Capitol Ideas/Impolitic Pol
Bethell, Tom
T wo days after the left-wing Game Show Host addressed the Joint Session of Congress, I journeyed to Capitol Hill, in search of Capitol Ideas. I was walking along the central corridor of the...
...I told him that I would shortly be seeing Sen...
...My suspicions had not been so far off, then...
...His father also was a U.S...
...We wheeled Pete Wilson in here on a gurney, and voted 50-49 to get rid of thirteen agencies of government and freeze the whole damned operation including Social Security, veterans' benefits, military retirement...
...No other country on earth does this," he continued...
...I can share with you about seventeen years of background...
...I was walking along the central corridor of the Capitol building and admiring the waxed, well-polished flagstones, when I spotted, striding in my direction from the Senate side, the tall, upright, blue-suited figure of Sen...
...I used to say, `Don't quote to me from the Statue of Liberty.' It doesn't say on the base, Emma Lazarus said send us everybody you've got, legally or illegally...
...A few years back I criticized Simpson on the immigration issue (TAS, February 1986), and he wrote back complaining that I hadn't even contacted his office for comment (TAS, April 1986), which was true...
...He was cheered by the recent youth rally outside the AARP headquarters in Washington, with kids asking: "When are you guys going to quit being so selfish...
...Great...
...How long do you think people will sit still to put in $12,500 a year while some dud is taking out $25,000...
...Soon his long, lean frame appeared in the doorway...
...That should take care of the yard boy," he said...
...It's liberals who constantly seek to circumvent or obfuscate the popular will...
...Well, I've been called everything," he said, his tone quiet and even and measured...
...Federal spending ran way ahead of revenues in the 1980s primarily because Reagan himself didn't really want to rein it in...
...So we went...
...His parents, both in their nineties, still live in Cody...
...I've been through the fires of bigotry and racism and all that crap...
...I liked him, I really did...
...I know you and I won'tagree on a lot of it.' I said, 'Hell, let's go.' So we did...
...His demeanor remained calm, but something caught fire inside and burned briefly...
...Simpson does believe, however, that the threshold for making Social Security contributions, currently $50 a quarter, should be raised—perhaps to $300...
...He predicted that Democrats would call for a GOP alternative to their tax increase plan, and in responding to the put-up-or-shut-up call, Simpson veered unexpectedly into truly verboten territory: criticism of the holy of conservative holies—Ronald Reagan...
...Senate in 1978...
...We should do everything we can for the combat veteran, the trainee accident, their widows, children...
...They don't quite know how to handle that," Simpson said with relish...
...If Clinton "fails" on healthcare, Simpson asserted, he will fail overall...
...In the end, then, deficits could only be cured one way...
...Its unintended effect was to doom Clinton's first two nominees for attorney general...
...Thus the impression was created that government spending is truly uncontrollable...
...Once they realized what a pliant figure Reagan was, liberals kept mum...
...But it's time someone said what Simpson said...
...Here he is on the veterans' lobby: "There's 27 million veterans, but only three million of them ever heard a shell go past their heads, and the rest of them just howl...
...The principal lobbying support for the reform at that time came from organized labor—always eager to restrict the supply of unregulated labor...
...Then the Republicans took over the Senate, in 1980...
...Simpson didn't tell me this, but my guess is that he thinks the Republicans blew it when, for six years, they controlled the White House and the Senate...
...Since then, Simpson and I have been vaguely talking lunch...
...In fact, they kept up the smokescreen about how anti-government he was...
...Whatever else he may be, Simpson is not easily intimidated...
...We'll cash you in, and you can have interest at the premium rate, but you're going to get out of this game because there's no way this system...
...never could understand how Simpson became so involved in the immigration issue...
...At that point Senator Kennedy came to me and said, `Well, I care very much about immigration and if Thurmond will let you set up a separate subcommittee, I'll be glad to serve as your ranking member...
...As a result, self-interest overrules statesmanship time and again...
...But for God's sake, a guy that served a year and never left Camp Beetle Bailey should not receive the same benefits that a combat veteran receives...
...She had good energy...
...So how did it happen...
...Reforming the entitlement culture on Capitol Hill cannot happen if legislators are intimidated by the organized lobbying of current beneficiaries threatened with cutbacks...
...Today there are three people paying in and one taking out...
...The law before was that it was legal to hire an illegal, but illegal for the illegal to work...
...hence their affection for the judiciary...
...For years I had darkly suspected that, in the course of some dinner party shortly after he arrived, the "Georgetown elite" had put Simpson up to it, knowing that there would be no constituency pressure on the issue from Wyoming...
...At town meetings in Wyoming, he tells young people to "get active and get in the game...
...Now the Game Show Host has taken to the stage with the liberals' dream package of tax increases...
...They let spending run out of control, not because they didn't have the votes to stop it, but because they didn't have the mirage...
...As assistant minority leader, Simpson has an office in the Capitol building itself...
...Orrin Hatch of Utah...
...He told me he was writing a book about the news media, which I gathermay not be wholly laudatory...
...All of this goodwill will just disappear and that will be the end of it...
...I think she's got the guts to do it," he said of her embryonic health-care reform: So, what needs to be done in that area...
...What we have to do, he said, is "compute how much you paid into this system, how much you make, what your net worth is, and if you're up there in that [upper-income] area we're going to cut you off...
