Republican Revolution Grinds To Halt
Analysis
The vaunted Republican Revolution is verging on near-total failure.
The first Republican Congress in 40 years sent expectations soaring that it would usher in an era of historic change, but instead odds are growing that this will be the least productive Congress in modern times.
Everything hinges on whether the GOP Congress cuts a deal with President Clinton to balance the federal budget. Republicans bet almost all their chips on that one towering goal, rolling a host of objectives into their balanced-budget plan, only to see Clinton veto it earlier this month.
Almost no other significant legislation has been passed by the 104th Congress. And none is likely to be in 1996 if the budget confrontation remains unresolved, for partisan conflict heading into the fall elections will dominate everything.
“The mood is going to be so foul, it’s hard to see how they get much of anything done next year if (the budget talks) collapse. It looks like it will be all campaigning,” said Thomas Mann, director of governmental studies at the Brookings Institution, a centrist think tank.
The Republicans’ refusal to meet Clinton’s terms for compromise on the budget has shut the government down for the second time in a month and has so sharpened the edges of partisan confrontation that a budget compromise now may well be impossible.
Clinton has said many times that he hopes to strike a balanced-budget compromise, but if he cannot arrange one that protects his priorities, he is perfectly willing to leave the conflict unresolved and lay the choices before the voters next November.
What is emerging is government by gridlock with a vengeance - but polls show the public sides with Clinton so far. That can only increase the odds that he will prefer to use the budget fight as a re-election platform rather than hand the Republicans a historic victory by compromising on their terms.
“If Clinton decides to take it to the electorate, he does prevent the Republican Congress from showing great achievements … But it’s very risky for Clinton I think,” said William Kristol, a leading Republican strategist and editor of the Weekly Standard.
“In his first two years he had a Democratic Congress and didn’t achieve much. In his second two he will have had a Republican Congress and didn’t achieve much. I still don’t think he’ll take that risk,” Kristol said.
If there is no budget deal, however, there likely will be an agreement to reopen the government before too long, for neither Congress nor Clinton have anything to gain and everything to lose from a shutdown.
Meanwhile, the GOP Congress will lose its promise of historic change if this scenario unfolds, for so far it has achieved precious little. Of the 10 major planks in the much-touted GOP “Contract With America,” for example, only three modest subsections have been signed into law.
One requires Congress to quit exempting itself from laws governing other workplaces. A second restricts Congress from ordering lower governments to take actions it fails to pay for. The third is a call to cut federal paperwork.
But Congress has failed to deliver the contract’s big goals, such as overhauling welfare, cutting taxes and imposing term limits. Congress put many of those into its big budget plan. That passed Congress, which GOP leaders hailed as a historic achievement, but did not get past Clinton.
Almost no other major legislation has been enacted in this, the first year of the two-year Congress, although several massive bills are pending, such as sweeping proposals to overhaul regulation of both the telecommunications and banking industries.
GOP congressional leaders put so much energy into their budget crusade that many other bills have been left to languish half-finished. Among them are proposals to revamp federal crime penalties, overhaul the Clean Water Act and restrict immigration.
“In terms of activity it’s been one of the busiest (Congresses), but in terms of actual public bills enacted, it’s been the meagerest in recent history,” observed Mann of Brookings.