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North Carolina senator Jesse Helms announces tonight that he will
retire from politics, as is widely expected, it will be in some
ways a more important event than James Jeffords's handover of the
Senate to the Democrats. The shift in control did not make the senators
more or less conservative. Helms's retirement will almost certainly
move the Senate leftward, whether he is replaced by a Democrat or
by moderate Republican Elizabeth Dole.
An orgy of
Helms-bashing in the press has already begun and will likely gather
force. Helms has a mixed record on civil rights that can legitimately
be criticized: He was a segregationist back when he was a Democrat,
but it's also true that he was right to oppose most of the "civil
rights" bills he opposed as a senator. But the critics don't
stop there. He's also condemned for pioneering direct mail, which
is bad because it supposedly injected partisan nastiness into a
political system that hadn't been there before (i.e., it helped
conservatives). His anti-abortion rhetoric has also "lowered
standards for political civility," explains one critic, who
goes on to announce with great civility that Helms is "terrifying,"
"only knows the politics of the truncheon," and "can
barely the stomach the democratic process" — that last bit
meaning that he sometimes blocks bills and nominations without floor
votes, something that no other senator has apparently ever done.
So far, the
oddest comment Helms has elicited has been that of the Washington
Post's Helen Dewar and Dan Balz. When they get around to discussing
the influence Helms has had on U.S. foreign policy, they treat his
views with a kind of antiseptic disgust, as if they were putting
on gloves to remove a dead rodent from the garage. They observe
that Helms is known for "opposition to what he regarded as
leftist regimes in Latin America. He was a relentless foe of Cuban
President Fidel Castro." Helms sees Castro as a leftist dictator,
other people don't — it's all a matter of perspective. This is the
kind of moral relativism that made it so hard for Helms and other
Cold Warriors to do their jobs.
In 1997, Fred
Barnes wrote in the Weekly Standard that Helms is second
only to Reagan as the most consequential conservative politician
of his age. He's right. It remains the case that a conservative
with a working spine and brain can accomplish a lot in the Congress.
Which is why conservatives ought to bid Helms a fond farewell from
the Senate — and, while they're at it, encourage Phil Gramm to stay
there.
The
Shrinking Surpluss
The Bush administration released its midsession budget review today.
It's had to revise its estimate of the "on budget" surplus
down to $2 billion for this year. The "off budget" surplus-generated
by Social Security and the Postal Service — is $156 billion. Democrats
say Bush's tax cut is responsible for the decline in the on-budget
surplus.
The administration
has several responses. 1) The total surplus is still the second
largest in history. What the administration is saying here is essentially
that the on budget surplus doesn't matter — that it's not important
to run a surplus beyond the Social Security surplus. 2) Mitch Daniels,
the budget director, noted that it was the Democrats who pushed
for an expanded tax rebate this year. Indeed, they've complained
that the letters accompanying the rebate check unfairly claim credit
for Bush. So why are they now complaining about the effect of that
rebate on the surplus? 3) In any case, the tax cut didn't reduce
the surplus as much as last December's spending spree. The economic
slowdown cut the surplus by $46 billion, tax rebates by an additional
$40 billion, an accounting shift regarding corporate taxes by $28
billion, and some spending bills passed this year by $9 billion.
Last December's appropriations bills increased spending by $50 billion-larger
than any of these other factors.
The administration's
first response, coupled with a remark of Daniels, suggests that
it may be breaking out of the absurd fiscal orthodoxy that has dominated
Washington in the surplus era. Daniels said, "It is growth
that produces surpluses, not vice-versa. And a return to economic
growth will be the focus of the President and the administration
in the months ahead."
And
a Word from Zell Miller
The Georgia Democrat issued a press release today on these matters:
"It was and is a responsible tax cut. If anything, it should
have been larger and kicked in sooner. The tax cut does not get
into the Medicare and Social Security trust funds, as some protest.
What would eat into them is hog-wild spending on other items. That's
where a problem could arise. Let's pass the defense and education
appropriations bills as well as the $300 million prescription drug
benefit as soon as possible, and then let's go on a fast the likes
of which have not been seen since [Gandhi]."
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