It’s two months late and as overstuffed with pork as the most bountiful Thanksgiving Day bird is with dressing. But the fiscal year 2000 budget cannot fairly be called a turkey. In the best bipartisan tradition, it delivers a little something for everyone.
Hard as it may be to imagine amid the vitriol surrounding much of the first year of the 106th Congress, the budget that cleared Congress last week is a win-win for Republicans and Democrats alike.
This budget was hard work, requiring months of haggling and 10 solid days of intense negotiations. What ultimately made it possible was something rarely seen in this highly partisan Congress: compromise.
President Clinton correctly called it a “hard-won victory for the American people.” It is that because the–mostly–untouched budget surplus will go to pay down the national debt. That’s good for the country. Because the Republicans forced Clinton to accept a tiny, but nonetheless real, 0.38 percent across-the-board cut in discretionary spending, House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) correctly can claim it “changed the way this town does business.”
Both parties rightfully claim they got the other side to give. Republicans got more for defense, health research and veterans’ health; and Democrats got more for new teachers and new police. And both are taking credit for restoring nearly $13 billion in Medicare cuts.
The spending cut means government agencies will have to look carefully to “see what frivolous spending can be eliminated,” said Hastert. Republicans also claim that they kept their pledge not to touch the Social Security surplus, although that still-questionable claim is due to gimmicks and accounting legerdemain.
The Democrats finally managed to resolve the long-standing dispute over paying back dues owed to the U.N. and got funding for the Mideast peace process.
So both parties deserve praise. But now some criticism too. The brinkmanship that led to the artful compromise is no way to run a government. Nobody knows all that’s in this monster 2,000-page, $390-billion spending bill. But it’s a fair bet that each state has its equivalent of $500,000 for science education for the Shedd Aquarium and the Brookfield Zoo, $3 million for a Lincoln Library in Springfield, $2.5 million for a substance abuse program for Chicago, Elgin and East Aurora schools and $2.5 million to create an on-line virtual community college degree in Illinois.
There is nothing wrong with any of these expenditures. They’re undoubtedly all worthy. But multiplied by 50 states, they total billions stuffed into the bountiful bird we all pay for.
