Thirteen
Guerrilla Warfare: Spending Politics, 1982

Amid battles of ideology and procedure, the nation's elected representatives and chief executive still had to run a government. Of the three 1982 battles already described—the constitutional amendment, budget resolution, and TEFRA—only TEFRA directly affected the goods and services government provided to citizens. Budget resolutions spend no money. The amendment was steps further removed from government activity. When members of Congress turned to legislation and appropriations, vague numbers—a percentage of GNP on the amendment, a functional total on the resolution—became far less attractive line-item reductions in specific programs. Just like the voters, legislators preferred abstract budget balancing to concrete spending cuts. When voting on the latter, it was more difficult to ignore both policy and political consequences: dams were not built; hot lunches were not served; transit fares were raised; and citizens were unhappy. As consequences became more direct, support for budget cutting declined, from a substantial (though not two-thirds) House majority for the amendment, to a bare majority on the budget resolution, to minorities on the appropriations bills.

Reagan and Stockman wanted to use the growing deficit to pressure domestic spending downward. By cutting or eliminating new appropriations, they could slash programs while bypassing the chairmen who would bottle up legislative proposals to eliminate them. Yet neither House nor Senate appropriations leaders, of either party, much approved of Reagan's agenda. In September, Republican leaders on Appropriations finally revolted. First Silvio Conte in the House and then Mark Hatfield in the Senate led their chambers in overriding the president's veto of a FY82 supplemental appropriations bill.

The conditioning event in all of 1982's spending battles was the recession.

The ideological shift against public works spending, which we saw in 1980, the giant budget deficits, and Reagan's veto all assured there would be no big new programs. Yet constituencies, including Republican constituencies, were suffering. Slashing the poor's benefits while their ranks grew was difficult to defend. As unemployment rose to the highest level since the Great Depression, even the taboo against jobs spending weakened. By December, Reagan, who in September said only a "palace coup" could win his support for such a plan, was backing a big increase in transportation funding, financed by doubling the gasoline tax.

In terms of the mathematics of deficit reduction, the appropriations battles were not so important. Congress appropriated $7 billion more than the president requested. Although an unprecedented increase, this was a very small proportion of the deficit. Yet it hid a much larger increase in domestic programs, which was balanced by scaling down the defense buildup. To update Senator Dirksen, a billion here and a billion there may not be real money in the macropicture of budgeting, but it is plenty of real policy. The policy stakes in appropriations were big enough that they were transmuted into power stakes, as the administration and its opponents each tried to win battles to establish momentum for the next.

We may push the military analogy further. Spending conflict in 1981 resembled a set-piece battle; the entire forces of each side collided in the House on reconciliation where huge amounts of budgetary territory were at stake. The struggles of 1982 were more like guerrilla warfare, a series of skirmishes over small pieces of territory, at the end of which control remained dubious. The drift of events, however, was clear: the administration, aggressive early in the year, was on the defensive in late 1982.

As 1982 began, the administration proposed not only substantial appropriations cuts in its FY83 budget but also substantial rescissions of funds appropriated in FY82. These proposals reflected a change in policy as well as a change in the role of the president's office, particularly OMB, in budget making. When David Stockman took over at OMB, he accelerated alterations in its relationships with Congress that had begun during the Carter administration. As a top OMB official wrote, the details of cuts were less important than

the way in which this revision took place. Traditionally the American budget is developed by the executive and presented to the Congress and the public without formal discussions or negotiations…. In contrast, the [fiscal] 1981 budget revisions were literally negotiated between executive branch representatives (primarily the Office of Management and Budget and the White House) and the leadership in both houses of the Congress.^[1]

Stockman institutionalized the ad hoc developments of 1980 and took them a giant step further. Executive budgeting became far more "top-down." He shifted OMB's focus from examining and assembling agency requests to lobbying the administration's budget through Congress. Staff was dedicated to tracking budget action through the multiple stages of the congressional process, not to examining agency requests. To facilitate this tracking, Stockman ordered the development of a computer system that aggregated budget items by both budget function categories and committee jurisdictions, allowing him to trace the spending implications of action at all levels. Stockman could use his resources this way because he really needed to know nothing about the agencies. For at least a few years he could get by with previous analysis by OMB, the extensive literature produced by GAO, CBO, and the think tanks, and his own prejudices about what government should and should not do. The new OMB approach, Hale Champion commented, "almost excluded cabinet departments and agencies from the formulation of the budget."^[2]

Because Stockman (and President Reagan) were interested in achieving their preferred set of cuts, not in using the budget to finance agencies, OMB also moved away from the norm of annual budgeting. The annual budget served many needs, but its primary purpose was to regularize the financing and therefore functioning of government agencies. Funded for a year in advance, an agency would be able to plan its activities. Stockman discarded the norm of the annual budget in 1981 and 1982, proposing large rescissions of spending that meant reneging on commitments; in effect, the budget was being remade several times a year. This would not exactly reduce budgetary conflict. With the budget under continuous negotiation, even a place in the formal budget did not guarantee funding at the formerly agreed level. As part of its budget cutting, OMB also interfered directly in agency administration; for example, OMB issued orders to the Park Service, forbidding hiring up to the levels allowed in the appropriations legislation.

Both House and Senate Appropriations Committees, as part of their job of overseeing program administration, found themselves defending agencies against OMB's attacks. Committee members objected to the repeated cuts on both programmatic and legislative grounds; in rescissions the president challenged the power of Congress through its appropriations committees.

Supplemental Appropriations

The year 1982 began quietly enough. Much of the government was still running on the December 1981 Continuing Resolution (for FY82), which

would expire by the end of March. The administration chose not to hold the CR hostage for further spending cuts because the Gang-of-17 negotiations had begun and such a conflict would not encourage deal making. Therefore, after bizarre maneuvers regarding legislators' taxes—which we will ignore for the moment but will confront later—the previous CR was extended with bipartisan support but without attention to the budget targets from the previous year.

Instead, the administration chose to use a supplemental appropriation for a number of other programs, such as Guaranteed Student Loans and sewage treatment grants, as a vehicle for spending reductions. OMB proposed rescissions of more than $9.4 billion, mostly in subsidized housing but also in education programs. It proposed new rules for student loans to shave $400 million from the $1.3 billion extra cost.

