Gop Tactics Backfired, Gave Clinton Boost

The shutdown finally ended because House Republicans couldn’t take the heat from all the outrage they inflamed.

For three weeks they closed down part of the federal government. They thought it would pressure President Clinton to swallow their budget, but it didn’t; in fact, it helped him avoid serious budget negotiations.

All the shutdown achieved was to disrupt government services as never before, ultimately disgusting the public so much that House Republicans had to back down or risk ruin.

Their knees buckled under pressure from people like Mark Sewak, a prison guard from Loretto, Pa.

Sewak is one of the 760,000 federal workers who have not been fully paid since the shutdown began Dec. 16, while House members took home the paychecks from their $133,600 annual salaries.

“Those freshman Republicans, they just don’t care who they hurt. You could show them a starving baby, and it wouldn’t make any difference,” Sewak told reporters.

Sewak, 33, scrimped through the Christmas holidays to make sure he had enough money to buy food for his wife and two children. This week Sewak and others like him sounded off to the news media about what the House GOP shutdown was doing to them.

Suddenly it wasn’t so easy for the public to dismiss furloughed workers as faceless bureaucrats; instead, they sounded like ordinary folks trying to make an honest living and being abused by big shots for no good reason.

Once the public started to pay attention to Sewak and his colleagues, so did House Republicans.

“I don’t think it’s right to hold hostage the federal workers who are innocent in all this,” said Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky.

At first, the shutdown had been relatively easy to ignore. It came at the start of the holidays, and most people assumed it would blow over soon enough, like the last one did after six days in November.

That widespread lack of concern disappeared this week.

The holidays ended but the shutdown did not, and ever more serious consequences began to roll up:

Kansas temporarily ran out of money for unemployment benefits, and 12 more states were due to join it.

A flu epidemic swept the Midwest, but Nebraska’s call for help from the Centers for Disease Control went unanswered, because the CDC was closed.

The Meals on Wheels program that provides hot food daily to 600,000 elderly people was to run out of federal funds Friday.

The impact spread on and on. You couldn’t get a passport. You couldn’t blow the whistle on an illegal sweatshop, because there were no federal Labor inspectors to hear it. You couldn’t stop pollution, because the environmental police weren’t allowed to work.

Meanwhile, every day, Bill Clinton and his top officials spotlighted the spreading damage for the news media, pointing public outrage at the House GOP. Polls showed the public sided with Clinton.

On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole decided “enough is enough.” Never enthusiastic about the shutdown, Dole broke ranks with the House Republicans and got the Senate to approve a bill to put furloughed workers back on the job.

House Republicans still didn’t get the message. They insisted the shutdown was the only leverage they had to make Clinton buy their balanced budget.

Clinton responded Wednesday by blasting them from the White House for following a “cynical political strategy.”

An ABC News poll that night showed public disapproval of Clinton’s handling of the budget stalemate rising to 56 percent, up from 42 percent in November - but disapproval of House Republicans was sky-high at 74 percent.

“I think it’s a losing strategy,” Rep. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said the next day. “Somebody said, ‘I don’t think the president will give.’ Why should he? He’s winning in the polls. We are losing the public perception battle.”

Reluctantly, even GOP die-hards began realizing their macho tactics were defeating their goal of balancing the budget.

Their obstinance had captured public attention, overshadowing Clinton’s refusal to bargain credibly for a balanced budget.

“The issue became the government shutdown,” said Rep. Wayne Gilchrest, R-Md.

“What we want to do is shift the focus back to the budget. We are as strong as ever when it comes to a balanced budget, if we can shift the focus back to what President Clinton should be doing.”