Playing the Debt Card

...Have the Republicans unwisely threatened to tie the debt ceiling to the reconciliation bill, to make a promise that in the end won't be in their interest to keep...

...Up and down the line, the Republicans have "zeroed out" nearly all the school improvement programs...

...What is not known is when it will happen, how long it will last and—most important in this consummate political town—who will be blamed...

...Presidential candidate Pat Buchanan voices the party's antigovern-ment stance when he says: "We don't need some character in the Department of Education with sandals and beads telling us how to educate our children...

...Playing the sensitive Wall Street card, Rubin pointed out that such a fight could "generate uncertainty in the domestic and international securities markets, and increase the government's [eventual] cost of borrowing...

...Thus, one goal of the imperiled Goals 2000 is insuring that U.S...

...But the Republican enlisted ranks in the House, heavily swollen with newcomers, might prove to be rebellious...

...In the case of Medicare, for example, the views of the Congressional Republicans and of the Clinton White House actually are a lot closer to each other than either side is willing to let on...

...students are "first in the world in mathematics and science achievement...

...But at the rate the Republicans are going, we will be lucky if U.S...

...Both the Republicans and Clinton insist they want to balance the budget, cut taxes and ease the steep rate of growth in Federal outlays for health services...

...Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin has written Gingrich to say, in effect: If we have to stage a fight over health, education and the like, let's at least find another way to do it than by mucking around with the debt ceiling...

...Most of the Federal dollars at risk were meant to deal with the ever-widening gap in income and social status between those who manage to get a good start in life and those who do not...

...Kasich was hardly the only member of his party who swore he wouldn't vote to raise the ceiling, even on a temporary basis, until President Bill Clinton agreed to balance the Federal budget in a manner consistent with conservative tastes...

...Rounded off to those two digits, the debt is fast approaching $4.9 trillion, the ceiling on Federal borrowing set by Congress in 1993...

...But it is clear the government can't run in that fashion for long...

...fiscal storm...

...A majority," he adds, "has certain responsibilities...

...The Republicans have devised a spending tourniquet that would balance the budget in seven years...

...The underlying Medicare problem, of course, is that while the number of patients covered has nearly doubled in the last 30 years, the cost of the program, adjusted for inflation, has risen more than 100 times...

...Rather, it is to lock in, for a generation or more, the conservative dominance of Washington...

...But Treasury officials put a halt to that practice a few years ago after they found bookies were using the last three digits for numbers games...

...The GOP Class of '94 has no more stomach for authorizing an increase in the Federal debt, regardless of size or duration, than the Communist members of the Russian Duma have for authorizing the formation of stock markets...

...students wind up first in the world at making beads...

...Moreover, many House Democrats, seething at Gingrich's slights, are not inclined to hike the limit either...

...asks Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution...

...The first two digits, however, still bear watching: They are the dice in a political game whose outcome will shape the nation's future...

...Speaker Newt Gingrich says the omnibus fiscal 1996 budget bill he and Kasich are steering through the House—a measure that reconciles tax and spending policies with deficit-cutting targets—will include a debt-limit rider...

...When Cox Newspapers published a computer-based study of some 100 million Medicare records that showed how a small percentage of doctors were making off with much of the money, the players hardly broke stride...

...Nevertheless, it is a fair bet that, at one point or another, the Federal government will be forced to shut down, if only to score political points...

...it is the smallest of the 14 Federal Cabinet-level agencies...

...That is not true, however, of the Republicans' proposed Medicaid cuts, which are clearly intended to gut a program serving poor people who mainly vote for the Democrats...

...And why not take the debt issue off the table until 1997 by bumping the ceiling up another trillion...

...Since the Republicans control the legislative agenda, we shall shortly see how they manage (or mismanage) the coming debt-limit crunch...

...To be sure, Clinton claims his approach, to turn a phrase, would offer a kinder and gentler glide path to a common goal...

...As for the coup de grace, the Republicans would fold what remains of Education into a weakened Labor Department...

...The lawmakers responded by voting to spend nothing...

...the Democrats would do it in nine...

