THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 13, 1994 TAG: 9411110040
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 52 lines
Now that Republicans are savoring their first complete congressional majority in 40 years, the conventional wisdom has begun coalescing around the theme ``they can't carry it off.'' The elements of the GOP ``Contract With America'' are too expensive or no longer in the Republicans' interest, supposedly. Fashionable opinion seems to be preparing for a Bush-like U-turn once the Republicans actually take power in January. Life can be full of unpleasant surprises, of course, but we suspect the Republicans will substantially stand and deliver. Indeed, they have little choice.
Recent political history is the best guide. In 1980, Ronald Reagan promised to cut taxes, reignite the economy and take on the Evil Empire. He faced the same skepticism and defied it to implement his program. The result was the first two-term presidency since Dwight Eisenhower and the longest peacetime economic expansion in U.S. history.
Presidents Bush and Clinton, by contrast, both ran as growth-oriented candidates and both ended up raising tax rates and spending. Mr. Bush received the lowest percentage of the vote of any Republican candidate since World War II and Mr. Clinton has just suffered the most stunning midterm repudiation of any president since Harry Truman.
So walking away from the terms of the ``Contract With America'' simply is not an option if the GOP wants its new dominance to be more than an historical hiccup. Indeed, they have been handed the opportunity to undertake a revolution in how Capitol Hill is run and America is governed.
Republican leaders have reiterated their determination to cut congressional staff by one-third. This is a long-overdue reform. Rep. Bill Archer, R-Tex., the incoming chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, remembers how when he arrived on Capitol Hill in 1971, the committee had 10 staff members. That number has since grown to more than 100. The same can be said for almost every other committee and subcommittee on the Hill.
Speaker-to-be Newt Gingrich is already talking about such previously unheard-of things as term limits, not only for members of Congress, but for committee and subcommittee chairman. He is also determined to make Congress live by the laws it passes for the rest of the country and from whose effect it routinely exempts itself.
Whatever one thinks of the Republican ``contract,'' one thing that cannot be disputed is that the Republican Party has clearly put out a yardstick by which it has asked the nation to measure the Republicans' performance. If they don't live up to it, the public will be perfectly justified in meting out punishment two years from now. by CNB