strong commitment within the caucus to uphold the veto. I don't think there will be any backing away," one GOP senate staffer says. Although a letter circulating among the GOP caucus indicated there were enough votes to uphold a veto, an aide to a conservative member told INSIGHT, "This is the Senate, who knows what will happen?" *** According to White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, what will happen is inevitable, not to mention politically motivated. "Why on Earth would the Senate go through this exercise when it clearly won't go anywhere, other than to delay America's national defense needs," he said. What happened was Democrats backed down on Dec. 7, avoiding a confrontation with Bush.

As "needs" are redefined with every new spending measure, so too is what it means to be patriotic. In an interview with USA Today, Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) sounded the Roxanne Pulitzer trumpet of class warfare, charging that her colleagues would be "unpatriotic, inappropriate [and] wrong" to vote for the stimulus measure that passed the House in October. Lowey, who heads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), then broke new ground by asserting, "The bottom line is: This is George Bush's recession." And Daschle did not miss a toot, soon blowing on about "the Bush economy."

The DCCC already has taken its rhetorical circus on the road with a series of radio ads targeting congressional districts with members who voted for the GOP stimulus bill. Appearing on Fox News Channel, Democratic National Committee Chairman Terrence McAuliffe argued more prudently that "it's a waste of time to argue" about where the blame should fall for the recession. "We have a proven track record, we have a message of fiscal discipline," boasted McAuliffe, claiming credit for a decade of economic prosperity. Clearly emerging was an effort to necklace Bush with accusations about "ignoring the economy," which Clinton used against George H.W. Bush in 1992. And McAuliffe will not be as cordial off-air.

The origin of the strategy is no secret. Asserting that the public is looking for "a new seriousness from its leaders," an analysis issued by the Democracy Corps, a consulting firm, argued Democrats should begin laying the groundwork for an attack on Bush. The organization, founded by former Clinton consultants Bob Shrum, James Carville and pollster Start Greenberg, questioned 1,000 likely voters between Oct. 30 and Nov. 1, as well as four focus groups consisting of swing voters. The conclusion? One is that "there is no area clearer than the economy, the budget and taxes where Democrats are closer to reflecting the country's aspirations and where Republicans are badly out of step."