The Art of Additive Compromise

...But my guess is that such liberals would quickly agree to at least a pragmatic fling if they had some confidence that, should the programs fail, conservatives would cancel them...

...Reagan could instead go after roughly $140 billion in corporate welfare items...

...The Reagan tax reform would drop virtually every poor family right off the income tax rolls...

...But do so and you will suddenly hear leading Republicans making an impassioned case for what amounts to an industrial policy...

...Instead, the White House tried to please all, and may please none-having lost the early enthusiasm of liberal tax-reformers by diluting the key provision of closed loopholes...

...The worst outcome is the emergence of a powerful pro-Soviet movement threatening to seize power...

...Ronald Reagan is...

...Much of the left even agrees, albeit grudgingly, with the Gilder-Murray critique of the welfare state...

...A force of, say, 50 MX and 350 Midgetman missiles, 90 percent of which will survive a Soviet attack, is far better than our present force of 1,000 missiles, of which 5 percent or less will survive...

...Reagan opened the door to such dilution by failing to cancel breaks that go to the symbolically important oil lobby in Treasury II...

...Yet the risks may be worth the benefits...

...intervention to prevent a far-right or far-left junta from seizing control...

...Now, to return to the budget issue that stalks Reagan's presidency: It seems clear that here, too, the best deal is not another swindle worked out by the Senate Republicans...

...More important, Mr...

...Watching them fall was bad, but failing to oppose the Ayatollah and the Ortega junta was worse Nothing was done, as the nature of the Sandinista regime became clear, to back the real democrats...

...Indeed, where these right-left alliances have formed, the policy result has been far more favorable than in the deals Reagan has cut with the centrist wing of his own party and the conventional wisdom brigade of the Washington Post...

...Wasn't the Great Society itself going to be a kind of noble gamble...

...But that's okay, since it is almost Christmas, and thus . . . time to start figuring out the 1987 budget...

...Today, that is what we have anyway-only our measures on behalf of freedom, both in Africa and Central America, are timid and reluctant...

...They would vote for Jack Kemp over George McGovern, but would choose Bill Bradley over Bob Dole...

...This summer, before his surgery, he remained cloistered in the White House while House Democrats began the repeal of the Clark Amendment...

...But the Soviets would hardly benefit, broadly, if America reestablished a foreign policy consensus that allowed us to fight for freedom in the Philippines and Vietnam, to call both apartheid and Communism "evil...

...These groups share a common agenda: a positive strategy to promote growth and democracy around the globe...

...You start with agriculture subsidies, 70 percent of which go to a small elite of wealthy farmers and farming conglomerates...

...As things now stand, Reagan will spend his golden years fighting for a few of Jimmy Carter's MX missiles, which, without Jimmy Carter's railroad tracks, many congressmen don't want to build, because these missiles cannot survive a Soviet attack...

...Similarly, in 1981, the American left contested all substantial efforts to aid a fragile democracy in E! Salvador, seemingly preferring a growing threat by the antidemocratic guerrillas there...

...But, in retrospect, Mr...

...Meanwhile, he will fight for Star Wars research, which some congressmen will oppose because it is mere research...

...And the former allows Ronald Reagan to announce that the U.S...

...But surely before that takeover is complete, there will come a time of decision, in which a Marxist takeover is a clear possibility but not yet an accomplished fact...

...we get a $5 billion jobs program...

...enact a sweeping poverty agenda of enterprise zones and similar schemes...

...Not only is Reagan in at least some danger, but the evening's session provided what may be the answer to the present gridlock...

...A handful of liberals, like the New Republic's Michael Kinsley, are concerned that even these private enterprise-style programs will turn into a pork barrel...

...10 / OCTOBER 1985 Gregory A. Fossedal THE ART OF ADDITIVE COMPROMISE Cannot conservatives and liberals work together to build a better America...

...Once again, the answer is an additive compromise...

...Any corporate welfare alliance, like a tax reform alliance, must involve the Democrats, who have taken the lead on this populist issue...

...Now, $50 billion is not much, Mr...

...The danger is that Reagan is squandering a revolutionary opportunity...

...Hart was right on both counts...

...Outcome one, the most likely, is that U.S...

...Now, there is always the danger that in nations currently allied with the United States, some freedom fighters will turn out to be Marxists, i.e., fighters of freedom...

