A REPUBLICAN OFFICIAL who attended Majority Leader Bob Dole’s gathering with Senate leaders, then dropped by a session of House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s advisory group later the same day, experienced quite a contrast. ” It was like going from ancient Greece to the planet Mars,” the official said. Senators, including Dole himself, were sober and serious about budget negotiations with the White House, anxious to avoid another government shutdown, and inclined to meet President Clinton’s demands halfway. House members, Gingrich especially, were defiant, even belligerent. They declared themselves ready to close down the federal government again unless Clinton agrees to a balanced budget largely on their terms.
More than atmospherics, this is the first major breach between Dole and Gingrich since Republicans captured Congress in 1994. The disagreement is over strategy, not substance. Both want spending cuts, tax reduction, a balanced budget, Medicare reform, etc. But Dole leaves the impression he’s willing to finish up the six appropriations bills for 1996, keep the government operating, and put off the larger struggle over spending, taxes, and Medicare for another day, perhaps after the 1996 election. Gingrich prefers confrontation now, by holding up spending bills and using them as leverage to force Clinton to sign a balanced budget and sweeping Medicare reform. The significance of the Dole- Gingrich split is that it puts the entire Republican agenda in jeopardy.
One point of contention is Republican National Chairman Haley Barbour, the most effective party leader in decades. Until mid-November, he was involved with Dole and Gingrich almost daily in devising tactics and crafting the GOP message. Then, Sheila Burke, Dole’s chief of staff, barred him from Dole- Gingrich meetings. The reason? Barbour usually sided with Gingrich and his aggressive schemes for advancing the agenda. Dole’s side was outnumbered. Barbour wfis miffed. But he’s had to settle for an informal, background role.
Burke’s ouster of Barbour reflects the new relationship between Dole and Gingrich. For most of 1995, Dole took a back seat to Gingrich, letting him create the agenda and take first crack at it in the House. Dole basically deferred to Gingrich — until November. Then, having tightened his grasp on the Republican presidential nomination for 1996 and won the Florida straw vote, Dole ceased following Gingrich’s lead. This was made easier by Gingrich’s decline in prestige and popularity. Democratic National Chairman Chris Dodd insists Gingrich is the most unpopular politician since Richard Nixon. Buttressing that, a Republican poll in late November found Gingrich has a negative approval rating even among Republicans in New Hampshire.
Democrats seek to exploit the split between the Republican leaders by talking up Dole and trashing Gingrich. Dole, says Dodd, “is certainly talented enough to be president.” And reaching a reasonable deal with him would be a snap, Dodd indicates, if Dole didn’t have to mollify Republican primary voters and Gingrich. The White House line on Gingrich, repeated incessantly, is that he’s merely a tool of radical GOP House freshmen. In truth, the 73 freshmen are instruments of Gingrich.
The White House has also made budget negotiations as unproductive and unpleasant as possible, if only to heighten the tension between Dole and Gingrich. After Clinton agreed to push for a balanced budget in seven years, Gingrich decided to block House Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt from joining the negotiations because he’d never backed a balanced budget.
So 10 minutes before the talks began, White House lobbyist Patrick Griffin notified Republicans that House Democratic Whip David Bonior and Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota would be part of Clinton’s negotiating team. “Bonior’s commitment to fiscal discipline is rivaled only by Imelda Marcos’s,” groused a Republican negotiator. Dorgan reneged on a balanced budget pledge earlier this year.
In the talks, White House tactics accentuated the Dole-Gingrich breach. For e xample, the Clinton team suggested rushing through the appropriations bills, th en moving later to the Bala nced Budget Act, with its dramatic entitlement reform. Dole was intrigued with this, but Gingrich flatly opposed it on the ground that control of the spending bills gives Republicans leverage to force entitlement changes and a balanced budget. Entitlements (Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, etc.) continue whether or not Clinton and Congress make a deal. The only way to get entitlement reform on acceptable terms, Gingrich argues, is by holding up appropriations and threatening a partial government shutdown.
The problem is, Dole and some senators are skittish about another shutdown. They believe the last one was a political disaster for Republicans. Actually, Republicans had begun to benefit from it. Overnight polls showing Clinton losing 2 points in approval on the Thursday of shutdown week and 4 points on Friday terrified the White House. Clinton quickly settled by agreeing to a seven-year balanced budget, with elements to be negotiated later. Still another White House ploy roiled Republicans — the idea that Clinton and the Democrats would be delighted to forget entitlements and a balanced budget and let those issues be hashed out in the 1996 election. This was a bluff. If balanced budget talks collapse, the stock market is bound to plummet, and the Federal Reserve won’t cut interest rates by as much as one-half point when it meets December 19. The White House knows this and thus needs a balanced budget.
But it wants one on its terms (far milder social spending cuts). As long as Dole and Gingrich stay divided, Clinton might get his wish.
by Fred Barnes
