End of ‘Contract’ Is Start of New Tests for GOP

In bold letters at the bottom of their “contract with America,” House Republicans issued a pugnacious challenge to the voters who put them in charge of Congress last year: “If we break this contract, throw us out. We mean it.”

On Thursday, GOP lawmakers began celebrating the end of the first 100 days of the 104th Congress, exhausted but exuberant because they had kept the compact they made with voters last year.

Indeed, as they prepared to wrap up a few loose ends today before beginning a three-week Easter recess, Republicans expressed confidence that American voters will not throw them out.

While the ultimate success of their conservative agenda could be blunted by the Senate, President Clinton or shifting public opinion, House Republicans who signed the contract before last November’s election could legitimately claim that they had kept their word. The last of the contract items, a $189-billion tax cut, was passed Wednesday night, but the White House said Thursday that Clinton is “inclined” to veto the measure if it reaches his desk in its present form.

Moving at the congressional equivalent of warp speed, the House GOP leadership brought all of the contract’s provisions to a floor vote before the 100-day deadline they had set for themselves.

Moreover, all of the contract measures received House approval except one: a proposed constitutional amendment to limit congressional terms.

“It’s actually been quite a run,” said exultant House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), who will trumpet his party’s accomplishments and outline its future agenda in a nationally televised address scheduled to begin today at 5 p.m. PDT.

“We said (to voters), we’ll have 10 major issues we’ll vote on,” Gingrich said in an interview broadcast by CNN Thursday. “We voted on all 10. We passed nine out of 10. I think that’s, frankly, a pretty tremendous achievement for the opening hundred days of a Congress.”

Yet even as Gingrich and other Republicans began toasting their 100-day achievements, they acknowledged that they are about to enter a distinctly different phase of congressional action that will present even greater challenges than anything they have confronted so far.

For starters, only two contract proposals have actually become law: a bill limiting “unfunded mandates” that the federal government can impose on states and communities, and legislation making the House and Senate subject to health, safety, labor and civil rights laws that apply to other Americans.

One high-priority House GOP objective, a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, was killed in the Senate, whose Republican members did not affix their signatures to the “contract with America.” Other contract bills, from welfare reform to tax relief, are expected to be rewritten or scaled back in the upper chamber. And Clinton has indicated that he stands ready to veto any bills that reach his desk in a form--like the tax bill--that he considers unacceptable.

Even if much of the contract ultimately makes its way into law, Republican leaders conceded that it will be difficult to fulfill the larger promises they have made--to shrink the federal government, erase the $200-billion federal budget deficit and restore an ethic of hard work, religious observance and private charity to American society.

And when House members return to work in early May, they no longer will have the script that kept such divisive issues as abortion and affirmative action off their agenda during the first 100 days.

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Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Tex.) described the contract as a disciplining tool that allowed Republicans to “learn the mechanics (of congressional power) without having to be concerned with what is the agenda.” Without that discipline, Congress quickly could become more fractious and less productive.

That discipline has reaped a flurry of legislative victories in the House that has no recent precedent. In fewer than 60 legislative days, GOP forces--often joined by substantial numbers of Democrats--passed a spate of bills designed to transform the 10 basic provisions of the contract into the law of the land. They include measures to create a line-item veto for the President, to protect future defense funding, to expand benefits for senior citizens, to restrict the federal regulatory burden and to reform the civil law system.

The final contract bill to win House approval was the $189-billion package of tax cuts, including a $500-per-child family credit, expanded individual retirement accounts and a 50% reduction in the tax on capital gains. The measure was approved late Wednesday despite forceful opposition by Democrats and the President.

Gingrich, the principal architect of the GOP agenda, has acknowledged that several contract items barely survived “near-death experiences” on the House floor. But in every case, except term limits, Republican leaders moved deftly to rescue them from legislative defeat.

While Senate Republicans seem less stirred by populist passions than their House counterparts, few insiders believe that the Senate will scuttle more than a handful of contract measures. Lawmakers like Sen. Connie Mack (R-Fla.) predicted that, in the end, the Senate will pass some version of “a great majority” of the contract’s items, giving GOP leaders what will be, by any measure, an impressive slate of victories.

But the Republicans have more on their minds than the contract’s 10 objectives, and they will be forced to move forward without a signed and sealed game plan to guide them. Republicans who have marched for months in lock-step are likely to fall out of formation as they encounter issues not directly addressed by the contract.

They include the specific spending cuts needed to achieve a balanced budget, for example, and lightning-rod issues that tend to divide conservatives into warring camps: gun control, school prayer, abortion rights and racial preferences, among others.

Asked about the task facing him in this brave new political world, Gingrich likened his task of coalition-building to that of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who held together a web of delicate alliances through war, economic disaster and social upheaval.