...Bob Dole rallies some senator from a hospital bed to cast the deciding vote on a continuing resolution of $985 billion...

...Unfortunately, the White House has demonstrated little interest...

...He refused to appear on television on behalf of aid to the contras...

...In South Africa, for example, there are three possible outcomes if the U.S...

...Outcome two is that the government makes no progress at all, in which case at least Reagan will not be to blame...

...By contrast, the really disastrous compromises of recent years have found Reagan, along with the usual Republican suspects, signing on to support Simpson-Mazzoli, tax hikes, and the Fed...

...We want 100 MX missiles...

...Ronald Reagan called several of these men days after his surgery to plead for their votes, but was rebuffed...

...cut the budget...

...Alas, go after items like that and you immediately lose the support of Bob Dole and Larry Pressler, even Jesse Helms and John East (tobacco...

...To get a conservative poverty program through Congress, Reagan needs a bribe-to entice the doubtful and enable the diehards to save face...

...Since Vietnam, the answer has usually been no...

...It was a Kennedy-Kemp coalition that sought to block a proposed multi-billion dollar bailout of the International Monetary Fund, opposing the IMF's self-defeating austerity schemes and the welfare provided to large U.S...

...Why isn't Phil Donahue interviewing people in Grand Central Station on Jack Kemp's plan to let them own a house...

...The additive compromise is sometimes, as Burt Pines of the Heritage Foundation has said, "a kind of bribe...

...Jimmy Carter is not President...

...Ben Hart did tell me that, as is well known, his Third Generation project at the Heritage Foundation brings together a lively crowd roughly each fortnight to sip Coors, nibble on bon mots, and toss darts at such atavistic concepts as arms control, comparable worth, the "money supply," and Anthony Lewis...

...Reagan wants to cut taxes 30 percent in one year...

...banks...

...Let us remember: The only worry conservatives have about pressuring people like Marcos and Botha is an indirect one, namely that the Soviets would benefit...

...We are already past the six-to-nine month honeymoon, with not a single second-term accomplishment...

...To appease high-tax states, the repeal of de-ductibility will be phased in or watered down...

...Another issue ripe for an additive compromise: Poverty...

...Dole will admit...

...overthrow the Ortega dictatorship...

...They lost this battle by a few votes in the House, but later combined to pressure the Agency for International Development into putting at least a little more emphasis on economic growth in Jamaica, Grenada, and Israel...

...Instead, Reagan's tax plan gives something many liberals value more than high rates: closed loopholes and shelters...

...liberals want no tax cut...

...and others will oppose because of the ABM treaty, or because the Soviets are willing to give up a few thousand missiles if we kill Star Wars (just enough so that Moscow still enjoys an emerging first strike arsenal...

...Ah, deficit reduction...

...We then get a much more stable ally and less human rights agony...

...Under the Senate budget, agriculture spending would rise by up to $15 billion in 1986...

...Teddy also sees an opportunity, of course, to advance his own presidential ambitions, but it is the kind of opportunity he should be encouraged to see...

...The grave danger to tax reform is that its provisions will in fact be whittled away in this salami fashion...

...In 1984, Congress after much agonizing agreed to support El Salvador...

...So why no action...

...A broad, additive compromise would encourage this evolution among the Democrats, but so far Reagan has offered little help...

...Of course, the best way to cut spending is with the line-item veto...

...Even Republican congressmen who have tried to interest the White House in an assault on corporate welfare, such as James Courter of New Jersey, still have not been granted a meeting with the President...

...ever closer to today's top rate of 50 percent...

...Surely Reagan would not permit a Marxist takeover in South Africa-and surely he would be in a better position to oppose it had he previously staked out his opposition to apartheid...

...According to a National Journal survey, 25 of 36 congressional leaders and tax committee members believe there will be some reform passed late this year or early next...

...Finally we come to foreign policy, where Reagan faces simultaneously the problems of South Africa, Nicaragua, Angola, Poland, Cambodia, and the Philippines...

...The solution, and a far more natural alliance to boot, is an entente between the Republican right and the right people on the left-a sort of Reagan-Tyrrell-Bradley-Peretz-Kinsley coalition, if you will...

...If, as a price for that policy, Reagan must make life miserable for some quasi-allies whose un-democratic systems make life miserable for Reagan, and make them weak allies anyway, it is a price worth paying...