Congressional opinion about the education rescissions in particular, and rescissions in general, was best indicated by the remarks of Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), the majority whip, in an Appropriations hearing. He told Ms. Harrison of the Department of Education that to rescind the funds would mean grantees had been misled. She replied that Reagan's administration and previous administrations had opposed the program involved. "But successive Congresses have disagreed," Stevens reminded her, and "the president signed that bill last year." "That's why we are proposing a rescission," Ms. Harrison explained. "I think the Department is just buying itself a fight," the senator responded. "There is a de facto breaking of a commitment as far as the Government is concerned…. You people are not reading Congress correctly if you think you are going to get away with this."^[3]

With the rescissions, and the pay raises still unfunded, the administration created an "urgent supplemental appropriation" proposal that would reduce budget authority by about $5 billion (subtraction under the guise of addition, a rather neat trick). House Appropriations, unimpressed, rejected almost all the rescissions, although it agreed to defer $3.8 billion. It then added some social spending, reporting a bill that would increase budget authority by about $5 billion.

This large but straightforward difference of opinion was then complicated by the demands of the housing industry for relief from the effects of recession and high interest rates. Republican representatives Tom Corcoran of Illinois and Thomas B. Evans, Jr., of Delaware wanted to take $1 billion from the synfuels program and use it for a new mortgage subsidy program. Majority Leader Jim Wright, an ardent defender of synfuels, objected. With the housing industry in desperate shape, however, the Corcoran and Evans proposal might well have passed with heavy Democratic support. Democratic leadership did not want Republicans to get credit for helping housing. Instead, after a delay, the Democrats

produced both a housing proposal that did not take the money from synfuels and a rule that allowed a vote on that amendment, legislation on an appropriations bill, but not on the Corcoran and Evans plan. Seeing little chance of Democratic defections on the rule, Republicans let it ride, and then, although Stockman promised a veto, most Republicans voted for the housing money.

Senate Appropriations acceded to most of the housing rescissions that the lower chamber had rejected. The Senate committee then tacked on a $1 billion appropriation and a five-year $5 billion authorization for a different mortgage subsidy plan, this one designed by Richard Lugar. Making the bill still more controversial, Appropriations Committee members also added provisions regarding senators' tax deductions that could increase their incomes.

Senator Lugar insisted his housing plan was a way to fight unemployment; William Armstrong (R-Colo.) argued that Lugar's plan would only pave the way for bailouts of other troubled industries; the administration fervently opposed Lugar as well. On this issue, the organs of responsibility," opposed as they were to spending programs, backed the administration. "Getting down the deficit," Time quoted a real estate economist, "is the only solution."^[4]Newsweek reported, with similar skepticism, that "it happens every recession: mindful of plunging economic indicators and—more to the point—upcoming elections, Congress scrambles to bail out the industries feeling the most pain."^[5] Reagan risked little media opprobrium for threatening a veto. Because the public at large and the interests involved might be less convinced that aid to housing or for jobs was bad, legislators still wanted to appear to be helping.

In conference the two houses split the difference on mortgage assistance and allowed most housing rescissions. The bill that emerged was still more than $4 billion over the administration's request, so Reagan vetoed it on June 24. A move to override failed when House Republicans supported the president, 131 to 53. Democrats thereby got those Republicans on record against housing aid.

Appropriations and Democratic leaders now turned to devising a supplemental that might get signed. They created, and the House passed, a "fat" and a "skinny" supplemental. The fat bill, H. R. 6682, did not contain the new mortgage subsidies and a number of other items that could wait until the next round; however, it provided lower rescissions and more spending than Reagan had requested. After the Senate passed the fat version on June 25, Reagan immediately vetoed it. Two days, two bills, two vetoes. For good measure, Stockman told Hatfield that the skinny bill, H. R. 6685, also would be vetoed. After those two bargained for a bit, Senate Appropriations reported an amended H. R. 6685 that rescinded more subsidized housing funds.^[6] On the floor, a Democratic

effort to restore the $3 billion conference version of the mortgage subsidy program was tabled, 48 to 44. Now Republican senators were on record against housing aid.

Democrats' strategy was to get spending increases if they could, but, if not, they at least wanted to get the Republicans on record against them. David Mayhew's classic analysis of position taking applies here:

A congressman can hardly be blamed if there are not enough right-thinking members around to allow him to carry his motions. He's fighting the good fight…. We do not ordinarily think of losses as being politically harmful. We can all point to a good many instances in which congressmen seem to have gotten into trouble by being on the wrong side of a roll call vote, but who can think of one where a member got into trouble by being on the losing side?^[7]

The president also might believe there was political mileage in using his veto against big spenders. He, however, had more stake in the results. People understand if their representative is outvoted; they may be less sympathetic if their president loses. The president's inside-the-beltway reputation for effectiveness is particularly important, for it shapes how seriously other political actors take those preferences.^[8] Reagan therefore had to care more about winning.

With a few minor changes, the skinny bill passed the Senate, and everyone went home to celebrate Independence Day. When the House returned, it tried but failed to override the veto of the fat bill and then went to conference on the skinny bill. More money was taken out of subsidized housing and spread around on more popular programs. (For various reasons, including being a fairly ineffective use of money, subsidized housing construction, the primary target, was less popular than almost anything else.) Stockman accepted the resulting package; Howard Baker commented that in any case a veto would have been hard to sustain.^[9] The skinny bill was a draw. It provided $390 million more new spending than the administration requested, accepting most housing but no other rescissions.

The appropriations committees' rejection of most domestic spending cuts would be ascribed by Stockman to the politicians' appetite for constituency pork. Yet there were at least two other sources. First, the administration itself tried to deny that its cuts would do harm, while Congress found those arguments incredible. "The impression you give us," Senator Andrews (R-N.D.) told an administration witness, "is that somehow or another you have found a magic way of doing exactly the same thing that has been done years ago for two-thirds of the cost." Andrews did not believe in magic.^[10] When told by agency officials that local governments would make up cuts in federal aid to libraries, Senator

Hatfield replied that they were wrong and they knew it.^[11] Appropriations members built a record against the cuts. Second, Appropriations elders did not see major policy changes as part of either their jurisdiction or budgeting. "Tell me," Sidney Yates (D-Ill.) of the House Appropriations Interior subcommittee asked the director of the National Park Service, "about the historic preservation fund. Has Congress repealed the basic legislation for which you are eliminating all funds?" "No, sir," replied Mr. Dickerson. "Why are you eliminating the funds then?" asked the chairman. As a senior Republican on House Appropriations commented to us about eliminating programs. "You can do that, but you have to do it in the authorizing committees."^[12]

In July OMB requested a new FY82 supplemental, including the annual pay raise, $2.4 billion in new defense authority, and $5 billion more for the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC). As the agricultural sector's problems mounted, the CCC was turning into an unstoppable money pump. Defense, CCC, salaries, and foreign aid increases accounted for $14.2 billion of a $16.3 billion administration request.

