| Tyrone Slothrop |
09-11-2020 05:53 PM |
Re: Swing State Blues
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski
(Post 530032)
Clinton didn't get it to zero. Gingrich did. Obama didn't reduce fuck all, congress did. Stop it. I've spoken to you IRL. Your restaurant choices imply a poor sense of smell, but your senses otherwise seem fine.
You know I'm right.
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You are older than I am, so you should remember the Clinton years, but apparently you weren't paying attention.
Quote:
HOUSE PASSES CLINTON BUDGET PLAN BY 2 VOTES
By Eric Pianin and
David S. Hilzenrath
August 6, 1993
The House last night voted 218 to 216 to approve President Clinton's budget package, setting the stage for a final showdown today in the Senate on the heart of Clinton's economic agenda.
In a Rose Garden statement, Clinton thanked the House for "breaking gridlock tonight and entering a new era of growth and control over our destiny." He said the action was an important "first step," adding, "The margin was close but the mandate is clear."
The president and his aides had lobbied frantically for the House victory, but more work remains for them today when the Senate votes on the plan. Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.), who voted for an earlier version of the plan when it passed the Senate by one vote, was undecided yesterday about whether to continue to support the president, despite intense pleading from the White House.
Republicans hammered away at the program throughout the day, portraying it as a recipe for economic disaster. But Democrats, fearful that the success of Clinton's administration may be riding on the outcome, rallied in the final hours to deliver the razor-thin victory.
The outcome of the vote was in doubt until the final seconds, when Rep. Marjorie Margolies-Mezvin- sky (D-Pa.), who has consistently opposed Clinton's budget proposals, and Rep. Pat Williams (D-Mont.) cast the votes that put the Democrats over the top.
Republicans were united in their opposition and 41 Democrats joined them in voting against the bill, including one committee chairman, Rep. G.V. "Sonny" Montgomery (D-Miss.), who heads the Veterans Affairs Committee. When the House first approved the plan May 27, the vote was 219 to 213 with 38 Democrats deserting the president.
House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) and Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) took the floor in the closing minutes of the debate to signal that members were facing possibly the most important vote for Democrats for years to come.
"We must go beyond our individual interests, our individual concerns, our own pride and sense of infallibility . . . and go for a common purpose and a common result," Foley told his cheering troops.
Summoning Democrats to face up to a massive deficit that he laid at the feet of two former Republican presidents, Gephardt described the economic crisis as "a dagger pointed at our economic heart."
"This plan, while not perfect, is good," he said.
To win the contest, Clinton had wooed moderate and conservative Democrats with a promise to seek additional spending cuts after Congress completes work on his budget package.
The agreement was announced by Foley and Office of Management and Budget Director Leon E. Panetta several hours before the vote.
"We're close, but not quite there," Panetta said before the vote. "It's high anxiety."
Rep. Timothy J. Penny (Minn.), a conservative Democratic leader who helped engineer the agreement, said that without it the president's package probably would have faced rejection in the House.
As part of the deal, the administration promised to introduce legislation this fall that would have the effect of lowering the 1994 federal spending ceiling by $5 billion to $10 billion and implementing the recommendations from Vice President Gore's National Performance Review to streamline government. The legislation also would give lawmakers the opportunity to propose additional cuts in discretionary and mandatory spending, beyond the $255 billion in spending reductions proposed in the budget package.
Also, Clinton and the Democratic leadership promised members votes on a proposed balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution and on legislation designed to discourage the growth of entitlement programs.
The entitlement restriction, first proposed by Rep. Charles W. Stenholm (D-Tex.), was dropped from the budget package because of parliamentary obstacles in the Senate. Clinton signed an executive order on Wednesday to achieve the same goal, but congressional Democrats want to make it a law.
Administration officials were optimistic that the last-minute deal would help seal a victory for the president in the House, but they were far less sure it would be enough to keep Kerrey from jumping ship and opposing the bill.
Kerrey, a maverick Democrat and Clinton rival during the 1992 campaign, has derided the president's plan as a tepid stew that does little to address the nation's economic and deficit woes. As the House and Senate prepared for final action late yesterday and today, the former Nebraska governor has surfaced as the wild card in the congressional deliberations.
Forty-nine of 56 Senate Democrats are firmly backing the budget package, including Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.), who announced his support Wednesday.
If it could gain Kerrey's support, the White House would have 50 votes, which, when coupled with a tie-breaking vote by Gore, would assure the administration a one-vote margin of victory.
Kerrey remained out of public view throughout the day amid growing frustration at the White House over his vacillation. Administration officials said it was not clear what it would take to satisify the Nebraska senator. "It's unlike DeConcini, who knew what he wanted," one official said.