...A friend who worries about bauxite supplies and the like warned me six months ago, with unintended irony, "If we follow your advice, we'll get some pressure on Nicaragua, but we'll get sanctions on South Africa too...

...Had Jimmy Carter opposed the Ortegas in 1980, Ronald Reagan would not have to fight them in 1985...

...A line-item veto would deprive them, in a narrow sense, of control over spending deals, and, in a broader sense, of their own importance as Reagan's key stumbling blocks, a role that wins them praise and gratitude from the Hive...

...Or add Gary Hart's idea to create individual training accounts for workers-or better still, a training voucher...

...and return to the gold standard...

...Instead of promising not to defend the country if Moscow tears up a few thousand missile warheads, Reagan should promise to tear up a few thousand warheads of our own-but defend the country whether the Russkies like it or not...

...The more usual relationship between these groups has produced what might be called "dilutive compromise...

...Whether Mr...

...The only development of interest is that Ben Wattenberg, Martin Peretz, and other Jacksonites have won a few (arguably token) victories from the far left and have wheedled fellow Democrats into sending a few millions to oppose Communism in various far-flung regions...

...Reagan could try to make a deal with the moderate, Republican center...

...What really induces the left's lethargy is fear...

...Everyone knows liberals are against poverty, and indeed, many liberals are co-sponsors of the above initiatives...

...And he may get something far more important to most conservatives than loopholes: lower rates...

...Jimmy Carter watched friendly governments fall in Iran and Nicaragua...

...The Hive knows that if conservatives suddenly pass a sweeping bill to help the poor, well, there goes the neighborhood...

...No, the main sponsor of the item veto is a Democrat, Senator Mack Mattingly of Georgia...

...increases pressure on the Botha government...

...It will" simply not be plausible to wave the South Bronx at conservatives while there are "Help Wanted" signs popping up all around Yankee Stadium...

...build a Star Wars defense...

...Then we come to defense policy...

...He did not follow my wise advice of last year, or that of wiser minds-Irving Kristol, Robert Bartley, Lewis Lehrman-to run a campaign based on such ideas...

...As an alternative, consider Reagan's tax cut proposal...

...we cut taxes by 22 percent over four years...

...Liberal and conservative pundits would spend the next twenty years, of course, debating whether it was the spending program or the tax cut that revived Harlem...

...we get 50...

...But this is the past...

...Under a dilutive compromise, Reagan would have proposed a simple tax cut to, say, a top rate of 25 percent...

...He did not tell me there would be a reporter, Joshua Hammer, present, who would, in an obvious attempt to discredit both Mr...

...To appease business, corporate breaks will be phased back in...

...Nor, at least arguably, does Reagan face the same opposition as he once did...

...will unilaterally begin to chop up nuclear missiles on the day our first Star Wars satellite lifts off the pad, an event that could occur in, say, early 1988...

...Hoping to establish a less martial flavor, I think a better term for the strategy of this new alliance is "additive compromise...

...Yet the bitterest opponents of an item veto include Republicans who do some of the loudest wailing about the deficit: Lowell Weicker, Charles Mathias, and Mark Hatfield...

...Hart and me, describe the evening's festivities favorably in the Nation...

...There is movement toward backing the contras in Nicaragua, though here-notably, where the hope for a democratic government is strongest-the support for freedom involves mainly bandages, condoms, and similar devices...

...In 1985, it began to back overtly the freedom fighters in Cambodia, Afghanistan, Angola...

...As he leaps back from another routine brush with death, it would be wrong to count him out...

...An additive compromise would simply mean bold support for free elections everywhere...

...Here, an additive compromise with the left is already emerging...

...Reagan will or can reach out with such a bold series of initiatives is doubtful...

...Tack a $10 billion jobs bill onto the Kemp proposals...

...liberals want none...

...So you could cut back on the Export-Import Bank, Small Business Administration, or Department of Energy subsidies...

...but in general, these people are the center...

...Hart did not tell me, until it was too late to bow out, that my task was to explain "What conservatives need to do differently in order to win...

...Typically, the package of roughly $50 billion in "cuts"-the actual budget will go up, say, $160 billion instead of $210 billion-is composed of a $28 billion reduction in defense increases, $5 billion in phony domestic "savings," and some increase in user fees and administrative efficiencies totaling $12 billion...