House Appropriations accepted mandatory increases like pay raises and CCC, but otherwise it gave the president none of what he wanted. The supplemental provided only one-sixth of the requested defense funds. House Appropriations also reduced extra medicaid funding, saying that it could wait until FY83 action. These reductions enabled the committee to add about $1 billion to such programs as community service employment for the elderly, education for the disadvantaged, college student aid, and interstate highways—that is, many programs the administration had been working all year to reduce. Yet the defense reductions kept the House committee bill well under the president's proposed spending. It passed easily on the floor. Senate action basically followed the House.

Because their version called for $1.8 billion less than the president's request, members of Congress could argue that the bill was fiscally responsible, differing only marginally from the president's request. Actually, members had rejected his policy preferences and imposed their own on almost every plausibly discretionary item. OMB therefore urged a veto of the bill, supported by political advisers who felt that a veto would mollify conservatives upset about the tax increase. On August 19 Senator Stevens warned that "I don't think anything is to be gained by vetoing this one. A veto would be overridden in the Senate."^[13] Mark Hatfield warned he would fight all future defense increases if the president vetoed. Reagan vetoed the bill anyway, denouncing it as a billion dollar budget buster.

Democratic leaders did not expect to override Reagan in the House. But with Silvio Conte leading the effort, the override succeeded, 301 to

117. Members had been infuriated by the president's claim that they had busted the budget; Reagan seemed to be saying that fiscal responsibility meant not just his totals but his priorities. Of course, within Reagan's moral economy, that was exactly what fiscal responsibility did mean; but Congress did not agree. To everyone's surprise, Senate leaders now had to take sides on the veto. Hatfield flew back to Washington on a red-eye flight to lead the override forces.

Nobody can say exactly what shaped that vote. An administration leader said, simply, "They'd [the Republicans] been up the mountain too many times." A House Republican staffer who was deeply involved said, "It was just a tactical error by OMB. What overrode the veto was just the older Americans' money. I never regarded that as other than a tactical success by the elderly lobby…. It proved nothing but don't screw around with the elderly."

Certainly part of Reagan's problem was money for jobs for the elderly. The program, that no one except Stockman wanted to close down, was out of funds. Even Reagan, after vetoing, backed off and explained he had not known about the older Americans money. Mark Hatfield used money for the elderly as an example of why Congress should set priorities:

I have swallowed hard many times. I have literally held my nose on occasion in order to be a part of the majority party … to demonstrate the capability of the majority to govern….

There comes a time in a person's life when conscience and principle transcend all the affections and loyalties of the party and to one's president….

The President may later claim an oversight, but we cannot…. The question is simple and straightforward. Will the Congress, which passed this measure by substantial majorities, kowtow to David Stockman in his singleminded desire to eliminate programs of great value and importance to the people of this Nation, or will Congress assert its own priorities and prerogatives and responsibilities?^[14]

Even Senator Domenici supported the override. The stakes had been exaggerated on both sides, he argued; clearly the bill was no budget buster so there was no point to a confrontation that would shut down the civil service. Howard Baker supported the president but without urgency. "They did their regular whip checks," one aide recalled, "but did not make it a big issue." When the vote was taken, the Senate overrode the veto, 60 to 30.

In politics, why something happened may be less important than why people think it did. Robert Michel's interpretation was telling: "The principle reason we lost was that you cannot make a good argument that

Congress was busting the budget. You couldn't make a good argument on the numbers. Maybe, for the long haul, the administration could learn something from this"^[15] Indeed. One lesson was that Conte and Hatfield could beat the White House. Another was that legislators were much less susceptible to pressure when they could not accurately be accused of swelling the deficit. Unlike events in 1981, Congress, not Stockman, was keeping score; if a bill fit Congress's scorekeeping, a veto might yield only an embarrassing defeat.

The supplemental veto override of September 10, 1982, therefore, was a watershed in the battle over priorities. The override also revealed the strength of pressure to restrain deficits. It succeeded where others failed because total spending fell below the amount requested. Congress would not explicitly increase deficits.

Appropriators, meanwhile, had been working on FY83 appropriations. The House committee had always taken pride in appropriating (by hook or by crook) less than the president requested. But Reagan went too far; the second session of the 97th Congress ended up appropriating $7 billion more, including later revisions, than the administration's estimates over the course of 1982. Congress kept the increase that low by chopping $18 billion on the defense side; in fact, it appropriated about 10 percent more for domestic discretionary programs than the president had requested. The committees treated the president's proposals not as a neutral upper bound but as a partisan position, worth consideration only to the extent that Reagan and his partisans in Congress could force its consideration.

Without the president's budget as a guide, appropriators resorted to two other standards. One was the previous year's policy, expressed as the CBO baseline. The huge deficits made spending above that level taboo, but, because of the recession, cuts below it were also questionable. The other standard was the spending allocated to the appropriations committees under the first budget resolution. They acknowledged that the resolution's totals constrained them but refused to accept budget committee assumptions about the line items.^[16] They ignored the resolution's priorities, being quite blunt about their opposition to domestic cuts.

Appropriators established the priorities within their allotted spending through the budget act 302(b) allocation process. Under 302(b), each committee had to report a division of the resolutions totals among its subcommittees. In 1982 hardly anyone outside the appropriations committees knew what a 302(b) was. Yet the 302(b) within Appropriations would soon become almost a second budget process, potentially as contentious as that of setting priorities in budget resolutions. Conflict was limited because entitlements and revenues were excluded. Yet, in terms

of results—particularly defense versus domestic—the 302(b)s were very important because appropriations spend money; budget resolutions do not.

In both House and Senate, full committee staffers would go to each subcommittee and ask the clerks how much they "needed." Clerks would consult with their chairs, who usually checked in with the ranking minority and other subcommittee members. Some subcommittees would accept Budget Committee assumptions as guidelines; most would not. Subcommittee chairs had to trust the "big" chairman's judgment of what kind of distribution would be both supported by other leaders and helpful to passage on the floor. A House subcommittee chairman commented that "it's a very subtle process. It really works out to be the staff acting as buffers with all the subcommittee chairmen." Members defer to the staff and Chairman Whitten because "it's easier. It avoids the recriminating and hostility."

House subcommittees reported bills that purported to spend less than the 302(b) allocations. Rather than let underestimations of entitlements force reductions in discretionary spending, subcommittees wanted to force Stockman to raise his estimates. Although the bills more or less conformed to the budget resolution, amounts were well over the president's budget in many categories. Appropriators and Democratic leaders, therefore, had to devise a way around the president's veto.

