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Episode 488: BOB DOLE 1995 Clintons Comeback The Federal Government Shutdown November the First One · BOB DOLE : 1995 Clinton's Comeback

0:25
SPEAKER_20: On Capitol Hill today, the first real test of the new Republican leadership's number one priority, a balanced budget amendment.
0:31
SPEAKER_20: The Republicans learned something important today if they didn't already know it.
0:35
SPEAKER_20: In order to push through their agenda, there will be times when they need Democrats.
0:39
SPEAKER_20: Here's ABC's John Cocker.
0:43
SPEAKER_10: Republicans tried to push through their version of the balanced budget amendment, which would require that any increase in taxes be approved by three-fifths of the members of Congress.
0:52
SPEAKER_10: We need a safeguard to make it tougher to raise taxes than to cut spending.
0:57
SPEAKER_10: But Democrats argued that the Founding Fathers wanted changes in taxes to be decided by a simple majority, not a supermajority.
1:05
SPEAKER_10: We are doing something that is undemocratic.
1:09
SPEAKER_10: And when the vote came, it was the minority party, the Democrats, who flexed their muscle.
1:14
SPEAKER_10: Constitutional amendments themselves require a two-thirds majority, and Republicans fell 37 votes short.
1:21
SPEAKER_10: They were furious.
1:22
SPEAKER_11: What is your solution to the escalating, exploding national debt?
1:28
SPEAKER_10: We've heard nothing but no, nay, no, nay, no solution, no answers, just fault.
1:35
SPEAKER_10: But many Democrats said they were willing to support a balanced budget amendment without the restriction on tax increases.
1:41
SPEAKER_10: And Republicans decided a partial victory was better than nothing.
1:46
SPEAKER_10: So after three weeks in power, Republicans are finding that not every vote is a slam dunk for them.
1:52
SPEAKER_10: And Democrats are finding that they are not completely toothless.
1:56
SPEAKER_10: John Cochran, ABC News, Capitol Hill.
2:43
SPEAKER_04: It shut down.
2:45
SPEAKER_04: National parks closed, federal workers were furloughed, government offices were locked.
2:51
SPEAKER_04: Americans who depended on federal services found themselves caught in the middle of a political showdown unlike anything the nation had experienced in modern times.
3:00
SPEAKER_04: But the story of the 1995 shutdown is about much more than budgets.
3:05
SPEAKER_04: It was a clash between two competing visions of America.
3:08
SPEAKER_04: Just one year earlier, Republicans had scored a historic victory in the 1994 midterm elections.
3:14
SPEAKER_04: Led by the Speaker Newt Gingrich and the contract with America, Republicans captured control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years.
3:24
SPEAKER_04: Voters had sent a message that they wanted change in Washington.
3:27
SPEAKER_04: President Bill Clinton, meanwhile, was entering the third year of his presidency after suffering major defeats in the 1994 elections.
3:35
SPEAKER_04: Many political observers believed his administration was on the defensive and on the ropes, and that his prospects for re-election in 1996 were uncertain and doubtful.
3:46
SPEAKER_04: Standing nearby was Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, a decorated World War II veteran and a respected legislator who was preparing his own campaign for the White House.
3:55
SPEAKER_04: The shutdown battle would become part of the political landscape that shaped the coming presidential election.
4:02
SPEAKER_04: At the center of the dispute were questions that Americans still debate today.
4:07
SPEAKER_04: How much should the federal government spend?
4:09
SPEAKER_04: How large should the government be?
4:12
SPEAKER_04: How quickly should the budget be balanced?
4:14
SPEAKER_04: And when the President and Congress cannot agree, who should the American people hold responsible?
4:20
SPEAKER_04: Those questions brought Washington to a standstill in the autumn of 1995 and set the stage for one of the most consequential political confrontations of the decade.
4:31
SPEAKER_04: On this episode, we'll examine the origins of that first federal government shutdown, the leaders who drove the conflict and the political calculations on both sides, and how the showdown ultimately reshaped the American politics heading into the election year of 1996.
4:48
SPEAKER_04: When it was over, Bill Clinton would be 20 points ahead, and he would stay there almost to the very end.
4:58
SPEAKER_04: To understand how the government came to a standstill in the fall of 1995, we must go back to the beginning of the year.
5:06
SPEAKER_04: Republicans entered Washington riding a wave of momentum unlike anything seen in decades.
