Waiting for George W.
Eastland, Terry
while simple majorities are the rule in the House, supermajorities are often necessary in the Senate—it takes 6o votes toend a filibuster. Passing legislation through both houses thus...
...But the most important bill of this kind is welfare reform...
...Sometimes, too, Republicans in the House have produceda bill that Republicans in the Senate blocked...
...Some items in the Contract, including the unfunded mandates bill, which constrains the old practice of requiring states and localities to do things without providing the necessary funds...
...But the Republicans don't see the father in the son...
...And Clinton has been forced to adjust, thanks in large part to the GOP Congress...
...He estimates that 17o to i8o Republicans are "true conservatives...
...But that couldn't have happened until the Republican majorities arrived...
...In1997,Clintonvetoed the legislation banning partialbirth abortion, and justrecently hevetoed the$792 billiontax-cut bill...
...Clinton's rhetorical campaign worked: They woundup being the ones blamed for the shutdowns...
...And already there are many big issues for Election 2000: Social Security, Medicare, taxes, and education, just on the domestic side...
...He's their man—indeed, the man to lead the unified government they see over the horizon...
...They would agree rhetorically with the idea but then block it...
...Bush has yet to declare his Social Security and Medicare reforms...
...What's remarkable is that so many congressional Republicans are pledging their troth to a candidate whose views either diverge from theirs or have yet to be offered...
...A recent Cato Institute analysis shows that Republicans have spent $8 7 billion more than the Contract with America contemplated...
...The legislation failed in the House JudiciaryCommittee because Republicans didn't unite behind it...
...The Republicans keep after their goal, however, as though it were the biggest one in politics...
...Given the peculiar arithmetic of governance, having a lot more Republicans in the House could prove just as important...
...Republicans alsohave felt the bluntforce of the presidential veto...
...The electorate has been nudging rightward since Ronald Reagan was first elected president...
...As Rep...
...How real...
...Again, the presidency is singular, andthe Congress plural...
...David McIntosh, "we'vebeen two separate deliberative bodies working at opposite purposes...
...Indeed, Cox, another Bush man, says there is "a coalescence of views between the Fourth Estate and the White House...
...In 1994, the last year Democrats controlled Congress, spending was 81.46 trillion...
...But Clinton's mostThe American Spectator November 1999important use of the power did more than simply defeat a bill...
...George W. will be good at communicating to the American people," says Canady, who adds, "I hope he'll have a filibuster-proof Senate...
...Spending is not much reduced by these measures, but the image of the Republicans as the too-clever-by-half bean-counting party is indubitably projected...
...text—than it is to propose—which is what Congress does in presenting legislation...
...Clinton wielded the veto not only to draw attentionto his differences with congressional Republicans on spendingand taxing but also to cast the Republicans as extremist anddestructive...
...In the 1o4th Congress, having conceded to the Republicans'demand for a balanced budget when his "relevance" was indoubt, Clinton threatened and cast vetoes against spendingand budget bills...
...But, as he notes, in the House "you need 218...
...remains unpopular with many voters...
...They no longer have the zeal to propose major savings...
...Another bill that would not have become law but for the GOP Congress is the IRS reform measure...
...erhaps the wonder is that the GOP has remained in conp trol of Congress...
...the surging economy is...
...This may explain why, during the budget standoff, Clinton had little difficulty transmitting through the media his misleading message that the Republicans wanted "to cut" Medicare when in fact the issue between Clinton and the Congress concerned the degree to which the rate of growth in the program should be reduced...
...What zeal the Republicans still have is for a balanced budget...
...Neither veto was overridden...
...And it doesn't boil down simply to the fact that Republican majorities mean divided government and thus a check against Clinton...
...But they underestimated him—and the force of the veto power...
...So we convinced our leadership to put it into the Contract with America...
...We could not get them to schedule a vote...
...This is the presidential veto, whichrequires a two-thirds vote of both houses to override...
...Naturally, the Democrats invoked Bush against Hastert and his colleagues, and the press played it up, using the occasion to remind the public that, as the Washington Post stated in the lead of its story, the "Republican-controlled Congress...
...These, by the way, were conspicuously not the strong suits of his father...
