This article was reprinted from the April 6, 1996 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.
That is how more and more voters see the majority- Republican 104th Congress. The shell of populist rhetoric has been stripped away. The right wing extremists are waging war on programs that benefit working people to pay for tax cuts and corporate welfare for the rich.
Citizen Action recently released two reports based on records in the files of the Federal Election Commission on corporate PAC contributions to incumbent lawmakers. One, titled "Business As Usual," reveals that corporations poured $83.9 million into the election coffers of GOP and Democratic incumbents in 1995 - not even a Congressional election year. Republicans raked in $57.9 million while Democrats garnered $36.7 million. By the time it is over, big business will spend 10 times that much attempting to buy the 1996 elections.
Ed Rothschild, a Citizen Action spokesman, said, "The corporate and special interests have succeeded in buying the kind of Congress they have always wanted. Under the Republicans, Congress has become nothing more than a bazaar where favors and prizes are peddled to the highest bidder. Corporate campaign contributions clearly fueled the Republican agenda, but that agenda has gone too far for ordinary Americans."
The report charges that House Speaker Newt Gingrich received $1,866,609, including $218,274 in corporate PAC money. House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) received $770,955, including $200,671 in PAC money. The only Democrat among the top 15 PAC recipients is Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.) who has opposed the GOP's so-called Contract With America.
Citizen Action found that the corporate PACs have increased their giving to Republican lawmakers by a whopping 110 percent while cutting contributions to Democrats by 41 percent. Similarly, in the Senate, corporate PACs increased giving to Republicans by 65 percent and slashed their contributions to Democrats by 65 percent.
"These sharp changes in giving," said Rothschild, "reflect not only the changeover from Democrats to Republicans, but a dogged determination to sweep away laws protecting the health and safety of all Americans and create new giveaways to America's most powerful corporations."
In an unprecedented display of venality, GOP lawmakers are now inviting corporate lobbyists to draft legislation which serves the interests of the corporations they represent.
- A corporate front called the Coalition on Occupational Safety and Health (COSH) delivered 30 recommendations for watering down OSHA health and safety enforcement to Rep. Cass Ballenger (R-N.C.). He introduced it in the House as the Safety and Health Improvement Act. COSH members gave the extremists $3.6 million including $64,750 to Tom DeLay and $31,000 to Majority Leader Dick Armey, both Texas Republicans.
- Golden Rule Insurance Company gave over $1 million to House Republicans and the Republican leadership including Gingrich's GOPAC. Other insurance companies, HMOs and the American Medical Association gave $3.5 million including $62,750 to DeLay and $43,000 to Gingrich.
It was a payback for a Republican bill to allow senior citizens to opt out of Medicare with so-called Medical Savings Accounts. MSA's would be a bonanza worth billions of dollars for the insurance companies but would cause Medicare to "wither on the vine" in Gingrich's words.
- The National Restaurant Association pushed vigorously for revisions in the Fair Labor Standards Act. They favored relaxing the ban on child labor. They want the statutory 40 hour work week weakened or repealed. They oppose the minimum wage. After a lobbyist for the group was permitted to testify, he sent a campaign contribution to Gingrich with a note, "Thanks for the help on today's committee hearing." The House Ethics Committee is investigating. The National Restaurant Association so far has contributed $180,000 to Republicans.
- Rep. Bud Shuster (R-Pa.), chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, last year invited private utility companies that supply drinking water into a House hearing room to draft legislation that would cripple the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act. Excluded were representatives of the Environmental Protection Agency or any environmental group. Shuster then introduced their bill which was soon known as the "Bud Shuster Dirty Water Act." It was killed through an all-out mobilization of environmental groups. Shuster has received at least $655,460 in corporate PAC money.
- GOP extremists are pushing legislation that would allow corporations to dip into their workers' pension funds to the tune of $40 billion even though many pension trust funds are dangerously depleted and some, such as LTV, have defaulted. The Pension Benefits Guaranty Corporation has identified a number of giant corporations that would benefit from this plan. In the first 10 months of 1995, these firms gave Congress $839,291.
The Citizen Action report continues, "While Republicans have worked to include special interests in their efforts, they have also let these interests know from the beginning that participation would not be free." Just before the 1994 elections, Gingrich told corporate PAC officials that if they did not contribute generously to Republican candidates, they would face "the coldest two years in Washington."
After the election, DeLay was assigned to make sure that the corporations paid. DeLay produced a list of the 400 largest PACs ranked by the percentage of funds they gave both Republican and Democratic candidates. "DeLay would point out the PAC's standing in meetings with lobbyists," the Citizen Action report charged.
One lobbyist interviewed for the report declared, "I am being told that the House leadership are scrutinizing to whom companies and business associations are currently giving. Lobbyists who are hedging their bets with an eye to reversal of last November's outcome in 1996 will find the next two years rather lean ones."