5:13
SPEAKER_04: In the elections of 1994, voters had handed the Republican Party control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years.
5:20
SPEAKER_04: Led by Speaker Newt Gingrich and the contract with America, congressional Republicans arrived with ambitious plans to reduce spending, reform government, and balance the federal budget.
5:31
SPEAKER_04: At the center of that effort was a proposed balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.
5:36
SPEAKER_04: The supporters argued that Washington would never control spending unless it was constitutionally required to do it.
5:42
SPEAKER_04: The amendment passed the House and came within a single vote of passing the Senate.
5:46
SPEAKER_04: One vote.
5:48
SPEAKER_04: Its failure would have enormous consequences.
5:51
SPEAKER_04: Meanwhile, President Bill Clinton was struggling to regain his political footing after the Republican landslide of 1994.
5:59
SPEAKER_04: Many observers openly questioned whether he would win a second term.
6:03
SPEAKER_04: Yet Clinton remained determined to defend his vision of government and resist what he viewed as excessive cuts to federal programs.
6:11
SPEAKER_04: Then caught between all these competing forces was Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole.
6:16
SPEAKER_04: As the leader of the Senate Republicans and a likely candidate for president in 1996, Dole found himself helping to shake the Republican agenda while preparing for a national campaign of his own.
6:27
SPEAKER_04: As spring turned into summer, the debate over balancing the budget evolved into a larger struggle over the future of the federal government itself.
6:35
SPEAKER_04: Republicans argued that voters had demanded major change.
6:38
SPEAKER_04: Democrats insisted that reform should not come at the expense of programs millions of Americans depended upon.
6:45
SPEAKER_04: And by that summer of 1995, the battle lines had been drawn.
6:49
SPEAKER_04: The government remained open, but the constitutional amendment had failed.
6:54
SPEAKER_04: Budget negotiations were growing more contentious, and neither side appeared willing to retreat.
6:59
SPEAKER_04: The stage was set for a confrontation that would eventually bring parts of the federal government to a halt and become one of the defining battles of the decade.
7:09
SPEAKER_04: That's the story we begin now.
7:55
SPEAKER_11: The man who says we should go in and work and then goes to play golf.
7:58
SPEAKER_11: I mean, at what point do you just break up laughing and think, nice Hutsplur, but give us a break?
8:03
SPEAKER_11: This isn't just teeing off and then having a nice 19th hole with your friends.
8:09
SPEAKER_11: These are tough decisions that are going to change the lives of our children.
8:18
SPEAKER_21: We have taken on programs that are growing so fast that everyone knows in 10 or 15 years we would not be able to afford them.
8:28
SPEAKER_21: We have decided that we would restructure the two major health care programs of our country, because, as the president said more times than one, without that you will never balance the budget.
8:40
SPEAKER_21: Why did I do all this?
8:42
SPEAKER_21: I happen to be fortunate, I have a few children, and have a real sense of the legacy that we leave to our children.
8:50
SPEAKER_21: And I am absolutely convinced that for adult leaders, if we don't leave a legacy which permits them to have a better life than we have, we're not worth our salt as leaders.
9:02
SPEAKER_21: And I am convinced that$220 billion deficits for as far as the eye can see is a legacy of destruction, a legacy of no standard of living increases, a legacy of high interest rates, a legacy of our children and grandchildren working many, many months of their lives each year to pay the debt we incur because we are not courageous enough to pay for it ourselves.
9:28
SPEAKER_21: So that's why uh I'm sticking with this, and why we're gonna take this to the end, and we'll take it to the president, and in due course, we're gonna see.
9:39
SPEAKER_21: We're gonna see whether he and perhaps some of you in this room really want to tax the next and the next generation and all the children to come without any representation.
9:50
SPEAKER_21: We want to tax them by imposing this debt on them, and they are not around to be heard.
9:56
SPEAKER_19: What we have seen over the past week and over the past weekend is not encouraging.
10:01
SPEAKER_19: Enormous damage has been done to the parties and to the institution.
10:05
SPEAKER_19: Today and tomorrow, we face a shutdown of the federal government.
10:09
SPEAKER_19: A default for the first time in history of our nation looms on the horizon.
10:13
SPEAKER_19: No one can be proud of uh such a distinction.
10:17
SPEAKER_19: If we are to have serious negotiations about balance in the budget, there has to be a measure of good faith on both sides.
10:25
SPEAKER_19: To this senator, part and parcel of the good faith in keeping the government running and not putting the full faith and credit of the United States in jeopardy.
