The Public Policy/Our Kingdom for a Deal
Armey, Dick
THE PUBLIC POLICY OUR KINGDOM FOR A DEAL It wasn't supposed to work this way, but as a sequester of federal spending loomed over White House and congressional budget negotiators, Republicans...
...Later, Byrd insisted on a provision that requires any tax cutting proposal to receive sixty votes in the Senate before enactment...
...The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which works to elect Democrats to the House of Representatives, began urging its candidates to attack Republicans on taxes...
...Did the President go on national television and urge people to contact their congressmen in favor of the amendment...
...In dealing in terms of fairness rather than economic growth, Republican negotiators were already at a disadvantage...
...Yet on September 30, we were treated to the sight of Gephardt standing at a presidential podium in the White House Rose Garden, indicting Ronald Reagan and his policies for our deficits while President Bush looked on...
...Would you please stop calling this `the President's package...
...The relatively few Americans outside the suburbs of St...
...Little wonder that a Washington Post poll taken after the summit showed that only 33 percent felt that when it comes to who's responsible for deficits, Democrats "go too far in keeping costly government services that are wasteful and out-of-date" while 63 percent felt Republicans "go too far in helping the rich and cutting needed government services that benefit average Americans as well as the poor...
...This lack of distinction is likely to perpetuate the Democrats' grip on the Senate through at least 1992, and haunt other Republicans—including the President himself—for years to come...
...On an issue that perfectly separated the liberal elites from most of the country, President Bush at a press conference equated our actions with censorship, and the administration requested an increase in spending for the agency in FY 1991...
...D ather than sidestepping the sometimes unpleasant conflict of visions by joining in a budget summit, Republicans would be better served by clashing with the Democrats over taxing and spending priorities...
...Of course, in Washington no good deed goes unpunished, and the White House was quick to join inside-the-Beltway pundits in labeling dissenters "irresponsible...
...Is any federal agency more expendable than the National Endowment for the Arts...
...Here are the keys to the bully pulpit, Dick...
...This year it sent a bulletin to candidates saying that "Republicans have spent the last ten years raising taxes and they're still doing it," and that Democrats should demand "the repeal of the unfair taxes that are breaking the backs of the middle class and the poor...
...This summer, a bipartisan group of House members tried to reform agricultural spending and inject free market notions into federal farm policy...
...Louis who could identify Dick Gephardt remembered him for his dismal performance in the 1988 Democratic presidential primaries...
...Who has abandoned whom in this process...
...Passage of a Balanced Budget Amendment is one of the most important planks in the Republican party platform, but did the White House lift a finger to help pass it...
...According to one summit participant, Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV...
...The summit package lost overby Dick Armey whelmingly despite the full-court press...
...and threatening many with reprisal if they refused to toe the line...
...No, we don't need a preferential capital gains rate to spur economic growth...
...Millions of middle class voters see it as a waste of taxes, and find many of the projects it funds to be willfully offensive...
...Budget summits have historically worked to the advantage of congressional Democrats and against Republican administrations...
...was bargaining like Richard III: "A deal, a deal, our kingdom for a deal...
...Another problem with summits is their elevation of congressmen little-known outside their districts to a level equal to that of the presidency...
...Chuck Douglas (R-N.H...
...bad policy...
...Dick Armey (R-Texas) is a member of the House Budget Committee...
...Had such a provision existed in 1981, Byrd could probably have blocked the Reagan tax cuts...
...If only Republican congressional leaders and White House officials had exerted the same energy on passing good Republican initiatives that they did on this bad Democrat one, we might not have found ourselves engaged in another round of summitry...
...The constitutional amendment to balance the budget came within seven votes of the two-thirds majority necessary for it to pass...
...successfully pushed a vote on the Balanced Budget Amendment to the House floor by threatening to disclose the names of congressmen who had cosponsored the amendment but then hypocritically refused to sign a petition to discharge it from the Judiciary Committee that kept it bottled up...
...When it was all over, Republican negotiators had signed off on an agreement that was sure to cause long-term damage not only to the economy, but to their party as well...
...Instead, a month before the election, Senator Mitchell used the Democrats' rebuttal to President Bush's speech urging public support for the summit package to emphasize that there was no difference between Republicans and Democrats as they "helped the president to rewrite his budget...
...Budget Director Richard Darman Rep...
...This is bad news to anyone who understands that process is policy, and that bad process means 34 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1990 when on April 15, the one day when most Americans are acutely aware of the cost of government, he did not fault the Democrats for again missing a budget deadline...
...THE PUBLIC POLICY OUR KINGDOM FOR A DEAL It wasn't supposed to work this way, but as a sequester of federal spending loomed over White House and congressional budget negotiators, Republicans showered their Democrat counterparts with concessions...
...one of the eight House Republicans running against a sitting senator asked White House Chief of Staff John Sununu, who was struggling to sell the summit deal to the House Republican Conference before the vote...
...As chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Byrd simply refused to consider conferring upon the President the power to disrupt the deals he and his colleagues cut in the committee...
...One amendment would have saved over $4 billion by barring individuals with annual adjusted gross incomes of $100,000 or more from receiving subsidies...
...Did our leadership twist any arms...
...The 1990 summit left the working men and women of America wondering which party wants to raise their taxes more, and Republican candidates know intuitively that any blurring of the tax issue hurts them...
...If Byrd and Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell (D-Maine) are President Bush's obstacles to progressive economic policies, as he has stated, he could better remove these obstacles by maintaining his pro-growth, no-tax position in support of Republican challengers trying to achieve a Senate majority...
...A little noted provision makes the 1990 budget summit (the seventh of its kind) the first to perpetuate itself as an institution in federal budgeting...
...In July, House Republicans passed by a margin of three-to-one a resolution stating unequivocal opposition to tax increases as a means of deficit reduction, yet administration officials and congressional leaders seemed genuinely surprised by this same group's rejection of their tax-laden summit package in October...
...As Darman, Treasury Secretary Brady, and other Republican negotiators focused on "deficit reduction," the Democrats kept their eye on who got the power...
...Had he then pressed for a budget that garnered the support of the moderateto-conservative Democrats as well as his own party in the House and Senate, we'd either have a decent budget or Americans would at least know who's responsible for the lack of one...
...This "supermajority" clause dooms the prospect of a preferential capital gains rate for the foreseeable future...
...In June, freshman Rep...
...Democrats know it, too...
...In opposing the budget summit agreement, House Republicans were standing by those who sent them to Congress in hopes of tax relief...
...House Republicans were abandoned by their summiteers (with the notable exception of Whip Newt Gingrich) not only on the tax issue, but on the budgetary process itself...
...Yes, the President will abandon his only electoral mandate of "no new taxes" and go along with the second largest tax increase in American history...
...No, the night before the floor vote Agriculture Secretary Clayton Yeutter said on national television that the amendment wouldn't work...
...Do those of us who challenge this agency's $180 million annual budget get support from the administration or Republican leaders...
...Every time we draw a distinction between us and the tax-and-spend Democrat incumbents, you blur it...
...Once elevated, Democrats immediately framed the budget negotiations in terms of "fairness," or the politics of income redistribution, from which they derive their power...
...President Bush missed a golden opportunity THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1990 35...
...very early drew a line in the sand when it came to process reform: There would be no line-item veto or enhanced rescission for the President...
...Yes, you can cut defense spending to the bone while allowing non-defense discretionary spending to continue to grow unabated...
...Did the administration support this measure of fiscal responsibility...
...No, you don't have to include a line-item veto or enhanced rescission provision in the process reform...
Vol. 23 • December 1990 • No. 12
