The truce won’t last. With a month left to fulfill its ““Contract With America,’’ House Republicans are now beginning to betray their deeply felt differences. Populists are arguing with country-club Republicans, moralists with libertarians, professional politicians with angry citizen legislators. As the House takes up the hard part of the contract – deep spending cuts, term limits and welfare reform – these natural fissures in the party are breaking into the open, testing Gingrich’s diplomatic skills and his promise to deliver results.
Abortion, predictably, is the most divisive issue. Far from mollified, Representative Istook plans to attach a right-to-life amendment to another important bill – this time the welfare-reform legislation scheduled to come to a floor vote. Istook’s amendment, which would ban Medicaid funding for abortions even in the case of rape and incest, is repulsive to House moderates. And they are vowing to boycott all over again, which could defeat the bill.
Precisely to avoid such ideological battles, Gingrich had promised to keep all social issues, like abortion and school prayer, out of the 100 days set aside to vote on the contract. Istook argued that the moderates, who number about 45 of the GOP’s 230 members, are the ones who should have compromised last week, since they are a minority. In his late-night jawboning with Istook, Gingrich had argued that if Republicans couldn’t stick together to pass $17 billion in spending cuts this year, they couldn’t possibly hope to balance the budget, which will require $700 billion in cuts over the next seven years. Istook backed down, but was irked when Gingrich said the moderates were acting out of ““conscience.''
Even if the speaker can once again finesse the conflict over abortion, he faces a seemingly irreconcilable fight over term limits. On this the gap is generational. Although Gingrich put term limits in the contract to win votes, he and other GOP elders privately consider the issue to be a populist eccentricity. Many freshmen, however, owe their seats to campaign promises to enact term limits. They prefer a law forcing lawmakers to step down after six years.
At first, the House leadership pushed for a weak bill that would permit members to serve 12 years, sit out a term, then run again. The bill also overruled the 19 states that have passed stricter measures. Incensed, term-limit advocates began running TV ads accusing the Republican leaders of hypocrisy.
Republican strategist Bill Kristol suggested a compromise: a bill allowing states to set any term limits they want. It seemed like an innocuous solution, but it was apparently too much for Gingrich, who opposed it. Suspecting the leadership of bad faith, many freshmen think Gingrich secretly wants to sandbag the term-limits movement. Finally, after a contentious meeting in Gingrich’s office, Armey fashioned yet another approach. The leadership agreed to permit a vote on a bill crafted by freshman Rep. Van Hilleary. It sets 12-year term limits but would allow states to require shorter terms if they want. To let tempers cool, both sides agreed to wait two weeks to vote. But with many older members opposed, the bill is still 90 votes short of passing.
The GOP’s intramural struggle also threatens to impede passage of the tax cuts promised by the contract. Last week House moderates forged an alliance with about 50 fiscal conservatives to try to scale back the tax cuts, scheduled to come to the floor later this month. The fiscal conservatives worry that tax cuts will swell the federal deficit, while many of the moderates fear that the Republicans will be accused of pandering to the rich. As written, the tax-cut bill would give even well-to-do families, those earning up to $200,000, the $500-per-child tax credit. The two groups want to lower that income ceiling to $95,000. This would reduce the drain on the federal deficit, but it would come as a direct slap at Majority Leader Armey, who believes that tax cuts for the well-to-do stimulate investment and hard work.
Although Gingrich and Armey were regarded as bomb-throwers when the GOP was in the minority, they have been nimble so far about preserving the GOP’s shaky coalition. Gingrich says he likes to operate on the Japanese style of management: let everyone, even the most junior employee, have his say, then step in to forge a consensus. The problem is that congressional lawmakers, increasingly weary and fractious, may not be as attuned to consensus as the average Japanese businessman.
