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- <text id=93TT1295>
- <title>
- Mar. 29, 1993: Goodbye Gridlock, Hello Steamroller
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1993
- Mar. 29, 1993 Yeltsin's Last Stand
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- THE WEEK, Page 11
- NATION
- Goodbye Gridlock, Hello Steamroller
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p>Clinton's budget, "motor voter" plans move toward congressional
- approval
- </p>
- <p> Bill Clinton incessantly told voters last fall that he would
- end gridlock between the White House and Congress. That is one
- campaign promise he might keep. In early tests, the heavily
- Democratic majority in the House of Representatives has acted
- like an Administration steamroller. It easily passed not only a
- budget resolution embodying Clinton's ideas for tax increases
- and spending cuts but also the President's plan to spend an
- extra $16 billion to give an immediate stimulus to the economy.
- Some conservative Democrats had fought the additional spending
- as unnecessary, but on the decisive vote they heeded pleas for
- party unity. The plan passed 235 to 190, with only 22 Democrats
- defecting.
- </p>
- <p> In the Senate, the 57 Democrats could not break a
- Republican filibuster against a voter-registration bill; that
- would require 60 votes. So they had to weaken the measure. The
- bill, dubbed "motor voter," would still allow citizens to
- register when they applied for a driver's license, but the
- Senate dropped a requirement that authorities make registration
- forms available to people applying for welfare or unemployment
- compensation (G.O.P. Senators feared that most people who signed
- up that way would vote Democratic). Still, the bill was passed.
- And when motor-voter and other bills go to House-Senate
- conferences, that heavily Democratic majority in the House may
- be able to bend the measures back toward the White House's
- wishes.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
-