...Buchanan and each of his Republican rivals for the White House, including Gingrich, would like to do away with the department—or, as they say here, "zero it out" of the budget...

...Their elimination would still leave about $465 billion a year in state, local and private outlays for overall educational needs...

...the data failed to conform to their carefully crafted political scripts...

...All signs point to a manufactured crisis designed to boost their campaign to downsize the government...

...Clinton asked Congress to up this figure to $693.5 million...

...Here is a more graphic way to look at it: The Federal government is in hock to the tune of $ 18,750 for every man, woman and child in the country...

...Clinton, for his part, thinks the Republicans have misread the national temper and overreached...

...Aided by media f ire-works, the Democrats hope to spark a backlash that will assure Clinton's reelection...

...By contrast, a middle-sized university such as Princeton employs 4,700 people on its staff...

...Using the Congressional shorthand term for this scheme, Gingrich predicts: "At some point in early November we will send down re-conciliation with the debt ceiling in it, and the President will sign it...

...Once the national debt bumps up against the $4.9 trillion ceiling sometime in November, the Treasury will lose the right to borrow so much as another dime...

...It would enable the government to spend $18 million in 1996 to help school libraries share resources...

...So why not split the difference at eight years...

...This collision of purposes could result in the kind of government-shutting drama Clinton and Gingrich say they are eager to avoid...

...It is noteworthy that the Education Department—prior to the fall of the Republican axes—has fewer than 5,000 full-time workers...

...Such notions, though, fail to pay heed to the profound political contempt of the Gingrich-led Republicans for Democratic legislators in general and the Clinton White House in particular...

...Ideological opponents are not known for taking prisoners, even where a negotiated peace would appear to make sense...

...For much of the year the Republican leadership has laid down a hard line...

...Their true aim is neither to balance the budget nor to fix Medicare, as intrinsically valuable as such goals may be...

...But Buchanan, who honed his sound bites as a columnist and TV talkmeister, likes to twist the knife...

...would set back efforts to improve education in our country...

...Minority Leader Richard Gephardt of Missouri doubts he could muster enough of his own troops to strike a deal with Gingrich on raising the ceiling that entailed delivering a percentage of the Democratic votes equal to whatever percentage the Republicans could come up with...

...One of them is to keep the Federal government solvent...

...In theory, things could work out that way...

...The exercise, they say, could last until Christmas...

...The Republican brass on Capitol Hill have been told by their allies in the financial world that a government bankruptcy, even a short-lived one, could produce a ANDREW J. GLASS, a longtime contributor, heads the Cox Washington bureau...

...Altogether, the education programs targeted by the Republicans amount to about 2 per cent of total Federal spending...

...Accordingly, they seem prepared to pursue a strategy that would use a series of minimum cash infusions to keep the Treasury in business until Clinton caves in to their demands...

...Like the numberof stars in the universe, that is too large a figure to readily absorb...

...House Republicans have sliced Clinton's education budget to pieces...

...You have to pull them out by the roots...

...In short, this is not apolitical climate that easily begets compromise...

...In the current fiscal year, for instance, Washington sent grants totaling some $362 million to the states for Goals 2000, an education reform program devoted to raising school standards...

...Predictably, Clinton has threatened a veto—a move Gingrich hopes to neutralize through his debt-limit ploy...

...Notes Education Secretary Richard Riley, a former governor of South Carolina who has never been known to wear sandals to work: "In an era in which this nation faces an education deficit that is as great a long-term threat as the budget deficit, the merger plan...

...Neither wants to be accused of using the debt limit as a political football, yet neither seems prepared to do what must be done to dodge a shutdown...

...In fact, so far, only one of 18 such initiatives has survived...

...the Treasury will soon need temporary or permanent Congressional authority to keep on borrowing...

...LESS PUBLICIZED, but typical, are the cuts in the Federal education budget that the Republicans seek to implement...

...You just can't mow the weeds," Representative John Kasich of Ohio, the House budget chief, told me recently...

...Whatever cash comes into the till can be used to meet bills...

...With constitutional fiats and political realities creating a double division in the governing process, negotiations might produce a compromise...