Capitol Ideas/A Strange New Respect
Bethell, Tom
CAPITOL IDEAS A STRANGE NEW RESPECT by Tom Bethell Federal budgeting now involves five-year projections, mark-up, spend-out, bipartisan chumminess, dawn-to-dusk staff meetings, concurrent...
...Hollings has the floor: The press gallery will soon see indignant news releases issued by righteous fiscal watchmen condemning their spendthrift colleagues for throwing the balanced budget away...
...Last April, it was zero...
...In any event, Bellmon tacitly joined what I think of in my mind's eye as the Hickory Hill Club...
...We will see who believes in balancing the budget and who does not...
...Conservatives rejoin with their lame response: "Balance the budget...
...One wish.es him a speedy and pleasant journey back to Oklahoma...
...Perhaps he could be relied upon to keep things pretty much the same after all...
...The temptation is great to say, 'I accept the amendment...
...BUT . . . (and here the Senate held its collective breath) "the amendment is irresponsible from the standpoint of really trying to balance the budget...
...As expected, the 72 included nearly all the Democrats (Boren, Nunn, and Zorinsky were exceptions), but also, perhaps more surprisingly, the following Republicans: Baker, Bellmon, Cochran, Cohen, Danforth, Dole, Durenberger, Garn, Goldwater, Hatfield, Hayakawa, Heinz, Kassebaum, McClure, Pack-wood, Percy, Schmitt, Simpson, Stafford, Stevens, Thurmond, Tower, Wallop, and Warner...
...On the other hand, unbudgeable conservatives are called right-wingers and kept off party lists...
...Domenici replied that he regretted opposing "this kind of paper cut the Senator from Wisconsin is recommending here, even though it is only a paper cut and a kind of wishful idea...
...Hollings fought back gallantly...
...Next we heard from Domenici, who truthfully remarked that "spending is nearly out of control and that the basic laws of this land must be changed if we are once again to control the voracious appetite of the federal government...
...day soon their eyes will be opened...
...Everyone talks about fighting inflation...
...Now you know what I mean...
...President," Domenici continued, "I really do not want to make light of a serious proposal, but does anyone believe that, because a senator came down here and changed six or eight numbers in an amendment- a wish list, a cumulative wish list, just a whole bunch of billions he took out and put a new number in-does anyone really believe this is a serious approach to bringing government under control...
...let there be no mistake-Congress and the country must have a budgeting process...
...Last week, as the Senate reconvened for its lame-duck session, budgetary deliberations were resumed after being so rudely interrupted by the election...
...President,"- Proxmire replied, "how long can we accept these alibis...
...Mr...
...It is ridiculous to come in and say we cannot cut three percent from this budget...
...But somehow the "process" is everywhere extolled...
...It is interesting to note that Bellmon came to Washington a believer in balanced budgets and fiscal conservatism, but was gradually, patiently, nudged to the left by the ethos of the capital, Ed Muskie's personal attention, the delegitimizing of some ideas by name-calling them uncompassionate, the legitimizing of others by dubbing them responsible, and the care and attention of the press...
...According to any criterion you use, the so-called "budget process," enacted in 1974, has failed lamentably...
...I greatly admire the fortitude and intelligence which Senator Muskieand now Senator Hollings have demonstrated as they chaired...
...His utterly fantastic statement- from which I reproduce only small excerpts-showed the extent to which Bellmon has been brainwashed in his twelve years in Washington...
...But in return everyone says you're a nice guy...
...Bellmon, "a man of plain-spoken wisdom when it comes to budgets," according to Miss Dewar in the Post...
...In his swan song, the retiring Bellmon responded to Hollings: Mr...
...We know we can cut three percent...
...The total deficit in the five years since its inception has been $300 billion-two and one-half times larger than in the five preceding years...
...For the allegedly adversary press, the budget process has become a touchstone of liberalism...
...All this results in-what...
...Is that not right...
...Who would have had the nerve to try that...
...Fiscal year 1981 began on October 1, but here the Senate was on November 18 "reestimating" the '81 budget, as it will continue to do until next September...
...It is unlikely that he would have been able to give an answer that did not make explicit the Keynesian underpinnings of the budget process...
...The senators looked at Domenici with . . . a strange new respect...
...The main actors on the floor were Senators Fritz Hollings of South Carolina, Henry Bellmon of Oklahoma, and next year's chairman of the Republican-controlled Senate Budget Committee, Pete Domenici of New Mexico...
...This is the way for those who believe in holding down spending to put their money where their mouth is...
...We cannot pull out the props from under an economy that is expected to be in the early and fragile recovery stage in fiscal 1981...
...It's worth reading that list over once or twice...
...All this contributed to Bellmon's dawning perception that it was time to outgrow his "simplistic" beliefs of old and acknowledge at last that the folks in Washington were better at spending the people's money than the people were themselves...
...I do not know how to tell the senator this," he said, "but his amendment is a joke...
...This is the way to start and this is the time to start...
...A joke...
...Seventy-two senators voted with Domenici, eighteen with Proxmire, and ten were absent...
...And then Domenici came riding to the rescue, too...
...Budget figures come out in January nowadays...
...Hollings recommended a budget deficit for 1981 of "less than $18 billion...
