THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, November 10, 1994 TAG: 9411100653
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A01 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 89 lines
Are you ready for the revolution signaled by the Republican Party's taking both houses of Congress in Tuesday's election?
Just a bit fearful of it, perhaps?
Don't be.
On key items, particularly one that counts most, the revolution may amount to little more than a ceremonial changing of the guard.
Neither the Congress nor the president has the stomach for adopting the major planks in the GOP's ``Contract with America.''
Let's examine three.
First, consider that great political shibboleth, the line-item veto.
That three-word mantra - line-item veto - is the one conservatives have prated for years when asked what they would do to revive the republic.
It would enable the president himself to reach into the budget and excise blatant hunks of pork.
Conservatives of both parties are pledged to adopt it; but it may just be dawning on many Republicans that they would be putting that two-edged ax - the kind a lumberjack swings - into the hands, not of the likes of Ronald Reagan or George Bush, good God-fearing Republicans, but of President Clinton.
In a news conference Wednesday, Clinton mentioned, in passing, his support for that additional selective power of the veto.
As to whether Clinton would wield it, remember that Gerald Ford, waning in office, exercised the regular veto 50 times.
IN BOTH CHAMBERS, the Republicans now have majorities to pass the line-item veto for which they and many Democrats have professed to yearn. Will they keep that promise?
In actuality, a president - perhaps this president - could wield it in bargaining to gain support for one of his pet projects or as an enforcer of discipline within his party.
Whether this new, bold Congress will have the nerve to arm Clinton with that weapon is doubtful.
In their eyes, it would be like Jack handing the ax to the giant instead of using it to attack the beanstalk.
A second chant has been raised immemorially, for term limits.
Looking at Tuesday's election returns, one might conclude that the most efficient term limit is the sort of vote with which veteran Democratic chieftains were swept from office throughout the nation.
In a day at the polls, voters changed the makeup of Congress and the states' governors.
But term limits envisioned in the Contract with America may never take place. Congressmen have too tender a regard for their own hides.
Suppose the limit imposed on House members is three, or even four, two-year terms. Can you imagine Newt Gingrich, just flowering as majority leader, being willing to relinquish his hold in eight years?
To separate Gingrich from his seat would be like trying to extricate a stick of candy from a petulant, screaming child.
And Texas Sen. Phil Gramm confidently expects to serve at least as long as South Carolina's Strom Thurmond, who intends to be embalmed, like Lenin, in office.
Or consider the newly elected young congressmen. Are they to be removed from the trough before they have had a chance to accumulate enough seniority to assure themselves a decent pension?
Term limits are destined to become squirm limits in the frenzied efforts of congressmen to avoid submitting to them.
Third, there is that chimera the balanced-budget amendment. The only way congressmen will have the will to pass it is to delay its imposition over a period of years, so that the deadline will become, like the horizon, forever receding.
The only way to save our grandchildren from being crushed by the deficit is to make cuts in entitlements. But by their very name they are protected from the ax, as sacred as biblical birth rights.
A confidential memo to President Clinton that listed entitlements as a possible target among options for reducing the budget was seized as a weapon by Republicans with which to thwack the Democrats.
Moreover, the slightest reductions in Social Security and Medicare would arouse a storm of protest among the electorate, ourselves.
So let the Republicans rejoice another day or so in the fancied revolution, apt to wind up as another extension of the status quo.
Lest we chide them for failing to honor the line-item veto and term limits, let us apply to ourselves the test of sincerity in welcoming cuts in entitlements, the only sure way to reduce the debt to save our offspring.
Do we have the courage we expect of Congress?
KEYWORDS: CONGRESS
by CNB