God weighed in on the budget debate between Congress and the Clinton administration last week, dumping two feet of snow on the nation’s capital shortly after negotiators agreed to end the record three-week government shutdown they engineered.
“You want a government shutdown,” the Great One roared, “I’ll give you a government shutdown!”
There it was: President Clinton, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) with no choice but to lock themselves in a room and work out a budget deal. With the city paralyzed and nothing else to do but babble about the budget, you’d think these guys might manage to hammer out a deal. No, not even divine intervention could help these mighty mortal misfits of official Washington. They broke off talks Tuesday, agreeing to restart negotiations in 10 days and resume playing God with the lives of hundreds of thousands of federal workers.
Republicans and Democrats instead smelled a conspiracy with each falling snowflake. They no more saw the blizzard of 1996 as a prophetic sign than they appreciated the cause-and-effect relationship between furloughs and mortgage payments.
But what a shutdown it was. PCS, SMR and wireless cable auctions stopped. FCC Chairman Reed Hundt, it is rumored, personally offered to drive a Jeep around town to round up auction personnel if Office of Management and Budget Director Alice Rivlin would let the show go on.
So, unable after last Tuesday’s budget talks to compromise on a plan to erase the federal deficit by the year 2002, Republicans and Democrats turned their attention to snow removal.
Again, fundamental fiscal and policy differences between Republican revolutionaries and the administration stalled progress. Senate and House budget chairs, Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) and John Kasich (R-Ohio), respectively, urged that the job’s cost be based on calculations of the Congressional Budget Office. White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta insisted on OMB’s rosier budget assumptions.
Gingrich agreed to clear city streets so long as snow plows also pummeled the Commerce Department. Sen. Ernest Hollings (D-S.C.) said he’d filibuster any snow removal appropriations that did not include American-made pickup trucks.
Hillary, fed up with it all, warned there’d be hell to pay if a path wasn’t cleared in front of the White(water) House.
