House Democrats Call GOP Agenda Extremist

Breaking more than a week of silence, House Democratic leaders emerged from their post-election trenches Friday to denounce the new GOP congressional agenda as “extremist” and to vow that they will use all the legislative maneuvers at their disposal to keep the country from reverting to the supply-side economics of the Ronald Reagan years.

Speaking out for the first time since the election, House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) said that while Democrats hope to cooperate with Republicans in the new Congress, they plan to use every tool at their disposal to delay, “defeat or turn back ill-advised, wrong-headed and damaging” GOP economic proposals.

“When it comes to the principles that are the heart of the Democratic Party and the heart of the American working people, we will never yield and we will never concede,” Gephardt declared, sounding a position of defiance that could herald a new kind of gridlock next year, if Democrats adopt the obstructionist tactics that Republicans employed in the last Congress.

Gephardt, a liberal who faces a challenge from a more conservative Southern Democrat for the post of minority leader next year, pledged that Democrats will seek to keep the Republicans from dismantling programs for the poor, enacting tax cuts for the wealthy and passing other supply-side economic reforms that were tried in the 1980s and which he said resulted in “a $300-billion deficit as far as the eye can see.”

Asked how the Democrats will do that, Gephardt acknowledged that they will not have the votes to stop what is expected to be a juggernaut of GOP reforms when Congress convenes in January, with the Republicans promising to bring to a vote all 10 points of their “contract with America” campaign pledge within the first 100 days of the new session.

But where they cannot block or modify legislation through coalitions with moderate Republicans, the Democrats may fall back on parliamentary delaying tactics and “whatever else we can think up” under the new open rules that the Republicans have promised will apply to floor debates.

Although, Gephardt said, Democrats do not want to exploit their minority status “to create gridlock,” he vowed that they also will not “capitulate on things we think are important.”

The combative stance outlined by Gephardt and several other Democrats at a Capitol Hill news conference was the first indication from a senior Democratic leader of what the party’s strategy will be in the new Congress, where Democrats will constitute a significantly larger minority than Republicans do now.

Although a few House races were so close that the outcomes have still not been officially decided, the Republicans are expected to hold a roughly 30-seat advantage in the 435-member House. In the Senate, they will control 53 seats to 47 for the Democrats.

Gephardt’s defiant return to the bruising political arena of C-SPAN and the swirl of Capitol Hill press conferences--dominated for the last week by incoming House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia and other jubilant Republicans--also signaled an end to a post-election Democratic silence that had alarmed the White House, which has appeared increasingly isolated since the Democratic defeat at the polls Nov. 8.

“Gephardt and the other leaders have been under pressure to get back here and start responding to Gingrich because it appears that we’ve just rolled over, given up and left Clinton out to dry,” a Democratic source said, adding that “post-election shock” largely accounted for his party’s silence.

Majority Whip David E. Bonior (D-Mich.), who was the first to speak out Thursday, joined Gephardt in the latest attack, saying that GOP promises to force votes on balanced-budget and term-limit amendments to the Constitution within the first 100 days of the new Congress amount to an “outrageous raid on the work of our forefathers” who did “a pretty good job of writing . . . a document that has stood us in good stead for more than 200 years.”

Trying to pass all their major ideas in 100 days “exposes the extremist position in the Republican Conference with respect to their contract,” Bonior said.

Most of the initial Democratic fire, however, was being aimed at the contract’s tax cuts and defense spending increases, which the Democrats sought to characterize as a return to the failed experiment with supply-side economics undertaken during Reagan’s first term.

“They told us in 1981 that this theory of supply-side economics, of tax breaks for the wealthy and increased defense spending, would result in a balanced budget,” Gephardt said, adding that the nation learned the hard way “that it didn’t work.” Now, he added, “history is repeating itself as . . . the same people who created this mess in the first place are ready to do it all over again.”

Rejecting the criticism, Tony Blankley, a spokesman for Gingrich, suggested that the Democrats seem to have already forgotten that “it was not just the rich who voted them out of office last week.”

Responding to Gephardt’s threat to delay GOP legislation on the floor, Blankley added that, while Republicans were accused of gridlock for employing similar tactics in the past, the strategy could backfire on Democrats if they block Republican initiatives that are popular with voters. Doing so, he said, “may not be the best way for them to rebuild their party back to the majority.”