IMPEACH BUSH....now look at the drunken power of the republicans.....it's a horror of fiscal responsibility....
GOP Puts Its Mark on Congress and Deficit
By Janet Hook, Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON — A full year of Republican dominance of government has
left a legacy rich in conservative triumphs: cutting taxes, building a muscular
defense, restricting abortion.
But the year has also brought an extraordinary expansion of government
power and spending that showed Republicans were willing to deep-six their
party's traditional commitment to fiscal conservatism and limited government.
The
Republican-controlled
Congress has passed the
third tax cut in as many
years, an enormous
Pentagon budget, a
costly experiment in
nation-building in Iraq
and a vast expansion of
Medicare — all at the
request of President
Bush. Their actions have
left the federal budget
swimming in the largest
deficits in history.
As one lawmaker heard from a Republican friend, "Democrats are the party
of 'tax and spend'; Republicans are the party of 'don't tax — and spend.' "
That is the ironic product of the first full year since 1954 that Republicans have
controlled the White House and Congress.
Although the ideological message is mixed, Republicans have engineered significant changes in U.S.
foreign, domestic and fiscal policy. The magnitude of change is surprising in light of the wafer-thin
margins by which Bush was elected in 2000 and by which the GOP controls the House and Senate.
Republicans have managed to do so in part by using extraordinary means to maintain party discipline
— and by being willing to spend taxpayer dollars freely to build their legislative coalitions.
"It shows what you can accomplish if you don't care about deficits," said Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.).
"That's going to be the most lasting legacy of this Congress."
Congress is expected to reconvene briefly in early December to tie up loose ends and possibly pass a
catch-all spending bill to finish the budget, but most of this year's legislative record has already been
written.
When 2003 began, just how decisively Republicans would be able to reshape policy was an open
question. It was clear that the House would continue to be a bastion of conservatism, especially as
partisan firebrand Tom DeLay (R-Texas) ascended to House majority leader, the chamber's
second-most-powerful post. Less certain was what could be accomplished in the Senate, where
Republicans held 51 of the chamber's 100 seats and had a new majority leader, Bill Frist (R-Tenn.),
who was considered less ideological than DeLay.
But on a variety of fronts, this Congress broke ground and steered policy in directions that would have
been unthinkable under the Democrats.
To the delight of anti-tax conservatives, Congress by midyear had passed a $350-billion tax cut to
stimulate the economy. That amount was less than Bush had sought, but much more than many thought
possible at a time of growing deficits.
On social issues, Congress approved the first abortion restrictions in 30 years in a bill, signed by Bush,
that banned a late-term procedure that doctors call "intact dilation and extraction" and opponents call
"partial-birth abortion."
On the international front, Republicans rallied behind and financed Bush's doctrine of preemptive
military action. Congress financed the war in Iraq and, despite reservations, put up almost $20 billion
for rebuilding Iraq, the most ambitious foreign aid initiative since the Marshall Plan. The pro-business
agenda thrived, as Congress cleared the way for Bush to limit overtime pay, relax certain clean-air
requirements and increase logging in national forests. Congress almost passed — and may do so early
next year — a bill bristling with tax breaks and subsidies for oil, gas and other energy industries.
Even in expanding the Medicare program, conservatives in Congress broke ground: The bill providing
new prescription drug benefits also called for an unprecedented level of involvement by private health
plans, a long-held and long-frustrated goal of free-market conservatives.
Many such major bills have passed by the narrowest of margins, with the help of heavy arm-twisting by
Bush and Republican leaders who have tried to enforce strict party discipline.
In a display of political muscle, House Republican leaders kept the vote on Medicare open for almost
three hours in order to win. Final versions of the energy bill and other major measures were negotiated
with almost no Democratic input. Democrats were given little time to review such bills before they were
brought to a vote: When Democrats protested at one committee meeting, the chairman called the police
to break up the private strategy meeting.
Republicans said they had to rely on such tactics because Democrats had shown little interest in
bipartisan cooperation. Democrats argue that the Republicans' hardball tactics were previewed during
the 2000 Florida recount that gave Bush the presidency and the negative ads they ran in the 2002
Senate elections.
"There were plenty of indications that they were going to use brass knuckles — that they were going to
bend the rules and use any means necessary to win," said Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle
(D-S.D.).
Republicans may have paid a price when the Senate voted Nov. 21 to block the energy bill. That vote
reflected, in part, the resentment of Democrats who were cut out of the process of writing the final bill.
It also reflected some Republicans' frustration with their leaders' willingness to throw money at
legislative problems. In an effort to stitch together a winning coalition, authors of the energy bill included
$25.7 billion worth of tax breaks for special interests — about three times the amount Bush wanted.
Similar concerns dogged the Medicare bill, which came under attack from conservatives who thought it
cost too much and would grow much larger in the future. But Republican leaders built a powerful
coalition behind the bill in part by diverting billions from the drug benefit to subsidies for private health
plans, increased reimbursements for doctors (who were supposed to see a cut in payments) and
increased funding for rural health-care providers.
"I'm concerned there has been an atmosphere on the Hill that the way we get bills passed is simply to
load them with spending," said Robert S. Walker, a lobbyist who was a member of the House
Republican leadership before he left Congress in 1997.
The nearly $400-billion Medicare bill was an emblematic conclusion to a year in which Republicans
seemed willing to throw fiscal caution to the wind, putting the deficit on track to hit $500 billion in
2004.
Republican leaders offered no apology for the Medicare bill's price tag, saying it included some
market-oriented reforms that could, in the long run, help control costs. And they have argued all year
that controlling the deficit should take a back seat to other priorities at a time when the United States is
embroiled in the conflict in Iraq and the economy is struggling to recover.
But other Republicans are concerned that war and recession have become an excuse for spending on
programs that have nothing to do with national security or stimulating the economy.
"Republicans used to believe in fiscal responsibility, limited international entanglements and limited
government," said Sen. Charles Hagel (R-Neb.) in a commentary published Wednesday in the Omaha
World-Herald. "We have come loose from our moorings. The Medicare reform bill is a good example
of our lack of direction, purpose and responsibility."
Rep. John B. Shadegg (R-Ariz.), a conservative leader, said this year's record shows how much the
experience of running the government has eroded Republican commitment to limiting government. "It
appears that Republicans have discovered the perks of power," Shadegg said, "and the most powerful
of those is spending." |