...If it is too easy to fault congressional Republicans for their budgetary preoccupations—after all, taxing and spending is their job—it is also true that only a president is positioned within our system of government to project themes broader and more compelling than those emerging from the nickel-and-dime work of congressional appropriators...
...On March 22, 1995, the president signed the bill...
...The Republican Congresses probably have spent less than Democratic Congresses would have...
...It is easier for one person to speak coherently than for a group...
...In the lo4thCongress, for example, environmental legislation passed bythe House was scuttled by moderate Republicans in the Senate...
...In this pursuit, they have resorted to creative accounting measures in order to avoid spending Social Security funds...
...Their labors, however, are not the reason for the slight surplus projected for z000...
...Sometimes," says Rep...
...Actually, to judge by their record, perhaps that's what a majority of congressional Republicans really wants...
...Also, it is in the nature ofthings easier to criticize—which iswhat a president typicallydoes in theveto con21 This is the background image for an unknown creator of an OCR page with image plus hidden text...
...Clearly there is something that the electorate has liked about having Republicans in Congress...
...And many programs the Republicans thought they had killed off or cut are alive and well...
...And in late September Bush publicly disagreed with the House leadership's decision to save $8 billion by stretching out payments of the earned-income tax credit, which are made to zo million working-class Americans, instead of providing the money in one lump sum...
...Consider, for example, Canady's bill outlawing racial preferences in federal programs, which he firstoffered in 1995...
...Presidential campaigns provide an occasion for sounding such themes...
...somemembers didn't even show up to vote...
...Since then spending has gone up...
...Bush did so with Democratic rhetoric, saying the Republicans shouldn't be trying "to balance their budget on the backs of the poor...
...None of this has weakened the congressional Republicans' desire for Bush...
...next year hewill go home to Indiana to runfor governor...
...Rob Portman of Ohio, another Bush supporter who was first elected (in a special election) in 1993 , recalls how he pushed in the 1o 3rd Congress to get Democrats to permit a vote on unfunded mandates...
...Bush doesn't want to eliminate the Education Department, he wants to increase its funding...
...Significantly, the rhetorical presidency, whether on display in a State of the Union speech or a veto message, is almost always going to attract more attention from the press than any statement by House or Senate leaders...
...In z000 it will be somewhere around S1.74 trillion...
...Republicans had thought Clintonwould shrink from vetoing their bills out of fear that he wouldbe the one blamed for the shutdowns...
...Clinton's action precipitated governmentshutdowns (some offices excepted, including his own, where acertain Monica appeared...
...Which ones...
...Some bills would not have become law had Democrats remained in control...
...8* November 1999 • The American Spectator...
...Clinton had run for president promising "to end welfare as we know it...
...And that's just to prevail...
...Bush is for the tax cuts Clinton vetoed, but cutting taxes and spending are not at the top of his agenda...
...Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, a so-called "budget hawk...
...And when theWhite House is held by the opposite party—as during theRepublicans' congressional governance—another supermajority constraint looms...
...Or the numbers...
...Passing legislation through both houses thus isdifficult, even when the same party is in control...
...They have been unable to shut down Cabinet departments they once spoke of eliminating — Commerce, Energy, and Education...
...We should haveunderstood that he had powers that were real," says McIntosh...
...Republicans did cut $22 billion in the year of confrontation, 1995...
...Especially since the press—as long has been the case —is more Democratic than not in its policy and voting preferences...
...Indeed, there have been times when they havenot been able to agree even at the committee level on key proposals of their own...
...But this is not to say a lot...
...Republicans regard him as someone who can work well with Congress and also use the bully pulpit effectively...
...As the framers of the Constitution would have understood, congressional Republicans have only occasionally had thingsclose to their way...
...In fact, in each of the past two years Republicans have spent more than Clinton actually requested...
...In retrospect, it is not surprising that Clinton won this battle of public opinion...
...But this is the first time since the 1920's that Republicans have held the House for three straight terms...
...Chris Cox of California puts it, "The executive has the institutional advantage of clarity...
...The Republicans' exhaustion is nowhere better seen than in their annual struggle with assigning funds for the big government...
...By the way, McIntosh, one of thecelebrated GOP freshmen elected in 1994, has decided he's had enough of congressional governance...
...We don't have a majority of Republican members who are conservative," says Rep...
...The era of big government is not over...
Vol. 32 • November 1999 • No. 11
