For "Gentleman" Jim Jeffords, those fleeting 15 minutes of fame had finally arrived. A part-time Civil War buff who just happens to be about the most liberal Republican in the U.S. Senate, Jeffords sat at his peaceful mountaintop farmhouse near Burlington, Vermont, last week taking half- desperate telephone calls from the likes of Vice President Al Gore, Education Secretary Dick Riley, Labor chief Robert Reich and Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala. All were calling to persuade Jeffords to vote for Bill Clinton's embattled economic stimulus package when it comes up for a vote this week. The White House left nothing to chance: behind the scenes, Clinton aides offered highly prized exclusive interviews with Clinton and Gore to Vermont television stations and newspapers in an attempt to turn the screws on Jeffords even tighter.
Not long ago, Jeffords was the Republican that the Bush and Reagan White Houses loved to hate. But last week old sins were forgiven. Senate minority leader Robert Dole, sensing he had Clinton cornered for the first time, hurriedly flew to Burlington Wednesday to attend one of Jeffords' quiet, $20- a-head, appetizer-and-Chablis fund raisers that are typical of Vermont's small-town politics. What wasn't typical was that more than a dozen reporters and seven television crews attended too, in the hope of seeing Dole close the deal.
Jeffords was far too smart for that. "We have many things in common," he said, speaking of Dole. "He's a plainspoken Senator from the Plains, and I'm a succinct, let-you-know-what-I-think person from Vermont." What Jeffords thought of Clinton's stimulus package was hardly nonnegotiable. "I'm holding firm. If they slice $8 billion or $9 billion out of it, I can live with it. Otherwise, no deal."
Clinton would go a long way toward meeting Jeffords' demands by the time the week was out. After insisting for several weeks that he would not compromise with Republicans, Clinton agreed to reduce his spending package by $4 billion and perhaps more, rather than risk losing a measure he believes represents a "booster shot" to the anemic economic recovery. The President had learned the hard way that as long as the Democrats hold only a narrow six-vote majority (Democrat Richard Shelby of Alabama has been voting Republican recently) in the Senate, Clinton will need the votes of Jeffords and four or five other moderates to avoid the filibustering of more conservative Republicans.
As his presidency nears the 100-day mark, Clinton is losing some traction. After winning speedy approval of his overall budget plan in March, Clinton is beset by distractions. In the middle of the stimulus fight last week, the White House had to confirm reports that Hillary Rodham Clinton's health-care task force was considering a new, value-added tax to pay for the $60 billion in reforms her team is contemplating. Just as millions of Americans prepared to file their income tax returns, a USA Today report quoted Shalala as saying that the health-care task force was examining some form of VAT in addition to Clinton's already announced plans for new energy taxes, higher sin taxes and rising top marginal rates. Coming two months after Clinton himself called the VAT a "radical" idea, the story could not have been more poorly timed.