Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 30, 1993 TAG: 9303300394
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
His achievement in getting the budget resolution past both houses is comparable to Reagan's early legislative successes, though aimed in an opposite direction. (Where Reagan cut taxes and increased military spending and the federal deficit, Clinton proposes to cut defense spending and the deficit and increase taxes.)
A budget resolution is only a skeleton, setting limits on spending for government departments and targeting the level of taxes needed to support them. Clinton's package has yet to be enacted, and he has jumped only one legislative hurdle. Far bigger ones still litter the escape route from Washington gridlock.
Still, the resolution is a good start, attributable to several factors:
First, Clinton and the Democratic leadership were able to get Congress to judge the plan more or less as a whole. Cut into pieces, divided into grievances, it would have died politically and substantively. The special interests would have devoured it. And the plan needs all its parts more or less intact - tax increases, spending cuts and public investments - if it is to work.
Party discipline prevented the addition of improvements to Clinton's package: such as significantly larger spending cuts than he proposed; or the elimination of most of his economic "stimulus" plan, most of which is a waste of money. But the plan marks - on the whole - a needed departure from debt-riddled drift.
Second, critics were challenged to come up with alternatives that could achieve similar deficit-cutting results. A GOP alternative in the House, which would have adhered to the mantra of "no new taxes," lost by a 160-vote margin. Even 41 Republicans voted against it, not being able to stomach the spending cuts necessary to accomplish serious deficit reduction without tax increases.
To do without any new revenues while sparing the military from further cuts, Republicans discovered they would need to slash every federal program by an estimated 30 percent - including Social Security and Medicare.
Third, the public backs economic reform, and has made its wishes known. Ross Perot has helped in this regard, explaining why deficit reduction is important. So has Clinton himself, as salesman for his plan.
"If we do not act now, we will not recognize this country 10 years from now," the president said when he unveiled his proposal to Congress and the people. The deficit, he noted, will have grown to $635 billion a year and the national debt would consume more than three-quarters of the gross domestic product. Everyone knows this would be intolerable.
Fourth, Clinton's political skills made a difference. In pushing the budget resolution through, he showed the sort of determination that politicians respect. Like Reagan, he apparently understands he must nail down major accomplishments in his first year or watch his clout diminish, as Jimmy Carter's did.
This initial success does not give full measure of Clinton's leadership - or of his plan's prospects. Indeed, troubling signs are sprouting on the horizon. His package still could unravel in the details.
Clearing the Senate along with the budget resolution, notably, were non-binding amendments that could sabotage the deficit-reduction part of Clinton's plan. Pressure-groups unable to cut from the resolution such items as higher user fees are aiming to have them quietly dropped during the tax and appropriations process later this summer. Nonbinding amendments also indicate less support for Clinton's defense cuts, and for his extended taxation of Social Security benefits, than the votes for the budget resolution would suggest.
Even so, Clinton has passed an important test of governance in Washington, and this should help him in coming, bigger tests. The president will need not only consensus-building skills, but also toughness going toe-to-toe with those who would let his national plan die to protect special interests.
by CNB