COLUMN ONE : D.C. Inertia Could Stall Crusaders : House Republicans enjoy little margin for error in new Congress. Senate procedures forcefully call for compromise. The first 100 days are crucial.

Now comes the revolution.

Perhaps.

With visionary and volatile House Speaker-designate Newt Gingrich at the point, the new Republican majority in Congress will roll into Washington this week with an agenda of astounding breadth and ambition.

From radical plans for reconfiguring the welfare system, to balancing the federal budget and limiting the terms of congressional representatives, Republicans are plotting a revolution--or more precisely a counterrevolution--against the accretion of federal power and authority that has proceeded virtually unabated since the Depression.

Conservative strategist William Kristol says the Republicans seek nothing less than ending “the New Deal era”--the reflex of looking to Washington to solve the nation’s problems.

Says Gingrich: “We simply need to reach out and erase the slate and start over.”

The Republican exertions to redeem their promises of retrenching government and reforming Washington makes this perhaps the most keenly anticipated legislative session since the mid-1960s--when Lyndon B. Johnson erected the Great Society web of social programs that Gingrich and his allies now hunger to dismantle.

With success in the months ahead, the Republicans could put their party in a commanding position to hold the Congress and recapture the White House in 1996. Failure is bound to inspire deepened disenchantment with the political system and growing talk of alternatives to the two major parties that have controlled American politics since the Civil War.

But something even more fundamental may be at stake: The ability of the nation to move the federal leviathan in any direction.

Two years ago, Bill Clinton arrived in Washington with plans as vast as the ones Gingrich and his Republican cohorts are nurturing today. Despite many important legislative victories, his term has painfully illustrated the institutional limits on change--an inertia most powerfully demonstrated in the collapse of his efforts to reform the nation’s health care system. If Clinton’s experience during the past two years testifies to anything, it is the power of Washington to blunt crusades and embitter crusaders.

In the end, the public sense that Clinton and the Democrats had not delivered on their promises of change let the initiative pass to the Republicans, who now control both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years. But now the GOP faces the test that the Democrats flunked. To avoid public disenchantment, “they need a high batting average in passing their agenda,” says John J. Pitney, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College, who has advised congressional Republicans.

In their “contract with America,” House Republicans have set themselves a high standard.

It includes two constitutional amendments (to balance the federal budget and limit congressional terms) with a third one (to reauthorize school prayer) on deck; a fundamental rewrite of federal welfare laws anchored on stern measures designed to discourage illegitimacy; a thorough redrafting of the crime bill that Congress completed only last August after six years of debate; across-the-board tax cuts for families and corporations; and a new set of basic ground rules for both private litigation and federal regulatory actions.

Gingrich has vowed to keep the House in session five days a week until it votes on all of that, and more, preferably within 100 days.

In pursuing this revolution, Republicans begin with some important assets. Polls show Americans clearly want the new congressional majority, rather than President Clinton, to take the initiative in driving Washington’s agenda. At a deeper level, the Republican call for limiting government resonates with the suspicion of Washington that dominates American politics in the 1990s and has constituted a formidable barrier to Clinton’s proposals. In one survey conducted on Election Night last November, 72% of Americans endorsed Ronald Reagan’s classic formulation that “government is not the answer to our problems; government is the problem.” Those sentiments are powerful allies for the GOP.

But the devil, as always, will be in the details. Polls have shown that Americans resist virtually all of the cuts--especially in middle-class entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare--that are unavoidable in any serious effort to balance the federal budget. And Americans continue to support the goals of environmental protection that advocates say would be imperiled by the regulatory agenda House Republicans have endorsed, polls indicate.

Likewise, Americans consistently indicate in surveys that they oppose the intellectual pillar of the House Republican welfare plan: to deny benefits to women under age 18 who bear children out of wedlock, and to use the money instead to provide services, including space in orphanages, directly to their children.

These yellow lights from the public may not derail action in the House--where all signs suggest the euphoria of regaining control after decades in the wilderness has unified GOP representatives behind Gingrich and the contract.

