Word: gramm-rudman
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What they and the rest of official Washington were talking about was a novelty called Gramm-Rudman.* Passed by a harried Congress and signed by an equally harried President Reagan during the confusions of the pre-Christmas season, Gramm-Rudman decreed an end to the budget deficits that have become a Washington way of life over the past two decades. Right now. Congress knows that the deficit must be cut, but naturally dreads deciding on its own whose funds should be cut. So the legislators left it to U.S. Comptroller General Charles Bowsher to trim $11.7 billion from this year...
...Gramm-Rudman bill! This simplistic cure-all had been lying around since last summer, gaining a modest amount of support. Now, as an amendment to the bill increasing the debt limit, it became what Co-Sponsor Rudman wryly called "a bad idea whose time has come." There was no time for committee hearings; many members never read the measure that gave away their responsibilities, but they overwhelmingly voted for it; final approval came at 10:15 p.m. on the eve of the prospective default, and then it was soon time to go home for Christmas. Yes, Virginia, there...
Last week's negotiations are nothing, however, compared with the coming struggle over taxes. For Gramm-Rudman does not command specific budget cuts; it only commands that the Government stop spending money it doesn't have. So why can't taxes be raised? Mainly because Ronald Reagan is passionately opposed to raising them, and because House Democrats, whom Reagan likes to blame for past increases, will not cooperate unless Reagan asks them to do so. Reagan will have to "take the hard knocks," as Speaker Tip O'Neill put it. Or as one Senate G.O.P. strategist suggested, "We all have...
Washington optimists--and there still are a few--like to view Gramm-Rudman as nothing more than a device for applying pressure. As they see it, when the pressure gets high enough a few months from now--meaning when enough special- interest groups rise in rebellion against the threatened cuts--there will occur, as if by magic, what former Budget Director David Stockman used to call "the big fix." This comes when everybody reluctantly agrees to both some budget cuts and some tax increases. One formula being mentioned is known as 20-20-20, meaning $20 billion in new taxes...
...much dissension within each House and within each party. In the White House, there is serious question whether Reagan fully understands what is involved. There is also a dearth of both acumen and independent thinking around him. If this analysis is correct, there is good reason to believe that Gramm-Rudman will turn out to be either a means of ravaging many Government functions, including quite legitimate ones, or a malign illusion that merely defers the real day of judgment on the deficit...