Politics/D-Day

...The $245 billion tax cut, which the establishment press belittles as "for the rich," would provide a $500 tax credit (not merely a deduction) for every child in families making less than $90,000...

...House and Senate Democrats know perfectly well that the passage of this budget will doom them to minority status for years to come...

...And voters told the pollsters they wanted change...

...More options and less government interference will bring about better health care at lower prices...

...At the American Enterprise Institute's annual dinner last December, then-Senate Finance Committee Chairman Bob Packwood told Karen Kerrigan, the president of the Small Business Survival Committee and an active opponent of Clintoncare, that the administration's hubris kept it from ever approaching him...

...Now he knows that change has other connotations...

...Welfare reform, as passed by the House and Senate, will save taxpayers more than $100 billion over seven years, end welfare as an entitlement, and shift many welfare programs into a block grant that goes out to states...

...Any American who wishes to stay in the present system without changes can do so...

...Clinton will be hard pressed to veto Republican reforms...

...Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour doesn't mince words when he points out that the left understands the stakes...

...With Washington having spent $5.4 trillion on means-tested welfare programs since 1945, Bill...

...The budget cuts billions out of programs that traditionally hire Democrats...

...A two-earner family with three children would, over the next seven years, keep $10,500 of the money it now sends to Washington...

...He couldn't vouch for Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, but he made his own intentions clear...

...The tax cut will also cut the capital gains tax in half, creating countless new investment and job creation opportunities for entrepreneurs and small businesses...

...Republicans will focus on the four pillars and ask Americans whether Bill Clinton can be allowed to remain an obstacle to serious reform...

...Subsequent vetoes by Clinton, designed to demonstrate his strength and impress his Establishment allies, will be met with rewritten budgets even less palatable to the president and his supporters...

...Since the new fiscal year began on October 1, the government has been operating under a "continuing resolution," a stop-gap measure permitting money to be spent at roughly last year's levels...

...0 The American Spectator December 1995 63...

...Senate backsliding gave the Establishment an opportunity to attack Republican tax cuts as benefiting the "rich" and misrepresent the proposed reforms of Medicare as "cutting Medicare...

...T he budget fight mirrors the two-year struggle over Bill and Hillary Clinton's attempt to impose a national health care regime on the United States...

...Only fifteen months ago, Republican opponents of government-run health care woke up every morning dreading a headline announcing a deal between Clinton and "moderate" Senate Republicans...

...In-depth polling by GOP pollster Ed Goeas, however, shows that the concern voters have is not that the Republicans are moving too fast or that they are, in General Colin Powell's words, "too harsh...

...But what they wanted to change was a corrupt and expensive federal government...

...Speaking to state taxpayer leaders on a national conference call October 17, Texas Senator Phil Gramm promised that he would fight to keep the Senate in sync with House pressure...

...The key non-negotiable elements of the fall budget fight are the "four pillars" ofreform...

...But Clinton and the congressional Democrats have different and conflicting interests...

...Gingrich believes that with each iteration the House will apply increasing pressure on Clinton...

...The Republican Reconciliation Bill, scheduled to go to Bill Clinton on November 13, is the blueprint for the revolution promised in the Contract with America...

...Thus, according to the Joint Economic Committee, a Balanced Budget by the Year 2002 will create 6.1 million jobs, and it will reduce interest rates by two percent, saving a family $37,440 on the cost of a 62 The American Spectator December 1995 30-year mortgage, reducing the cost of financing a $15,000 five-year car loan by $900, saving a college student $2,167 on an $11,000 student loan...

...Decision Day, indeed...

...That's why Gingrich-led Republicans plan to drive home what's at stake with their four-part package...

...According to a Heritage Foundation study, without reform it will take an additional $862 a year from the average worker to avert this bankruptcy...

...Rather, they have seen the Contract bog down in Bob Dole's Senate and are disappointed and angered by the slow pace of change...

...U nfortunately for the Democrats, there are three major players in the budget battle: the Republican leadership in the House and Senate, congressional Democrats, and Bill Clinton...