We do not know if anyone plotted the subsequent strategy explicitly; perhaps no one needed to. Our sources claim it happened naturally. House Appropriations held the DOD bill hostage pending satisfactory settlement on other contentious measures. The DOD subcommittee waited until early December before reporting out its measure, but everything else was reported out by September 29. In the end, the most contentious domestic-spending bills would be wrapped into a continuing resolution package with defense; if Reagan vetoed, therefore, he would be vetoing something he badly wanted as well as activities he proposed. This use of the continuing resolution would informally but significantly modify the budget process.

As Congress passed TEFRA and the supplemental FY82 appropriations and as FY83 appropriations worked their way through the process, Congress also had to pass the second reconciliation bill. A second reconciliation? one might ask. Wasn't the whole idea of reconciliation to put everything into one big package? Well, yes, that is what everybody said. In 1981 all the commentators remarked on the brilliant strategy of one big vote, but it required the House leadership's cooperation, which was no longer (in fact, far from) forthcoming. Democratic leaders decided that there was no reason to make life easy for their opponents by creating

a package. Instead, they brought up separate reconciliation bills for separate votes.

Nothing interesting happened in the separate votes on Veterans and Banking, but the agriculture committees became creative. The budget resolution assumed that food stamps and other nutrition programs would be reduced. The Senate committee mostly complied, although its food stamp savings were less than convincing. With the Commodity Credit Corporation hemorrhaging and farmers in real trouble, Senate Agriculture also felt it could do something more constructive. The Senate side endorsed changes in farm programs of the "pay now to save later" variety. Encouragement of farm exports and controls on production would cost money up front but would also raise prices and reduce yields, thereby increasing farm incomes and (hopefully) reducing federal obligations under the commodity loan and price-support programs. The House committee cut food stamps less and projected billions in savings from new efforts to reduce yields of milk, wheat, and corn.^[17] In the short run, the wheat and corn plans would have put cash directly in the hands of farmers.

OMB claimed that the House committee and CBO savings estimates were off by about $3 billion. In fact no one knew. The administration's credibility on the subject was limited; after all, OMB had projected spending cuts in 1981 and now in the course of 1982 was to request nearly $17 billion in extra funding for the CCC (the $10 billion in FY82 supplementals and another $6.7 billion in December). Meanwhile, something had to be done about both costs and the farmers, so the House ignored OMB's criticisms. The Agriculture Committee proposals passed easily. The only strong challenge was on food stamps, where Delbert Latta's larger reductions were defeated when enough gypsy moths voted with the Democrats to balance boll weevil defections.

The Post Office and Civil Service Committee, which was expected to cap Civil Service Retirement (CSR) COLAs at 4 percent, not only refused to do so but proposed minimal other savings in place of that cap. It thus became the first committee to defy reconciliation. The committee's bill was brought to the floor under a rule that kindly allowed Republicans to undo the damage with an amendment placing the 4 percent cap on the pensions of two million politically active federal retirees (and, by extension, another two million military retirees). "We are not considering reconciliation in the context of fiscal responsibility," complained Minority Leader Michel. "We are being forced to consider individual bills tailored to embarrass and frustrate those in the House who supported the budget resolution in June." It was convenient to forget that Republicans had forced a similar situation in 1980. Leon Panetta replied that "members

cannot come here and support a budget resolution that calls for certain cuts and then hide from the ability to vote up or down on those cuts."^[18] "I challenge you to offer the amendment" to reduce CSR COLAs, chided Post Office and Civil Service Committee Chairman William Ford (D-Mich.).^[19] Republicans were not about to take that dare. They challenged the rule but lost 240 to 170; the Post Office Committee package then passed with equal ease.

The conference agreement followed congressional inclinations to restrict agriculture production, interfering with the market. It met civil service pension targets through some extremely creative drafting. CBO had to score the package as meeting the targets, but in the end it wasn't close.^[20] The final bill claimed savings of $13.6 billion over three years, substantially more than the committees had been ordered to achieve. Nobody could tell if the claim were true. The bill was generally reported as a victory for Reagan and the budget process, but it is a strange set of cuts that hurts few constituents. As on TEFRA, the administration had negotiated unsuccessfully on programs.

Getting Through the Election

After reconciliation and the September veto override, Congress had to finish up FY83 appropriations so it could recess for the election. Both Speaker O'Neill and Senate Majority Leader Baker were tempted to wrap up everything for the year in the continuing resolution, but the administration refused. On the day House Appropriations reported out its CR, the president called for a lame-duck session. Reagan explained his demand in procedural terms, deploring the attempt "to run the Federal Government without a proper budget." Tip O'Neill scoffed, "You know what happened, the defense figures are so much lower, and they don't want them."^[21]

No one likes lame-duck sessions. Howard Baker apparently figured that whatever deal could be cut with the House could be done as easily before the election as after. Barring Republican gains in November—which, with unemployment headed over 10 percent, seemed unlikely—there was no reason to wait. But the president's procedural argument, supported by such unlikely allies as the New York Times, was hard to counter. Baker and O'Neill grudgingly agreed to the postelection session.

The House, therefore, with support from some GOP leaders, passed a short-term continuing resolution 242 to 161. In the Senate, Appropriations Committee members set defense spending at their own desired level, tacked a few authorizations on to the bill, and reported it out. In a thirteen-hour session on September 23, senators rejected all major Democratic spending amendments but added a miscellany of authorizing

measures. Proponents were grabbing seats on the CR train. Disgusted, Jamie Whitten asserted that the result "attacked the whole idea of being a continuing resolution—it's a catchall legislative bill."^[22] Not for the last time.

House conferees realized they could not get away with keeping defense at FY82 levels. The prodefense mood had been eroded but not ended. They settled for allowing DOD to spend at a rate of about $229 billion for the year, albeit with restrictions on some new procurement. The Pentagon was thus assured a 14 percent nominal spending increase, quite substantial because inflation would be under 5 percent. Nevertheless, DOD was unhappy because the spending level and restrictions on procurement represented substantial changes from its request. In our opinion the giant FY83 request had made the final increase seem less huge. For domestic spending, in contrast, the status quo, hemmed in by recession and deficit, was the implicit standard.

Legislators' attention turned to—though it had never really left—the campaign.

The Election of 1982

In 1981 Republicans had thought that 1982 might be the year when they finally captured the House. The president's party normally lost seats in a midterm election, but, if a political realignment were in progress, 1982 could be, like 1934, the exception to the rule. After the 1980 census, redistricting would shift congressional seats from the declining Democratic Frostbelt to the booming Republican Sunbelt.

