Most Americans have never heard of Sen. James Jeffords, an unassuming Republican from Vermont who walks to work every day, buys his blazers off the rack and does not spend his Sunday mornings holding forth on the talk-show circuit.
But as the House approved a compromise budget with a $1.35 trillion tax cut Wednesday on a party-line 221-207 vote, and with the Senate poised to follow suit Thursday, the final shape of the package was in no small part due to Jeffords’ protests. In a Senate divided 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats, as Jeffords is proving, anyone from the lowliest freshman backbencher to the most powerful committee chairman can vault to notoriety with ease.
In recent days, he has infuriated the White House and paralyzed the Senate when he refused to support President Bush’s budget and original $1.6 trillion tax-cut proposal. Without Jeffords, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Republicans did not have enough votes to pass the president’s budget resolution, which guides how much money Congress can spend in the following year.
Eager to capitalize, Jeffords named his price: He would vote for the budget only if the president agreed to pay fully for special education for the disabled at a cost of $120 billion over the next 10 years. The White House balked and then delivered a snub, refusing to invite the education panel chairman to a ceremony honoring the national teacher of the year, Michele Forman, who just happens to be a Jeffords constituent from Middlebury, Vt.
Meanwhile, the senator so irritated Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and White House officials that another Jeffords’ priority, the New England Dairy Compact, may be in jeopardy. The compact, which sets milk prices in New England and is seen by Midwest farmers as unfair to them, will expire on Sept. 30 unless Congress extends it.
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici (R-N.M) announced Wednesday that the final budget agreement includes $7.9 billion to pay for special education programs under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, up 20 percent from this year. “There is sufficient money in there for education, including . . . a substantial increase in special ed,” Domenici said.
The Senate began debating the measure following House passage. The budget calls for a $1.35 trillion, 11-year tax cut and a 4 percent average increase in spending for federal programs. Bush had sought a 10-year, $1.6 trillion tax cut but accepted the smaller package as the price for a majority vote in the Senate.
Hammering out details
Once the broad outlines of the budget and tax package are approved by the Senate, members of both chambers will begin working on the details, deciding what types of tax cuts to provide and how much money to appropriate for specific programs.
For his part, Jeffords, 66, is leaning against voting for the compromise budget and tax-cut outline Thursday. He’s still worried that the president will not spend enough money on education.
“To me, for the president’s education program to be successful, substantial resources are going to be needed for the states and local governments to make it work or it could well be a disaster,” Jeffords said Wednesday during a break from shepherding Bush’s education reform bill through the Senate floor. “I just don’t think they have a realistic understanding of what’s needed.”
He said he wasn’t surprised, either, that his work on behalf of New England dairy farmers may be facing retribution as a consequence of his push for more education money. Administration officials have been talking with Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) about killing the dairy program partly as thanks for his support of the budget, according to Kohl.
“Oh well, that’s the way the place works. It’s leverage,” Jeffords said. “And especially with members like myself who are independent, they have to find some way to get your attention.”
`No vengeance’
Of course, senators widely frown on the practice of punishing colleagues.
“There’s to be no vengeance around this place,” Domenici said.
“Once you get into that, it gets to be uncontrollable,” said Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), citing the possibility of unintended consequences.
Indeed, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) is expected to face a tough re-election fight in 2002. And Collins, who has not publicly thwarted the administration, supports the dairy compact. The administration may have second thoughts about killing the dairy program, so as not to hurt her chances for re-election.
“I’m not sure you can be vindictive in a 50-50 Senate because your enemy today can be your friend tomorrow,” said a top Republican leadership aide.
Jeffords, for example, voted to confirm John Ashcroft as attorney general and he voted to overturn ergonomics standards written during the Clinton administration. Both were considered key votes in support of Bush during his first days in office. He is also expected to play a pivotal role in any legislation addressing Medicare coverage for prescription drugs and a patient’s bill of rights.
Clinton retribution failed
The Clinton administration dabbled in retribution during its early days and the exercise backfired badly. White House officials were furious when Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama announced on camera, “The taxman cometh,” as President Clinton arrived for a visit.
In retaliation, White House officials moved a NASA facility out of Alabama. And in response, Shelby switched political parties, ditching the Democrats for the Republicans.
On Wednesday, Jeffords said he had no plans to make such a switch. “I don’t even think or talk about those things that much,” he said. “I just try to do my job.”
Democrats give him high marks for the way he does that job. Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) said Jeffords has conducted himself with great dignity and grace.
“He has a deep-seated and deep-rooted independent streak against this extraordinary barrage of arm-twisting and White House pressure and Senate majority leader pressure,” said Kennedy. “He’s won renewed respect in Vermont and the Senate as well.”
In fact, a recent Vermont poll shows Jeffords is more popular than at any time in his long political career. He’s also more popular than Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat, more popular than Rep. Bernie Sanders, the lone Vermont congressman, who considers himself a Socialist, and more popular than Bush.
`Senator for life’
“Jim Jeffords is beloved,” said Garrison Nelson, a political science professor at the University of Vermont. “He won 3-1 in this last election. He’s senator for life.”
When Jeffords took his stand on behalf of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, he was trying to address an increasingly thorny problem for states and local governments.
Since 1975, Congress has required states to educate children with disabilities. But while Congress promised to contribute 40 percent of the cost for educating those students, it has never sent the states more than about 15 percent. That has left states and localities paying a very large bill at the expense of other education programs.
Aides to Jeffords, however, said the senator remains skeptical that, once all is said and done, and various appropriations committees have done their job, there will actually be more money for his favorite cause, special education.