“In a free society, when you have major disagreements about public policy--the definition of when life begins, the role of God in public life, the question of whether criminals are violent or guns are violent . . . these things are unavoidable,” Gingrich said in recent remarks to Capitol Hill reporters.

“I think that the job of political leadership is to manage the dialogue in such a way that your coalition holds together. . . . What we have to do on our side, I think, is to continually manage the transition to a more conservative America within a framework that we don’t break down our majority.”

But it is precisely that kind of issue that will dominate the congressional agenda in coming months. As GOP lawmakers move from broad exhortations about budget-balancing to painful cuts in federal programs and government benefits, their own resolve--as well as the public’s--is likely to erode.

Indeed, most of the legislation passed by the House so far remains largely obscure to ordinary Americans. Bills reforming regulatory policy, giving the President the line-item veto, restoring defense budgets and overhauling product liability account for a substantial part of the “contract with America” agenda. But they are hardly the stuff of kitchen-table conversation.

What has generated debate among voters and handed Democrats their most potent political weapon is the initial discussion of the specific spending cuts needed to free funds for tax reductions and move the government toward a balanced budget.

No issue, for instance, has stung Republicans more bitterly during the first 100 days than reaction to proposed changes in the school lunch program--changes that were not mentioned in the contract but were included in the GOP’s broad package of welfare reforms. Democrats also scored political points by attacking Republican proposals to reduce funding for public broadcasting, student loans, summer jobs and Clinton’s national service program.

Adding to the controversy, the Republicans proposed to undertake such spending cuts in part to offset the cost of tax reductions for businesses and for families making up to $200,000 per year. The increasingly emotional debate has caused a pronounced case of the jitters among rank-and-file Republicans. One telling sign was an appeal by more than 200 GOP lawmakers to limit a proposed family tax credit to households making less than $95,000 per year instead of the $200,000 that was initially proposed and finally passed.

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The budget-cutting process will move into full swing next month. As appropriations bills force difficult choices over specific cuts, Democrats are promising an all-out attack on their rivals. Republicans, in response, are bracing for the assault.

They are, in one respect, well armed by public opinion: a Los Angeles Times Poll conducted in mid-March found that just 14% of those surveyed thought that the Republicans were going too far in cutting back government, while 46% said Congress was not going far enough.

Even before Republicans become bogged down in budget cuts, Gingrich and other GOP leaders are trying mightily to characterize the choices ahead in the broadest possible terms:

“I suspect virtually every part of the country will find some transitions that are uncomfortable,” Gingrich told reporters. “But I also suspect that the challenge to us is to convince them that compared to the collapse of the system, those transitional changes are worth it.”

Congressional Democrats, increasingly comfortable with their minority status, have made it clear that they do not feel obliged to produce a coherent budget blueprint of their own to counter the spending plan developed by Republicans.

Drafting a budget, the Democrats argue, is a responsibility of the governing party. And for the last 100 days, and several hundred more to come, the burden of governance, no matter how uncomfortable, must be borne by the majority Republicans.

* CONSUMER IMPACT: What you should do now with proposed tax changes. D3

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Scorecard on GOP’s ‘Contract’

House Republicans kept their promise to vote on all the items of the “contract with America” in the first 100 days of the new Congress. Here is the current status of their agenda:

A: Approved by House

B: Approved by Senate

C: Approved by President

D: Rejected by House

E: Rejected by Senate

F: No action taken by President

G: No action taken by Senate

Congressional accountability--Require Congress to follow all employment laws that apply to private sector.: A, B and C.

Balanced-budget amendment--Bring the federal budget into balance by the year 2002.: A, E and F.

Line-item veto--Give President the power to eliminate individual spending items.: A, B and F.

Crime control--Limit death penalty appeals, cut social spending from earlier crime bill.: A, F and G.

Welfare reform--Distribute money as grants to states, impose five-year limit on cash aid.: A, F and G.

Family reinforcement--Toughen child-support enforcement, install tax incentives for adoption.: A, F and G.

Middle-class tax relief--$500-per-child tax credit, repeal of marriage-tax penalty.: A, F and G.

National security--No U.S. troops under U.N. command, no spending cuts to pay for social programs.: A, F and G.

Senior citizen--Raise Social Security earnings limit, repeal 1993 tax hikes on benefits.: A, F and G.

Unfunded mandates--Ban Congress from ordering local programs without providing the money.: A, B and C.

Capital gains and business tax breaks--Cut capital gains tax by 50%, allow more-generous depreciation write-offs.: A, F and G.

Legal reform--Cap damage awards in product-liability cases, pass “loser pays” laws.: A, F and G.

Term limits--Replace career politicians with citizen legislators by limiting number of terms.: D, F and G.