Still, with only 230 members, House Republicans have little margin for error. At the least, they will need substantial Democratic support to reach the 290 votes required to pass their constitutional amendments to limit terms in office and balance the budget; the latter seems likely to win approval, but the former has uneven support even among Republicans and faces an uphill struggle.

That prospect frightens many Republican political consultants who consider term limits a promise as critical for Republicans as universal health care was for Clinton.

On other issues, the House Republican contract could face moderation and dilution in the Senate. “The big danger,” said conservative strategist Grover G. Norquist, “is the Senate more than the House.” Senate procedures forcefully encourage compromise: With just 53 Republicans, the new majority will need Democrat support to reach the 60 votes required to break off minority filibusters.

Moreover, Senate Republicans never endorsed the House GOP contract, and some have already signaled that the upper chamber will move more cautiously on issues such as welfare and regulatory reform, much less term limits. In late December, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), the incoming chairman of the Judiciary Committee, warned that several elements in the contract could not pass the Senate and chastened his breathless colleagues in the House: “We’re coming in with higher . . . expectations than we can deliver.”

Expectations may be highest for the GOP in the arena where progress will come most grudgingly: further reducing the federal budget deficit. After great exertion, Clinton passed a huge deficit-reduction package last year; but the deficit this year is still estimated to come in around $167 billion, and it is projected to drift back over $200 billion by the end of the decade, largely because of rising costs in federal health care programs.

Nothing will test the boundaries of the possible in Washington more profoundly than the Republican efforts to put flesh on their crowd-pleasing exhortations to further cut spending and finally bring the budget back into balance by the year 2002. “That is the essence of the whole debate, whether we as Republicans are going to chart a new course” said Richard May, the Republican staff director at the House Budget Committee. “Can we or should we as a government live with an equal amount of revenue and spending? We should not underestimate that challenge.”

Like Ronald Reagan in 1980, the Republicans have made a series of promises that many fiscal experts consider incompatible: balancing the federal budget while cutting taxes (at a cost of $197 billion over the next five years and $712 billion over the next 10, according to Treasury Department estimates), strengthening the Defense Department and protecting Social Security from any cuts.

Incoming Republicans insist that, unlike Reagan, who let federal deficits explode under his Administration, they will find the budget cuts to square that circle. But to do so they will have to confront constituencies dependent on existing federal programs--from large corporations to middle-class retirees--that neither party has been willing to stare down.

“It’s just hard to do,” Pitney said, “because inevitably you are going to bite into Republican constituencies.”

Republicans are already trying to dampen expectations for their budget proposal: It will “point toward a down payment” on balance, May says, but not detail how the GOP would fulfill the balanced-budget amendment it hopes to pass through both chambers of Congress by the end of January. If Republicans, who have preached fiscal conservatism for decades, blink now, that could mean large budget deficits are an immutable part of our future--a problem that the political system considers less painful to live with than to solve.

Looming over all of these deliberations will be the 1996 presidential race. With their dramatic gains in November, and Clinton’s persistently weak job-approval ratings, Republicans see blood in the water. Optimistic about their prospects, and spurred by an acceleration of the 1996 primary schedule, Republican presidential hopefuls are expected to begin formally announcing their candidacies early this year; one sign of Republican impatience is that a straw poll is scheduled for this weekend at the state Republican convention in Louisiana.

That early jostling will add a new level of complexity to legislative maneuvering on Capitol Hill. For sheer exuberant animosity, nothing this side of “Melrose Place” rivals the intrigues between incoming Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole and Texas Sen. Phil Gramm--both of whom are eyeing presidential bids and vying for control of the Senate Republican agenda. By next spring, both may be looking nervously across the Capitol to the House--and the inevitable discussion of a possible presidential run by Gingrich, who has at least temporarily eclipsed all rivals as the symbol and spokesman of the new Republican majority.

For Clinton too, the coming months will cast a long shadow over 1996. At some point, most experts agree, Americans close the book and render their judgment on a President; if Clinton hasn’t reached that point, it may not be too far off. “There is time” for Clinton to recover, says Don Sweitzer, the former political director of the Democratic National Committee, “but things have to be looking better by summer or fall.”

