104th Congress flinched too often

0 Comments | Insight on the News, May 27, 1996 | by Paul Weyrich

Last year at this time the new leadership in the House of Representatives boldly spoke of "revolution." Speaker Newt Gingrich insisted that business as usual was out; fundamental changes in the way that Washington does business were in.

Against the suggestion that the Senate and President Clinton were unlikely to go along with such changes, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bob Livingston retorted: "President Clinton is irrelevant and the Senate doesn't matter. Not one dime can be spent on a single program unless the House of Representatives okays the spending." Known as the one-house-veto strategy, this was the way Republicans were going to force an end to programs that they considered bad for the country.

What a difference a year makes. Gingrich may have fun cavorting with Jay Leno or acting as a substitute host for CNN's Larry King Live, but these days there is no talk of revolution. The rest of the Republican leadership tries to put a happy face on what happened with the budget process -- not an easy thing for them to do. That is because, on substance, Clinton won just about everything he fought for in the fiscal 1996 budget finally approved by Congress.

AmeriCorps, which is a device to pay volunteers to be active in politics, supporting Clinton and his friends, is still with us. The National Endowment for the Arts, despite its subsidies for pornographic art, is in the budget. The Corp. for Public Broadcasting, despite its ability to earn billions by marketing its own products, gets subsidized for an even longer term than in budgets approved by Democratic Congresses. The Legal Services Corp. is alive and well. Goals 2000, an attempt to federalize education and impose "outcomebased" methods on local school districts survived because Clinton fought for it -- and the Republicans were unwilling to fight against it. The Commerce Department, the Department of Education and even the Department of Housing and Urban Development are still with us.

True, this budget does cut more money from discretionary programs than even the Republicans had proposed when they put forth their seven-year balanced budget. So in that sense, the Republicans have a right to some credit.

The bad news is that the federal programs the Republicans sought to kill have been funded and will be funded again in the 1997 budget. If Clinton is reelected and if the Democrats take over Congress -- as well they might -- these programs will grow again and be right back where they were. Although most of them have been reduced significantly under the newly approved budget, the bureaucrats don't care. As long as they stay alive, as long as the infrastructure stays intact, they survive to fight another day. That is why the freshmen Republicans wanted to pull these programs up by their roots.

I am not faulting the Republicans because these things didn't happen. The fact is that one election simply isn't enough to turn around a nation that has been heading in the opposite direction for 70 years. What the Republicans should be blamed for is their failure to wage an all-out fight to accomplish the ends they originally sought. In the process of such a fight they probably would have managed to get half again as much as they got. But even if they didn't, the public would have understood what the 1996 election is about.

Elections are best for the country when there are clear-cut differences between the parties. Now everything is fuzzed up. Both sides and claiming credit for the budget. Under these circumstances, Clinton and congressional Democrats win hands down.

It was said of Clinton that he didn't really believe in anything. Indeed, if You follow his rhetoric, he is master-ful in appropriating the themes of his opponents. "The era of big government is over," he intoned in his State of the Union speech. But Clinton fought, and fought hard, for liberal federal programs. He fought on principle. He got every single thing he fought for in one way or the other.

The problem here is that one side was willing to go all-out to win. The other side was embarrassed by what it was fighting for. The Republicans didn't want to defend killing, the arts endowment because too many upperclass suburban women gave them a hard time. They didn't want to defend killing the Legal Services Corp. because they heard from too many Republican lawyers who were afraid they would get stuck with more pro bono work. They didn't want to defend cutting off the government subsidy for public broadcasting lest they see one more bumper sticker proclaiming that "Newt killed Barney."

In short, they didn't have the stomach to face down their opponents. Livingston was right. If the House had stood its ground, none of this would have happened because not a penny can be spent by a president who doesn't get money from both houses of Congress.

The voters are going to take it out on the Republicans for their cowardice because the GOP raised expectations to an unreasonable level. The freshmen, by and large, fought the good fight, even against the wishes of their leadership. The sad thing is that these same freshmen likely are to get hit the hardest by the voters' wrath. And when that happens, the assumption will be made that cutting back federal programs is anathema with voters and cannot be attempted again.