GOP Leaders Ready Plan B to Dodge Budget Fight

A year ago, Republicans in Congress were spoiling for the biggest, bloodiest budget fight this town has ever seen. This year, they may just go fishing.

Hoping to avoid another ugly spending battle just as they head into the fall’s crucial elections, GOP leaders are preparing legislation that would essentially put the government’s finances on autopilot until well after election day.

The measure, which could come to the House floor within the next week or two, would keep the government operating at current spending levels until March 31, 1997.

House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) describes the novel approach as a budgetary “fallback” that would kick in only if Congress fails to write the 13 appropriation bills needed to keep the government funded after the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1.

“We will, under the worst-case scenario, lock in the . . . savings we achieved last year,” said Armey, who wants the House to act on the measure before Congress begins its August recess. “That would insulate against any vetoes that would result in a government shutdown.”

But some Republicans are furious that their leaders are already talking about fallback strategies, saying it amounts to waving the white flag of defeat and giving up too soon on squeezing more savings from the budget.

“It’s defeatism,” fumed Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Mark O. Hatfield (R-Ore.). “I don’t think it helps.”

President Clinton, who has the power to sign or veto any of these spending bills, seems to be in no rush to call an early cease-fire in this year’s budget wars. “I would hope we could get some of the appropriations bills passed,” Clinton told reporters after GOP leaders revealed their backup plan. “I would hope we wouldn’t give up this early on the prospect of progress.”

Indeed, the House and Senate will be spending most of July and August doing the hard work of writing the 13 regular appropriations bills and sending them to Clinton. But with Republicans’ fallback position already on the table, Clinton may have little incentive to sign the bills working their way through Congress because they are, in many cases, less generous to his priorities--such as the national service initiative and the Goals 2000 education reform program.

The early talk of an end-game strategy is a measure of how eager members of Congress are to wrap up the year’s legislative business and go home to campaign. It also shows how much Republicans want to avoid another gridlock-inspired government shutdown, like the ones last winter that proved so politically damaging to the GOP. And it demonstrates how dramatically the budget battleground has changed over the last year.

When Republicans turned to the 13 appropriations bills in mid-1995, just a few heady months after they seized power on Capitol Hill, those measures became the vehicle for many of their loftiest ambitions. By vigorous application of the power of the purse, Republicans tried to topple pillars of the Great Society, stop regulators in their tracks and take an ax to the roots of Clinton’s legislative legacy. Summer jobs programs--gone. Environmental regulations--blocked. The national service program--history.

Those efforts foundered in the more moderate Senate and ran into fierce resistance from the White House. The failure to reach agreement on these bills produced the two longest government shutdowns in history. Republicans bore the brunt of the blame, according to public opinion polls.

This year, Republicans are charting a less confrontational course. They have padded accounts that they slashed last year and have put a lid on the conservative social-policy riders--such as antiabortion restrictions and anti-regulatory initiatives--that were a drag on last year’s bills. Those measures opened deep divisions within Republican ranks between hard-right conservatives and the party’s moderate wing.

The shift in GOP strategy this year was apparent last week, when the House took up a far-reaching spending bill that funds the Departments of Health and Human Services, Education and Labor. Last year’s bill was so jammed with conservative totems--including abortion restrictions, anti-union initiatives and provisions reining in the power of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration--that one wag said it sounded like the “soundtrack of the Rush Limbaugh show.”

This year’s version of the bill is less provocative. It would essentially freeze spending for those agencies. Conservative policy riders are far fewer. In fact, one OSHA-limiting rider that easily passed the House last year was rejected when it came to a vote last week, with 35 moderate Republicans crossing party lines.

But even with a less confrontational approach, spending bills working their way through the House would find Republicans at odds with Clinton--and arguing among themselves--on key issues. For example, the House has passed another social spending bill that would cut off funds for the national service program; Senate Republicans, however, are moving to restore funding.

It’s not just on such details that House and Senate Republicans have been in opposition. They have been locked in a bitter, behind-the-scenes squabble over a $1.3-billion contingency fund that had been set up in the budget blueprint passed by Congress earlier this year: Senate Republicans want to dip into the fund now; the more conservative Republicans in the House want to keep it locked up, at least until a budget deal with Clinton is struck.

Those are the kinds of intraparty divisions that Republican leaders are loath to bring into the open in this election season. That is one reason why they are thinking about passing a fallback spending bill rather than battling among themselves, appropriations bill by appropriations bill.

“The House and Senate have very different positions that will take a long time to work out,” said a top House GOP aide. “We all remember the stories last year--it was Republican on Republican.”

But the White House may not be as eager as GOP leaders to end the budget battle quickly and send members of Congress home early to campaign for reelection.

“If the budget debate is over adequate funding of education and the environment, those are things we want to be talking about,” said a White House official. “If they want to solve their problem, what they ought to do is provide adequate spending for the president’s priorities, and that will get them home.”