In the Democratic Party and the White House, opinions diverge on whether cooperation or confrontation with the Republicans offers Clinton the best chance of revival. House Democrats don’t appear to be waiting for guidance from Clinton: They have already shown that they intend to apply the same ferociously partisan tactics against Republicans that Gingrich deployed in his long drive to escape minority status.

Incoming House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) has sounded notes of class warfare in denouncing the GOP economic agenda, and Democratic whip David E. Bonior (D-Mich.) has repeatedly attacked Gingrich’s ethics, leading the chorus that forced the Georgia Republican to return a $4.5-million advance to write a book for a company owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

The congressional Republicans face similar strategic choices. Many want to push purist conservative bills on issues like welfare that will provoke Clinton vetoes--and sharpen partisan contrasts for the presidential campaign. But other GOP strategists warn that such a consciously polarizing strategy could invite breakdown and stalemate--and quickly disillusion voters who turned to Republicans after Democratic promises of change collapsed into chaos last summer and fall.

Indeed, across the ideological spectrum, there is a growing suspicion that both parties may be on trial in the historic legislative session that begins this week. Like Clinton, who described his campaign agenda as a “New Covenant” with voters, Republicans have enshrined their promises in a “contract.” Should Americans conclude that the Republicans, like the Democrats before them, have failed to deliver on the reform they promised, talk of third parties and independent presidential candidacies will undoubtedly intensify in the months ahead.

“We don’t have a long time here,” said Republican pollster Bill McInturff. “Very early on, people will judge whether something has changed, which is good; or whether its the same old stuff, which is bad.”

If by June 30 Clinton is no better off but we’re in the tank too, then it just leads to (independent presidential campaigns from) Ross Perot, Jesse Jackson and a very complex environment.”

For now, though, the Republicans are operating with an opportunity to foreclose those possibilities and determine their own fate. If the new legislative majority can hold together and pass their agenda, they could marginalize their opponents--and perhaps build a lasting national political majority. But then, the same was true for the Democrats only two years ago.

* POLITICAL PHYSICS: GOP revolution to collide with a slow-moving institution. A22

* RELATED STORY: A26

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FROM TAX CUTS TO SCHOOL PRAYER

A Primer on the Leading Issues

DEFENSE

Both President Clinton and congressional Republicans want to beef up the defense budget. By how much and where the money will come from is unsettled.

Clinton has suggested an additional $25 billion over the next six years. Most GOP proposals surpass that by $10 billion to $15 billion, with much of the total costs going for training, equipment maintenance and service member’s benefits, as Clinton’s would.

The Republicans also would like to spend more on missile defenses, including possibly reviving the Reagan-era Strategic Defense Initiative; shift costs such as military base environmental cleanups to other agencies, and redo the recent “Bottom-Up Review” to ensure the military could fight two full-scale regional wars at the same time.

In the end, the shopping list will probably exceed the bank balance. Following a blitz of pro-defense rhetoric, most analysts expect only incremental increases to ultimately be approved.

HEALTH

Despite the spectacular collapse of health reform in the ’94 session, this issue seems to be a starter again this session. But don’t expect anything on the grand scale of its failed predecessor.

Instead, look for some of the less controversial elements to come up separately. Best bets are a guarantee of insurance renewability, added protection for the health industry from costly malpractice suits and more flexibility for states to fashion their own type of health reform.

Also getting attention may be so-called medical savings accounts, supported by some Republicans, which would allow people to use pretax earnings to pay for medical expenses.

The White House is still working on its health reform strategy. Some congressional Democrats may push to expand coverage to uninsured pregnant women and children. But, as with many other issues now, the Republicans seem to have the upper hand in deciding what will be done.

SCHOOL PRAYER

Incoming House Speaker Newt Gingrich wasted no time in sounding the battle cry on this volatile issue, but the result has been more of a retreat than a rally. Parents called conservative talk show hosts to complain, prominent religious groups spoke out in opposition and even the Christian Coalition disputed important details of the proposal.