10:35
SPEAKER_19: The Republican objections to raising the debt ceiling are the worst form uh and they're all humbug.
10:43
SPEAKER_19: I tell my colleagues, examine the Republican budget and add up the numbers as I have done.
10:49
SPEAKER_19: If you do, you will discover the best kept secret in Washington.
10:53
SPEAKER_19: You will discover that by necessity the Republican budget requires that the debt ceiling be raised from the present$4.9 trillion to seven six point seven trillion by the year 2002.
11:07
SPEAKER_19: They have to raise the debt ceiling to accommodate their billions of dollars in tax breaks for the wealthy and to cover the ever-increasing interest costs that result therefrom.
11:17
SPEAKER_19: In the short term, the Republicans will have to raise the national debt by$600 billion in the years 96 and 97.
11:25
SPEAKER_19: Since this is their clearly stated goal, there is no earthly reason for this uh economic Russian roulette that the majority has been playing.
11:36
SPEAKER_11: But it'll get down soon.
11:37
SPEAKER_11: This weekend down today.
11:39
SPEAKER_11: Or tomorrow.
11:39
SPEAKER_11: We get down before the markets open on Monday, and Secretary.
11:42
SPEAKER_11: And Anne, let me say.
11:43
SPEAKER_03: You know, this uh this is uh if we can't talk, I mean, he in effect said on the telephone, uh, you know, get lost.
11:51
SPEAKER_03: Uh that was sort of the tone of it.
11:53
SPEAKER_03: Uh, but uh if we can't even talk to the President of the United States and we're the leaders of the Congress, how are we gonna resolve this?
12:00
SPEAKER_03: I mean I I'd ask any fair-minded American voter, taxpayer, senior citizen, whatever, we're we're prepared.
12:08
SPEAKER_03: We stayed here today, we stayed here for discussions, and we're not gonna have any discussions.
12:13
SPEAKER_03: It's pretty obvious.
12:14
SPEAKER_03: And I can, you know, I I I I I know when somebody's pulling my leg on the telephone.
12:19
SPEAKER_03: I wasn't born yesterday.
12:21
SPEAKER_03: And I think it was all a setup.
12:22
SPEAKER_03: We thought we were gonna be in good faith, try to get together with the president, and before he healing up the phone, the press secretary was in the White House press room putting their spin on it.
12:31
SPEAKER_11: The Congress has done exactly what past Congresses have done.
12:35
SPEAKER_11: We have sent down a debt ceiling extension.
12:37
SPEAKER_11: We're about to send down a continuing resolution.
12:40
SPEAKER_11: It's exactly what we should do.
12:41
SPEAKER_11: Now, if the president wants to veto the debt ceiling, then whatever happens to the markets Monday is because of his decision.
12:48
SPEAKER_11: And he should be held accountable.
12:50
SPEAKER_11: If the president decides he wants to close the government down, then his veto represents his decision to shut down the government.
12:56
SPEAKER_11: But we are doing what the Congress historically does, which is send him a debt ceiling extension and a continuing resolution.
13:05
SPEAKER_11: This was high midnight.
13:07
SPEAKER_03: Do we have an agreement?
13:08
SPEAKER_03: No, let me just make a statement and I'll turn over to the speaker.
13:11
SPEAKER_03: Uh we had a very constructive meeting.
13:12
SPEAKER_03: We've been in there for an hour and 40 minutes.
13:15
SPEAKER_03: Uh went around and around, uh, but we don't have an agreement.
13:19
SPEAKER_03: Uh the first thing that'll happen tomorrow morning would be a meeting with uh the chief of staff, Leon Panetta with John Casey, Pete Domenici and I said Alice Rivlin, too.
13:30
SPEAKER_03: See if they can find uh some formula.
13:33
SPEAKER_03: But uh we're gonna try to meet again tomorrow, and I'll turn it over to Newt.
13:38
SPEAKER_11: I don't have much to add to that.
13:39
SPEAKER_11: I think uh, you know, we laid out in a pretty candid way uh where we uh feel different in terms of principle, and we uh talked through uh as a sort of first round of uh what we would have to try to work out in order to be able to get something that could uh pass the House and Senate and be signed by the President.
13:58
SPEAKER_11: But I think until we've had a chance to see how the meeting goes between uh Kasich and Domenici and Rivlin and Panetta, we really don't know.
