Jousting with Bill : Has the GOP finally got smart?

'I magine a world where there's no punishment for a crime, where thieves can steal from unsuspecting victims without a worry of being caught," says a concerned voice as menacing visions of street villainy flit across the television screen. "Well, it's about to happen in Washington." Some in Congress are getting ready to "raid Social Security," warns the narrator. "Protect your family's future. Insist that every penny of the Social Security trust fund go to the people who paid into it."

The words are familiar, but the sponsors have changed. This fall, it's the Republicans who are rushing to the rhetorical defense of Social Security. In a series of ads now playing in eight key congressional districts, the GOP is accusing Democrats of the same offense that Democrats have tried for so long to pin on Republicans. And it's driving the Democrats mad. "It is the most cynical thing I've ever seen in my time in politics," complained minority leader Dick Gephardt on September 29. By the end of October, the GOP had poured about half a million dollars into the effort- not a bad investment, considering that it could save billions.

Autumn is usually a season of discontent for conservatives on Capitol Hill. It's the time of year when a federal budget must come together, forcing Republicans to reach bad deals with the White House, and providing an annual reminder that government continues to grow. Last year, for example, discretionary spending exploded by about $20 billion during last- minute budget negotiations with President Clinton.

But now, for the first time since taking over Congress, Republicans have actually put Clinton on the defensive during budget talks. The president has signed appropriations bills he didn't want to sign, and abandoned major parts of his domestic program; in short, he's been denied the blank check he had come to expect every October.

There are plenty of problems with the Republicans' Y2K budget, including unnecessary new spending, no significant tax cuts, and a few accounting tricks. Yet heading into the final phase of budget dealmaking, Republicans are in a stronger position than ever before. Simply fighting Clinton to a draw is a major achievement. "Compared with the ideal conservative budget, this one isn't great," says Peter Sperry of the Heritage Foundation. "But compared to the expectations set up over the last several years, it's pretty good."

Promising not to raid Social Security has been the linchpin of a year-long strategy developed by House Republicans. The idea came to House leaders following Clinton's State of the Union address in January. The president proposed spending 40 percent of the budget surplus generated by Social Security on a variety of pet projects and saving the other 60 percent to pay down the federal debt. Speaker Denny Hastert asked GOP whip Tom DeLay, his close ally, to prepare a budget plan that would sidestep another embarrassing October deal. "We needed an approach that would both control spending and keep our four-vote majority together," says Hastert.

Just as Clinton believed his commitment to preserve most of the Social Security surplus would head off GOP tax cuts, DeLay figured a Republican promise not to spend any of it would deny the White House many of its spending priorities. DeLay met individually with almost every Republican in the House to discuss the budget. One of the major challenges he faced was to persuade conservatives to support bills that would increase federal spending. There are about a hundred GOP members who routinely won't vote for any appropriations bills at all-"the puritanical caucus," as one leadership aide describes them. As a result, Republican budgeteers have had to compromise with Democrats at the start of every appropriations cycle. Last year, for instance, the budget passed with more Democratic votes than Republican ones. And because these funding bills are bipartisan from the start, they cost more than solid-front Republican versions would. DeLay had to convince conservatives that, for example, voting to freeze foreign aid at $12 billion is better than voting against it, only to have a negotiated budget wind up spending $16 billion.

DeLay's tactic paid off. By October 28, Republicans had passed all 13 appropriations bills, chiefly with Republican votes. The defense bill is a case in point: It passed the House with 372 votes. Clinton would have preferred to hold defense spending hostage for, say, gun control. But he faced a yes-or-no choice on a bill that clearly had enough strength to override a veto. At one point, Gephardt seemed to stake his leadership on being able to sustain a Clinton veto-"If you don't like it, I don't have to be leader," he said to House Democrats, according to a report in Roll Call-but his colleagues apparently weren't convinced, and Clinton reluctantly signed the defense bill. As a result, about half of this year's discretionary spending is no longer up for presidential grabs.

The Hastert-DeLay ads on Social Security stiffened GOP resolve. Republicans knew they faced a ceiling of $592 billion for discretionary spending. The appropriations bills they passed actually topped that mark, meaning that, without further cuts, Republicans would have to dip into the Social Security funds they have proclaimed sacred. John Kasich, as budget chairman, suggested that Congress use a device employed by state legislatures when their ledgers don't balance: an across-the-board cut in discretionary programs. The cut amounted to just under 1 percent-"sanding off the edges," as Rep. Heather Wilson put it.

Clinton called this a "terrible" way to make a budget. His press secretary Joe Lockhart said that the retroactive reduction would prove "devastating" to military readiness. But the poverty of their position was obvious: Clinton had requested a $263.5 billion defense budget. Congress ratcheted it up to $268 billion. Minus the 1 percent cut, the "devastating" congressional budget still comes out $2 billion ahead of the original Clinton request.

This may seem like minor haggling in the context of a nearly $2 trillion budget. But consider all the things Clinton probably won't be getting this fall: HMO patients' rights, a minimum-wage increase, and hate-crime laws. The budget remains far from perfect. There's plenty of pork, such as $100,000 to develop "pungency testing procedures" for vidalia onions-a concession to Democratic representative Sanford Bishop of Georgia to win his vote on the agriculture bill. But that's a small price to pay when the alternative is a closed-door session with the president that would be likely to end with the GOP "melting" (as Newt Gingrich once put it) and conceding a costly new entitlement, such as Medicare funding of prescription drugs.

To be sure, there are problems with the GOP's sudden love affair with Social Security. For a variety of reasons, it may not work next year. In addition, paying down the debt rankles supply-side sensibilities. And all this GOP talk about saving Social Security's phony trust fund may damage the fight to transform the New Deal retirement program for a population of stock-owners. On this final point, at least, Hastert isn't worried: "We've always thought that would take a Republican president."