ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, January 5, 1996 TAG: 9601050041
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
POLITICAL fault-lines underlying the partial shutdown of government shifted and rose closer to the surface this week, as the shutdown's effects began rippling more ominously across the land.
As if to confirm his reputation as one of Washington's grown-ups, Majority Leader Bob Dole on Tuesday pushed legislation through the Senate that would have reopened the government until Jan. 12, while Congress and the White House continued their budget talks.
The Senate reasonably, overwhelmingly approved the measure. Yet, egged on by a GOP vanguard of freshman militants, the House on Wednesday turned it down.
Now there's word the GOP leadership is changing its tune, and none too soon.
Keep in mind: Federal employees who were furloughed, as well as those working without pay, in the end will be paid. In the claimed pursuit of austerity, the shutdown is costing taxpayers, on top of other costs, huge sums to pay employees for work they weren't allowed to do.
Give credit, therefore, to Reps. Rick Boucher and L. F. Payne for their vote Wednesday to end the partial shutdown. Rep. Bob Goodlatte unfortunately joined with the GOP's House majority, initially refusing to consider the Senate-passed measure.
"Bob Dole made a huge miscalculation," grumbled one of the GOP tough guys, John Shadegg of Arizona. The partial shutdown, he and other House Republicans argued, is their best leverage for getting the White House to accept the basics of their balanced-budget plan. Shadegg called Dole's support for ending the shutdown "an act of betrayal."
But if Dole betrayed his party's zealots, he hardly betrayed his country - or his chances for the presidency. On Thursday, House leaders were conceding theirs was the miscalculation.
The shutdown has gone on long enough. Indeed, it is more likely getting in the way of, than moving along, the budget talks. Clinton might have discerned a self-serving political interest in continuing the standoff rather than trying genuinely to end it.
"It is wrong ... to shut the government down while we negotiate, under the illusion that somehow that will affect the decisions that I would make on specific issues," Clinton said. He's right.
It is wrong to hold Americans hostage to budget bargaining and partisan charade: Meals on Wheels clients, nursing-home residents, Head Start youngsters, vendors waiting to be paid, citizens wanting to visit national parks or to travel overseas, Americans depending on unemployment assistance or water-quality monitoring - not to mention 760,000 unpaid federal workers.
Congress has proposed measures that Clinton is right to veto - mean-spirited, counterproductive measures. But House Republicans are right when they criticize the president for failing to specify how he would balance the budget in seven years, given a common set of fiscal assumptions.
To bargain in good faith - while still sticking to principles that, in most cases rightly, he says he'll stand by - Clinton needs to be more forthcoming.
Dole was right, however, in judging the shutdown a poor means of exacting concessions. The House should end it today.
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