The Republicans had a further advantage in the Senate, where only 12 of their seats but 21 Democratic seats were at stake. Republicans had also developed a superior campaign apparatus: The GOP could raise more money than the Democrats. That did not ensure that Republican candidates would have more money than their opponents, for Democratic incumbents could generate substantial contributions. But it did mean that Republican challengers would be better funded than Democratic challengers. The Republican National Committee not only provided campaign assistance in each district, but it also helped to recruit attractive candidates, guaranteeing them money enough to make the race, and even training them in electioneering. The Democratic National Committee could not begin to match such efforts. All those Republican advantages only limited damage at the polls, exacerbated by an unemployment rate that hit 10.8 percent in November.

Republicans would complain that Democrats blunted the effect of population shifts to the sunbelt by the hoary political tactic of the gerrymander (named, not quite fairly, for Elbridge Gerry, governor of Massachusetts

in 1811). In states where they controlled both houses of the legislature and the governorship, Democrats drew new district lines that helped them stay in charge by concentrating Republican voters in as few districts as feasible. Republicans did the same where they could, but they controlled fewer (or smaller) states. Thus the GOP gerrymander in Indiana hardly compensated for the Democrats' plan in California.^[23] Nevertheless, Republican advantages in campaign resources and plain good luck enabled them to win more seats in the House and Senate than their smashing defeat in the popular vote would normally have allowed.

In 1982, as in 1980, most close Senate races—those decided by 2 percent or less—went to the GOP. The GOP held on to its 54 to 46 edge, although roughly 43,000 votes in five states (Virginia, Rhode Island, Missouri, Nevada, and Vermont) would have given the Senate to the Democrats. In the House, the public voted Democratic 57 to 40 percent, a margin that would normally create a landslide in the districts. Republicans escaped with a loss of "only" twenty-six seats—low given the poor economy, but double the norm and enough to restore Tip O'Neill's reliable majority. In the states, Democrats gained seven governorships for a 34 to 16 edge and gained full control of six more legislatures for a total of thirty-four.

The election gave Tip O'Neill control of the House; without shifting, the balance in the Senate was less secure. Columnist Mark Shields pointed out that the problem for Republicans was not their losers but their winners: winning senators such as Danforth, Durenberger, Chaffee, Stafford, and Weicker had run away from the president to save their skins. "In politics," Shields wrote, "which is the art of the imitative as well as of the possible, that lesson will not be lost on any of the 19 Republican Senators facing reelection campaigns in 1984."^[24]

Using his nautical storm theme yet again, Reagan and his party had tried to stave off disaster by urging voters to "stay the course." Sure, the ship of state had drifted into a gale, but that was the fault of the previous skipper and crew. If the ship were steered straight ahead, it would emerge into bright sunlight. On October 13 Ronald Reagan went on television to defend his record. He argued that the cure of economic problems caused by government spending required time. The administration's policies were working on everything except unemployment ("always a lagging indicator in times of recession"). The next recovery would be "built to last." Congress, of course, would have to help by such measures as honoring its "pledge" to save three dollars in outlays for every dollar in new taxes.

But it isn't an easy job, this challenge to rebuild America and renew the American dream…. It can be tempting, listening to some who would go

back to the old ways and the quick fix. But consider the choice. A return to the big spending and big taxing that left us with 21 ½ percent interest rates is no real alternative. A return to double-digit inflation is no alternative. A return to taxing and taxing the American people—that's no alternative. That's what destroyed millions of American jobs. Together we've chosen a new road for America.

In the Democrats' televised response, Senator Donald Riegle of Michigan declared:

The President says, "Stay the course." But Democrats feel that it's time to change the course…. Every month since the President and the Republicans got their program adopted a year and a half ago, unemployment has skyrocketed. Why would the Administration want to stay this course? Maybe because so many of the top officials in the Administration are millionaires who have no understanding of what life is like for most Americans.

Maybe it's because they have their eyes so fixed on the ticker tape on Wall Street that they don't see the growing pile of pink slips and foreclosure notices shutting down Main Street.

The truth is that this Administration has created two courses: one of them a very fast economic track for the few, the other filled with potholes and roadblocks for the rest of us.

That's why staying the course makes sense to them: because they're not paying the price. You are.^[25]

Riegle appealed to the traditional Democratic voter. In politics votes, not dollars, counted; for the Democrats the government rather than the economy had been the place of fairness. The party's long-term problem was that Democrats had grown suspicious of that government as well. In 1982, however, the Democrats reclaimed most of their old constituency. Reaganomics might be okay in the abstract, but unemployment in the concrete was terrible.

NBC's election day sample reported that 39 percent of 12,000 respondents believed that Reaganomics has "helped the country," and 40 percent said it had hurt. The president's job performance showed 52 percent disapproval and 48 percent approval. Reagan and Reaganomics did even this well because, another poll showed, 46 percent blamed the recession on "the situation Reagan inherited," while only 33 percent blamed "Reagan and his policies." In the NBC/AP poll, only 6 percent called Reagan's policies a success, but 50 percent declared that they "needed more time."^[26]

At the level of theory, voters were not so sure the president was wrong. They liked him personally. With unemployment over 10 percent, however, those closest to joblessness remembered that Democrats were their historic allies. Democrats once again were heavily favored over Republicans as the party to reduce unemployment. Democrats gained most

among Catholics, union members, and those with no college education, all of whom had deserted Jimmy Carter when he engineered a recession.^[27] They were mobilized by leaders of unions and civil rights movements; turnout increased for the first time in years as these voters protested the new turn in policy.

Although the depression (so, Louis Harris reported, most voters considered the state of the economy) brought voters back to Democrats, it did not create a groundswell for big new social programs. There was no mandate for an alternative Democratic program. Californian Democratic Senator Alan Cranston, his party's whip, concluded that "this election was a call for moderation and modification, not for a return to old-style liberalism."^[28]

Republicans agreed in their own way, seeing the message as not rejecting the premises of Reaganomics but showing their concern about unemployment. Minority Leader Bob Michel narrowly survived the election. "We've listened and learned, and we will take what we've learned back to Washington," Michel told his constituents. "There will have to be some adjustments, some modifications in the things we are doing. No question about it."^[29]

Politicians are a creative lot; and any situation, however bleak, is an opportunity for someone. The election of 1982 seemed mainly to guarantee stalemate, but Drew Lewis and James Howard had an answer for legislators who wanted to do something about jobs without rejecting Reaganomics.

