Ascendant GOP Alters Terms of Capitol Debate

No matter how the budget struggle between President Clinton and Republicans gets resolved, the GOP has already accomplished a remarkable feat since it took control of Congress a year ago: It has utterly transformed the terms of debate in Washington, making a mockery of the hoary truths that guided policy and politics before the 1994 elections threw Democrats out of power on Capitol Hill.

In the pre-1994 political world, Medicare was untouchable. Today, Clinton and the Republicans are arguing not about whether to cut projected spending from the health program for the elderly but about how much to cut.

For years, states were regarded with suspicion as agents of social policy. Now it seems that they can do no wrong, and they clearly are destined to get more power to shape the nation’s social safety net.

Tax increases, once the bread and butter of deficit reduction, are now unthinkable. Balancing the federal budget, long dismissed as a throwaway line for conservative politicians, is the generally accepted framework for almost everything.

“They have engineered an incredibly dramatic shift in the political culture of Washington, from one of distributing benefits to one of austerity,” said Ross K. Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers University. “The theme the Republicans have set is one that Clinton has tuned his instrument to. What the Republicans have done really transcends legislation.”

No one yet knows exactly what the legislative legacy of this GOP Congress will be. At this moment, the outlook is mixed. With the year drawing to a close, Republicans are bumping up against obstacles at almost every turn: budget talks stalled, their welfare reform bill facing a veto, telecommunications legislation snagged and very little of their much-heralded “contract with America” actually signed into law.

“They have succeeded in changing the terms of debate, but they have not succeeded in accomplishing any of their legislative goals,” said Ann Lewis, deputy director of Clinton’s reelection campaign.

But this is only the midpoint of a two-year term for the Republican Congress, and much of its agenda is tied up in the torturous talks with Clinton over how to balance the budget by 2002. Much is at stake in those talks because the issues on the table--proposals to curb the growth of Medicare, to end the federal guarantee of health care assistance to the poor under Medicaid, to cut taxes and to slow the government’s fast-growing entitlement programs--are fundamental to the GOP goal of not just balancing the budget but also restructuring government in a lasting fashion.

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If the budget talks collapse in failure, Republicans may have only themselves to blame. Having built a strong consensus behind the idea of balancing the budget and other broad GOP goals, some Democrats argue, Republicans are at risk of coming up empty-handed because they won’t give on the details.

“We are acting on the Republican agenda,” said Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.). “With a little flexibility, these folks can achieve an extraordinary victory. But they are about to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.”

But even if no long-term budget-balancing plan is enacted, Republicans will not have failed on the budget-cutting front. Clinton has already signed seven appropriations bills that by themselves go a long way toward the GOP goal of reducing government spending.

He has signed bills that would cut spending for energy and water programs by 6%, transportation programs by almost 9% and legislative branch operations by more than 10%. Some programs took far deeper cuts: Rural housing grants were cut in half; the Appalachian Regional Commission was sliced by more than one-third; dozens of programs and agencies were wiped out, from the $15-billion Interstate Commerce Commission to the Coast Guard’s $8.5-million buoy-replacement project.

Those appropriations bills did not go as far as some conservative activists had hoped in abolishing, not just trimming, such federal programs as the Appalachian commission. In that respect, as in others, Republicans have fallen short of the standards of revolutionary change they set for themselves at the beginning of the year. But compared to the incremental changes that usually are the measure of movement in Washington, they have made important strides toward their goal of a smaller, less expensive government.

Overall, the House and Senate have approved cuts of more than $20 billion from the 13 appropriations bills needed to finance the government every year. Clinton has vetoed, or threatened to veto, the three biggest domestic spending bills. But he signaled in earlier negotiations that he would accept most of those cuts if the GOP would agree to restore only $6.5 billion for his top priorities in education, the environment and other social programs.

That is a matter of great frustration in liberal circles. “I have had trouble focusing Democrats on the depth of the cuts in domestic efforts, even in such popular programs as Head Start,” said Rep. Pat Williams (D-Mont.). “We’re so focused on Medicare and Medicaid--the political blue-ribbon winners--that we haven’t moved to protect other essential programs.”

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Clinton’s willingness to accede to such spending cuts is one of many fronts on which Republicans have driven him and other Democrats far closer to the GOP’s conservative positions than anyone could have imagined before the 1994 election.

