TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/102290/1022105.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.7 KB | 125 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 31

Why Coalitions Fail


Declaring an end to ideology may seem like a good idea, but in
the fight over the deficit it backfired

By WALTER SHAPIRO


    The message from Washington was as sadly unambiguous as the
testimony at an A.A. meeting: "My name is the Government of the
United States and I have hit rock bottom. After years of
denying my problems, I finally cannot function."

    The Columbus Day crack-up -- and the week of budget
blustering that followed -- can serve as a lasting metaphor for
national decline. Picture a government so broke and divided
that patriotic tourists in Washington were caught between
frustration (closed monuments) and farce (Congress in session).
The public reaction was rage, an indiscriminate mad-as-hell
roar. The politicians responded at first in typical fashion:
posturing and finger pointing in an effort to apportion
partisan blame.

    Moderate and conservative House Republicans began squabbling
among themselves. The issue: whether to back a short-term plan
to keep the government running until Oct. 19 or to allow
mandatory spending cuts to take effect, which would have forced
the furlough of thousands of government employees.
(Congressional Democrats settled the argument  by passing the
interim arrangement with the aid of Senate Republicans.) The
President compounded the confusion with daily shifts in his
position on taxes. Democratic majorities on the appropriations
committees began filling in the blanks of a vague plan to cut
$500 billion from  the deficit over five years. But they took
time to lard their proposals with the usual favors for vested
interests, such as imposing a 9 cents per gal. fuel tax on
railroads at the behest of the rival American Trucking
Associations.

    This deadlock of democracy transcends the budget morass and
will not be broken with the November elections. The underlying
question it raises is stark: Why is the nation unable to govern
itself?

    The current crisis is rooted in the anti-democratic
conviction that neither political party is supposed to stand
for anything. In the quest for what Richard Darman called a
"no-fingerprints" budget deal, the Bush Administration and the
congressional leadership of both parties carried this flight
from democracy to self-destructive extremes. The bipartisan
budget summit not only shut out the voters but almost all of
Congress from the vital business of setting national priorities
at a time of scarcity and economic fear.

    That is why -- despite its veneer of banana-republic
brinkmanship -- the current congressional revolt is a return
to pre-Reaganite tradition. The President's weather-vane
vacillation has forced the House to reaffirm its constitutional
role as originator of taxation and spending measures. The
result: the eruption of the long-suppressed ideological debate
over the size and scope of the Federal Government.

    In their quest to safeguard domestic spending programs --
and enhance their populist appeal -- House Democrats are
readying what they freely call a "soak-the-rich" tax plan.
Conservative House Republicans are joining this philosophic
fray with a vengeance. "We're not stating the position of the
President," says Oklahoma Congressman Mickey Edwards, "nor are
we stating what we think Democrats would vote for." There is
a smoke-and-mirrors quality to their proposal, misleadingly
billed as a tax hike on the rich. But it reflects a supply-side
vision far closer in spirit to Ronald Reagan than to George
Bush.

    How unusual to see liberals and conservatives poised to
battle it out on the floor of the House. In contrast, the
ill-fated bipartisan proposal was a themeless pudding of a
budget. Its guiding philosophy was a cynical renunciation of
the long-standing principles of both parties. Much of the
criticism leveled against the congressional backbenchers who
rebelled against the pact claimed they were motivated by
partisan excess. But it can be argued that the authors of the
plan were not partisan enough. The White House abandoned the
traditional Republican hostility to funding ineffective
domestic spending programs. The Democratic leadership
surrendered the fairness issue in taxation, socking it to Joe
Sixpack's beer bill while allowing the wealthy to weasel out
of their fair share of sacrifice.

    But as the mutiny on the budget proves, the House is not a
home for such bipartisan blandness. That can be a strength, not
a weakness. Public skirmishing over the budget stands as much
of a chance of achieving a workable compromise as the back-door
accord that was rejected two weeks ago. And if Congress fails
this time, the voters will know whom to blame at the polls.

    In any case, the rebellion by a coalition of liberal
Democrats and Reaganite Republicans was in effect a vote of
no-confidence in Bush and the congressional leadership's
end-of-ideology experiment with European-style coalition
government for domestic affairs. Such a caretaker arrangement
suited a President with a lilliputian domestic agenda and a
Democratic leadership more concerned with sharing power than
making tough choices. But it ill served a nation that had for
too long papered over its problems.

    According to most polls, Americans are willing to pay more
taxes if the levies are equitable and if -- this is an
important caveat -- the money is well spent. But in the insular
world of Washington neither party hears both parts of this
message. To date, Republicans have been unwilling to endorse
the necessary taxes and Democrats have been loath to revamp the
programs. Now that the debate has moved into the open, the
voice of the people may finally get through.