(5 of 10)
Kasich, though, seemed undaunted. Let Clinton talk about killing one department, he said. He had plans to zero out four and eviscerate a fifth. (He declined to allow those departments to be named.) Kasich also figured he could whack more than one-fifth of the foreign-aid budget during the next five years without touching Israel's share, and cut another $26 billion from food stamps in the same period.
Passing around a list of every function in the budget, Kasich said, "All of these groups will be looked at under the prism of can it be eliminated, can it be privatized, can it be cut?" Hearing the magnitude of Kasich's plan for the first time, Gingrich was concerned. "The other committees are all going to jump on you," he warned Kasich. Soon-to-be majority leader Dick Armey of Texas added a stern caution of his own: "If you get out too far ahead of us, you're going to be out there alone. You can't be out there naked."
They agreed that Kasich would submit another list the following Monday -- one, Gingrich instructed, that would begin with the 70% of the budget that is hardest to cut. Kasich interrupted, "I can give it to you now -- Medicare and Medicaid."
Separately, Gingrich learned that the White House had launched a subterranean assault on another G.O.P. budget proposal. Treasury Secretary-to- be Robert Rubin was talking privately to Wall Street economists about the dangers of the Republican plan to change the government's accounting rules to make tax cuts appear less expensive. A negative reaction by the financial markets could discredit many of the Republican taxing and spending plans. Typically, Gingrich's planned response to Rubin was a counterassault, inviting 25 top Wall Street economists to Washington to suggest they were "being stupid" to buy the White House line.
The session with Kasich had been arranged hastily, and was the only meeting that day in which Gingrich actually discussed the substance of legislation. - The rest of his day, Gingrich wrestled with logistics. There were meetings to parcel out office space, much of which the new Speaker had never been allowed to see until after the election. There were meetings to decide whom to hire, as well as which of Congress's more than 10,000 jobs to abolish. Among the first to go in the campaign to show that Gingrich's team is serious about rooting out waste: the scores of people whose political connections have landed them full-time jobs punching buttons on automatic elevators. Gingrich has even held meetings to decide what meetings he should be having. Before the meetings begin, he often tries to squeeze in an early-morning walk among the monuments and museums of Washington's grassy Mall. Before he goes home each night, he insists upon a session at the House gym, part of his losing battle to keep the button on his suit jacket within striking distance of its buttonhole. ("Remember! Exercise today! Every day!" he barks at his scheduler.)