Capitol Ideas /Dole Drums
Bethell, Tom
/ t was a little unusual to receive a phone call from Senator Bob Dole's office. Invitation to a breakfast meeting at his office in the Capitol Building, room S230. Hmmm, what could that be all...
...wanted to increase spending...
...Hard to say...
...Incidentally, officers of General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler have offered to support the tax in exchange for fixed limits to Japan's share of the U.S...
...It seems to promise less government in the future...
...That's why I gave you bananas and strawberries first—the way the Clinton plan gave Democrats a "stimulus package" (more government spending) before they have to vote on tax increases...
...W hat about spending cuts...
...Deficit reduction" is a phrase that reliably hoodwinks the public, which is why it is so popular in Washington...
...One or two of the senators left early, but by 9:30 sharp the breakfast came to an end, and at that point everyone rushed off to important engagements...
...Does Dole have a breakfast...
...You know it, I know it, the American people know it...
...I dutifully scribbled his numbersinto my notebook, knowing as I did so that my voice would make no difference...
...To most Americans, a budget is the limited amount that you have to spend for a specific purpose...
...When Clinton and Gore had lunch with Republicans on Capitol Hill recently, Wallop told me, he asked Clinton a question about the energy tax and it was wholly answered by Gore (for whom McGinty still works...
...Mostly conservative, they were milling about beneath the mosaics, marble busts, and oil paintings...
...The deficit" is the difference between two unspecified numbers and hardly anyone knows what it is...
...One could not help feeling sorry for the man—chased about wherever he goes by these organized packs of feminists...
...It reminded me of flying El Al...
...The Republicans are now making legitimate complaints, of course...
...This year and perhaps next there will be strong growth, but Bell foresees slowly rising inflation and a recession late in Clinton's term...
...Bob Dole stood up and named the senators who would be speaking to us...
...The guard picked up a phone...
...So it's politics as usual beneath a veneer of environmentalism...
...In all the thousands of newspaper stories about "the deficit" in recent months, I have not seen one that mentioned the actual outlay and revenue totals for the most recent (or any other) fiscal year...
...wanted to be part of the process...
...Several other senators began to appear: Gramm of Texas...
...Simpson opened his cereal package Americanstyle—plunging a knife into its heart and spilling out the contents...
...I found myself thinking that Republicans could get their message across—if they had one...
...At the end of the room was a desk with papers piled on it—a "working desk" (presumably Dole's...
...He won't be," Gramm said later...
...There were place cards at the table settings, which was a little unexpected...
...Jeffrey Bell, president of Lehrman Bell Mueller Cannon, a market forecasting firm, told me later that he doesn't think the tax increases will stop the recovery, but pointed out that the Clinton plan is the mirror image of Reagan's...
...They take the form of assumed "savings" in future years, all the way out to 1998, when with any luck Clinton will no longer be in office...
...We heard from Malcolm Wallop, who mentioned in passing that the energy tax was "mostly drafted" by Katie McGinty, "who wrote Al Gore's book...
...Then there's the $16 billion "stimulus package"—more spending on welfare programs and the like...
...The tax won't protect the environment, as it is supposed to, Wallop said, because it was structured in such a way as to "take care of Robert Byrd's high-sulphur, high-ash West Virginiacoal...
...One of those present said later that the breakfast may not have been unrelated to a possible 1996 presidential run by Dole...
...At least, those at the breakfast seemed to think that the energy tax can be defeated in the Senate...
...That is the principal goal of Republicans...
...Or is he hoodwinking his own followers who think that "deficit cuts" are spending cuts, not tax increases...
...Dole was right to dismiss the polls taken shortly after Clinton's speech to Congress, allegedly showing that two-thirds of the voters approved the economic plan...
...In 1995 the "cuts"—by then not even implemented—will be quietly restored by the Budget and Appropriations Committees, and hardly anyone in the country will be aware of what has happened...
...At the table behind me I could hear that familiar rasping senatorial voice...
...cereal, fruit juice, bowls of strawberries and sliced bananas...
...and no peep of criticism will be heard from our government-licensed, government-friendly TV networks...
...The problem is that there is no enforcement mechanism in 1995-1998 for the spending control measures to be implemented," Gramm said...
...Or could care less...
...Hmmm, what could that be all about...
...Shortly before 8:30 we were shown into an inner office, large enough for four circular tables set for breakfast...
...Again, he drank water...
...And hydropower was taxed heavily, "in order to prevent the Pacific Northwest from becoming the region of choice...
...T here are issues that the people broadly understand, and those they don't...
...But they realized that Republicans, perennially beset by deficit anxiety, probably could (with the aid of a little propaganda) be persuaded to support tax increases, thereby breaking their most conspicuous campaign promise...
...The irony is that if the Republicans do succeed in blocking new taxes, or some of them, Clinton may be the unexpected beneficiary...
...Packwood of Oregon arrived looking a little wan and hollowed out...
...Gays in the military was and remains dangerous for President Clinton, because people understand it...
...What a farce this is...
...I set my alarm...
...There was no cooked breakfast...
...wanted to be loved...
...Another day, another . . . what...
...both Simpson and Wallop of Wyoming...
...Guardedly...
...wanted to help businessmen...
