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Jewish World Review / Oct. 30, 1998 /10 Mar-Cheshvan, 5759
Paul Greenberg
New budget, same swollen government
IT'S A CLOSE QUESTION: Which is more depressing --- this muddy,
spiritless election season, or the elephantine budget that
Congress and the president have just loaded onto the backs of
already overtaxed American earners?
I say the federal budget, at least today. This year's is heavier'n
a bucket of hog livers, and about as cheering. Social Security
wasn't saved, and neither was the surplus. Maybe a third of
this year's surplus -- billions and billions of it -- was handed
out in great big servings of pork. It was labeled For Emergency
Use Only in order to get around the spending limits set in last
year's budget agreement.
The usual parade of horribles will soon be dug out of the
federal budget and listed in the papers, and, don't worry, your
state will probably will get its share. But waste is nothing to
celebrate even if it happens where you are.
Wasn't a Republican Congress supposed to make a
difference? A befuddled congressman from Nebraska named
Chuck Hagel, a Republican who sounds thoroughly
disillusioned with his party, and who should be, asked the
most relevant question of the day: "Does a Republican
Congress make any difference? Do we believe in anything?
Can we lead?'' Answers: No, no, and not so as you could tell.
With the president waving still another government shutdown
at a cowed Congress, the GOP caved in quietly, voting as
much pork for its own districts as it could. To quote Missouri's
John Ashcroft: "It is clear that these negotiations were
merely another round of backroom bargaining over the terms
of business as usual, in the form of high taxes and more
spending.''
This could be just another Democratic Congress handing out
the goodies and keeping taxes high. Whatever happened to
that tax cut? American families may find themselves a little
more hard pressed, but it's a great day for one fanciful
government project after another.
There will be more job
slots for teachers, but education may continue to decline. And
highways will be built with such enthusiasm that states may
decide to just let the feds build their roads for them --- instead
of taking responsibility for themselves. The money will flow
to, then through, and finally out of Washington. Yep, politics
as usual.
Even those defending the budget -- like good ol' Bob
Livingston, the chairman of the House Appropriations
Committee -- calls the process "ugly.'' Robert Byrd, the grand
old man of the Senate who is only now beginning to enter his
oratorical prime, said of this monstrous budget that no one is
really willing to take responsibility for: "It is a creation
without a mother or a father -- rather more like a
Frankenstein creature -- a being patched together from old
legislative parts that don't quite fit.'' And it could prove just as
destructive as it eats up the surplus and leaves taxpayers
without relief.
Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton will defend this budget, each
with his own unconvincing rationalizations. Scores may
dwindle, learning decline, standards erode, and the higher
illiteracy flourish, but our president will talk about the great
gains this budget will mean for education, which he tends to
define only in terms of money spent.
And the speaker of the House, his party's chief handicap, will
attack the Republicans' "perfectionist caucus'' -- especially
those members of it with a shred of idealism left, the ones
who thought they were coming to Washington to change
things, to make government leaner, better and maybe even
meaningful. (At least this Congress did manage to stop a little
of the bleeding in this country's over-extended defenses.)
According to Newt Gingrich, none of this could be helped:
"In a free society you have to have give-and-take. If we don't
work together on the big issues, nothing gets done.'' This way,
nothing can get done on a much grander scale at a lot more
expense. The speaker's defense of democracy as basically
trading favors at others' expense has a tired old sound about
it. On the whole, I prefer Colonel Peron's exquisite
description of the same basic transaction in the musical
"Evita'': "One always picks the easy fight. One praises fools,
one smothers light. One shifts from left to right. Politics: The
art of the possible.''
The colonel's lines come to mind regularly these days -- every
time someone explains that politics has nothing to do with
principle, or law, or ethics, or morality, but is only, yes, The
Art of the Possible. It's more like the art of the
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