Some conservative activists are trying to work up a milder version that would protect “religious expression” on school campuses without using a Constitutional amendment to establish a right of voluntary prayer. But an acceptable draft has remained elusive.

The likelihood is that Congress will wait until the latter half of 1995 to take up the issue, and will likely face an uphill fight to get the needed two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate.

ENVIRONMENT/CONSUMER ISSUES

Conservatives in Congress tried last year to roll back federal authority in these areas and didn’t succeed. This time they are primed to finish the job.

On the agenda: (1) Bar “unfunded mandates,” or new regulations that the federal government hands down but doesn’t appropriate money for; (2) Strengthen “private-property rights,” by making the government compensate a land owner when it decreases the value of his property; (3) Require a “risk assessment” for new regulations, specifically weighing the potential public benefits against the cost of imposing them.

GOP leaders Phil Gramm and Dick Armey are leading the charge in the Senate and House respectively, and many Democrats are joining in. The pro-environment lobby will be hard-pressed to head them off.

AGRICULTURE

How does a crusader against big government do his budget-cutting duty in Congress without taking a chain saw to the farm bill?

That’s a dilemma more than a few lawmakers face this session. The agriculture program is a huge pork-stuffed carcass, as most Democrats and Republicans will acknowledge; it also bristles with more political nerve endings than almost any other issue.

When the budget knives are passed around, Rep. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), the incoming chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, will find himself in a particularly interesting position. He is a front-line commander of Speaker Gingrich’s cut-government-down-to-size squad. He’s also the representative of a rural district that is due to collect $1.4 billion in federal subsidies between 1986 and 2003, according to one study.

POLITICAL REFORM

House Republicans have promised to bring up two proposals for limiting the terms of members of Congress. One would let representatives and senators serve 12 years. The other would limit House members to six years.

Term limits have stirred a lot of public interest, but getting them enacted will take more than a straight-up vote. The change could require a Constitutional amendment, which means three-quarters of the nation’s state legislatures would have to approve it as well.

The only short-cut would be if states establish the right to limit their own members’ terms. That question is currently pending before the Supreme Court. Although Congress plans to take up the term-limit issue this session, many members privately don’t like the idea and would like to sidetrack it. Notable among them is Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), the incoming chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

Another institutional change, the line-item veto, also is likely to get an airing this session. Both President Clinton and many Republicans like this concept, which would allow the President to cancel any items in the budget he doesn’t like, because it could help to lowering spending. But here, too, there are Constitutional questions.

The one seeming sure bet is a measure that would require Congress to abide by the same rules it imposes on the rest of the nation--from labor laws to environmental regulations. Right now, it exempts itself from some. Passage in the House is a certainty; in the Senate, it is has a strong likelihood of passage.

FOREIGN POLICY

Never popular even in the best of years, foreign aid will come under fierce assault in this Republican-controlled Congress. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), heading the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has vowed to cut off funds funneled down “foreign rat holes;” Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a key subcommittee chairman, is proposing cuts of at least 20% for all but the Middle East and Europe.

Some impact will certainly be felt. But the bigger target is likely to be the Clinton Administration’s policies toward flash points like Bosnia, North Korea and Haiti. The leadership will demand tougher action against the Bosnian Serbs and the lifting of the U.N. arms embargo against Bosnia’s Muslim government.

IMMIGRATION

A crackdown on immigration is not in the “contract with America” that House Republicans have promised for Congress’ first 100 days, but it is expected to make its way up the agenda before long. In the House, Republican Lamar Smith, a key subcommittee chairman from Texas, plans to begin drafting a national version of California’s Proposition 187. The Senate’s immigration expert, Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming, will be doing the same in that chamber. But there are strong disagreements in GOP ranks over how far to go to deter illegal immigration. Simpson, for one, has expressed discomfort at calls to deny benefits.

So any major legislative action on this issue could well be skipped for another year.