...Dole obviously had asked these senators to come...
...Has he been taken in by rhetoric that dresses up the expansion of federal power in the language of thrift ("deficit cuts...
...Late term recessions have defeated three out of the last four presidents," he said...
...For a dozen years they wanted to be team players...
...New taxes are harmful to economic growth, and the massive tax increase that Clinton really does seem to want—revealing the ideological bias that he managed to conceal in the 1992 campaign—is likely to stall the economic recovery, ensuring that he is a one-term president...
...In Washington, the budget is an obscure spending total that expands every year,without political resistance...
...All of them...
...According to Keynesian economic theory, deficit spending is stimulative...
...they would rather go on being team players...
...Domenici of New Mexico, and Nickles of Oklahoma...
...As a result, the Republicans have now been forced into opposition, whether they like it or not (and many of them don't...
...1:3...
...Today we have monetary ease in the pipeline and prospective tax increases...
...But one thing is certain: if Perot started to demand spending cuts and rejected tax increases, the news media would stop giving him a free ride...
...People went through this period of denial after Clinton was elected, and now there's this feeling, let's give him, a chance and don't confuse me with the facts...
...One wonders if Ross Perot knows what's going on...
...The big newspapers and magazines are staffed by people who believe in unlimited government, so they will not be raising any objections...
...He said he tells his staff and schedulers that if he drops dead, they're all out of a job...
...Tom Wolfe would have noticed the cutTom Bethell is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent...
...As Dole said, people reacted as though they had been asked whether Clinton had given a good speech...
...I asked Simpson if he has to go to many of these events...
...He said he.drank enough coffee in the army to last him a lifetime...
...In a few months he will be 70, but he looked remarkably fit and even happy, as several people commented...
...In fact, it means billing taxpayers for money already spent: tax increases...
...Now they are in the minority across the board and the new president can afford to ignore them...
...In the first two months of the Clinton administration, I am prepared to assert, no such numbers appeared in any "budget deficit" story in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, or the Washington Post...
...I was trying to hold off using that word, budget, because people won't read about it, and probably you don't want to either...
...Which voice...
...But the people generally do not understand what's going on when schemes to expand government have been deliberately, consciously, and misleadingly represented as "reductions...
...wanted to support the president...
...That was where we journalists came in, then...
...You thread your way through metal detectors on Capitol Hill these days and, if the hour is early, announce your precise destination...
...The energy tax will hurt farmers, transportation in general and airlines in particular, Wallop concluded...
...wanted to reduce the deficit...
...Republican senators 'would oppose the energy tax unanimously, he said, but in response to a question from Robert Novak, Packwood conceded that a handful of Republicans will be willing to vote for the increased tax rate on upper income taxpayers...
...In 1981 we had tight money and prospective tax cuts...
...automobile market...
...Robert Novak leaned over and asked him what was going on in Wyoming...
...By that time, however, the tax increases will no doubt have been locked in place...
...It can be beaten and must be beaten...
...But eventually I was admitted, and I began to meet other journalists...
...Phil Gramm, who is on the Budget Committee, pointed out that domestic spending "cuts" in the Clinton plan are purely notional...
...lery, but I'm afraid I didn't...
...B ob Packwood took the floor and pointed out that ,with the 11-9 party split on the Senate Finance Committee, Republicans only have to win over one Democrat to stop a particular tax...
...I was seated next to Senator Simpson, my old friend...
...And he probably has figured that out...
...But, as one of the better known journalists present told me, they have lost all credibility on economic issues...
...When I mentioned the metal detectors on the way in he said the guards pick up several guns a week from people coming into the building (but from law-abiding citizens, he stressed...
...It's hard to believe, but after twelve years the GOP found itself completely outmaneuvered by Democrats whose policy positions were generally not popular with the voters...
...Five billion dollars to spend...
...The federal budget, on the other hand, is very elusive...
...He was very quiet and placid—dutifully present and correct, I sensed...
...If it's true that a big deficit is dangerous to economic health, then calling for a little bit more spending is like prescribing a couple of aspirin for a patient who has swallowed a bottle of aspirin...
...And this is the administration that promises no more smoke and mirrors...
...Clinton undoubtedly knows the American people don't understand it, and the other senators in the room knew it...
...A lot of people don't want to know the details," Senator Gramm told me...
...This year, for example, the House and Senate voted on budget resolutions before Clinton's Office of Management and Budget had even submitted a budget to Congress...
...That left us—a motley crew munching our cornflakes one Thursday morning, along with half a dozen senators...
...What this hunger for economic "stimulus" suggests is that Democrats (and liberals in general) never did think of deficit spending as doing any harm...
...But how many Americans understand these things...
...Pete Domenici, ranking member of the Budget Committee, told us that in the years ahead all of the spending cuts will be coming from Defense...
...The Republican leadership was frustrated over its inability to "get its message across...
...One Congress cannot bind the next...
...Then Bob Dole appeared and he commenced his familiar raucous badinage, pencil gripped in right hand, handshake with left (soft, unlike voice...
...If so, it worked like a charm...
...Topic: the administration's budget package and the Republican response...
...What cynics journalists are...
...It's not certain yet that Clinton's tax-increase package will pass...
Vol. 26 • May 1993 • No. 5
