It’ll be 1993 all over again. Today’s congressional Democrats claim to be chastened. ““We were just throwing programs at problems,’’ says would-be House Speaker Dick Gephardt. Hence Gephardt’s ostentatiously unambitious ““Families First’’ agenda. (Who could oppose ““technical assistance’’ for Police Athletic Leagues?) Let’s assume Gephardt isn’t faking it, and that any Democratic majority will be so slim that centrists will have the leverage to check liberal chairmen like New York’s Charles Rangel, who would run Ways and Means.
But what about the Republicans? Once in the minority, they would have little incentive to cooperate with their opponents. Better for them to withhold their votes, sit back, snipe and let the Democrats rip themselves apart trying to govern. That’s the strategy the GOP successfully pursued in the first two years of Clinton’s term. The result: little gets done.
In contrast, the current combination of Clinton and a GOP Congress has produced an impressive array of legislation: a higher minimum wage, incremental health-care reform, dramatic overhauls of welfare, farm programs and telecommunications. Clinton, as Jacob Weisberg has argued in Slate magazine, probably has a better chance of achieving what Democrats want if Republicans control one branch of government and can claim some of the credit.
It takes two parties to cut a budget. Ask Clinton advisers what the president might accomplish in a second term and you get a short list: balance the budget, reform education, make the recently enacted welfare bill work, maybe add some trade expansion. But budget-balancing (and restoring solvency to Medicare and Social Security) means inflicting pain. Congressional Democrats aren’t about to walk that plank alone, especially since the perceived lesson of a Democratic victory will be ““touch Medicare and you die.''
Education, welfare and trade, for their part, are areas in which Democrats will be inhibited by their own ““constituencies.''
It is inconceivable, for example, that a Democratic Congress will promote independent ““charter schools’’ over the objections of the National Education Association. And if the Democrats do regain Congress, they will owe the AFL-CIO big time for its $35 million ad campaign. How will labor cash in its chits if not by restricting trade? Well, maybe by blocking public-work programs for welfare recipients, which are opposed by government-employee unions who fear ““workfare’’ workers will take union jobs. Indeed, while Democrats are unlikely to openly attack this year’s welfare reform, a few subtle changes–say, allowing training to count as ““work’’– could radically weaken the law.
Democrats need Newt. If the Republicans lose the House, they may well dump Newt Gingrich. Why would any Democrat want that? Gingrich almost single-handedly revived the Democrats’ electoral fortunes. The public took his measure, and the measure was that of an infantile egomaniac. His replacement might be just as extreme, but more appealing. Better to let Gingrich keep flailing in the Speaker’s spotlight, desperately trying to reinvent himself.
The Democrats haven’t been out long enough. Even if Gephardt believes his learned-my-lesson rap, the rest of his party might not. Consider Robert Matsui, a capable California congressman on Ways and Means. In 1994, Clinton proposed his ““two years and go to work’’ welfare plan. Democrats would kill if they could have that plan today, instead of the far harsher reform they wound up with. But back in 1994, Matsui was having none of it. In private, he yelled at Clinton’s top welfare adviser, Harvard scholar David Ellwood, and browbeat him in a public hearing, even hinting that Ellwood was ““trying to push welfare reform’’ in order to ““enhance his own resume.’’ Matsui saw to it that Clinton’s bill was bottled up in subcommittee. When liberal allies suggested that, to prevent a voter revolt, the Democrats should perhaps do something in 1994 to improve the despised welfare system, Matsui snapped at them, too. He was, in short, a bully, the way men long in power become bullies, and he seemed to enjoy it. As much as anyone, he helped bring on his own punishment, in the form of Gingrich. But I’m not sure he–or his party–has been punished enough.
