Gingrich Gang Achieving Little
As with so much in Washington these days, the increasingly ludicrous budget impasse has come down to Newt Gingrich.
President Clinton and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole want the partial government shutdown ended. They want a compromise, with some tax cuts and some Medicaid and Medicare spending reductions which, on paper at least, will balance the budget over seven years.
But what does the House speaker want? His hard line in these negotiations has brought a promise from the president to eliminate the budget deficit in seven years and use figures from the Congressional Budget Office, rather than the administration, to make calculations. Clinton apparently agrees to a capital gains tax cut as well.
What remains to be decided is the size of tax cuts and the magnitude of the spending reductions. Were these negotiations solely in the hands of consummate deal-makers like Clinton and Kansas Sen. Dole, this debacle would have long since ended. The outline of a deal is evident: Split the difference on the figures, shake hands and get back to work.
But this approach requires seeking the middle ground, a practice the House speaker - and his 73 freshmen GOP disciples find contemptible.
Gingrich got his start in Congress as a bomb-throwing backbencher, supremely effective at attacking the Democratic status quo. His philosophy as speaker is to raze the political infrastructure and launch with missionary zeal his program for reinventing the federal government.
Gingrich can take credit for changing the fiscal debate.
But Gingrich and his herd of 73 must see now that the very obstinacy that makes bomb throwers and missionaries so effective in opposition makes them a liability in leadership.
By whipping his zealots into an anti-Clinton, anti-government frenzy, the speaker has created an atmosphere in which an agreement - even one giving the Republicans most of what they want - will be more elusive.
By sticking to an irresponsible position that the government shutdown continue until a budget deal is agreed, the 73 drained political support for their position and hardened Clinton’s resolve.
There are several explanations for the GOP’s hard line:
House Republicans aren’t truly committed to a balanced budget. They continue to demand, paradoxically, that the budget be balanced while taxes are cut by $240 billion. Many conservative House Democrats believe the House leadership and the 73 care less about balancing the budget than about cutting taxes.
A leadership maneuver after passage last year of the “rescissions” bill was telling in this regard. Under that legislation, the House trimmed spending that had already been approved for 1995 federal projects and promised to direct the savings to deficit reduction. But the leadership instead earmarked the funds for tax cuts, outraging the conservative “Blue Dog” House Democrats.
House Republicans believe Clinton will cave in to their demands. Since he accepted the CBO budget scoring and the seven-year framework, perhaps they thought Clinton would concede the whole package. But this fight has turned so nasty that such an outcome is inconceivable, particularly since Clinton’s standing in the polls has soared since this fiasco began while the speaker’s has plunged.
There is a GOP belief that the leadership can muster enough votes to override the president’s veto of the budget package. But the Blue Dogs, burned by the House leadership and turned off by the quixotic ramblings of the 73 true believers, have rallied around a president who has disappointed them often in the past. GOP leadership could count on 40 to 50 House Democrats for votes early last year, but Democratic staffers predict only eight to 10 would back a veto override attempt now.
So why have the speaker and his 73 continued this tack? Perhaps it’s because the combative speaker and his loyal foot soldiers are so blinded by their own dogma that they have abandoned pragmatism.
Gingrich is a weak horse-trader with a poor record of guiding bills through conference with the Senate. While he has strong-armed virtually all of the “Contract with America” through the House, only four narrow provisions actually became law. Only 67 bills were enacted in this first session of the 104th Congress, the smallest total for any first session since World War II.
Leadership is defined in many ways, but one measure of a leader’s success is the number of concrete achievements he can claim. To date, Gingrich’s volume of achievements is a slender one.
It may be that Gingrich is too ideologically inflexible to ever acquire the bargaining skills needed to turn legislation into law. If so, his “revolution” will be but an historical afterthought.
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