So “W” wants to hide the right-wing ranters during this summer’s GOP nominating convention.
Smart thinking.
No sense reminding viewers at home that the party of Gov. George W. Bush is also the party of Sen. Jesse Helms and Rep. Dan “Free Elian” Burton. The hyperpartisans did enough damage in 1998-99, when they ensnared and then attempted to impeach the president. Polls showed most Americans didn’t like that. So Bush’s handlers plan to let the screamers blow off steam during untelevised platform hearings and such. There will be no hysterical Clinton-bashing or anti-abortion tirades from the big rostrum during prime time.
But there’s a problem with this attempt to reposition the party as a thoughtful bunch of compassionate conservatives: The convention is only four days in mid-summer. Between now and then, and for several weeks following the Bush coronation, the party’s extremists will be loudly on display–in Congress. You can catch their antics on C-SPAN just about any weekday afternoon.
And there’s nothing Gov. Bush can do about it … any more than Al Gore can throw a blanket over his supporters who are seeking cash reparations for Negro slavery.
Don’t expect flame-throwers like House Majority Leader Richard Armey and House Whip Tom DeLay, fellow Texans both, to back off and quietly pass a fiscal 2001 budget that Bill Clinton might actually sign. They’re spoiling for one last, redemptive battle with Slick Willie, even if it means shutting down the government like they did a few years ago. Same goes for Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and outspoken lieutenants like Sen. Phil Gramm.
It isn’t in these guys to avoid, for strategic political reasons, one last go at the hated man in the White House. And more reasonable voices, like that belonging to Illinois’ favorite son, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, will be ignored.
Already last week, in preliminary budget maneuvering, the House Appropriations Committee began deleting items Clinton wants for his presidential legacy. The Committee deep-sixed the president’s $1.3 billion public school renovation plan, his plan to help poor families gain access to the Internet, his plan to increase government-funded scientific research by a half billion dollars.
And even though Clinton and Hastert recently reached a handshake agreement over an expansion of anti-poverty enterprise zones, (the so-called “New Markets” initiative) no funding was recommended for that purpose. Instead the partisans have ordered a 10 percent cut in existing public health and environmental protection programs and the total elimination of Clinton’s ultimate pet project, the AmeriCorps national service program.
But don’t get the idea GOP hard-liners are ungenerous.
While slashing programs such as child care and summer jobs for inner-city youth, the hard-liners have begun pushing another round of tax cuts for the wealthy. They want a law phasing out federal inheritance taxes (now referred to as “death taxes” to make it sound as if people besides the rich pay them.)
In truth, the current 55 percent top rate on multimillion dollar inheritances ought to be lowered. Democrats have proposed doing just that. They’d raise the inheritance tax threshold on individuals to $4 million from the current $650,000, and cut the tax rate by 20 percent. That way inheritors of farms and small businesses would be protected, as would the new crop of 401(k) retirement-plan millionaires.
But the Republican leaders want to go all the way, or at least to force Clinton into vetoing a bill that would “repeal the death tax.” Never mind that repeal would ultimately deliver a $50 billion windfall to the less than 2 percent of the population that pays inheritance taxes; or that $30 billion of that would go to the heirs of just a few thousand fabulously wealthy individuals … not family farmers or small businessmen.
Fortunately the president would likely veto a complete repeal. He might sign a reduction of the tax, but with the exception of Hastert and a few forlorn moderates, Republicans in Congress aren’t looking to compromise.
This is a problem for George W. Bush. He might be able to convince voters that he’s more reasonable than the zealots on Capitol Hill … and maybe even get himself elected. But the way this Congress is behaving the Democrats may just retake the House of Representatives come November.
Political gridlock would be preserved. And it will be President Bush’s turn to get rejected by a hostile Congress.
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E-mail: jmccarron@tribune.com