CRIME

President Clinton’s anti-crime bill produced one of the biggest fights of the 1994 term. It will be back for another round in ’95. With their new majority, Republicans hope to strip down the program, starting with the provision that promised 100,000 more cops on the streets through matching federal grants. The Republicans would replace it, along with provisions for drug courts and assorted crime prevention programs, with $2 million annually in block grants, which would lessen Washington’s control over the money.

Republicans maintain that even if there is less money, the cities will appreciate the greater latitude in using it. The Administration hopes for a public relations boost from police departments that have been eagerly waiting to get their hands on the funds for new job slots and other programs.

WELFARE

Welfare as we know it will most likely be changing. House Republicans are starting with a tough-minded plan that would deny benefits to teen mothers, drop families with children off the dole after two years and end any state-guaranteed jobs after three years. Legal immigrants would lose assistance and food stamps would be cut back. States that chose to opt out of the system entirely could take a block grant and design their own program.

Senate Republicans don’t have a detailed plan yet, but they are more divided on the issue and seem likely to balk at the tougher House GOP options. The Clinton Administration has its own welfare plan pending before Congress. Offering extensive job training and child-care benefits, it will likely be attacked as too costly and too coddling, particularly in this more conservative political climate. The President has scheduled a summit on welfare reform for mid-January in attempt to regain the initiative on the issue; it won’t be easy.

Most observers expect that when the dust settles, there will, at minimum, be some time limit on welfare, special restrictions for teen mothers and no benefits for most legal immigrants. Federal spending will be cut back sharply and states will be free to take a lump sum and do it their own way.

TAX CUTS

The middle class is in for a tax cut--that seems almost certain. The big question is whether it will be a modest one, as the Clinton Administration and congressional Democrats prefer, or a GOP-style whopper that would exceed anything seen since the early Reagan era. Also in dispute is who should be considered middle class.

President Clinton would draw the line at roughly $100,000 in household income. His plan would provide a $500-per-child tax credit for children under 13 for families with incomes under $75,000; would allow up to $2,000 in IRA tax deductions for families earning up to $100,000, and would allow parents earning up to $100,000 to deduct $10,000 a year in costs for post-secondary education. House Democratic Minority Leader Richard Gephardt of Missouri has a proposal targeting the same income range, though most of its details remain unset.

On the other hand, the Republicans are pledging bigger cuts for more people, particularly at the high end. As part of the “contract with America,” there would be a $500-per-child tax credit for families earning up to $200,000; an easing of the “marriage penalty” for two-income couples, and new tax incentives for adoption.

In the Senate, Republican Phil Gramm has his another big-impact proposal that would double the current $2,500 per-child tax exemption to $5,000.

The only problem with the Republican plans is the cost--enough to blow a huge hole in the federal deficit unless there are major spending cutbacks. The Republicans promise there will be.

But most analysts expect a compromise: something for middle-class families and something for business, probably centering on a tax credit for children and some capital gains tax cut.

ENTITLEMENTS

In the budget-cutting spree, Social Security is off the table--so say both Democrats and Republicans. But Medicare may not be. The cost of the health care program for the elderly is growing faster than any of the others and thus makes an attractive target. Looking to fund a middle-class tax cut, both sides may wind up recommending reduced payments to doctors and hospitals.

Trimming civil service and military pensions also may be considered if the push for tax cuts hits high levels.

BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT

Passing this amendment is one of the first promises the new Republican leadership seems certain to fulfill. It has a lot of political appeal for both parties. The hard part will be actually living up to a balanced budget, and at the same time finding the money to pay for the Republican’s long menu of tax cuts.

Still, the Republicans plan to give themselves some breathing room on how quickly they will have to balance the books. Under the their plan, the federal government would not be required to have a balanced budget until 2002; that delay allows two years for three-quarters of the states to ratify the measure, as is required of constitutional amendments, and five years for implementation.

Researched by Times reporters EDWIN CHEN, MELISSA HEALY, RONALD J. OSTROW, ART PINE, JAMES RISEN, ROBERT A. ROSENBLATT, MICHAEL ROSS, DAVID G. SAVAGE and ELIZABETH SHOGREN