Helms Deep
Liberals reflect on a conservative icon.

By John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru
August 21, 2001 6:00 p.m.

f 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]."