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CLOSE-UP: THE REPUBLICAN BUDGET NEGOTIATORS Posted January 11, 1996 The politicians were finally able to end a three-week shutdown of the federal government last weekend - just in time for one of the biggest blizzards Washington has ever seen, which promptly shut everything down again. But even though Congress was able to pass a temporary spending bill to put federal workers back to work, President Clinton and Republicans are still at a standoff over the shape of the federal budget, and on Tuesday the talks broke down again for a week-long break. Republicans have refused to pass bills funding the government for the next year until Clinton agrees to major overhauls in Medicare and Medicaid and huge tax cuts, all of which he thinks are too extreme. Clinton has agreed to the Republicans' demand for a balanced budget in by 2002. But the two sides are still billions of dollars apart on how to get there. If no agreement is reached, the government will shut down again on January 26. So negotiators from both camps continue meeting to try, somehow, to find some common ground. This is a clash of Constitutional branches, and so no side has an inherent advantage over the other. Unfortunately, it looks like it may be public opinion polls that force one side to give. But while publicly the Republicans have put forward a relatively unified front, several personalities and forces are shaping the bargaining behind the scenes. Here's a look at the key members of the GOP negotiating team: DOLE: For Bob Dole, Majority Leader of the Senate, the budget standoff is inexorably tied to his Presidential candidacy. In that sense, it is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, the deadlock has distracted the media from the candidates challenging Dole's lead in the race for the Republican nomination. It has also put Dole head-to-head against Clinton, letting him draw the contrast that he hopes to make later as the GOP nominee anyway. On the other hand, Dole knows his opponents will to paint him as an inside-the-Beltway dealmaker who is willing to compromise away the Republican Revolution. In a sense it's true: Dole is a masterly deal-cutter, and he has never been wild about the more radical elements of the Republican budget, particularly the heavy deficit and tax-cutting. He wants desperately to avoid fueling that perception, although he has already felt heat from conservatives for leading the effort to temporarily re-open the government. GINGRICH: House Speaker Newt Gingrich is stuck in a difficult middle. If an agreement cannot be reached with Clinton, the very heart of the much-touted House Contract With America -- particularly the balanced budget and tax cuts -- will have run into a brick wall and amounted to nothing. With Clinton vetoing other major bills like welfare reform, the GOP Congress won't have that much to show for all its talk. For these reasons, Gingrich has an interest in yielding some ground to Clinton, and the Republicans have softened their position a bit. However, a radical and intransigent class of 73 House Republican Freshmen, who campaigned hard on the promises of the Contract, are applying extreme pressure on Gingrich to hold his ground. It's possible that if a deal is cut, to save face Gingrich will try to blame Dole. ARMEY: House Majority Leader Richard Armey, R-TX, a co-author of the Contract With America, is a leading hard-liner in the Republican camp. He, too, wants to see the Contract's integrity protected, and he and Clinton seem to have a particular dislike for one another (Clinton recently yelled at Armey for bad-mouthing Hillary). A former economist and long-time champion of a flat tax, Armey is a strong believer in the theory of "supply-side" economics which holds that lower taxes will stimulate the economy to everyone's benefit. Thus, he is more protective of tax cuts than deficit cutting, which he is less passionate about. DOMENICI: Unlike Armey, Senate Budget Committee chairman Pete Domenici, R-NM, has little interest in tax cuts, and is adamant about eliminating the deficit, which he deplores above all else. He supported Bill Clinton's deficit-trimming 1994 budget, and that year he and Senator Sam Nunn, D-GA (who is retiring this year) proposed a 10-year balanced budget plan that included nearly $500 billion in tax *increases*. Domenici, one of the Senate's most respected members, has moved rightward with the political spectrum, but he almost certainly finds the freshmen's insistence on huge tax cuts aggravating. KASICH: House Budget Committee chairman John Kasich, R-OH, has been on a virtual religious crusade to balance the budget. Even more than Domenici, Kasich thinks a balanced budget is essential - he constantly poses it as a moral obligation to future generations. And like Domenici, he has little use for other GOP goodies like the tax cut. While he stay in ranks in public, Kasich privately thinks tax cutting is a reckless detour on the balanced-budget path. Kasich has also fought hard for spending cuts, even if it meant going against his party -- he was the leading Republican to oppose, unsuccessfully, his party's decision to order more billion-dollar B-2 bombers. Kasich is close to Gingrich, and his popularity and respect inside and out of Congress make him a persuasive counterweight to the freshmen. ARCHER: Representative Bill Archer, R-TX, is the chairman of the ultra-powerful House Ways and Means committee, and rounds out a list of key players that is heavy with no-nonsense Southerners. Archer, who was a faithful agent of Gingrich and Armey in keeping his committee behind the Contract With America, is less driven by sweeping ideological principles than are colleagues like Kasich. Less zealous about billions in tax cuts per se, Archer has endless ideas for tinkering with the tax code, and is pushing his pet ideas. Many of them involve hefty breaks for businesses. He favors credits for estate and gift taxes, and wants to replace our current income tax system with a broad-based consumption tax. He is also a major fan of capital gains tax cuts, an issue on which Clinton has indicated there could be compromise.