A Lame Duck Takes Wing, Sputtering

Drew Lewis was secretary of Transportation; James Howard (D-N.J.) was chairman of the House Committee on Public Works and Transportation. Lewis and Howard wanted to spend money on roads, bridges, and mass transit, key components of the nation's "infrastructure"—the capital plant used to move our goods, treat our waste, or store our water. The projects involved are the traditional subject of "pork-barrel" politics, the "internal improvements" beloved by Henry Clay, that dated back to the building of canals and roads at the beginning of our history.

House Public Works has long been the prototypical pork-barrel committee. Contrary to an overwhelming deluge of political rhetoric, spending on such projects had not grown but—as a proportion of national product—had been halved during the 1960s and 1970s.^[30] Governments instead shifted resources from public works to transfer payments for the elderly, to health, to education (due to the baby boom and Sputnik), and to antipoverty programs. These new responsibilities crowded out the old ones as government at all levels met resistance to raising taxes.

Spending that could be postponed, therefore, was; that meant less for highways, bridges, sewers, and the like. It was easy neither for Democrats to explain why, when money was more plentiful, these essential services had been neglected nor for Republicans to explain why, when they were in control, they allowed these building blocks of society to decay.

Secretary of Transportation Drew Lewis cared more about highways than sewers. Highway spending had shrunk, in real terms, mainly because the gasoline tax, which financed the Highway Trust Fund, had not been raised since 1959. Lewis felt that after twenty-two years an increase of four or five cents a gallon, from the existing four cents, could be justified. It would be a "user fee"; the people who use the highways pay the gas tax. James Howard and many urban Democrats agreed with the need for higher spending on transportation, but they were less interested in highways. To urban Democrats, cars and highways were middle-class commodities while subways and buses were working-class. Democrats also were uneasy with the gas tax, which was not at all progressive. For years, city representatives had argued that mass transit took pressure off the highway system, that types of transit were fungible, and that cities should be able to choose. Cities had little place to put interstate highways. Many city people bought gasoline, and, perhaps more important, there were lots of urban senators and representatives. By allowing some new gas tax money to go to mass transit, Lewis won liberals' support.

Lewis, Howard, and others worked to bring infrastructure needs to public attention. In 1981 the National Governors Association published a report, "America in Ruins," which claimed that up to two-thirds of the nation's towns and lacked the facilities to accommodate new economic growth.^[31] Then Republican and Democratic legislators injected the need for new capital spending into the budget debate. Transportation Department officials, in the unusual position (for this administration) of having a program advocate as secretary, lobbied for new spending. The media also joined the campaign. Newsweek titled its August 2, 1982, issue, "The Decaying of America," beginning its story with a vision of the chaos that would be caused if a main water tunnel were to crack beneath New York City.^[32] The publicity campaign succeeded.

Now, recognizing a problem did not mean (especially if you were Ronald Reagan or David Stockman) that the federal government should pay to solve it. It might be left to the states and localities, or it might wait for economic recovery. Even if federal action were demanded, spending and tax increases could be avoided by shifting funds from lesser priorities. Therefore, on May 18, a day after Howard had reported the bill out of his committee, the president turned down Lewis's proposal. Lewis worked to reverse Reagan's decision, but on September 28, in

response to a question at a press conference, the president declared that "unless there's a palace coup and I'm overtaken or overthrown, no, I don't see any necessity" for a gas tax increase.^[33]

The election accomplished what the National Journal called "Political Alchemy: 26 fewer Republican seats in the House plus 10.4 percent unemployment transforms an unacceptable gasoline tax into an acceptable user fee."^[34] In another bit of alchemy, the infrastructure bill became a jobs bill. Legislators in both houses and both parties saw Lewis's proposal as a job provider that could not be criticized as "make-work." Dan Rostenkowski endorsed the idea; the Speaker promised to send something over to the Senate during the lame-duck session where, "if they don't do anything, the onus is on them."^[35] On November 18 Howard Baker announced he and Tip O'Neill would work out a bipartisan jobs bill; on November 22 they endorsed the basic outlines of the Lewis and Howard proposal.

The president wanted private, rather than governmental, spending to lead the way out of the slump. He suggested that the July 1983 tax cut be moved up to January. Howard Baker and Bob Michel immediately told Reagan they did not have the votes.^[36] November 23 the president finally jumped on the infrastructure bandwagon: "There's no question but obviously there will be some employment with it," he declared, "but it is not a jobs bill as such. It is a necessity. It's a problem that we have to meet, and we'd be doing this if there were no recession at all."^[37] (The president did not explain why the infrastructure bill was a necessity in November and heresy in September.) Robert Dole, skeptical of spending but recognizing the politics, was more straightforward: the transportation package was, he commented, "the best possible jobs bill that could be devised.^[38]

In politics, agreement on a proposal may substitute for agreement on purposes. If the objectives of the winning coalition are too diverse, however, they may undermine the initial agreement. With all the major party leaders behind it, the bill seemed likely to pass.^[39] Yet conflict about purposes and shortness of time almost enabled opponents to scuttle it.

By early December, Democrats had developed a $5.4 billion plan for "light" public works. The administration then had to explain why one jobs bill was good and required Republican loyalty, while another, which would create jobs more quickly, was bad and required Republican opposition.

On the transportation bill itself, the administration strongly opposed subsidies for mass transit operations; if the users could not pay at least operating (as distinguished from capital or investment) expenses, then the systems probably should not exist. Mass transit proponents argued that users could not pay and that the consequences of letting big city

transit systems go under were too terrible to contemplate. For their part, some Democrats wanted to replace the gas tax increase by repealing part of the third-year tax cut. If either operating subsidies were removed or the income tax cut scaled down, however, the coalition might fall apart. In addition, the bill had myriad consequences disliked by the trucking industry and, therefore, the Teamsters—two powerful lobbies. And it was almost universally condemned by the economics fraternity. New CEA Chairman Martin Feldstein told the president and everyone else who would listen that the gas tax bill would just siphon jobs from the private sector. Democrats Walter Heller, Charles Schultze, and Otto Eckstein joined the chorus of skeptics.^[40] These objections helped justify the resistance of a small band of conservatives who felt that nearly all domestic government spending was bad and that new taxes were worse. When he jumped on the infrastructure bandwagon, they believed Ronald Reagan had abandoned his principles.

The growing continuing resolution became the second major controversy of the lame-duck session. Disagreements over defense and federal/ congressional pay threatened to torpedo it.

The defense disputes involved not just money but policy. House liberal leaders wanted to kill at least one of two nuclear aircraft carriers, the B-1 bomber and, most of all, the MX missile. If they could not do so, defense savings would have to come out of combat readiness, like spare parts, and there was little support for that.

