A Year of Living Dangerously

The first session of the 101st Congress blessedly faded into the bleak November Washington dawn Wednesday, more notable for all that it undid or left undone than for its few achievements. Not many in Washington will lament its passing. The final acts were symbolic of the year. The House and Senate dismantled a major program, the 1988 catastrophic health care system, which sank under an anti-tax backlash. They then pasted together a $14.7 billion budget deficit reduction measure with a good deal of whole cloth, in the form of fiscal shell games, and (hush) some $6 billion in various “revenue enhancements” (i.e., tax increases).

The unappreciated irony is that all the turmoil that churned through the 1989 session for both the lawmakers and President Bush has laid the groundwork for major opportunity in 1990.

Substantial progress was made on new programs such as the Clean Air Act and child care. And the escalating demands of the Gramm-Rudman deficit reduction law may compel Bush to do something he failed to do this year: to lay a coherent fiscal program before Congress in January. His hopes for cutting the capital gains tax may rest on his ability to negotiate a solid budget and tax agreement with Democrats.

Nostalgia for the 1989 session will not linger long. Unlike Ronald Reagan in 1981, Bush did not come to office with a big domestic agenda. At the outset, the new President had lots of good will in Congress, but he lost several big ones in his first year, including his fight to fulfill a major campaign pledge, the capital gains cut, and his selection for secretary of Defense, John Tower (a blessing in disguise, since he got the able Dick Cheney instead). And he may have tripped himself up politically with his hard-line position against public funding for abortion, even in cases of rape and incest.

Things have turned out a little better for Democrats on the Hill. True, the House lost its Speaker and majority leader, Jim Wright (D-Texas) and Tony Coelho (D-Modesto), after embarrassing and time-consuming scrutiny of Congressional ethics. And the Senate stumbled along early in the year under the hesitant guidance of its new majority leader, George Mitchell (D-Maine). But by November, both Mitchell and the new House Speaker, Tom Foley (D-Wash.) had emerged as popular and effective leaders.

Even so, the Democrats cannot make political gains just by continuing to stalemate the President on issues like capital gains. The challenge for Mitchell and Foley is to unite their party behind a positive program. The challenge for Bush is to develop a Congressional agenda with clear direction and to demonstrate a willingness to support his kindler, gentler leanings with the necessary money. The battle resumes in just seven weeks.