The problem isn’t that Hillary Clinton talks to Eleanor Roosevelt, it’s that she wants to.
Hard to believe, but there it was: a Democrat standing on the House floor pointing at a chart showing how Republicans have reversed President Clinton’s success at reducing the deficit. Odder still, he wasn’t making it up. The budget resolution recently passed by congressional Republicans includes a spike in the deficit, which is projected to be larger both in 1997 and 1998 than this year. There are innocent explanations for the hiccup, chiefly that the deficit dipped lower than expected this year (perhaps as low as $130 billion). But for Republicans who have made actuarial decreases in the deficit their Holy Grail, it is embarrassing. More embarrassing still, when it seemed that the Energy-Water appropriations bill (the source of ample funding for New Mexico) would have to be cut, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici (R., N.M.) simply added $5 billion more to the overall budget. House Republicans went along, some openly exulting when extra money made its way into their districts. (The first effort by House freshmen to trim back the extra funding with a 1.9 per cent cut in the Interior appropriation bill won just 128 votes.) Some of this is understandable; these are politicians, after all, who have to win re-election. But higher deficits seem to be a dubious way to do it.
Comments