They have pushed Clinton to the extraordinary position of embracing the goal of a balanced budget and even of accepting the Republican framework for doing so in seven years, using cautious congressional economic forecasts to get there. “They have made theidea of a balanced budget a serious one for the first time in a generation,” said Alan Brinkley, a history professor at Columbia University.

On welfare policy, the consensus has shifted so dramatically that Clinton and all but 11 Democrats in the Senate this year endorsed a GOP welfare reform bill to end the federal government’s 60-year policy of guaranteeing cash aid to the poor, a change that even many Republicans were reluctant to espouse until this year. Clinton has promised to veto the final version of that bill, passed last week, but not because it ends welfare’s status as a guaranteed safety net.

Public demand for big changes in welfare has been building for years, so here--as in other parts of their agenda--Republicans have been riding a wave of change, not creating it. But with Medicare, Republicans have moved the debate into a realm that was practically sacrosanct until now.

Not so many months ago, conventional political wisdom held that Medicare, like Social Security, was too politically popular to be curbed substantially. But Republicans hammered away at the message that cost-saving changes are needed to shore up the Medicare trust fund and keep the program solvent into the 21st century. Now even Clinton has proposed saving $124 billion in Medicare over seven years--far less than the $270 billion in savings that the Republicans initially proposed but far more than many Democrats wanted.

“When I first got here, everyone said that Medicare was one of the third rails of American politics--touch it and you die,” said Rep. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.). “We’ve touched it. Maybe we die, but I don’t think so.”

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That points to a key question for Republicans’ political and legislative future: Are they overreaching by misreading their mandate for change? Clinton has scored big political points by hammering the Republicans for seeking such big savings from Medicare, arguing that was not the kind of change Americans had in mind when they voted to give the GOP the reins of power in Congress.

But Republicans have forged ahead, seemingly heedless of polls showing Clinton on the rise.

“They have proceeded on the assumption that what they are doing is right and good and just and that sooner or later people will recognize that,” Brinkley said. “They have moved beyond public opinion and are waiting for it to catch up with them. It’s not clear it will.”

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Cuts and More Cuts

Even if congressional Republicans are unable to overcome President Clinton’s objections to their seven- year balanced- budget plan, they have imposed significant cuts in discretionary spending programs through the appropriation process. Here is the status of the 13 major appropriation bills for the fiscal year, which began Oct. 1.

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Defense

Last year (in billions): $234.0

This year (in billions): $243.0

% change: 0

Status: Became law without president’s signature

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Labor, HHS, Education

Last year (in billions): $70.0

This year (in billions): undetermined*

% change:

Status: Pending in Congress

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VA, HUD, NASA, and other agencies

Last year (in billions): $70.4

This year (in billions): $61.3

% change: -13%

Status: Vetoed

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Commerce, Justice State, judiciary

Last year (in billions): $26.3

This year (in billions): $26.6

% change: +1%

Status: Vetoed

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Energy, water

Last year (in billions): $20.5

This year (in billions): $19.3

% change: -6%

Status: Signed into law

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Agriculture, FDA

Last year (in billions): $13.4

This year (in billions): $13.3

% change: -1%

Status: Signed into law

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Transportation

Last year (in billions): $13.7

This year (in billions): $12.5

% change: -9%

Status: Signed into law

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Interior

Last year (in billions): $13.5

This year (in billions): $12.2

% change: -9%

Status: Vetoed

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Foreign aid

Last year (in billions): $13.6

This year (in billions): $12.1

% change: -11%

Status: Pending in Congress

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Treasury, Postal Service

Last year (in billions): $11.6

This year (in billions): $11.2

% change: -3%

Status: Signed into law

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Military consturction

Last year (in billions): $8.8

This year (in billions): $11.2

% change: +26%

Status: Signed into law

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Legislative

Last year (in billions): $2.4

This year (in billions): $2.1

% change: -10%

Status: Signed into law

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District of Columbia

Last year (in billions): $0.7

This year (in billions): $0.7

% change: 0

Status: Pending in Congress

* Senate $62.7 billion (-10%), House $60.9 billion (-13%)

Source: House Appropriations Committee