At Long Last--No More Gridlock? : Signs of hope appear as Congress takes up the Clinton economic program

More and more these days, Congress seems to be getting with the White House’s program. Is this the end to legendary gridlock?

The Senate is scheduled to vote next week on President Clinton’s budget and stimulus plan. The smart money says the package will be passed in a form, more or less, that Clinton will like. But the process is likely to be messier and more contentious than in the House, which this week passed a resolution supporting the broad outlines of the Administration’s deficit-cutting budget and stimulus plan. Senate Republicans, who want no new taxes and more spending cuts, may be cranky. A showdown may come over the stimulus plan for community development grants, summer jobs, small business loans and other projects designed to produce 219,000 jobs this year.

Will conservative Democrats back off from their threat to delay most of the funding in the $16.3-billion stimulus program? The White House proposes to spend that over the next two years; some senators want to slow it down. A measure of compromise on the timing of the stimulus program may be inevitable.

Some promising signs emerged in the Senate this week. On Friday the Senate defeated, 52 to 44, a Republican amendment to impose a five-year freeze on domestic spending. A day earlier the Senate defeated an amendment to eliminate a broad energy tax that is a vital part of Clinton’s overall economic plan.

Clinton scored a coup in the House in the first congressional test of his economic plan. The House vote on the resolution for a $510-billion deficit reduction in a five-year budget and stimulus program was along party lines. If the Senate resolution were crafted more or less along these lines, the inevitable House-Senate conference would find it easier to narrow differences so that Congress can deliver a final resolution before its April 2 break.

The resolution will establish overall limits on spending and taxes, which will become the standard for other congressional committees in fashioning their reductions. Intra-chamber fights will continue through spring and summer as specific cuts in various programs are made.

That’s politics, of course. But what the American people want is some sensible movement to begin to improve the economy, reduce the national debt and help smooth the way from Cold War budgets to plowshare budgets. That won’t be easy, but it won’t happen at all if the post-Cold War era doesn’t become a post-Washington-gridlock one too.