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Many in the Administration believe they are in office to shrink Government. "You liberal writers are just like the Democrats in Congress," White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater recently lectured a reporter. "You think Government isn't doing anything unless it's taxing and spending and creating new bureaucracies." Yet the Government does still spend mightily where it has a mind to. The Pentagon has done some tactical trimming but remains the biggest Government consumer of all. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney is determined to retain as much as possible of the $2.4 trillion Reagan-era buildup -- including a scaled-down Star Wars program, at about $4 billion; the B-2 bomber, at $535 million each; and the Advanced Tactical Fighter, projected at $65 million each.
With defense spending unlikely to increase significantly over the next half- decade, both troop strength and some of those weapons will have to be sacrificed. Neither the Administration nor Congress has suggested what to do. In the meantime, Cheney is proceeding with his own priorities. Because of his belief that there has been only a temporary thaw in relations with the Soviet Union, the Pentagon has barely even begun to assess the U.S.'s real defense needs should the change turn out to be permanent.
Various support programs for the middle and upper classes are also humming along nicely. Large-scale farmers and well-to-do retirees still enjoy federal largesse, as do oil companies and people earning more than $200,000 (whose income is taxed at a 28% marginal rate, while a working couple with a taxable income of $71,900 pays 33%). Those who gain from such Government generosity vote -- and contribute money -- in disproportionately high numbers and are the heart of the Republican electoral coalition. As long as the middle class has remained relatively unaffected by Washington's retreat, the Republican strategy has paid off handsomely, most recently in Bush's 1988 election and his extraordinary 75% current approval rating in the polls. Making sure the Republican coalition stays intact seems to be the Administration's major priority. Secretary of State James Baker, asked to comment on Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell's criticism of Bush's tepid handling of the situation in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, replied, "The President is rocking along with a 70% approval rating."
But a TIME poll last week indicated increasing, if still rather vague, doubts about the future. Moreover, signs of strain are beginning to show at the state and local levels. State officials generally find their constituents as opposed to new local taxes as they are to the federal kind, except, in several states, when a tax is earmarked for a specific need: schools, say, or roads.
In De Kalb County, Ga., however, voters last month overwhelmingly rejected a 1% hike in the local sales tax, even though it was intended to offset part of the property tax. De Kalb's chief executive officer, Manuel Maloof, bemoans the deterioration of the federal highways and Washington's unwillingness to provide adequate funds for the national highway system and toxic-waste removal. But Maloof, a Democrat, is even more upset at his own inability to repair his county's sewers and pipelines. "It's all a residue of Ronald Reagan," Maloof says."He did more than most by telling us you don't have to pay taxes even though you still have needs."