[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 155 (Friday, November 5, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2279]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                REPUBLICANS ARE WINNING THE BUDGET FIGHT

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. ERNEST J. ISTOOK, JR.

                              of oklahoma

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, November 4, 1999

  Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to commend the Republicans in 
the House and the Senate on our pledge not to spend Social Security. To 
that end, I recommend the reading of the following article by Tod 
Lindberg, which appeared in the November 8th issue of The Weekly 
Standard.

                   House Republicans Are Winning One


 The budget battle of 1999, hard to believe but true, has featured GOP 
                                cunning

                           (By Tod Lindberg)

       Republicans both inside and outside Congress have been 
     pleasantly surprised by how well they are doing politically 
     in this year's budget fight with President Clinton. Ever 
     since Clinton squashed the Republican Congress over the 
     government shutdown in 1995-96, the autumnal rites of 
     appropriation have been a time of dread for the GOP, an 
     exercise in wondering who among them will be a human 
     sacrifice come the next election as a result of drawing the 
     wrath of the Democratic administration.
       This time, simply put, they are not getting killed. In 
     fact, thanks to their tireless reiteration of their unifying 
     theme--namely, that they are going to protect every last dime 
     of Social Security from marauding Democrats--and thanks to 
     the money the GOP is spending on advertising in select 
     congressional districts repeating the point, poll numbers 
     show the Republican message taking hold. It looks like 
     Republicans have at last found an incantation with the same 
     black magic power as the Democrats' ``Medicare, Medicaid, 
     education, and the environment.''
       Now, there are those who might say that the real secret of 
     the GOP's success, such as it is, has been timely surrender, 
     appeasement, and subterfuge: that Republicans have whole-
     heartedly agreed to substantial increases in government 
     spending. The spending caps theoretically imposed by the 
     balanced budget agreement have in effect been blown to 
     smithereens, and the appropriations bills themselves are, in 
     the aggregate, full of budgetary gimmickry and self-
     aggrandizing assumptioneering. This, snort some, is what a 
     Republican Congress does? Crank up spending and cook the 
     books to hide it?
       Well, up to a point. Those who see a smaller, more limited 
     federal government as the sole test of conservative success 
     will rightly be disappointed. At the end of the 
     appropriations process--which is to say, before final 
     negotiations with the White House--domestic discretionary 
     outlays were scheduled to grow by 6 percent. The increase in 
     outlays will surely outpace the growth of the economy in 
     2000. In absolute and relative terms, government is not 
     shrinking but growing.
       But this raises the question: By how much? And compared 
     with what? In judging the Republican performance, it's only 
     fair to take account of political reality--in particular, the 
     terra incognita of budgeting in an era of surplus.
       A better term for Bill Clinton's ``Third Way'' governing 
     philosophy might be ``balanced-budget liberalism.'' For 
     years, Republicans ran against the federal budget deficit, 
     while Democrats only paid lip service to the concept (though 
     they were always prepared to raise taxes in the name of 
     deficit reduction). With their new majority after the 1994 
     elections, Republicans felt obliged to attack the deficit 
     head-on. Politically, they ran into the Clintonian buzzsaw. 
     But in the end, thanks in no small measure to a surging 
     economy, Clinton was happy to grant Republicans what they had 
     always claimed was their fondest wish: a balanced federal 
     budget.
       One should, of course, be careful what one wishes for, lest 
     one get it. Before Republicans saw it, Clinton understood the 
     political implications of a world of budget surpluses. If 
     your main argument against federal spending is ``the 
     deficit,'' then surpluses translate into more spending. The 
     GOP leadership on Capitol Hill disagreed. Many of them still 
     wanted to cut spending or at least restrain increases. But 
     for the first time in their political lives, the budget 
     deficit was no longer at hand as an easy argument against 
     spending. And Clinton would not go along with a tax cut 
     acceptable to Republicans, so no budget restraint would be 
     imposed by depriving the government of tax revenue.
       This is the box Republicans found themselves in at the 
     beginning of the 1999 budget season, with the additional 
     headache, after their 1998 election losses, of only a 
     whisker-thin majority in the House. What's more, impeachment-
     related political tumult had claimed first the Gingrich 
     speakership and then Bob Livingston's, resulting in the 
     elevation of the amiable but untested Dennis Hastert of 
     Illinois. This looked for all the world like an environment 
     in which Clinton could fragment the House Republicans and 
     dictate the spending levels he wanted, up to the limits of 
     the budget surplus.
       Indeed, this was the calculation the House leadership made 
     at first. They were inclined to abandon the budget caps early 
     and make an expensive peace with the White House, thereby 
     avoiding the nightmare scenario of another government 
     shutdown for which they would be blamed--and the end of their 
     majority in 2000. But there was serious resistance in the 
     ranks to the idea of popping the caps. So they hung on and 
     looked for some other survival kit, and found an unlikely 
     one.
       They decided to make Social Security their friend. For 
     years, the fact that government took in more in Social 
     Security taxes than it paid in benefits, $99 billion in 1998, 
     was irrelevant to the big picture on the deficit. In other 
     words, government ``spent'' the Social Security ``surplus''--
     that is, the deficit for running the rest of the government, 
     apart from Social Security, would have been higher by the 
     amount of the Social Security surplus. No one seriously 
     objected to this ``raid'' on the ``Social Security trust 
     fund.'' These are arbitrary accounting distinctions.
       Then, in a series of head-scratching staff meetings devoted 
     to the question of how not to get killed, Republicans finally 
     hit paydirt--a line they could articulate simply and clearly, 
     with potential for public resonance, and around which they 
     could keep their slender majority united, against all odds. 
     It was ``Stop the Raid'' on Social Security. At a stroke, 
     they were able to declare some $147 billion of the federal 
     budget surplus for 2000 off limits to new spending. And they 
     were able to hold that line.
       In accounting reality, this Social Security surplus figure 
     is not less arbitrary than the budget caps supposedly still 
     in force. But in the real world of politics, the fact is that 
     budget caps were too abstract to hold Republicans together. 
     Social Security is real. Clinton's rhetorical case against a 
     tax cut hinged on protecting Social Security, for example.
       Without necessarily setting out to do so, the GOP 
     leadership essentially created a very useful artificial 
     deficit, the size of the Social Security surplus. This 
     ``deficit'' now serves as a restraint on federal spending--
     and will continue to do so. The Social Security surplus is 
     estimated at about $155 billion in fiscal 2001 and $164 
     billion the year after. If Republicans win this point, it's 
     likely to work for them in future budget rounds.
       The story of the fiscal 2000 budget, then, is not the story 
     of gimmicks and gewgaws. That's the story of the budget every 
     year. The story is how a perilously thin and nervous GOP 
     majority under an untested leader managed to change the 
     subject in such a way as to forestall scores of billions in 
     additional government spending at a time when the government 
     had the money. Dennis Hastert turns out to be the most 
     underestimated politician in Washington since Bill Clinton in 
     January 1995.

     

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