...A similar left-right coalition-Jesse Helms, Tom Bethell, and the Wall Street Journal cum Jesse Jackson, Tip O'Neill, and the New Republic-has for several years managed to block a bill aimed at keeping more blacks and Latinos out of the country, the Simpson-Mazzoli immigration proposal...

...The result, for the small price of a few billion, would be a revolutionary policy experiment...

...Progress on enforcing pornography statutes now comes thanks to a coalition of feminists and New Righters...

...ban abortion...

...But this in itself would be a useful exercise...

...Gregory A. Fossedal is an editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal...

...these people would actually pay less than they would under the plan proposed by Democrats Bradley and Gephardt...

...Washington-When a friend invited me to address a group of right-wingers here recently, he didn't tell me what was in store...

...But what if there were no ABM treaty, if Star Wars were not a mere research program, and if the arms deal involved our own nuclear arms...

...Why isn't Ray Brady asking poor black mothers what they think about a proposed $500 tax cut, or free tuition vouchers to send the kids to the local Catholic school...

...Is there any doubt how this year's budget will finally pass...

...The most recent convert of note is Teddy Kennedjr Kennedy sees that an item veto, in the short run, would force Reagan to put up or shut up on spending control, and, in the long run, would be a useful tool in the hands of Democratic Presidents who wanted to cut fat in social programs without hurting the poor, or slash defense spending without slashing defense...

...To appease revenue enhancers, tax rate reductions will be delayed...

...The main proposals for dealing with it now come from the likes of Jack Kemp, in the form of enterprise zones, a new homestead act,' education vouchers for the poor, and on and on...

...There must be a way to change this dreary scenario, to wrest the agenda away from the junta of Robert Dole, George Shultz, and the New York Times editorial page, all of them mesmerized by the budget deficit, the trade deficit, the immigration surplus, and other phenomena they are so frantic to bring "under control...

...Once the oilmen saved their breaks, other groups saw their opportunity to demand just one more exception...

...Liberals want a $10 billion jobs program...

...It is roughly 4 a.m., December 22...

...To stay off this slope, as Jim Baker noted early this year, you have to offend everyone...

...The topic was based on two assumptions, both of which, at the time, seemed wrong: that conservatives are not, in a general sense, winning already, and that somehow my experience would enable me to tell these political writers, organizers, and administration and congressional aides how to set things right-how Ronald Reagan could pass a major tax reform...

...It would probably not be possible without additive compromise...

...There is thus every reason for what political analyst Jeff Bell calls a strategy to "collapse the center," after Hannibal's battle plan which drew the Romans into his middle, then crushed them from the right and the left...

...That third case is the crux of the matter...

...It was Democratic Michigan Congressman John Dingell who this summer delivered what may prove to be the decisive body blow to that corporate welfare classic, the synthetic fuels program...

...The political margin is this: Would the American left be willing to support U.S...

...The Gipper's only notable lobbyist for aid to the anti-Communists was George Shultz, who was in Asia pooh-poohing the incipient, but significant, re-emergence of the Jackson wing...

...They read, and write for, the same magazines...

...The deal for Star Wars should involve not Soviet missiles, but American missiles...

...Then the appropriate group to back is neither the government nor its far-left opponents, but democrats in the government and the opposition...

...The answer, it seems to me, is to support freedom fighters in all such countries...

...Ad nauseam...

...conservatives want no jobs program...

...Remember "hunger in America...

...In retrospect, then, such a left-right coalition is not only possible, but underway...

...the Democrats, with an assist from Dole & Co., would gradually have whittled this away to 35 percent, 42 percent, 47 percent, 49 percent...

...So it is an uphill fight, and it may be that for these victories we must await the handsome young knight from Buffalo...

...Add in $5 billion in "reduced interest on the national debt" which the Nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office will certify results from the $45 billion in deficit reduction, and you have the total...

...The coalition to make the Federal Reserve Bank more accountable, and less deflationary, finds the same ragtag group of Nader-ites and New Righters in tow...

...And yet our aged champion, Sir Gipper of Camelot, returns now fresh and ready for battle...

...Meanwhile, on the Reagan landscape it is fall, and on the White House lawn one can already see the moldy leaves of a summer wasted on summit briefings and deficit reduction schemes...

...pressure produces progress towards democracy...