The Deal That Must Go Through

Those whom the gods wish to make mad they first put on television. That seems to sum up the gnawing sense of dread that the framework for a balanced federal budget by 2002, jubilantly proclaimed in press conferences on May 2 by both the White House and congressional budget negotiators, may be coming unstuck.

Reports out of Congress suggest that the deal is imperiled because of a failure to honor the first principle of contract law: There must be a meeting of the minds. Yet for all the nail-biting anxiety that the eye-winks, handshakes and encouraging body language might not rise to the dignity of a formal agreement, there is just too much at stake for too many politicians to have the whole thing unravel.

To understand what the negotiators thought they had achieved and what they now fear is imperiled, it is useful to look at the budget deal as simply an agreement to agree. It’s a little like a prenuptial contract in which a couple stipulates how their finances will be handled once they are married. It is, however, not a marriage.

The first step in consummating the marriage is for the House and Senate budget committees to ratify the prenuptial agreement by passing a budget resolution that must be approved by both houses. The next step is the most perilous: The committees that raise revenues and spend money must give substance to that resolution with tax and spending bills that conform to the agreement. Bear in mind, of course, that the people who will be appropriating the money and writing the tax bills were not parties to the budget agreement. They might be seen as the meddlesome in-laws who fret over the unwisdom of the match and conspire to undermine it because they did not confer their blessing on the union.

There are other mischievous members of the immediate families on both sides. Liberal Democrats, a group that includes the House minority leadership, fear that President Clinton, in his haste to the altar, has endowed the undeserving wealthy too generously by his concessions on capital gains and inheritance tax cuts. Conservative Republicans are also sulking because of the generous slice of discretionary spending given the president. But even these critics receive a dividend if the budget agreement achieves fruition: They will have something large and conspicuous to denounce to their more doctrinaire constituents.

What really underscores the importance of success in this process is that, apart from the shaky deal itself, neither the president nor Congress has much to show for the five months they have spent since the 105th Congress was sworn in. If the agreement fails, we will hear accusations not only of a do-nothing Congress but a do-nothing White House as well.

That latter charge might seem to be of little consequence to lame-duck Bill Clinton, who will never again have to face a national electorate. Presidential conceit, however, makes the inhabitants of the Oval Office obsessively concerned about their place in history. A second term barren of any accomplishment and distinguished only by the number of investigations into fund-raising irregularities is not the kind of record that Clinton wants to turn over to historians. Being down there with Grover Cleveland and James K. Polk is not an inviting prospect for the history-minded chief executive. Prominent figures concerned more about the future than about history, notably the president’s heir-presumptive, Vice President Al Gore, also have a stake in the success of the agreement.

For the budget compromise to unravel would be a far worse situation for incumbents than if it had never taken place. The agreement gave new juice to the bull market on Wall Street and the prospect of capital gains cuts has had investors salivating. For everything to come to naught after having so loudly proclaimed triumph violates the old admonition that people get angrier about having something taken away than about never having had it in the first place.

Having so ostentatiously patted themselves on the back and proclaimed the arrival of the fiscal millennium, lawmakers in both parties have no choice but to see it through.

If this marriage fails, there will no equitable division of property for politicians. There will only be a squabble over which party will be called on to answer charges of desertion and infidelity.