UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Tuesday, September 27, 1994
7B
GOP to sign contract with America
Democrats predict revert to Reaganism
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Hoping to thwart a major Republican campaign offensive, the White House warned yesterday the House GOP's platform was "warmed-over Reaganism" that would loot Social Security and Medicare to shower tax cuts on the rich.
The White House attack came a day before more than 300 Republican House candidates, a mix of incumbents and challengers, were to gather on the Capitol steps to sign a "Contract with America" that pledges swift action on a 10-point agenda if voters give Republicans a House majority for the first time since 1954.
The contract promises votes early next year on congressional term limits, welfare reform, new anti-crime measures and an array of spending and economic initiatives, from a balanced budget amendment to tax cuts for capital gains and some families.
"This is a fraud and I think the American people need to know that," said White House chief of staff Leon Panetta. "This is horrendous economic policy," added senior Clinton economic adviser Robert Rubin, who called the GOPpolicy a recipe to revive the huge deficits, higher interest rates and sluggish economic growth of the Bush administration.
To back up the White House push, the Democratic National Committee purchased time for radio ads in 20 markets with competitive House contests. The ads say the Republicans are promising "more tax breaks for the rich, forcing devastating cuts in Medicare and Social Security. It's Republican politics as usual."
Republicans labeled the White House presentation "the big lie" and suggested Democrats were panicked because they felt a Republican tide growing with just more than a month to go before the midterm elections. "They have no agenda now because the American people rejected theirs, so all they can do now is whine and carp," said Ed Gillespie, the House Republican Conference spokesman.
But Republicans refused to say specifically where they would find the cuts to balance the budget, leaving them open to the White House assertion that the document was little more than a political gimmick.
House focused solely on the spending and economic aspects of the GOP document, an area even many Republican strategists concede privately is open to criticism.
In its pre-emptive strike, the White
For example, a cost analysis prepared by House Republicans said there are "no costs" to passing a balanced budget amendment and line-item veto.
Labeling that assertion "a flim-flam," Panetta said it would take at least $743 billion in cuts to balance the budget within five years or $1.2 trillion to do it in seven years.
"Do they not have a responsibility then to tell us where they would find these cuts?" Panetta said.
The Republicans' task would be even harder, because budget rules also require them to pay for the tax cuts promised in the contract, including $56 billion to reduce capital gains taxes and $6.5 billion to raise estate and gift tax exclusions — cuts the White House noted would go predominantly to the wealthy.
All told, Panetta said that balancing the budget and delivering the tax cuts would cost $1 trillion over five years, or $1.6 trillion over seven, and that Republicans had detailed proposed cuts that would cover only a sliver of that.
Reforms to limit lobbying,no more ski trips
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — A sweeppackage of reforms banning most gifts to members of Congress and imposing strict new reporting requirements on lobbyists won agreement yesterday from House and Senate negotiators.
The bill appeared to be on a fast track to passage, with action in the House scheduled for today. The Senate is expected to act soon, and supporters said they anticipated no serious opposition.
"This makes a historic change," said Rep. John Bryant, D-Texas, the bill's chief house sponsor. "These limits have never existed before."
At the core of the bill is a requirement that all professional lobbyists, those whose business is to influence government policy, register and disclose who they are working for, how much they are paid and the issues on which they are lobbying.
It would, for the first time, cover not
only the more traditional approach of lobbying in person, but the growing practice of "grassroots" lobbying, generating contacts with Congress by mail, telephone, fax, computer and advertising.
The bill is designed to close loopholes that render the current lobby registration law, in effect since 1947. Of the more than 10,000 lobbyists estimated to work in Washington, fewer than half are registered under that law. And those who do register seldom report meaningful details about their activities.
More explosive than the new lobbying rules are provisions that would ban virtually all gifts to members of Congress from lobbyists and bar acceptance of anything more lavish than a $20 meal from non-lobbyists.
A particular target of Bryant and Senate sponsor Carl Levin, D-Mich., is the free charity golf, tennis and ski outings that have embarrassed lawmakers caught in vacation spots by
Lawmakers still would be able to accept travel expenses if they are related to an official function, such as fact finding or delivering a speech.
television cameras. Those trips, where members of Congress rub elbows with lobbyists, would be outlawed under the bill.
Lobbyists would be barred from giving to a member's legal defense fund, or to a charitable foundation controlled by a lawmaker.
Exemptions from the ban included home-state products given for promotional purposes, inexpensive items like T-shirts, and attendance at certain "widely attended" events like receptions and dinners, and meals and entertainment in a lawmaker's home state.
