JUST one week before the 1997 budget deal was officially announced, the Senate Republican Steering Committee convened its pivotal Wednesday strategy lunch in the Madison Room of the Capitol. After unveiling the terms of the agreement, the lead Senate Republican negotiator, Pete Domenici of New Mexico, was confronted with scattered protests from the conservatives present. Phil Gramm of Texas began by going down phony details of the package. Next, freshmen Sam Brownback of Kansas and Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma voiced reservations about a budget package permitting a $70-billion increase in social spending in the first year alone. But neither Domenici nor Majority Leader Trent Lott seemed in the least disturbed by the glaring defects of the plan. After the contentious meeting, Domenici turned to one of the budget-deal skeptics and whispered, “You vote the way you feel you have to; we can always replace your vote with a Democrat’s.”
He wasn’t bluffing. As is happening with frustrating regularity in the 105th Congress, fiscal conservatives are finding themselves on the losing side of the battle. In the case of the budget deal, 14 of the most conservative Republican senators voted no, but they were replaced by 38 Democrats who voted yes. In the House, 26 conservative Republicans voted no, but the large margin of victory was secured by the 132 Democrats who signed on to the Clinton-Lott-Gingrich plan.
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