Editorial The revolutionary 104th
Steinfels, Margaret O'Brien
EDITORIALS The revolutionary IO4th During House debate on the budget reconciliation bill, Christopher Shay of Connecticut, formerly a liberal Republican, said that "we will not compromise on [the]...
...On another front: Cuts in Medicare will entice the healthiest seniors into managed-care plans and leave the oldest and sickest Americans to seek care from doctors and hospitals increasingly disinclined to serve them...
...When critics complain of this inequity, Speaker Gingrich accuses them of fomenting class warfare...
...Revolution"correctly describes one of the most radical and destabilizing legislative sessions in modern times...
...Twenty years ago, when most states wouldn't or couldn't regulate, it became a federal responsibility and conditions improved...
...A rebellion is a failed revolution...
...Down with the Securities and Exchange Commission...
...Both in 1992 and in 1994, the minority of the American electorate who went to the polls voted for reform...
...But many of these cuts will in fact finance a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans...
...Consider the federal regulation of nursing homes, which has brought a modest degree of protection to the most vulnerable elderly, who often have no advocates...
...instead, Mr...
...The poorest and the most vulnerable are taking the deepest cuts now, but the revolution will not stop with them...
...Or take the earned-income tax credit, which gives low-income, working men and women a tax break, a bridge to cross from welfare to work and an incentive not to cross back...
...This isn't a rebellion," he went on...
...Shame on them...
...All these programs, and others, do need reform...
...Gingrich gives them a revolution: Send regulatory power back to the states, he says...
...They should look at the whole picture...
...The Republicans are cutting it...
...The nursing home industry wants reform...
...Stock-owning Americans, look to your gilt-edged certificates...
...Instead of mending, trimming, patching, and tucking, the revolutionary 104th Congress is ripping apart the social fabric and over eighty years of legislation that established a role for government in helping to maintain the common good...
...We shudder to think that Bill Clinton is all that stands between Americans and Mr...
...A tighter, trimmer government would be good for our politics and our economy-but not if the pain is spread inequitably...
...bill, which will essentially wipe out Depression-era regulations that protect investors, rein in brokers, and, by the way, build confidence in the market...
...When President Bill Clinton and a Democratic Congress failed, the mantle of reform fell to Congressman Newt Gingrich and his 100 freshman colleagues...
...Gingrich's revolutionaries...
...Look at Representative Jack Fields's (R-Tex...
...medical-care costs, public and private, do need to be brought more sharply under control...
...But power is evanescent, time is short, and the Republican House decided to dismantle rather than reshape government...
...When even capitalism's safety net is threatened, it is clear that congressional Republicans have more than class warfare in mind: Carry out a deregulatory revolution that will catapult us into the twenty-first century (their slogan), but could actually send us back to the 1930s...
...And they are cutting welfare too...
...This is a revolution" (New York Times, October 14,1995...
...EDITORIALS The revolutionary IO4th During House debate on the budget reconciliation bill, Christopher Shay of Connecticut, formerly a liberal Republican, said that "we will not compromise on [the] basic principle" of a balanced budget in seven years...
...That goal is driving the Republican party to cut, to deregulate, and to decentralize government...
Vol. 122 • November 1995 • No. 19