DeLay represents Houston - or rather the oil, petrochemical and high tech corporations centered in Houston. He owned Albo Pest Control, a small business specializing in the extermination of cockroaches and other vermin. As the Almanac of American Politics put it, DeLay was "an ardent backer of Vice President Dan Quayle's Competitiveness Council and drafted the regulatory section of the Contract With America."
As approved by a vote of 276-145 on Feb. 24, 1995, DeLay's HR-450 would impose a moratorium on new federal regulations. Four days later, the House approved HR-1022, a bill to require "risk assessments of costs and benefits" for all federal regulations - making it more difficult to regulate dangerous chemicals such as pesticides. A couple of weeks later, the House approved so-called "tort reform" which sharply limits the damages consumers can collect from corporations in product liability lawsuits. Another requires consumers to pay court costs if they lose these lawsuits. The Senate recently approved similar legislation which President Clinton has vowed to veto.
When the Republicans took control of the House, a GOP freshman commented that they had to move fast to push through their "Contract" because "most of us aren't going to be on Capitol Hill for very long." There are straws in the wind that suggest maybe he is right.
The GOP suffered heavy losses in the off-year 1995 elections last November. The special election in Oregon to replace GOP Sen. Bob Packwood was won by Ron Wyden, the first Democratic senator from the state of Oregon in decades. The withdrawal in disgrace of right-wing extremist Rep. Enid Waldholtz (R- Utah), one of the "Gang of 74" GOP freshmen, was another blow.
Gingrich is a politician so loathed these days that the GOP has effectively removed him as the top leader in the House. One opposition lawmaker said Gingrich is the GOP's "crazy uncle in the basement." The scowling Armey, a right-winger more fanatical than Gingrich, has taken his place. The "Contract With America" is rarely mentioned.
Considering their swagger only a year ago, it is hard to believe that these lawmakers have plunged so far so fast. Within 100 days of taking the oath of office two years ago, they had rammed through the House all but one of the 10 points in their Contract With America. The exception was a Constitutional term limit amendment.
Approved was a Constitutional balanced budget amendment. While it is unlikely ever to be added to the Constitution, the hysteria over the federal budget deficit has become a relentless right wing drumbeat. President Clinton has embraced the right wing demand for a balanced budget within seven years. The deficit, they tell us, is the source of everything that is ill in society and a balanced budget is the universal panacea.
It is providing cover for the most sweeping attack ever on Medicare, Medicaid, welfare and other entitlement programs. It is the pillar of the right wing extremists' drive to repeal 60 years of gains in social welfare legislation - including Social Security. The extremists who rave about the federal deficit voted for President Reagan's $1 trillion military buildup and $1 trillion tax cut for the rich which caused the deficits. They reject the idea, enshrined in the preamble of the Constitution, that the government is responsible for the "general welfare."
The Republican leadership knew President Clinton would veto most items in their Contract if they sent them to him as free standing bills. So they attached them as riders to omnibus spending legislation, daring him to veto these money bills. They assumed that Clinton would sign the money bills rather than veto them and shut the government down.
But Clinton did veto these money bills loaded with giveaways to the rich. And when the expected tidal wave of popular anger hit Washington, it was directed not at Clinton but rather at the Republicans. Clinton took credit for standing up against GOP "class warfare against working people." His standing in the polls shot up.
It was a debacle and the GOP has never recovered from it. They failed to take account of a popular upsurge that was beginning to stir across the country a year ago. It was spearheaded by the AFL-CIO, senior citizens, environmental and consumer groups and child advocacy organizations like the Children's Defense Fund. CDF President Marian Wright Edelman wrote an open letter to Clinton warning him that his veto of the GOP's bill to terminate welfare entitlements for eight million children would be a "moral litmus test of your presidency."
That mass upsurge continues to gather strength. Edelman has called a "Stand Up For Children" demonstration at the Lincoln Memorial June 1, endorsed by 600 organizations including the AFL-CIO. The AFL-CIO has approved "Union Summer," a plan to put hundreds of union doorbell ringers into every Congressional district to help defeat the "Gang of 74." Only 30 of them are rated as "safe." Another 19 are "high risk" and 25 are "vulnerable" or a total of 44 who could be dumped in 1996. Many were narrowly elected in districts that are traditionally Democratic.
Yet their campaign coffers are overflowing with cash. They are maneuvering to distance themselves from the "Contract." Defeating them will be a battle all the way until November. But the upheavals of the past eight months have drastically reshaped the political map - and not to the GOP's advantage. Now it is clear that if labor-backed candidates run an energetic grassroots campaign that stresses basic issues - like jobs, a higher minimum wage, health care and education then these right-wingers can be defeated.
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