Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 23, 1993 TAG: 9304230476
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Historically, one of its most prominent uses was by white Southerners intent on blocking civil-rights legislation. More recently, it has been used for the care and feeding of senatorial egos.
Now, Senate Republicans have thought up a new purpose: to undo the results of the last election. President Clinton had the votes in both the House and Senate to pass his $16 billion economic-stimulus bill. But by filibustering, Minority Leader Bob Dole and his crowd have killed it - and so, it is said, delivered a serious setback to the new administration.
Clever, clever.
Oh? Or are the Republicans, having manufactured a particularly egregious example of governmental gridlock, in danger of making themselves look like part of the Washington status quo that Clinton was elected to break up?
Granted, the bill is flawed. On the plus side, it would have created jobs in distressed areas at a time when signs of economic recovery aren't matched by an equivalent measure of jobs growth. A start would have been made on some initiatives, such as childhood immunizations, that could provide long-run paybacks.
On the minus side, many of the new jobs would have been temporary, and much of the proposed spending was for items with little discernible payback potential. In any event, an extra $12 billion or $16 billion (the GOP minority deigned to allow a vote on the $4 billion for extension of unemployment benefits) wouldn't provide very much stimulus in a $6 trillion economy, with an annual federal deficit already at more than $300 billion. The amount is also trivial compared to Clinton's $1.5 trillion budget and economic program that Congress already has approved in principle.
It is this very triviality, however, that gives the GOP filibuster its ominous edge. Why go to such an extreme, resorting to such an extraconstitutional and undemocratic maneuver, to kill this bill? Give the old Southern racists at least this much credit: They reserved the tactic for what their limited hearts and minds mistook to be fundamental principle. The Republican goal seems to be simply to make life as miserable as possible for Clinton.
Granted, it was a mistake for the president, particularly one claiming the mantle of "New Democrat," to rely so heavily on party discipline. Clinton has been criticized for failing to woo moderate GOP senators, a la Ronald Reagan's wooing of conservative Democrats in the early months of his administration. A handful of Republican defections (there were zero) would have been enough to "invoke cloture" - that is, to tell the windbags to stifle it.
But the parallel with Reagan isn't exact. He needed Democratic defections in the House not because of a filibuster (House rules don't allow it), but because the voters had returned a Democratic majority there. And in the Senate, the then-minority Democrats generally voted against administration legislation with which they disagreed, trying to recruit GOP waverers to their side when possible. They didn't try to deny democracy by simply talking such bills to death.
Will Senate Republicans, thinking they have won a victory in this instance, turn ever more frequently to the tactic? If so, they may find their perception of victory to be an illusion, and their filibustering frustration of democracy a source of political trouble.
by CNB