...As we go to press, the target date for sending the budget reconciliation bill and the fallback continuing resolution to Bill Clinton's desk is November 13...

...In short, congressional Democrats are fighting for their lives...

...This budget fight will decide if big government and the welfare state will be consigned to the dustbin of history," Barbour says, deliberately paraphrasing Ronald Reagan's promise in 1982 to destroy the Soviet empire...

...Less pork means less reason for traditional Democratic constituencies to care about who is in Washington...

...Now the tables are reversed, and it is the Republican Congress that is poised to pass a budget that will tip the playing field permanently against the left...

...The budget fight may be over in days Grover G. Norquist is president of Americans for Tax Reform...

...Even Bill Clinton's own report projects that without reform Medicare will go bankrupt in seven years...

...Reform will also slow the growth in the cost of Medicare by offering America's elderly more choices than the present "one size fits all" government monopoly...

...The fewer goodies handed out by Washington, the weaker the power of Democratic incumbents...

...D emocrats have been cheered by summer polls showing voters less enthusiastic about the new Congress than they were in the heady first 100 days...

...Gingrich has held to the formulation he developed on the evening of November 8, 1994, promising to "cooperate with Clinton, but not compromise" on key principles...

...More than enough...

...In 1992 candidate Clinton promised to "end welfare as we know it," but his first budget increased welfare spending by $100 billion over five years...

...Packwood's comment highlights how close America came to sliding down the slippery slope into a European-style social democracy...

...Confident Hill Republicans, by contrast, are calling November 13 "Decision Day...

...or weeks, or it could last through the Christmas holidays...

...Hence his recent moves to undercut his former congressional allies by repositioning himself as a born-again supporter of the balanced budget, tax reduction, and welfare reform...

...It surprised him, he said, because "I could have brought over seven votes...

...If Clinton signs the legislation, what House Speaker Newt Gingrich calls the "four pillars" of reform—welfare reform, Medicare reform, the $245 billion, seven-year tax cut, and the commitment to a balanced budget in 2002—will be locked in place...

...What Clinton and his friends wanted to change was American society, with government as the instrument for "fixing" it...

...Clinton's signature on such a budget will be a down payment on the welfare state's unconditional surrender...

...The president will have to decide whether he wants to join them in replacing the failed welfare state, or defend it alongside the labor unions, government employees, and trial lawyers...

...Meanwhile, the sketchy outline of "reform" he submitted to Congress would at best have re-labeled welfare as "education" and "job training"—and kept welfare firmly in the hands of Washington bureaucrats...

...But new options will include Medical Savings Accounts, HMOs, preferred-provider networks, provider-sponsored networks, and plans offered by voluntary associations of seniors, such as labor unions, fraternal organizations, and senior citizen organizations...

...Should Clinton veto the budget as expected, Speaker Gingrich promises to extend the continuing resolution only with additional restrictions on government spending, which will be painful to a Clinton constituency dependent on taxpayer dollars...

...Under current law, retirees lose benefits if they earn more than $11,280 in wages...

...Ceding welfare to the states will begin a competition over how best to reduce the number of Americans trapped in dependency, and every American liberated from dependency is a vote lost to the Democrats...

...At Radio America's tenth anniversary dinner on October 16, Speaker Gingrich commented that when the Republican planfor Medicare, which increases Medicare spending per recipient from the present $4,800 to $6,700 in the year 2002, is constantly described as a "cut," the crisis in public education must be graver than most people realize...

...In 1992, Clinton campaigned for "change...

...Families would also receive the $500 tax credit for taking care of a frail parent or grandparent...

...Once the final reconciliation package is worked out in conference between the more radical House and the more tepid Senate, the interests of the Republicans will be united in fighting for the reconciliation package...

...The Establishment has portrayed the inevitable clash between the Republican vision of the future and Clinton's determination to continue the status quo as a mutually destructive "train wreck...

...It would repeal Clinton's tax hike on Social Security recipients and allow Americans over 65 to earn up to $30,000 without losing any Social Security benefits...

...Meanwhile, Bill Clinton knows that if he spends the next several months cheer-leading for the status quo, whatever chance he has for re-election will disappear...