Both President Clinton and Republicans in Congress claimed victory in the new budget agreement Thursday, but one GOP political operative didn’t feel like celebrating.
“We lost,” he said.
He did not mean the Republicans lost in their effort to pressure the president into proposing a seven-year balanced budget plan. Nor did he mean the GOP lost in pressuring Clinton to accept a fiscal year 1996 budget $30 billion smaller than the one he proposed. They succeeded on both counts.
He meant the Republicans lost the public relations war, the war that Washington cares about most.
Republicans had much to brag about Thursday when looking at the hard numbers of budget cuts and program changes and the degree to which they had enforced more fiscal discipline on the White House.
The House and Senate approved the $159 billion budget bill Thursday evening and sent it to the White House for Clinton’s signature. The measure provides spending for nine Cabinet-level departments and other agencies.
Even though overall spending has been scaled back, the White House claimed victory because funds were restored for hiring 100,000 police officers, for the president’s national service program, and for poor school districts. Also, environmental provisions–such as removing Environmental Protection Agency’s reviews of wetlands development–were killed or softened.
The GOP forced cuts in many programs, such as a $5.5 billion reduction in the Department of Housing and Urban Development budget, to a total of $19 billion. Social services grants to states were cut nearly 20 percent.
“We did not buckle, we did not cave, we did not collapse,” said Rep. John Kasich (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Budget Committee. “We were able to achieve the biggest reduction in Washington spending since World War II.”
The price of victory, though, was a rise in the polls for Clinton and a corresponding decline in public sentiment for the GOP, which took most of the blame for two partial shutdowns of the federal government.
If the new budget agreement had an anti-climactic feel about it, it’s because it is so much less than what could have been. In the thick of the budget battle three months ago, both sides were debating a deal that included balancing the budget in seven years.
All they got Thursday was a one-year budget that postponed important decisions on taming the explosive growth of federal entitlements, such as Medicare and Medicaid. There also was no tax relief, a central part of the GOP’s “Contract With America.”
In a news conference, Clinton did not crow about the outcome, saying that “we have shown that we can work together to cut the budget,” and he coupled that with a call for Congress to join him in balancing the budget. “I believe there’s enough credit to go around when you do the right thing,” he said.
His statement did not console Republicans much. Many members feel they deserve more credit for pushing Clinton in their direction.
But Democratic consultant Mark Mellman said the GOP “did not understand the difference between the general and the particular. People wanted a balanced budget. That doesn’t mean they wanted to cut Medicare or education.”
It was an odd result. Clinton got credit for what he did not do and for raising fears about what the Republicans were trying to do, namely slashing funds for education and the environment and restraining the growth in Medicare and Medicaid.
The GOP got the blame for shutting down the government and for the way they tried to bring federal spending and revenues into line over seven years.
They came across as the heavies, and they did not lay sufficient political groundwork for the pain they were about to inflict.
And through it all, Clinton rehabilitated himself. Battling an image last year as a waffler who had no defined core of beliefs, the president established his credentials as a “New Democrat” willing to exercise fiscal discipline while trying to preserve programs such as education, the environment, and health.
“They (Republicans) have done a masterful job of restoring this guy,” said Charles Jones, political science professor at the University of Wisconsin.
At the same time, the budget battle opened fissures within the Republican Party that will linger through the presidential election. The conservative wing, led by House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) pushed a far-reaching agenda that the moderate wing, led by Sen. Bob Dole, had a difficult time accommodating.