Public interest groups applauded the bill. Common Cause, the self-styled citizens lobby, called it "amajor breakthrough in the fight to stop lobbyists from financing the lifestyles of members of Congress."
BOSTON — Sen. Edward M. Kennedy is finding himself doing some unusual things this campaign, hanging out with Aerosmith, going negative and running neck-and-neck with a Republican.
The Associated Press
Kennedy to face challenger
Kennedy's opponent is Mitt Romney, an energetic, clean-cut millionaire who is convinced and has convinced other Republican that 1994 is the year Kennedy comes home from Washington for good.
Kennedy hopes they know him as a powerful senator who has fought for education, health care, job training, child care and other issues, and repeatedly steered federal dollars to Massachusetts.
"After many years there are some serious questions being raised, indeed for the first time among his own supporters, about whether it would be best for him to continue or for him to be replaced," said Paul Watanabe, political science professor at the University of Massachusetts-Boston.
Both candidates, for different reasons, are banking on a key premise: Voters know who Kennedy is and what he has done.
"He says longevity, meaning experience, is not a vice but a virtue." Watanabe said. "The prime vulture attached to that clout."
But the picture painted by Romney, son of former Michigan Gov. George Romney, is of an old, out-of-touch liberal who has been in Senate far too long, pushing massive government programs that create problems rather than solve them.
Ronney spent Thursday chatting up Republican fund-raisers in Washington. Nevertheless, to protect his "outsider" image, Ronney says he doesn't want Republican bigwigs coming to Massachusetts to campaign
Earlier this month, the Boston hard rock group Aerosmith performed at a Kennedy fund-raiser.
And, for the first time in 32 years, Kennedy has run negative ads, hitting Romney for his role as a venture capitalist. The two have traded charges for two weeks.
"Ted Kennedy's distorted negative attacks on me are wrong," Romney responded, "and more than anything else, these cynical old-style politics prove he's been in Washington too long."
Senator accused of funneling money
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — A Virginia congressman accused Sen. Robert Byrd of "greed and abuse of power" yesterday for steering 27 percent of next year's funds for special road projects to Byrd's home state of West Virginia.
Hours after the charge was leveled by Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., Byrd agreed to pare back the $95 million he had won for his state by an unspecified amount, citing Congress' need to quickly finish its work for the year.
state.
"It shouldn't hang up over one man's petulance," Byrd said in an interview.
In mounting his latest attack against Byrd, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, Wolf was taking on a man whom he and other foes have long accused of funneling a disproportionate amount of federal money to his small, economically depressed
Byrd, the 76-year-old senior Democrat in the Senate, has not exactly been embarrassed by his colleagues' accusations. He became chairman of the appropriations committee in 1989, a panel that controls one-third of the $1.5 trillion federal budget, and unabashedly promised to steer as much money as he could to West Virginia.
By 1990 he already had overseen bills that poured $1 billion into the state.
Of the $352 million for so-called highway demonstration projects that House and Senate negotiators have put in the 1995 transportation appropriations bill, $95 million was to be for West Virginia before Byrd agreed to the reduction. In each of the past five years, Byrd has usually steered at least 30 percent of the road-building money to his state, Wolf said.
Defense budget up for final vote
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — House-Senate negotiators completed work yesterday on a $244 billion defense budget that includes money for the B-2 bomber, the SR-71 Blackbird spy plane and the C-17 transport.
The defense appropriations bill for the fiscal year beginning Saturday includes most of the military priorities laid out by President Clinton in his budget request.
Final votes on the measure in the House and Senate are expected within the next two weeks.
The measure agreed to in the House-Senate conference committee totals $3.5 billion more than this year's defense appropriations budget. But, when adjusted for inflation, it amounts to roughly level funding or even a slight decrease in buying power.
Negotiators resolved several key areas of disagreement between the House and Senate in the Senate's favor. In some areas where the House favored eliminating or sharply reducing funding requested by Clinton, the Senate supported the president's position.
Ex-United Way head faces accusations
The Associated Press
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The longtime president of United Way, removed from his post over allegations of lavish spending with charity money, was ordered yesterday to stand trial in February on charges he helped loot $1.5 million.
William Aramony has pleaded not guilty to charges he diverted funds to buy a New York City apartment for his girlfriend, among other things.
Aramony, Stephen J. Paulachak, 49, and Thomas J. Merlo, 63, were charged in a 71-count indictment. Paulachak and Merlo also pleaded not guilty. A preliminary hearing was set for Jan. 6.