Word: shutdown
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WASHINGTON, D.C.: The Senate passed an omnibus spending bill Monday night by a 84-15 vote that came just hours before the beginning of the new fiscal year. President Clinton has said he will sign the bill before the midnight deadline, averting what would have been the third government shutdown in the past year. Unlike last year, when budget battles led to two government shutdowns that proved to be politically costly to Republicans, the GOP leadership this time for the most part gave in to Democratic demands. The bill is similar to the $389 billion measure passed overwhelmingly...
...shutdown naturally distresses a great many people who now must bury old personas and migrate to new remailers. "There's a freedom to speak when you're anonymous," says a 39-year-old woman, a frequent poster to alt.sex.recovery who had used Helsingius' service since its inception. For years her deepest confidants knew her as an145396@anon.penet.fi That cloak of anonymity allowed her to communicate honestly with people for what she says was the first time in her life. Anon.penet.fi allowed lots of people to be heard. Doubtless, some of them will now revert to silence, waiting for the courts...
...best bit of stagecraft in Clinton's virtuoso State of the Union speech: planting in the gallery Richard Dean, a Social Security Administration employee who had heroically saved lives in Oklahoma City. Dean provoked thunderous bipartisan applause--and then G.O.P. consternation when Clinton noted that the Gingrich-inspired government shutdown had later locked Dean out of his office. It was Gore who forcefully advocated the quick appointment of Mickey Kantor as Commerce Secretary after Ron Brown's death; who persuaded Clinton to rediscover the virtues of being pro-environment; who twisted entertainment executives' arms until they agreed to a "voluntary...
Likewise it was Dole who watched silently last fall while the Republican field marshal Newt Gingrich marched his troops to the cliff of a government shutdown and over it. Dole went along, partly because he believed in stapling Clinton to the bargaining table and partly to keep his right wing happy. But by mid-December, Dole was talking to people in Iowa and New Hampshire nearly every day, and he could see that this was silly. Paying people not to come to work? Not paying people to come to work...
Longtime chief of staff Sheila Burke, who shared Dole's skepticism, recalls informing her boss on New Year's Day that another government shutdown was imminent. Dole turned to her, furious, "Did it ever occur to anybody that there are people out there who live paycheck to paycheck?" Dole spun away, saying to no one in particular, "This is the last time." And it was. On Jan. 2 he walked onto the Senate floor in the morning and just ended it. He didn't tell anyone. Didn't call anyone in the leadership. Didn't use any of the mechanisms...