All these weapons could be attacked on strategic grounds: the carriers were too vulnerable to attack by missiles; the B-1 as adding little to the B-52s, and outmoded as soon as the "Stealth" bomber came on line; the MX as a potential first-strike weapon, vulnerable to Soviet attack, and therefore destabilizing. They could also be defended: the carriers were the core of the Navy's strategy for projecting power around the world; the B-1 was better than the aging B-52s and more likely to be produced than the Stealth; the MX was a counterforce weapon and, within the bizarre world of "arms control" reasoning, necessary so it could be bargained away.

Liberals lost badly in Appropriations on the carriers and B-1, but $988 million for five production-line MX missiles survived only because three MX opponents were unable to attend the vote. The MX was vulnerable: production funds could be reduced without eliminating research, development, and test money; it was possible to send a cautionary message to the president with that vote; but most important, no one knew where to put the missiles once they began producing them.

MX had gone from the "racetrack"—100 missiles shuttled among 1,000 silos in Nevada and Utah, so the Russians wouldn't know where to shoot—to "dense pack"—all the missiles would be placed in silos fairly

close together so the explosion from knocking out one missile would blow up incoming missiles, thereby protecting the ones that remained in the ground. Members of Congress were skeptical. Charlie Wilson's comment that the pro-MX arguments "sound like PAC-Man" struck a responsive chord. Even three of the five members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff opposed what some congressmen called "Dunce Pack."^[41]

When Don H. Clausen (R-Calif.) invoked the memory of Pearl Harbor in a traditional argument for preparedness, Carroll Hubbard, Jr., added that "right or wrong, the words 'Here come the Russians' nowadays do not scare Kentuckians half as much as 'Here come the creditors.'"^[42] The House accepted Addabbo's amendment to delete funds for MX production, 245 to 176. Both Addabbo and occasional MX critic Les Aspin conceded that, if the basing issue were resolved, the administration would get the missile.^[43] For the first time since World War II, however, a house of Congress had even temporarily denied the president a major weapon.

The major controversy over the Transportation Act was about its tax provisions. Trucking interests objected to the truck charges; conservatives objected to any taxes at all; liberals, led by Richard L. Ottinger (D-N. Y.) and Henry Reuss (D-Wis.), wanted to replace the gas tax increase with a cap on the third-year tax cut, in effect repealing that cut in the upper brackets. House leaders concluded that the tax section of the bill was too vulnerable, that any change in it might unravel the whole package, and that the tax section therefore should be offered without allowing amendments. Thus, floor conflict centered on the rule, which was upheld by a close (197 to 194) margin. The bill passed by a 262 to 143 margin that belied the pitfalls it had avoided.

House Democratic leaders still wanted to attach extra jobs spending to the continuing resolution. On December 10 House Appropriations reported out a new CR with a $5.4 billion jobs bill attached, including $1 billion in new programs. In debate on the floor, Silvio Conte reported that Reagan had promised to veto the CR if it included jobs spending. Democratic leaders again saw no reason to back down early. They managed to defeat Conte's motion to delete the jobs sections, 215 to 191. The CR passed by an even narrower 204 to 200 that included 13 votes from an assortment of not overwhelmingly liberal Republicans who may have wanted to go home.

In spite of the jobs battle and a narrow deletion of funds for the controversial Clinch River breeder reactor, the CR's greatest controversy was congressional pay. Here we have to go back a bit because we have been skirting the subject.

Because legislators are normally scared to raise their own pay, they sometimes look for less visible ways to increase their compensation; these

in turn are attacked by members looking for a safe issue with which to get some publicity. In 1981 the Senate managed to sneak through a large tax break for congressional living expenses, replacing the old, insufficient provision with a new, more generous one. Senators also eliminated the existing limit on honoraria from speeches and the like, and House members doubled their own limit on honoraria from $9,100 to $18,200.

It could not last; with members of Congress leading the way, the tax break became the subject of maneuvers on the final FY82 CR that continued throughout the battle on the "urgent" supplemental that finally passed in July. Senators pushed to return to the old tax provision as irritated House members tried to blackmail the senators out of that by reimposing the limit on honoraria. In the final version of the July supplemental, the tax deduction limit won out.

In August Senator Stevens, who headed the Senate subcommittee with responsibility for federal pay issues, tried to tack a byzantine pay raise maneuver onto the reconciliation. He wanted raises for not only his colleagues but also the higher civil servants whose pay was held down by members' inability to raise their own salaries. It failed after a revolt in the House. "Obviously we are in an election period, and it is not a good time to talk about these things," commented Vic Fazio (D-Calif.). The "cap" on salaries, however, was due to expire at the end of FY82. Fazio, chairman of the legislative branch subcommittee of appropriations, made sure that battles were postponed by extending the cap to December 17 in the first CR. He then began a quiet campaign to raise the cap during the lame-duck session. The GAO reported that, if the cap lapsed, under the existing comparability system members would be entitled to a 27.2 percent pay increase.

When the second CR came to the floor, Fazio had left out the pay cap. Two amendments—one by Fazio limiting the pay raise to 15 percent and one by Bob Traxler (D-Mich.) reimposing the cap—were in order. The Fazio amendment passed without comment. Then Traxler's amendment was defeated on a tie vote, but it wasn't easy. The vote was allowed to run well beyond the normal fifteen-minute period. Even the Speaker voted against Traxler. The Congressional Quarterly Almanac reported:

Finally, with the amendment ahead 208-207, lame duck Robert K. Dornan, R-Calif., voted no, and the amendment failed on a 208-208 tie. It was the vote of Dornan and the other 70 lame ducks who voted on the Traxler amendment that sealed its fate. Lame ducks opposed the amendment by 2-1, 24-47. While Republicans overall supported Traxler, 121-65, the 48 Republican lame ducks who were voting opposed his amendment, 21-27.^[44]

Lame ducks, of course, did not have to worry about public opprobrium, therefore giving a parting gift to their more "responsive" colleagues.

Any issue that can unite Tip O'Neill and "B-1 Bob" Dornan is bound to have unusual permutations; more were to come. In order to make the raise more palatable—and to create a bargaining chip with the Senate—the House took the precaution of limiting honoraria to 50 percent of pay. Senators had more prestige than representatives and could make more money from speeches. Naturally, when the CR reached Senate appropriations both the pay and honoraria provisions were deleted. Final action would wait for the conference. But there would be no conference until the CR passed the Senate, which, strangely enough, brings us back to the transportation act. Anybody want to be a congressman? The job is so simple! And rewarding!

