Policy making descends into farce as the GOP passes tax cut bill

By Thomas Oliphant, Globe Columnist, 07/25/99

WASHINGTON -- Dennis Hastert, occasional speaker of the House in fact as well as title, was fighting to save his position. In that context, details hardly mattered.

So he was grabbing at thin air as the robotic House went through the motions of deliberation and passed their tax cut bill.

Stick with me, guys, he babbled at his Republican troops. Vote yes and the elderly will have new freedom, the ability to earn more money on the side in retirement without Social Security consequences.

An interesting issue, Democrat Sandy Levin of Michigan countered, except that earned income exclusion and Social Security benefits were nowhere to be found in the turkey of a bill being considered.

Hastert's purpose was to collect 219 votes for a tax cut bill that added up to roughly $800 billion in forgone revenue over 10 years.

The components were important only to the extent that they attracted votes. And there was the additional pitch that there was no reason to fear that the measure under ''consideration'' would become law. For that reason, it was no problem that only a handful of members knew what was in it.

Thus does a dysfunctional House ''legislate.'' Thus does national policy making descend into farce.

Charley Stenholm, the veteran conservative Democrat from West Texas, called the House's tax bill the most irresponsible piece of legislation he had ever seen. And Stenholm had the standing to say that. Back in 1981 he was a leading ''Boll Weevil,'' one of the Southern Democrats who provided the key votes for the tax- and budget-slashing monstrosities that sent the national debt through the roof, driving up interest rates and squeezing the incomes of working families for another decade.

This time around the conservative Democrats (now called Blue Dogs) couldn't even get floor consideration for their much smaller alternative because it would have passed solidly and become the possible basis for a bipartisan compromise that could have proved irresistible to President Clinton.

Even President-in-Waiting George Bush has smelled a rat in the political maneuvering, triggering his resolve to avoid clear identification with the GOP Congress.

When Bush first emerged from Austin in June, some of the first words out of his mouth were an unqualified call for reductions in marginal income tax rates. But two weeks ago, as the House's bizarre intent became more clear, he dropped what had been a bedrock principle faster than a bad habit.

Bush's current position is essentially like Clinton's and the congressional Democrats': First, Congress should ''preserve'' Social Security and Medicare; then it should take care of the ravenous military's supposed needs; then tax cutting is an appropriate subject.

That would preclude not only the House's bill, but the same-size but differently structured turkey that came out of the Senate Finance Committee. But Bush diplomatically avoided saying so.

To the true believers of the right, however, Bush's apostasy was dramatic and quickly became fodder for some of his upstream-swimming opponents, notably flat taxer Steve Forbes.

To Forbes, the tax measures inching toward the president's inhospitable desk are mere drops in the bucket. Supply siders of the late 1990s are either still pushing flat-tax systems like Forbes or advocating radical acts like the 30 percent across-the-board rate cuts favored by floundering Dan Quayle.

Social conservatives also grumble, albeit lamely. The current complaint is that the House measure only grazes the over-hyped ''marriage penalty,'' but they were bought off with Hastert promises of unspecified add-ons later in the process.

Totally missing are the less rich-biased proposals of people like Senator John Ashcroft, Republican of Missouri, who had urged making Social Security taxes fully deductible against income taxes. Also missing was a species once known as Moderato Republicano. It has been replaced by today's moderate Republican, who frequently expresses concern that other GOP stalwarts are ''extreme'' but then votes with them anyway.

Last week, these summer soldiers were bought off, incredibly, by a weird provision in the legislation that the House bill's rate cuts (though not its equally large breaks for special interests) would take effect only in years when national debt reduction targets are met. This unworkable garbage will be laughed out of the occasionally responsible Senate.

That leaves only those who think that cutting taxes is nuts when spending cuts needed to keep the budget balanced can't be made, who think it's especially nuts when the ''surpluses'' are all conjectural, who think retirement programs should be made secure first, who think debt reduction is more responsible, and who think the inflationary consequences of tax cutting in the midst of a boom are dangerous.

They are now called Democrats.

Thomas Oliphant is a Globe columnist.