...He was referring to the feature of the immigration law that penalizes employers for hiring undocumented ("illegal") immigrants...
...Under present law, amazingly enough, it is actually illegal for employers to ask prospective employees to produce green cards, or any other specific document, as proof of legality...
...Speak out against the veterans' program, which now costs $37 billion a year, or any number of other programs, and your opponent has a nice 30-second spot: "This is the slob that cut your veterans' benefit, this is the slob that cut your Social Security . . ." Simpson was not optimistic about the prospects for Clinton's budget plan "because he still has not laid his scalpel on the sacred of sacreds, and that's these damned entitlements...
...He says now of her earlier attack on him: "I liked her spirit...
...Senator Kennedy and I are going to change it," Hatch said...
...Wyoming is believed to have fewer immigrants than any other state...
...If Reagan couldn't control it, who could...
...I called him and he said, 'I just couldn't do that to the poorest people on Social Security.' I said, 'It [COLA freeze] was only for a year...
...You could have left the thirteen agencies cut.' He said, 'I just couldn't . . .'" Truly, Ronald Reagan, who so often said he admired Roosevelt, was closer to him than conservatives want to admit...
...She laid the F-word on me three times in 42 seconds," he told me...
...I'll say, pal, in May of '85, we all put up...
...Sounds like price-controls...
...An aide brought me a cup of coffee, but Simpson himself, who is 61 and looking very fit, abstemiously confined himself to a glass of water...
...Well, Senator Simpson has a lot of spirit, too...
...And there's no record of where they served...
...Simpson doesn't want it but we're going to...
...My excuse was that you go up to Capitol Hill, talk to these guys, and before you know it you're friends and you don't feel like criticizing them anymore...
...At the time of the Clarence Thomas hearings, after an appearance on "Nightline," Simpson had a run-in with Nina Totenberg of National Public Radio...
...senator, and before that governor of Wyoming...
...Reagan helped by giving his anti-government speeches...
...It also has fewer people...
...Reagan—Ronald Reagan!—"said we must do it differently...
...In twenty years it will be two to one...
...He smiled broadly and beckoned me to join him in his inner office, across the hall...
...It was all out of compassion," Simpson added, trying to soften the blow...
...Hatch told me that they were "discriminatory" against minorities and placed an inappropriate law-enforcement burden on all...
...The only thing wrong with the law at present is that "maybe 40 percent of the documents presented to employers are fraudulent," he said...
...Combining charm and asperity, he has managed to cast himself in an unusual Washington role: the impolitic pol—an acerbic variation on Sam Ervin's "country lawyer...
...n conversation, Simpson repeatedly gives one to understand that the Senate would be a better place if it wasn't for organized pressure from constituents...
...at least I went overseas [Germany in the fifties], which makes me a war hero compared to.half of them...
...That is also the direction in which Social Security is headed under Team Billary...
...Simpson's prescription, however, would seem to turn Social Security into even more of an income-redistribution scheme than it already is...
...Something else crossed his mind: "When I was a freshman in college there were sixteen people paying into the system and one taking out...
...I told Simpson that I had just met a senator who said to "hit him hard on employer sanctions...
...She called me in January 1992," Simpson recalled, and said, 'You and I have been through some heavy fire...
...I'm ready to do that...
...Al Simpson of Wyoming...
...Ten days later came the downer...
...This is thought to be discriminatory...
...Now if that isn't the ultimate stupidity for a constitutional government...
...He was elected to the U.S...
...He didn't go for the package...
...They were looking for lawyers from the Judiciary Committee, and Howard Baker told Jimmy Carter, `Here's Simpson.' I said to Baker, 'Why did you do that to me?' He said, 'You're the junior member of the Committee, and I think it's important that you go on there.' So Carter appointed me to the Commission...
...It seems that Simpson and Nina Totenberg made up, too...
...I was a freshman senator, and they created the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy," he said...
...You do something to doctors," he said, without specifying what, "you do something to hospitals, you do something to durable goods providers, and you do something with malpractice...
...S impson seemed to admire Hillary's steeliness...
...Take Social Security...
...An aide told me that the senator (who lives in McLean, Virginia) had been held up in traffic...
...Employer sanctions are the guts of any kind of reform...
...Producing fake ID has become "a cottage industry," so this session the Congress will take up a new national ID card, to be used "at the time of new hire...
...Thanks in no small measure to the persistent efforts of Senator Simpson, the immigration law was revised in 1986 to include sanctions against employers...
...Then again, Simpson is at least partly right...
...It was furnished with realistic paintings of Western scenery, including a small Bierstadt, a scene by one of the "Taos Ten," and—point of pride—"no photographs of politicians...
...I doubt if I will criticize him again—except on employer sanctions...
...Hit him hard on employer sanctions," Hatch said briskly...
...Do you want to go to the White House Correspondents Dinner with me?' And I said sure...
...Ted Kennedy...
...He favors term limits, for example, because "it would be a joy to know" that all those in their last term "would be a bedrock of doing things right, instead of doing them expediently," From a conservative perspective, of course, this is debatable...
...The employer must fill out a form attesting that the employee is authorized to work, but is not at fault if the documents that support such a claim are faked...
Vol. 26 • April 1993 • No. 4
