Politics /Bogus Charlie Stenholm
Norquist, Grover G.
0 n Thursday afternoon, May 27, 1993, Texas congressman Charlie Stenholm cast his vote in favor of Bill Clinton's budget reconciliation package, which increases taxes by $300 billion over the next...
...It may be too late...
...His amendment would have cut off all funding to the NEA, saving taxpayers $171 million...
...Throughout the entire process Stenholm was always trying to slow us down...
...If Stenholm had stood his ground—demanding real spending Grover G. Norquist is TAS's Politics columnist and president of Americans for Tax Reform...
...How to explain Dick Armey's success in establishing a base-closing commission that has resulted in billions of dollars in real savings...
...A number of spending-cut congressmen echo Chuck Douglas's observation that "whenever...
...Clinton said he was for it...
...Gerald Solomon's legislative line-item veto, which would have allowed the president to cross out wasteful spending and required a two-thirds vote of both houses to reinstate spending...
...Stenholm gets near one of our projects it ends up failing...
...Stenholm has also been rewarded with a plum assignment on the Budget Committee...
...House Republican Whip Newt Gingrich sees Stenholm as an active part of the leadership's strategy, providing cover for Democrats in swing districts by Grover G. Norquist who have to pretend to be moderates...
...The House leadership, however, was dead set against it, and this is where Stenholm came in, introducing a deceptive "expedited rescission" bill...
...Both Republicans and Democrats agree that without Stenholm's support and influence, Clinton's package would have died in the House...
...The 1989 brouhaha over the National Endowment for the Arts demonstrated how the myth of a moderate Stenholm has served the liberals well...
...Genuine fiscal conservatives like Tim Penny and Gary Condit should now have an opportunity to emerge as leaders of the Democratic party's moderates...
...Charlie's reaction—he was livid...
...It was hoped that once congressmen were in their districts, they would be subjected-to-the-growing anger of taxpayers...
...His vote for Clinton's tax-andspend package has made it impossible for him to claim he is anything other than an active agent of the House Democratic leadership...
...What's saddest, he notes, is that "it will be difficult for Stenholm to return to his first loyalties, and his new friends will drop him as his usefulness evaporates...
...Dick Armey voted for the Rohrabacher amendment on principle and also offered a 10-percent cut to the grants-giving portion of the NEA budget that would have saved $14.4 million and sent a signal to the NEA to clean up its act...
...Stenholm's usefulness to the Democratic leadership was underscored in 1989, when he was given the post of deputy whip...
...The Washington press corps frequently calls Stenholm for the "moderate" or "conservative" Democratic spin on issues, and for ten years, Democratic congressmen who've wanted to distance themselves from the party's liberal ideology have looked to Stenholm as their standard-bearer...
...When we were within two votes of forcing the discharge," Douglas recalls, "we saw Stenholm up at the front desk talking with the Speaker...
...Their job is to make it look interesting, make it look close even, but in the end to lose gracefully...
...The Democratic leadership allowed him to attach a toothless "entitlement review process" that even Ways and Means Chairman Rostenkowski belittled as "bells and whistles...
...One reason people believed that Clinton's package was in serious trouble was Stenholm's announcement that he would insist on real caps in entitlement spending...
...S tenholm's strategy of feinting right and folding left has allowed him to run unopposed since 1978...
...Bush did not scare Stenholm," Billmire says, but now Foley and Clinton do...
...0 n Thursday afternoon, May 27, 1993, Texas congressman Charlie Stenholm cast his vote in favor of Bill Clinton's budget reconciliation package, which increases taxes by $300 billion over the next five years and increases spending from $1.5 trillion this year to $1.8 trillion in 1998...
...Last fall, nervous Democratic freshmen had campaigned in favor of a line-item veto...
...In a letter to members, Rep...
...Stenholm's colleagues on the Agriculture Committee were not surprised this year when Stenholm led the Clinton grab for an additional $7.5 billion in food stamps...
...He compares Stenholm to Marshal Main, a hero in World War I who wound up the leader of Vichy France and a universal symbol of collaboration...
...reduction and real caps on entitlements—Clinton would have lost on May 27...
...This is what we had been working on for months...
...Stenholm's collapse was so total that it led tax activist Peter Roff to complain, "After a dive like that, someone should call the boxing_commissioner...
...Now he is a useful tool," the member says, "playing on his fraying reputation...
...In short, Stenholm won the NEA its increase, protected it from certain slashing by Armey, and gave members a chance to say they "voted with that conservative from Texas" Stenholm...
...It's one thing for the Texan Stenholm to sabotage the work of a New York congressman like Gerald Solomon...
...It's a wonder Stenholm managed to craft a reputation as a conservative Southern Democrat in the first place...
...Stenholm saved the day for the NEA crowd by offering a "perfecting amendment" to cut only $45,000—the total of the two most prominent abuses—from the $2 milliod increase in the NEA budget...
