Guts Check

Republicans control the nation's purse for the first time in 40 years. Do they have the courage to roll back federal spending?

Carolyn Lochhead from the July 1995 issue

(Page 3 of 4)

Lewis points to the $206-million reduction he proposed for the behemoth $38-billion veterans program. Knowing that the notoriously ill-managed veterans hospitals are nonetheless "sensitive and controversial," Lewis says he decided to preserve spending levels at the level requested by President Clinton, plus a House add on. He said he sought only to eliminate more money that had been added by the Senate for six ambulatory care facilities. President Clinton immediately excoriated this half-a-percent trim that left spending higher than his own request as an ugly assault on veterans.

Then when cutting time arrived, Lewis says, Bob Stump (R-Ariz.), the chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee, and Gerry Solomon (R-N.Y.), chairman of the Rules Committee, led the retreat, saying they wanted to restore the money before the Democrats did.

"When you got right down to it, they weren't even willing to take that step," Lewis says. "People say, 'Cut spending, but make sure government fills the pothole in front of my house.' When people who are the biggest of budget cutters have programs that they're emotionally involved in--even though they are huge programs--there's not a dime of it that can afford to be considered."

If such timidity, Lewis says, "is a reflection of the real intestinal fortitude" in both parties, "then there are real problems in the House of Representatives before you even get to the Senate."

The Senate, of course, is led by Bob Dole, the new media darling now viewed by liberals as the pillar of moderation who will turn back the House barbarians. In a New York Times profile, the Senate Republican leader and number-one contender for the GOP presidential nomination said his message would be, "reining in government and all that other stuff."

Dole often sounds eerily reminiscent of George Bush, resorting to Bushisms when trying to articulate the GOP message of smaller government and other elements of "the vision thing." His lieutenants who chair the big committees--Mark Hatfield, Robert Packwood, Nancy Kassebaum, John Chafee, Larry Pressler, William Roth, and Arlen Specter--are cool if not hostile to a major rollback in the federal government.

But even the staunchest Senate conservatives have tasted the joys of the status quo. "This is going to be very tough politics for these guys for the first time," says a Democratic committee aide. "They've always had it easy going around saying the government's the problem, and yet when it comes down to brass tacks, those guys are parochial politicians just like everybody else up here."

He recalls an episode in the transportation committee when the administration laid out plans to cut Amtrak. Mississippi's Trent Lott, the GOP whip who won the job on the strength of his conservative credentials, "all of a sudden discovered that there was an Amtrak line going from Chicago to New Orleans, and guess where it went through," the aide recalls. "All of a sudden he said, 'Well now, you guys have to work with us. You're springing this on us,' and he was back pedaling like mad. All these years conservatives, including Lott, have been saying, 'Amtrak, that's socialism.' So it's going to be tough going for them."

One little corner to watch this summer, the Democrat suggests, is LIHEAP, the low-income energy assistance program, a relic of Jimmy Carter's disastrous reaction to the "energy crisis" of the 1970s. LIHEAP pays the utility bills of an extravagant number of New Hampshire residents who will vote in the bellwether GOP presidential primary.

"We're going to watch what Mr. Gramm and Mr. Dole and Mr. Specter have to say about LIHEAP," the aide says. He says he knows what New Hampshire Republican Judd Gregg will say, "because we went through this last year," when the administration proposed reducing LIHEAP. "Judd Gregg and Trent Lott said, 'Oh no, no, no, you can't cut LIHEAP.' LIHEAP also goes for air conditioning in Mississippi, and they said, 'Oh, no, no, no, you can't do that. This is an important public program.'"

Rolling his eyes at the mention of LIHEAP, a GOP staffer acknowledges the inconsistency. "The word courage is a political cliché," he says, "but courage is really what they need right now."

Even the 73 vaunted GOP House freshmen at the vanguard of the revolution understand the value of pork. The day after the $189-billion tax cut in the Contract with America passed the House, Andrea Seastrand, a grass-roots conservative from California's central coast, faxed dual press releases: "Seastrand Praises Middle Class Tax Relief Bill," and "Niblick Bridge Survives: Seastrand Fights to Keep Money for Paso Robles Bridge Expansion."

That little bridge happens to be the same one that sparked a citizens' rebellion when the Paso Robles city council first proposed paying for it years ago through a colossal tax on local property owners. So the city council turned to Congress, which stuck the tab with federal taxpayers, in Iowa and other far-flung places, who will never cross the Niblick Bridge.

Such are the homely illustrations of the great forces that built the New Deal, the Great Society, and other 20th-century versions of socialist democracy. They will not die easily.

UCLA economist William Allen, now retired, often made the point that socialism leads to two things: poverty and tyranny. The extent will vary depending upon how far the experiment is tried, he said, but the direction always holds. Yet while the invisible hand of the market produces a better if not perfect outcome, Allen noted that free markets lose in the political arena, precisely because the invisible hand is invisible.