...On Proxmire went while dismayed senators pondered ruefully, scratching their heads: "If we cannot balance the budget now, especially after the message from the election, we are never going to balance the budget...
...I decided to observe the proceedings from a perch in the press gallery...
...Let us balance the budget...
...The budget processors use the language of stringency, austerity, and tough choices...
...The supply-side tax-cutters have all along understood this political reality...
...Until now, the greatest strength of the process has been honesty and precision in a climate of bipartisan cooperation on the Senate side...
...Bellmon received this treatment...
...throughout the rest of the year, with a large chunk of spending packed in at the last minute to make the differential between the new year and the old seem smaller than it is...
...CAPITOL IDEAS A STRANGE NEW RESPECT by Tom Bethell Federal budgeting now involves five-year projections, mark-up, spend-out, bipartisan chumminess, dawn-to-dusk staff meetings, concurrent resolutions, puzzled senators reading staff-prepared speeches that they only half understand, reflow estimates, outlay reestimates, aggregate targets, functional totals, and, finally, the reconciliation process...
...This amendment is going to do it...
...President," Proxmire said, "everyone talks about balancing the budget...
...We will then have "earned" our tax cut...
...The fact that they did not tells you that they knew it was a real cut, not a paper one at all...
...This would "stick to the spending discip-pline and steady plan for continued restraint that will balance the budget as soon as it is practicable to do so," Hollings intoned, throwing in the comforting words "responsible and measured approach," and "fiscal responsibilities of this body...
...But one day soon their eyes will be opened...
...Let us join the senators in their deliberations...
...Domenici was already-so soon- sidling to the left...
...We have to start somewhere and sometime," Proxmire concluded...
...This involves playing ball with the Kennedys...
...We are all for a balanced budget...
...Average inflation and unemployment rates have similarly risen...
...Oh my goodness, whole armloads of new respect were flowing Domen-ici's way by now...
...But these mean nothing any more, notwithstanding the massive and unrepeated press coverage of the moment...
...I then said that such people evidently do not read The Congressional Record...
...Irresponsible...
...Everyone talks about holding down spending...
...A measure of social and intellectual ostracism can take its toll of the faint hearted...
...instead, the process creates a rationale for everlasting and ever-enlarging deficits...
...We cannot make billions of dollars of additional spending cuts when the cuttable cloth just is not there...
...There is a genre of Washington journalism which plays a role here- the Strange New Respect story: Conservative newcomers who are successfully herded to the left are described as being perceived now with a "strange new respect...
...That is all I am asking...
...If ever we are going to balance the budget, we should do it now...
...We should get the message...
...If it had only been a "paper cut," the senators would have voted for it and so received credit for supporting a balanced budget...
...A nice fat budget deficit: Once again the government has spent more than it takes in...
...Domenici (softly): "We surely should...
...Interestingly, Proxmire, a liberal Democrat (of maverick disposition) , then made the argument heard over and over again from conservative Republicans: If we are going to have tax cuts next year, we must make room for them with spending cuts this year...
...Consider, for example, a recent, baffling article in the Washington Post by Helen Dewar headlined "Hill's Budget Process Grows Stronger With Every Passing Deficit...
...Finally, Domenici asked for the yeas and nays...
...He had actually fought back against a proposed budget cut by calling it "changing numbers...
...Then Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin popped up unexpectedly with an amendment, asking for its "immediate consideration...
...The figures are then revised steadily upward Tom Bethell is The American Spectator's Washington editor and a Washington editor of "Harper's...
...It has been a surprisingly even-handed effort to control Federal spending and reach agreement on spending priorities in a world of insatiable and diverse wants...
...The temptation is great," he cried...
...It is remarkable, incidentally (or perhaps not, come to think of it), that John Anderson's left turn since arriving in Washington was so widely construed as principle when it was so obviously a willingness to abandon principle as soon as it dawned on him-and his wife-that the social stakes were so high...
...Mr...
...The country has never spoken so overwhelmingly as they did in the election which was so surprising and shocking...
...So far, the "old-time religion" budget-balancers have not...
...Now there was a collective sigh of relief...
...Let us do it...
...Liberals then all join hands and sing in chorus: "The budget process must at all costs be preserved...
...As for tax cuts, "until such spending restraint, provision in this budget for a tax cut would be premature.'' The Senate was advised to "exercise patience" and "resist the call for snap judgements.'' Someone at this juncture might have asked Hollings why, when the government spends our money, the economy is propped up better than when we spend our money...
...President, I believe the Senator has made a remarkably good statement . . . I strongly believe that the success'es the Congress has achieved through the budget process can be attributed, in part, to the unbiased, real and up-to-date budget information which has been included in budget resolutions...
...Cut spending...
...It is not possible to cut spending in this country in anything other than cosmetic ways, and the reason is that it is considered irresponsible to do so...
...But in practice, these choices are never made...
...Last month I commented that some conservatives seem to imagine that we are going to be able to solve our economic problems by cutting federal spending...
...Instead we heard from Sen...
...It read: "on page 2 line 16 strike out '$633,000,000,000' and insert '$615,000,000,000.' On page 2 line 22 strike out '$17,900,000,000' and insert '0.'" Oh dear, here he was again with his naughty balanced-budget amendment, all set to embarrass everyone...
Vol. 14 • January 1981 • No. 1
