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Lawmakers deride this grass-roots clamoring as Astroturf, but no one doubts its populist impact on Congress. "Ten years ago, you could have used 10 to 15 lobbyists to kill this thing on Capitol Hill," says Jim McAvoy, senior vice- president of Burson-Marsteller's Advocacy Communications Team. "Now you have to hire 45 people and send them to 23 states. That's because all the noise is supposed to have more credibility. Lawmakers have to hear it echoed from the folks back home."
Oklahoma, an energy-rich state and home to Boren, was targeted for special attention. Because air time is inexpensive in lightly populated states, the lobbies saturated the airwaves for almost nothing: Citizens for a Sound Economy spent less than $100,000 to inundate the state with radio and television ads critical of the BTU tax and urging listeners to "spend some of your energy to stop the energy tax. Call Senator Boren at 1-800-228-6200." The AEA made a $5,000 contribution to the University of Oklahoma College of Business Administration after its Center for Economic and Management Research released a study estimating that the BTU tax would rob the state of 11,000 jobs. On May 19, the eve of rallies in Tulsa and Oklahoma City, Boren came out against the tax. Once that happened, Clinton's tenuous hold on the Finance Committee collapsed.
But Clinton had no sooner surrendered to one group when a second wave attacked his fallback position. With the BTU tax in a coma last week, Senate Democrats glommed on to a proposal by Louisiana's Breaux to raise the tax on gasoline by 7.3 cents per gal. That prompted airlines, travel agents and trucking companies to deluge Washington with complaints about the nascent "transportation fuels" tax.
But Breaux's compromise steamed lobbyists for seniors and minorities, who watched as Clinton and Finance Committee chairman Daniel Patrick Moynihan considered further cuts in Medicare and Medicaid to make up the $35 billion - difference in revenue between the BTU tax and the simpler fuel tax. Moynihan at first said most of the money would have to come from the health-care programs; by week's end the White House had trimmed that figure to $20 billion. But doctors, hospital executives and senior citizens began to scream at this prospect, unleashing their own carefully orchestrated telephone attacks on key members of the Senate. Lawrence Smedley, the executive director of the National Council of Senior Citizens, urged Clinton to abandon his new approach. "If you fail to heed this warning," said Smedley, "you do so at your own peril."
The Congressional Black Caucus joined the fray, protesting Clinton's budget cuts. "I don't want to see the poor, the middle class and the elderly pay for the victory of Big Business, Big Oil and the wealthy," declared Maryland Congressman Kweisi Mfume, chairman of the caucus. Thirty-four of the group's 39 members boycotted the President's annual South Lawn barbecue for Congress, and the caucus voted the next day to delay a planned meeting with Clinton. The White House tapped public liaison chief Alexis Herman to bind up the wounds, but black lawmakers say Herman's influence in the West Wing is minimal.