Unyielding Republican Turns to Compromise

It was just before Christmas, deep into the record-setting government shutdown that had become an emblem of congressional Republicans’ recalcitrance on the budget, and House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bob Livingston (R-La.) was playing the role of rabble-rouser.

“We will never, never, never give in!” he bellowed in the House chamber, drawing war whoops of support from rambunctious Republicans. “We will stay here until doomsday!”

Four months and many chastening political lessons later, Livingston stood on the House floor Thursday, defending a massive spending bill that was laced with money for President Clinton’s signature domestic programs, stripped of GOP proposals to tame the federal regulatory beast and utterly lacking in trophies for the Young Turks who were determined to dismantle a Cabinet department.

“These are compromises,” Livingston said. “They make everyone and no one happy.”

With that about-face, Livingston helped lead a sharp swing in Republican tactics over the last few months: a shift from a take-no-prisoners confrontational style to a more pragmatic approach.

That shift has seen Republicans back away from past threats to shut down the federal bureaucracy or to drive the government into default unless Clinton agreed to a seven-year budget-balancing plan. It has led them to essentially abandon hopes of enacting such central legislative objectives as cutting taxes and reforming Medicare.

It also culminated in the $160-billion budget bill--signed by Clinton on Friday--that makes deep cuts in federal spending but falls far short of the goals set by GOP revolutionaries. They had wanted not only to reduce spending but to also redesign the architecture of power in Washington by sending money and control to the states.

Livingston, handpicked by House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) to be Appropriations Committee chairman because of his rock-solid conservative credentials, emerged as one of the principal architects of this monument to the art of give-and-take.

More than anyone else involved in drafting the bill, he has worked at the confluence of two powerful currents that will be roiling the GOP waters for the rest of this year. He had to balance the hard-line demands of party ideologues against the need to produce a spending bill that avoided another politically embarrassing government shutdown, and all the while give Republicans at least a few budget-cutting accomplishments. The resulting bill may be the party’s single biggest legislative trophy to take to voters this fall.

The tall, lanky former prosecutor represents a safe Republican district in the New Orleans suburbs. He was first elected to the House in 1977 and, like most of his GOP colleagues, spent most of his House career laboring in obscurity while the party remained mired in the minority.

But after Republicans won control of the House in 1994, Gingrich propelled Livingston to prominence by giving him the reins of the Appropriations Committee, one of the most powerful fiefdoms in Congress because it controls the federal purse strings.

In choosing Livingston, Gingrich passed over several more-senior members of the committee, defying the House’s cherished seniority system. Gingrich saw the more-senior members as too willing to compromise with Democrats.

Livingston seemed more prepared to turn the committee from a bastion of green-eyeshade number-crunchers into an engine for the GOP agenda.

“We are going to be revolutionary,” he said after the 1994 elections. “This is not patty-cake. This is not pickup sticks. This is serious. We’re going at their throats.”

He made his debut as chairman in January 1995 with characteristic flair. He turned up at the first meeting with a Salvadoran machete, a Bowie knife and a “Cajun scalpel”--a small knife used to skin alligators. “It’s one of the sharpest instruments you can find, and I intend to use it on the budget,” Livingston said.

Early on, Livingston spoke brashly about restructuring the government by cutting off funds to programs Republicans deemed unnecessary, redundant or just simply bad. But as he got down to the business of writing legislation, he found it was not so easy. He had to accommodate senior members more attached to the status quo.

Plans to scrap the Depression-era Tennessee Valley Authority gave way to a bill that trimmed its budget, for instance. The Commerce Department lived to see another day despite demands from GOP freshmen to dismantle it. The National Endowment for the Arts survived even though conservatives organized a procedural rebellion against the committee’s effort to keep it alive.

Such episodes fueled complaints in the back benches that Livingston was too quick to cave. “While his rhetoric is there, his actions are not as conservative,” said freshman Rep. Mark Edward Souder (R-Ind.). “From his perspective, he pushed it as hard as he could, but he could have pushed harder.”

Livingston had his biggest confrontation with the freshman class in October, when he punished Rep. Mark W. Neumann (R-Wis.) after the first-term lawmaker helped organize a successful effort to defeat a major defense spending bill.

A shouting match ensued and Livingston threw Neumann off the defense appropriations subcommittee. Enraged freshmen rallied behind Neumann and stormed with their protest into Gingrich’s office. Livingston refused to reinstate Neumann but patched things up by suggesting that he be given a seat he wanted on the Budget Committee.

But as the months rolled by and the Republicans saw their agenda bogging down, attitudes changed. Some of the freshmen who once complained about Livingston are starting to let up.

Neumann was one of his biggest defenders last week when some freshmen were taking potshots at the budget agreement Livingston helped craft. Neumann circulated a letter praising the compromise because, despite concessions to Clinton, it met GOP deficit-reduction targets.

“Lord knows, I was critical enough when I thought [Livingston] was wrong,” Neumann said. “But when the guy does the job right he should be commended for it.”

One area where Livingston has clearly made his mark was in pushing the antiabortion agenda. An ardent abortion opponent, Livingston laced his panel’s appropriations bills with a full complement of restrictions on government funding of abortion and other new limits.

But as his bills got loaded down with dozens of other controversial riders--on the environment, on workplace regulation, on lobbying restrictions--Livingston complained to the GOP leadership.

Gingrich told him he had to hang tough and help carry the GOP agenda. Many of those riders proved to be not just a drag on the budget process but politically damaging to the party as a whole.

Now, with the interminable debate over the 1996 budget finished, Livingston and his GOP colleagues are turning to the overdue work on the 1997 budget. They hope to learn some lessons from the most protracted budget impasse in memory.

“We were just practicing for ‘97,” Livingston joked last week as exhausted negotiators announced the long-delayed agreement.