"Whenever the Republicans have gone up against Clinton over the budget, they lost," says TIME White House correspondent Jay Branegan. "And the 1995 shutdown was a complete disaster, from which theyre still trying to recover." Hence the accomodationist posture now, as they head back to their home states to try to swing the polls in their favor. If Clinton vetoes the stop-gap budget, the thinking goes, then maybe hell catch the heat for a shutdown. And if Clinton wants to veto a tax cut, well, thats just okey-dokey with these Republicans, who can afford to be laid back when George W. Bush is sitting so pretty in the polls. "If (Clinton) vetoes it," crowed House whip Tom DeLay on CNN, "then maybe we'll have to wait for a real president that wants to give the American family a tax relief." But the American family is going to have to ask for it first.
This Time, A Kinder, Gentler GOP
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The Republicans $792 billion tax cut may be an attempt to turn back the clock to the Grand Old Populism of 1981, but theres one year that this current crop never wants to repeat: 1995. Stopping by the Sunday talk shows on their way out of town, Congressional Republicans declared the Era of Newt officially over. If, after a month of stumping for the voters, they and the President still couldnt agree on what to do with the surplus, well, that was no reason to get nasty. On ABC's "This Week," Trent Lott gallantly offered to start working on a continuing resolution, or legislation that would keep the government running "for two weeks or a month or for a year" while the mundanities of next years budget, at least, got hammered out. "That's the way to avoid a train wreck," Lott said. "There's no need for that sort of thing. And it's irresponsible, too."