Capitol Ideas: Letter From Dead City
Bethell, Tom
"Capitol Ideas: Letter From Dead City" by Tom Bethell Letter From Dead City As we have been kept indoors by the snow, this may be the moment for a letter from the capital. Evidently Marion Barry sold off the city's snow...
...Ross Perot never caused any such trouble...
...Notice, for example, Tim Russert's obsequious interview of Perot on "Meet the Press"—an embarrassing half-hour of softly lobbed questions...
...Clinton has told "lies" about Medicare, Robert J. Samuelson wrote, adding: "I dislike using the word `lies,' but Clinton exploits such forbearance (widespread in the press) to spread untruths...
...Ted Stevens of Alaska is de facto captain of the team, which includes John Chafee of Rhode Island, William Roth of Delaware, John Warner of Virginia, and Pete Domenici of New Mexico...
...The Senate is slowly becoming more conservative, making the job less attractive for those once praised as "thoughtful...
...Now a somnolent, ill-informed populace is their only hope...
...The fury the Washington Post directed at the mayor and city government was wondrous to behold...
...If selling off the city's capital equipment helps to keep the paychecks coming, that is surely a small price to pay for compassionate government...
...I have all along believed that, in terms of enacted legislation, not much would change in this Congress...
...That's a big change from fifteen years ago, when liberals complained about the public's "apathy" or indifference tothings political...
...Sooner or later, they will outweigh in the political balance those hoping to come out ahead in the Ponzi scheme...
...But there is a growing cohort (those born since 1956, say) who know perfectly well that they will be lucky to get back what they put in, and who will support radical reform...
...Fortunately, the new technology is both eroding the network audience and breaking up the old monopolies...
...Welfare reform passed in good enough shape to merit the "evil" label from Marian Wright Edelman...
...How does he think that is created...
...In the budget negotiations, the Republicans concentrated their efforts on an issue they were unlikely to win...
...in turning power back to the states, it would have obliged the social-worker classes to mobilize and lobby in 5o states rather than one capital...
...But the message of tax cuts unconfused by balanced-budget talk has strong appeal...
...It has always been assumed that Social Security is the "third rail" of American politics...
...He is also stressing term limits and, heavens be praised, radical reform of Social Security...
...I'm worried about the public perception out there...
...At the most basic level, their mistake was to believe in opinion polls...
...It is rare to find a man of inherited wealth who understands the economic problem as well as Steve Forbes does...
...The liberals have evidently decided that Coats may be a good prospect for "moderate" status, and so they have been dangling Strange New Respect awards before his eyes...
...With funding restricted to piecemealdonations of $1,000 or less, outsiders could not easily gain access to airwaves with any unorthodox message...
...But, I say, 40,000 government employees have feelings, too, and must meet their mortgage payments just like the rest of us...
...A moderate Republican is someone who prefers to concede Democratic hegemony, while maintaining two-party appearances...
...The federal government serves exactly that function, either as source or subject of a great deal of network news...
...The TV networks are the problem, and here's one explanation...
...President Clinton vetoed it surreptitiously, after the TV reporters had gone home...
...The big development has been the sudden emergence of Steve Forbes and the flat-tax issue...
...Moderate Republicans are said to be a dying breed...
...Dan Coats of Indiana was a case in point...
...CAPITOL IDEAS by Tom Bethell Letter From Dead City As we have been kept indoors by the snow, this may be the moment for a letter from the capital...
...We have been told this for twenty years, but the Senate is still the home of Republican moderates...
...To Jennings or Tom Brokaw, upholding the federal government may look like virtue, but we should see it as self-interest...
...kk The American Spectator March r 9 9 6 21...
...That is not good turf for Republicans to fight on...
...Until Forbes appeared on the airwaves, reform of the confiscatory tax structure was not on the agenda...
...A friend who works in the Senate tells me that nonetheless there is some truth to the "dying breed" claim today...
...Inside the Beltway a great social engine works tirelessly to turn newcomers into moderates...
...20 March 1996 • The American Spectator expected by the inquiring pollster...
...Instead of aiming for radical reform of this evil system, Republicans proposed to raise the price of the offsetting benefits to which people feel entitled...
...Then, perceiving it to be popular, he endorsed a flat tax the very next day...
...Chile is the only country in the Western world that has such a system at present, and let us hope that it spreads north...
...As Churchill remarked, there is nothing so exhilarating as to be shot at and missed...
...the Pentagon makes available film-clips of weapons systems and aircraft-carrier flight decks...
...Video from Chechnya shows how far Russians in Moscow will go to stop that change...
...Efforts will be made to lure Perot back into the race...
...National government provides the experts, the press conferences, and the film footage that serve a wide array of government and central-news interests...
...The pundits played him along as their pet outsider...
...There are three outright liberals: Jim Jeffords of Vermont, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, and Olympia Snowe of Maine...
...about the ability of rich candidates to circumvent the campaign finance laws...
...Film footage showed protesting federal "workers" holding union-printed placards: "America Looks Foolish...
...The good news is that many senators and congressmen have announced their retirement...
