Capital Letters: Coat-Check Time

In which our man in Washington endures Republican victory rituals.

Michael W. Lynch from the January 1999 issue

Subj: Omnibus Spin
Date: Fri, October 16, 1998 12:49:15 PM
From: [e-mail]

I was sitting at my desk, fact-checking my McCain piece yesterday, when an elated Horace Cooper, press secretary for Dick Armey, called to announce that the Republicans had struck a budget deal with the White House on terms favorable to the Republicans. Tell me about it, I said, as I flipped a page on my reporter's pad and uncapped my Uni-ball micro pen. I was happy to be thought enough of to be on the receiving end of spin. I have never heard Horace as excited as he was rattling off his boss' accomplishments.

A $10 billion increase in defense spending--considered "emergency spending"--with $1 billion dedicated to an anti-ballistic missile program was the first item he shared. Not only will there be
no federal money for needle exchanges in D.C., but the Republicans won a ban on needle-exchange funding for the entire country. But I like needle exchanges, I interjected. Horace reminded me, however, that I wasn't in favor of the federal government's funding such pursuits. He had me. (In a conversation today, I asked him if the Republicans would make private needle exchanges legal. We both chuckled at the thought.)

The next series of accomplishments consisted of defensive feats: no money for developing national education tests, no hate crime bill, census sampling to be pushed off for another six months, some prohibitions on international family planning. Horace said Third World women would no longer receive involuntary IUDs, and he mentioned something about forced abortions in China.

"What about the Communications Decency Act II?" I asked. That stayed in. Knowing we had a disagreement, Horace was quick to point out that funding for the Department of Transportation's national ID card was yanked for a year and a proposed gun registry was blocked. The anti-drug propaganda and drug-war armament programs, however, stayed in. And the IMF, according to Horace, will get its $18 billion only after the Treasury Department certifies that it has adopted more open procedures.

Clinton gets his $1 billion increase in education spending, but locals get to decide how it's spent, within some limits. And farmers get $6 billion in emergency relief. In total, there will be $20 billion in emergency spending: $10 billion defense, $6 billion farmers, with the remainder going to the much-hyped Y2K problem and embassy security. (Why are these "emergency" items? So the spending caps aren't officially busted.)

I deemed this a mixed bag at best. I was happy about the ID and guns, but the Republicans seemed once again to have displayed fiscal incontinence while enthusiastically pandering to those who would deny me the freedom to have a good time. So I wasn't surprised by this morning's newspapers.

"This Republican Congress is going home after blowing a hole in the balanced-budget agreement it so proudly announced just a year ago," led The Wall Street Journal's Politics and Policy feature. Not exactly the spin Horace had in mind. The article noted that the "pre-election spending spree" helps define today's conservatism, adding that none of the GOP gains enumerated by Gingrich had to do with "the old order of fiscal discipline," but were in fact "important to the social right."

In his Potomac Watch column, Paul Gigot sniped that if Clinton "gets any weaker, Republicans may pass Hillary's health care plan." The Washington Post's lead article called the deal a "victory for traditional politics," an "election-year political piñata, stuffed with special projects and extra spending for both parties."

Yesterday, Horace said a common Hill analogy characterized Clinton as the place-holding Lucy and the Republicans as the place-kicking Charlie Brown, which seems about right to me. But while Clinton is still the untrustworthy Lucy, argued Horace, it is congressional Democrats who are in Charlie's position, as the president's deal with the Republicans has left them airborne with little to campaign on.

I called Horace today to discuss this idea, since the news reports quoted Democrats praising the president. "They got a great spin operation going on," Horace allowed. But if the Democrats are so happy, he asked, why are they refusing to endorse the deal until they read it?

"Is anybody going to read this before the vote?" I asked. That's precisely his point. Since no one will read it before voting on it, it should be enough that the president supports it. (I checked with a Democratic Hill staffer, who said, "We think it's a good thing. We just don't know what's in it.")

Horace then laid into his defense of the deal, which, in quintessential Washington terms, has everything to do with "our team" vs. "their team." According to this logic, all "their team," meaning the Democratic Party and its sundry bottom-feeding interest groups, got was $1.2 billion for teachers and $35 million for heating fuel for North Koreans, two items which aren't likely to motivate their base. "This is not the same as the $25 billion we spent for the radical-left agenda" to get out of town in 1996, Horace said. He was not happy about the IMF money, but at least it's for the "corporate pukes," not for feminists, Hollywood, or unions. The farm aid, which Rep. James Moran (D-Va.), my congressman, characterized in The Washington Post as "enough for farmers to buy both of the Dakotas," is bipartisan, as members of both teams count farm votes.

In this team-sport view, Horace is convinced the R-team won. "Corporate pukes" get the IMF money; military folks and contractors get $10 billion; people who go ballistic for anti-ballistic missiles get $1 billion earmarked for just that; social conservatives get abortion restrictions, no drug needles, and cybersex bans; and libertarians don't have to carry a national ID and can keep their guns.

I noted that there's not a lot of spending restraint, to which Horace responded with a "compared to what" scenario. "A $30, $40, $50 billion spending spree. That's what we were looking at," he reminded me, again noting that in 1996 they spent $25 billion to get out of town.

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