Beth Gonzalez, Kerrey's press secretary, said the senator "doesn't want to do anything he regrets," but added that he does not see a threat to Clinton's presidency if the reconciliation bill fails in the Senate today. "I don't think he sees that at all," she said.
Panetta told reporters early yesterday that Kerrey has concerns about health care and about the reorganization of government, ideas he put forward during the presidential campaign. But mainly, he said, "he is interested in creating some kind of focal point" for applying further spending restraints.
At the White House, Clinton spent most of the day in the Oval Office, working the phones along with his congressional liaison, Howard Paster, and senior adviser George Stephanopoulos. One senior official estimated the president made more than 40 calls, mostly to House members but also to a few senators, including Kerrey.
The frantic endgame, with Cabinet secretaries and even First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton making phone calls to lawmakers, was reminiscent of the last House vote on the budget package, in which the administration was still scrambling to nail down the necessary votes as the roll call commenced. "It feels to me exactly like last time," one senior official said.
Despite expressions of confidence by administration officials that they had the required number in the House, "the ones we thought were leaning yes have been harder than we thought" to sign on, the official said.
"We're going to sweat more bullets and get it done but at the last possible minute, they won't let this thing go down."
In the end, the key to victory was making several key converts while holding down last-minute defections.
Rep. Bill Sarpalius (D-Tex.), who voted against the bill the first time, switched and supported it last night after talking twice with Clinton and repeatedly with Energy Secretary Hazel R. O'Leary. Sarpalius is worried that a nuclear weapons complex in his district might be closed and raised his concerns with the president.
Others, like freshmen Reps. Ron Klink (D-Pa.) and Eric D. Fingerhut (D-Ohio), both of whom had reluctantly voted for the plan in May, flirted with voting against the bill late yesterday afternoon before being on the receiving end of a White House full-court press.
The package, the product of months of intense haggling and compromise, would raise taxes on wealthy Americans, corporations and motorists, slow the growth of spending for medical programs for the elderly and poor, and provide significant tax credits for the working poor.
Democrats say the legislation would achieve $496 billion in projected deficit savings over five years, through a combination of $255 billion in spending savings and $241 billion in revenue increases.
"No one is suggesting that this plan is a panacea -- it is not a cure for all of our economic ills," said Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), in defending the plan against a barrage of Republican criticisms. "But, when we pass this plan, it will be a major step down a very long road toward getting our economic house in order."
House Budget Committee Chairman Martin O. Sabo (D-Minn.) told his colleagues that the package "represents the opportunity of a lifetime to turn this country around."
However, Republican critics insist that many of the savings claimed by the administration were achieved through budgetary gimmickry and by claiming savings that were already mandated under the 1990 budget agreement.
The Republicans took turns yesterday bashing the plan, one they claimed would strangle the economy and wipe out many small businesses with a raft of new taxes.
"It is a tax-and-spend bill, pure and simple," said Rep. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.). "It won't reduce the deficit, but it will injure the country and decimate the economy. It's a job-killing bill from the word go."
The Democrats lashed back, charging that the Republicans were more interested in distorting the contents of the package and humiliating Clinton than in seriously working to reduce the federal deficit.
"They claim to care about working families, when they are really out to protect their wealthy friends," said Rep. Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.).
Clinton's package is faring poorly in some of the polls, and House Democrats backing the president were feeling the heat.
Rep. Charles Wilson (D-Tex.), who announced Wednesday that he was switching his vote to support the package, said that he has received a rash of negative calls from constituents. "We've had some threats, some really violent calls," he said. "One of them just said I better not show my face back in my home town again."
The bill would raise income taxes for the top 1.2 percent of taxpayers, increase taxation of Social Security benefits for the top 12.8 percent of recipients, raise taxes on corporations with taxable income of more than $10 million, increase the federal gasoline tax by 4.3 cents per gallon, and tighten some tax breaks, such as the deduction for business meals.
The growth in spending on Medicare, Medicaid, veterans programs, agricultural programs, federal retirement benefits and other programs would be restrained.
But wage subsidies for the working poor would be expanded, and funding for foodstamps and child immunizations would be increased. Tax incentives would be created to encourage business investment in nine depressed urban or rural areas to be designated. Small businesses would be able to claim larger tax deductions for equipment purchases, and people who buy newly-issued stock in small and medium-sized businesses would get a 50 percent cut in the capital gains tax if they hold the stock for at least five years.
Government spending would increase from $1.5 trillion in the first year to almost $1.8 trillion in the fifth year. Most of the spending cuts the bill calls for are actually reductions in the spending increases that would otherwise occur automatically.
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Washington Post
Note that Gingrich is not mentioned. You can figure out why. |
