Republican Budget Reeks Of Favoritism

If the Republican budget legislation were a consistent, logical effort to cut federal spending, it would deserve respect. If it put fiscal goals ahead of the wishes of big contributors, it would deserve respect. If it resisted ideological lusts, it would deserve respect.

It fails those tests. And the failure undercuts the Republicans in their budget contest with President Clinton.

On Medicare, for example, the president’s position that premiums paid by the elderly must not rise is blatant demagogy: We all know that the government cannot for long bear the cost of unreformed entitlements, especially Medicare. But the Republicans cannot argue that issue credibly because their own legislation is so full of trumpery.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his colleagues made balancing the budget the primary goal of the revolution they promised. A logical effort to achieve that end could not rule out of consideration any significant part of federal spending. But that is precisely what the Republicans did. They excluded from scrutiny the largest single government department, Defense, and indeed added billions of dollars.

Underlying the demand for an end to budget deficits has been the argument that we must spend less on current gratification and more on research and investment for the future. Again, the Republican budget-cutters have gone in the opposite direction. Over the seven years of their plan, non-military scientific research funds would decline by a third. We would fall even farther behind Japan in research and development.

If one looks at the decisions made by the Republicans to cut or not to cut particular programs, a striking pattern emerges. Over and over again, the decisions were based not on grounds of need or effectiveness but on the demands of lobbyists for interests that made large campaign contributions to the Republicans.

One example is almost laughable in its crudity and contempt for the public interest. At the behest of bankers, whose association contributed nearly $700,000 to Republican candidates in 1994, Congress voted to restrict the direct government loan program for students. Instead, students will have to go to banks for government-guaranteed loans - at an estimated cost of $4 billion to the government and $2 billion to students over the next five years.

Then there is the case of gasohol, a gasoline substitute made from corn. Efforts to eliminate a tax subsidy for gasohol, which will cost $3.5 billion over the next seven years, were spiked by lobbyists for gasohol producers, notably the giant Archer-Daniels-Midland Co.

The environment has been a rich field for lobbyists. Representatives of oil, timber, mining, chemical and other industries have actually written much of the legislation to relax or eliminate environmental regulations. Wetlands protection, energy efficiency rules, the inviolability of wilderness areas, the protection of endangered species: These and others would be gutted.

The attack on the environment has been carried over into budget legislation. Various appropriation bills and the huge budget reconciliation bill include provisions that would, among other things, turn nature reserves in Alaska over to oil prospectors. And the appropriation for the Environmental Protection Agency would be slashed.

Lobbyists for the medical profession worked their will in the Medicare provisions of the budget legislation. Among other things, they would relax present rules against doctors referring patients to laboratories and other businesses in which the same doctors have a financial interest.

As for ideology, the budget bills reek of it. The most vulnerable in our society, notably poor children, take the big hits. The earned-income tax credit, which benefits the working poor, would be drastically cut. Welfare and food stamps would no longer be federal guarantees.

The tax cuts adopted by the Republicans would largely benefit the rich. A key provision, a tax credit of $500 per child, would not help those who do not earn enough to pay at least $500 in income tax.

However the conflict with President Clinton plays out in the weeks ahead, the public is likely to grow increasingly cynical about the Republican budget effort as its nature becomes clearer. Far from a revolution, it will be seen as just one more round in the game of rewarding friends and punishing opponents.

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