...but that's because they know that is the approved answer...
...People under a certain age would be allowed to opt out and privatize their own savings...
...So far the dying breed is still with us...
...This time the veto was Clinton's, and the reaction was different: "Why can't those politicians get together like grown-ups and work something out...
...Peter Jennings often seems to be running a backstop operation for OSHA and EPA...
...an aroused one is more likely to demolish programs than demand new ones...
...It was taxes that people were worried about all along, not those arcane CBO estimates of budget outlays in 2002...
...And network news operations have a parallel interest...
...The issues of taxation and middle-class entitlement interact in ways that Republicans overlooked...
...Inflation at four percent further melts away savings...
...When a GOP congressman said that no matter what they did, the press would make them look bad, Dole replied: "I'm not worried about the press...
...Network news is centralized news...
...Bob Dole expressed fear of the flat-tax idea as one that Clinton would gleefully use to embarrass Republicans: "Here they go again helping the rich...
...No conservatives are to be found among Democratic senators, I need not add...
...Above all, he has demonstrated the appeal of the tax-reform message...
...With his own money, Forbes was able to end the decorous silence about the robbery called taxation, and restore the Reagan agenda to American politics...
...Maybe we are closer than we think...
...I once had lunch with him in New Orleans, and can attest (as everyone else says) that he is a most unassuming and modest fellow...
...Dole, for one, didn't understand what was going on...
...Still, if we omit the retirees, perhaps ten GOP moderates or worse remain in the Senate...
...The program is a reliable transmitter of all federal health, safety, and environmental warnings...
...Or something...
...The biggest political issue of our time is the struggle to decentralize power...
...Robert Bennett of Utah is a "big disappointment," my friend said...
...Preservation of central control now depends on keeping people in the dark, notice...
...I like to think this is a sign that the electoral upheaval of r994 will continue...
...It didn't help that the negotiation story was improperly reported by the media, as two Washington Post columnists complained...
...Two more should be watched...
...The networks obliged the following day by not reporting on the veto...
...Those who run it require a central information depot facilitating one-stop shopping for news...
...Forbes has stirred up a sudden concern Tom BETHELL is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent...
...He obligingly agreed with Washington that first, before other reforms were made, taxes should be increased to balance the budget...
...After the veto, Senator Moynihan wrote a muddled article for the Washington Post, noting that Clinton had called for an end to welfare as we know it, Congress had delivered, and Clinton had done the right thing...
...That is what has happened...
...Without even knowing it, he had been suckered into promoting their preferred policy—just like George Bush with his 1990 repudiation of the "no new taxes" pledge...
...Reagan flirted with shutting down the government, but would back off after a couple of days because the press immediately made him the villain...
...It was, I think, a close call," Moynihan wrote...
...Evidently Marion Barry sold off the city's snow plows, or failed to pay for their repair...
...It was so successful that the liberals ever since have strained to discredit it...
...Since a future Congress is not bound by its predecessor, all promises of out-year spending cuts are meaningless anyway...
...Then he sees Gingrich on TV talking about "balancing the budget in seven years using honest CBO numbers," and insisting that no, he really isn't killing Medicare but allowing it to increase just as Hillary Clinton had proposed—and at that point (like the rest of us) he doesn't have the foggiest idea what is going on...
...As the technology changes, the center does not hold...
...GOP efforts would be vetoed by a leftist-dominated Clinton...
...Instead, the public, which has to rely on the press for an understanding of these arcane matters, blamed it on intransigent Republicans, while the President portrayed himself as the savior of Medicare...
...As Forbes consultant Josh Gilder points out, the present system makes it almost impossible for us to save for retirement because we are taxed so many ways: when we receive income, interest, dividends, capital gains, and finally when we bequeath what is left over...
...Clinton knew he could succeed as long as the media were quietly on his side...
...When the pollster calls, yes, people do say that they want a balanced budget...
...For international coverage, the State Department provides briefings, story line, consular support abroad...
...There, one has to be suspicious...
...Al Hunt's recent column on Sen...
...New ones keep budding, no matter how often the voters cut them back...
...Clinton insisted that as a matter of "moral necessity" the entitlements shouldn't be cut...
...Fred Thompson of Tennessee also looks to have moderate potential...
...This was precisely the supply-side strategy of 1980...
...A capital idea...
...The effect is to turn us into wards of the state and constituents of the Democratic Party...
...James K. Glassman wrote that in his budget dealings, the president had to feel "bullet proof": "The press didn't even notice that it was President Clinton who shut down the national parks with his veto of the Interior and related agencies bill...
...Liberals in Washington are no less determined...
...I write four weeks before the New Hampshire primary...
...Forbes has also shown the extent to which the campaign finance laws have served, not to democratize politics as advertised, but to allow a Washington coterie to control the agenda of politics...
...The truth is that the budget is an arcane, distant problem about which the average voter knows nothing, except that he knows the answer Steve Forbes brightens a cruel Washington winter...
...His father was a senator, so (like Al Gore) the son has a Washington background...
Vol. 29 • March 1996 • No. 3