...It's possible that if the Republicans raise their numbers in the House to about 193, they could put together enough party switchers and Democrats to overturn the present leadership...
...Given Clinton's weakness, Foley & Co...
...The fury of conservative congressmen at Stenholm's betrayal was unprecedented, not simply because of the size of the package Stenholm forced through, but because it was the latest in a series of efforts to cut spending that Stenholm endorsed and then undermined...
...A whip's job is to line up votes for the leadership's position—an odd job for an honest dissident...
...Gingrich likens Stenholm to the Washington Generals, the basketball team that barnstorms with the Harlem Globetrotters...
...But Stenholm caved...
...By contrast, when then-Democrat Phil Gramm bucked the House leadership in the early 1980s to cosponsor Reagan's first tax cuts, he was stripped of his committee assignments...
...Joe Barton's proposal to require a two-thirds vote for tax increases as a way to force spending cuts...
...Charles Stenholm has been outed, and his days as a party leader may be numbered...
...Perhaps by noting that Stenholm never helped in that legislative campaign...
...This will almost certainly change...
...it would have been quite another had he undermined the efforts of Dick Armey, whose district borders on his own...
...ome argue that Stenholm is simply S weak: he can't stand up to pressure...
...Harris Fawell of Illinois denounced the Stenholm bill as a charade that in fact provided for weaker rescission authority...
...Only days before the final vote, taxpayer groups and business lobbies believed they had the votes to defeat the package, which would have forced Speaker Tom Foley to withdraw the bill from consideration until after the Memorial Day recess...
...Just as the Dole filibuster against Clinton's $16.5 billion "stimulus" package was strengthened by the April recess, so too would the anti-tax forces in the House gain strength through any delay...
...The left would pillory him if they saw him outside their control...
...Former New Hampshire congressman Chuck Douglas led the fight for a balanced-budget amendment in 1990—which Stenholm purportedly supportedand-has NVATird memories of-the "help" Stenbolm offered...
...LI...
...Earlier this year, Stenholm singlehandedly sabotaged New York Rep...
...As a legislative and not constitutional amendment, it required only a majority of the Congress to be enacted...
...Richard Billmire of the National Republican Campaign Committee recalls that when the winds were blowing from the right in the early 1980s, Stenholm was "terrified of Ronald Reagan" and could be counted on as a sure vote in support of the contras and the Reagan tax and budget cuts...
...Because the Democratic leadership would not allow the amendment out of committee and onto the House floor, Douglas circulated a discharge petition, a little-used parliamentary mechanism that forces a vote on a piece of bottled-up legislation if a majority of members sign on...
...Now more than ever, the House leadership will try to prop up Stenholm to stop the growth of a real opposition...
...The National Rifle Association points out that Stenholm voted in 1991 for the Brady Bill...
...The Right to Work Committee complains of his "steady leftward drift" as demonstrated in his vote to repeal the Hatch Act (to allow your local EPA and IRS agents to come and raise funds from your company while they decide about your permits and tax audits...
...Solomon had commitments for 218 votes and fifteen more to spare...
...Dana Rohrabacher of California offered the libertarian solution to funding obscene and blasphemous art: no government control of the arts, no taxpayer-funded grants...
...Taxpayer and business groups remember Stenholm as the point man in the Democratic leadership's fight against cutting the capital gains tax back in 1989...
...One member close to Stenholm wistfully recalls the Stenholm of a dozen years ago, who not only backed key Reagan policies but fought for his district and believed in limited government...
...His district voted 69-31 for Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison in June's special election, and gave 65 percent of its votes to Republican Phil Gramm in 1990...
...Sadder and wiser, one member likened Stenholm to the cartoon character-Lucy-who each fall holds the football out for Charlie Brown, only to pull it away at the last minute...
...More than a dozen moderate Democrats followed Stenholm's lead, giving Clinton his first major legislative victory by a margin of 219-213...
...If Charlie Stenholm was even a minor irritant to the ultimate goals of the liberals," Douglas says, "you would hear unceasing hell from liberal publications and liberal columnists...
...we were certain he was warning Speaker Foley, and so I rushed up two more signers and we discharged the balanced-budget amendment...
...know that a pickup of fifteen Republican seats in 1994 is a real possibility...
...According to Nuttle, a serious conservative effort to displace Tip O'Neill in 1985 fell short only for lack of a strong leader among the Democratic moderates...
...Douglas adds that Stenholm "violently" (*posed any balanced-budget amendment that limited tax hikes, such as Texas Rep...
...Writing in the Wall Street Journal last November 4, Mark Nuttle, former executive director of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said he knew of at least fifteen Democratic incumbents who would be willing to overthrow Tom Foley...
...Members were angry at Stenholm, but also at themselves for being fooled—yet again—into thinking Stenholm would stand firm...
...Or it might just be that Stenholm's double-dealing stems from his own drive for power, which requires that he ultimately please the Democratic leadership...
Vol. 26 • August 1993 • No. 8
