From the streets and schoolyards of the nation’s cities, the drug crisis came to roost on Capitol Hill last week. Though more than half a dozen measures awaited action before Congress’s October recess, none were more important in the Senate than the hurriedly drafted anti-drug bill. When public opinion polls showed rising concern over drugs, both Senate and House members wanted to pass new laws that would sweep “crack” off the streets and help the legislators keep their seats in November. “This is war,” said House Republican Whip Trent Lott, using the preferred metaphor. But war is expensive, and as much as the lawmakers wanted to go to battle, they could not find a way to pay for it.
House Speaker Tip O’Neill proposed raising taxes to pay for a $1.6 billion bill — a sure non-starter in an election year. His lieutenants wanted to raise the necessary funds by nicking every Government program for an infinitesimal amount. No way, said Senate colleagues; their favorite programs had already been repeatedly trimmed and pared to fit the budget. Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole decided charity was in order: he wanted taxpayers to donate a dollar or two of their tax refunds next year.
The Senate finally hit upon a solution to the problem of financing: ignore it. By an overwhelming vote of 97 to 2, the upper chamber approved a $1.4 billion drug measure that would boost penalties for pushing drugs and beef up federal narcotics enforcement on a broad front. Just before final adoption, a handful of Senators on the floor shouted through a resolution pledging to find the money later. Appropriations Committee Chairman Mark Hatfield, who was behind the maneuver, was not proud of it. “It’s a gimmick,” he admitted afterward. “All we’re doing is Band-Aiding ourselves over the obvious obstacle of the election.”
Welcome to Capitol Hill in the era of Gramm-Rudman, the half-desperate deficit-reduction measure passed last fall and described by one proponent as a “bad idea whose time has come.” No one doubts that Gramm-Rudman’s requirement to shrink the federal deficit each year by fixed amounts has changed the way Congress does business. What its members are unable to agree upon is whether the change is for the better.
Congress has yet to resolve its basic standoff with the White House over how to close the budget gap without raising taxes or making major cuts in defense or social programs. After a year of Gramm-Rudman, Congress has become somewhat more frugal but mostly more inflexible. “Gramm-Rudman has helped, but it’s a little like a half-successful birth-control method,” mused Lynn Martin, an Illinois Republican who serves on the House Budget Committee. “It’s better than nothing, but it’s not as good as just saying no.”
The budget straitjacket annoys many lawmakers because they can no longer dash off the sort of heroic measures they once passed effortlessly. After Philippine President Corazon Aquino made a stirring speech to Congress appealing for more American aid, the Senate comically tried and failed twice to come up with a $200 million honorarium. After first hunting fruitlessly through foreign aid accounts and then trying to siphon funds from a Central American appropriation, last week the Senators dug the money out of the foreign-operations kitty.
An important toxic-waste-cleanup program had been in limbo for more than a year while the House and Senate wrangled over a way to raise the $8.5 billion to pay for it. Although they finally struck a compromise last week, President Reagan may kill the bill because it levies new taxes on corporations. The President and Congress have also proclaimed their intention to build a replacement for the space shuttle Challenger. But the Administration proposes raising the $2.9 billion cost from NASA’s operating budget while the space ! agency’s friends insist that too many corners have already been cut.
Gramm-Rudman requires Congress to reduce the deficit in fiscal 1987 to $144 billion or face painful across-the-board budget cuts. To meet their self- imposed goal, the lawmakers blazed through the budget with fiscal fudging and bookkeeping gimmicks that might land them in jail if they were running a private corporation. Last week House and Senate leaders worked to agree to credit their accounts with $2.1 billion from the expected sale of Conrail, some $700 million more than its apparent market value. They want to stiffen penalties for delinquent and tardy taxpayers, and throw in a wishful $2.4 billion anticipated from more rigorous tax collections. In one particularly deft sleight of hand, Congress will probably charge $680 million in revenue- sharing payments to 1986, magically wiping them off the 1987 deficit ledger.
With the help of a $10 billion windfall from the tax-reform law, Congress may keep the deficit in line this fiscal year, but some of its tricks will actually increase the amount of red ink later on. The sale of billions of dollars’ worth of loans, for example, deprives the Treasury of millions in future repayments. “They’re one-shot deals,” Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici lamented. “They ain’t gonna be there next year.”
Next fall Gramm-Rudman will require Congress to shrink the deficit to $108 billion, though many economists expect the red ink to rise to $170 billion. Gimmicks and cosmetic fixes will not be enough to fill that gaping hole. The $108 billion target is “utterly absurd,” says Norman Ornstein, a political scientist at the American Enterprise Institute. “It isn’t going to happen.”
By papering over their problems and putting the drug bill in layaway, electioneering Congressmen can go home next week and tell constituents they cut the deficit as required. But they will not be able to point to many other accomplishments. Gramm-Rudman’s brutal targets and timetables have made all other matters secondary, which may be one reason why, with the exception of tax reform, the 99th Congress has such a lackluster record. Major bills on immigration reform, trade legislation and environmental regulation will wither and die when the 99th adjourns this month. Those failures, as much as anything else, may force lawmakers to rewrite Gramm-Rudman before its second birthday.
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