Back to the Senate

When the Senate began to debate the transportation act on December 10, Senators Helms, Nickles, and Humphrey filibustered against Howard Baker's motion to consider the bill. On December 13 the Senate invoked cloture 75 to 13, ending debate on the motion to consider while allowing consideration to begin. Aided by the need to consider a raft of amendments, some germane and some not, opponents then began a not-quite-filibuster. Ronald Reagan requested they halt the delaying tactics.^[45] The senators refused. Howard Baker hesitated to move for cloture again because foreclosing amendments might anger potential supporters.

After a series of amendments, up and down, Carl Levin (D-Mich.) moved to extend the period of unemployment benefits. Not exactly a germane subject, but this was the Senate. A motion to table lost, 47 to 50. Opposed to the cost of the benefit extension, GOP leaders decided that maybe cloture was not such a bad idea after all. Democrats then voted against cloture, even though they wanted to pass the transportation act to force a vote on unemployment benefits. Back at square one, Robert Dole had to compromise with Levin. Under Senate rules another two days had to pass before another cloture vote could be taken; Helms and his allies therefore filibustered.^[46]

Because he was afraid that everybody would go home after the CR was passed, Howard Baker wanted the gas tax bill passed before action was taken on the CR. "We're going to pass [the gas tax bill] even if that means that those who are filibustering will shut down the government," he declared.^[47] That probably was fine with Helms and his allies. So on December 16, Baker, blinking first, pulled the transportation act off the Senate floor so as to work on the new CR. The old one would expire the next day, but, because it was a Friday, Baker and friends figured they had through Sunday (December 19) to pass the new CR.

Everything was going smoothly, if slowly, until the Senate neared a

final vote on Saturday night, December 18. Then John East (R-N.C.), responding to an announcement that the Senate would return to the gas tax after disposing of the CR, began a filibuster on the CR. Cloture could not be invoked for two days, so Baker took two steps. First, the Senate appointed conferees to begin negotiations with the House the next morning, even though the Senate had yet to pass its version. Second, Baker sent the senators home to sleep, staying alone in the chamber to listen to Senator East. In the early morning hours, East made a procedural error, and Baker regained control of the floor. On Sunday evening, as the conferees were actually meeting, the Senate approved its version of the CR 63 to 31.^[48]

The president promised to veto the bill if it included a jobs plan; House Democrats were adamant about the MX. Perhaps Reagan could have been talked into accepting jobs in return for getting MX. The new bias against spending won out; the conferees chose no spending and no MX until the dispute over the mode of basing was settled and there was some place to put it. Total defense spending was set at $231.6 billion—$4 billion below the budget resolution and $18 billion below the president's request—a 9 percent real increase.

House members got a raise, and senators did not; but House members' outside incomes were restricted, and senators' were not. Conferees agreed that the CR would expire on September 30, 1982 (end of the fiscal year), meaning that no more action would be required. Senator Hatfield reported that total outlays in the bill might be around $2 billion above the budget resolution. Everyone knew that no one knew for sure. Stockman was quiet about it.^[49]

The only question left was whether the pay deal and MX would scuttle the conference report. In the House not enough members requested a roll call, so the CR sailed through on a voice vote. The filibusterers were quiet in the Senate. National Security Adviser William Clark lobbied for a veto because of the MX. But the White House Legislative Strategy Group recommended that the bill be signed because Republican leaders predicted that a veto would be overridden.^[50] Jack Edwards (R-Ala.) told reporters that he had called the White House and "told them that if they wanted to see the roof come off the Capitol they could veto this bills."^[51] Silvio Conte, who had led the House fight against the jobs bill (and had no use for the MX) warned, "If he vetoes, he'll get a jobs bill like he never saw before … and he won't get what he wants on the MX missile … and I'd lead the fight."^[52]

The president signed the CR on Tuesday, December 21, coyly congratulating Congress for having "completed action on a budget for the full fiscal year before final adjournment." If wrapping most discretionary spending into a CR, while operating under a budget resolution with

economic projections (and thus deficit totals) that were wildly out of whack, qualifies as "completing action," then Reagan may have been correct. Congress would gladly have done the same the year before if he had let them; the president, not they, had changed. "On balance," the president said, "the resolution is a significant achievement in our efforts to control discretionary spending."^[53] What you want depends on what you can get!^[54]

As the CR awaited the president's decision, the Senate returned to work on the Transportation Assistance Act. It required five days and two more cloture votes, but the Senate finally passed both the bill and the conference report. At the battle's end, Reagan personally offered senators rides home on air force planes if they would stay in town long enough to invoke cloture and pass the bill. Five took him up on it; "that's what airplanes are for," commented Russell Long.^[55]

The 97th Congress

At long last, the 97th Congress came to an end. The lame-duck session had passed a major piece of legislation, but few were happy with the experience. An exhausted Howard Baker agreed with defeated Jesse Helms that the session should never have been held.^[56]

Members of Congress had traveled a long way from the dramatic Reagan victories of early 1981; the president's budget had been virtually disregarded; Congress had tied itself in knots. Arguments could be made that each had been successful in 1982. Reagan had won a big military buildup; in the midst of a recession domestic spending had been increased far less than one might expect; and, though forced to raise taxes, he got others to take most of the blame. Democrats at least had stopped the Reagan Revolution; budget balancers had won a major deficit reduction package. Yet no faction was satisfied.

Pragmatic though he could be, Reagan still had to view rejection of his spending cuts as a defeat. From his standpoint TEFRA was a betrayal; his side had been snookered. Preventing new programs was not so great a victory. Even in 1975 facing huge Democratic majorities, Gerald Ford had successfully vetoed a jobs bill in the midst of a recession. Reagan did lock in the military buildup; his high-ball strategy certainly helped. But the final figures had more to do with senatorial than with White House preferences.

Congress had failed to resolve the disjunctions within its own preferences on taxes, spending, and the deficit. The leaders of the Republican Senate had succeeded in pursuing their own version of responsibility: a tax hike, large but scaled-down defense increases, the status quo on poor people's programs. They had failed only on the great

universal entitlements. Still, senatorial preferences, like everyone else's, did not add up to anywhere near a balanced budget.

Outside analysts might call the events of 1982 a reasonable package of compromises, crediting Senate Republicans with the lead role. By their own standards, however, all participants had done poorly. And now the grizzly bear of political animals, social security, was bound to awaken after its election-year hibernation. Soon the government would have to act to ensure the solvency of the giant pension system. Policy would have to be made with a Congress at least as ideologically divided as the 97th had been. Moreover, the deficit would not go away.

Republican Senator Slade Gorton of Washington summarized the situation nicely: "1981 was the Year of the President. 1982 was the Year of the Senate Republicans. 1983," he concluded, referring to a well-publicized film, "is the Year of Living Dangerously."