14:05
SPEAKER_11: And I think there's a fair chance that if they have a good meeting, we might have another meeting later on the day tomorrow.
14:10
SPEAKER_11: But I think that's about all we're gonna talk about.
14:13
SPEAKER_16: When you really are firm on his determination not to allow Medicare to be used in any calculation relating to both the the continuing resolution or the debt limit.
14:26
SPEAKER_16: Uh we we talked about uh uh how we might bridge our differences, and no resolution was achieved.
14:33
SPEAKER_05: I don't think it's appropriate, I don't think it's legitimate, uh I think it's irresponsible.
14:39
SPEAKER_05: A lot of innocent people will be hurt as a result of what happens in the next days.
14:45
SPEAKER_05: But I right now I can't tell you when I think this will be resolved.
14:49
SPEAKER_05: It may not be resolved for a number of days, and maybe beyond that.
15:12
SPEAKER_14: Today, as of noon, almost half of the Federal Government employees are idle.
15:18
SPEAKER_14: The government is partially shutting down because Congress has failed to pass the straightforward legislation necessary to keep the government running without imposing sharp hikes in Medicare premiums and deep cuts in education and the environment.
15:37
SPEAKER_14: It is particularly unfortunate that the Republican Congress has brought us to this juncture because, after all, we share a central goal, balancing the Federal budget.
15:49
SPEAKER_14: We must lift the burden of debt that threatens the future of our children and grandchildren, and we must free up money so that the private sector can invest, create jobs, and our economy can continue its healthy growth.
16:03
SPEAKER_14: Since I took office, we have cut the Federal deficit nearly in half.
16:08
SPEAKER_14: It is important that the people of the United States know that the United States now has proportionally the lowest government budget deficit of any large industrial nation.
16:19
SPEAKER_14: We have eliminated 200,000 positions from the Federal bureaucracy since I took office.
16:26
SPEAKER_14: Our Federal Government is now the smallest percentage of the civilian workforce it has been since 1933 before the New Deal.
16:36
SPEAKER_14: We have made enormous progress, and now we must finish the job.
16:41
SPEAKER_14: Let me be clear.
16:46
SPEAKER_14: I proposed to Congress a balanced budget, but Congress refused to enact it.
16:51
SPEAKER_14: Congress has even refused to give me the line item veto to help me achieve further deficit reduction.
17:00
SPEAKER_14: But we must balance this budget without resorting to their priorities, without their unwise cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, in education and the environment.
17:11
SPEAKER_14: Five months ago, I proposed my balanced budget plan.
17:14
SPEAKER_14: It balances the budget in the right way.
17:17
SPEAKER_14: It cuts hundreds of wasteful and outdated programs, but it upholds our fundamental values to provide opportunity, to respect our obligations to our parents and our children, to strengthen families and to strengthen America, because it preserves Medicare and Medicaid, it invests in education and technology, it protects the environment, and it gives the tax cuts to working families for child rearing and for education.
17:45
SPEAKER_14: Unfortunately, Republican leaders in Washington have put ideology ahead of common sense and shared values in their pursuit of a budget plan.
17:56
SPEAKER_14: We can balance the budget without doing what they seek to do.
18:01
SPEAKER_14: We can balance the budget without the deep cuts in education, without the deep cuts in the environment, without letting Medicare wither on the vine, without imposing tax increases on the hardest-pressed working families in America.
18:17
SPEAKER_14: I am fighting for a balanced budget that is good for America and consistent with our values.
18:22
SPEAKER_14: If they'll give me the tools, I'll balance the budget.
18:27
SPEAKER_14: I vetoed the spending bill sent to me by Congress last night because America can never accept under pressure what it would not accept in free and open debate.
18:38
SPEAKER_14: I strongly believe their budget plan is bad for America.
18:42
SPEAKER_14: I believe it will undermine opportunity, make it harder for families to do the work that they have to do, weaken our obligations to our parents and our children, and make our country more divided.
18:56
SPEAKER_14: So I will continue to fight for the right kind of balanced budget.
19:01
SPEAKER_14: Remember, the Republicans are following a very explicit strategy announced last April by Speaker Gingrich to use the threat of a government shutdown to force America to accept their cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, to accept their cuts in education and technology and the environment.
19:21
SPEAKER_14: Yesterday they sent me legislation that said we will only keep the government going, and we will only let it pay its debts if and only if we accept their cuts in Medicare, their cuts in education, their cuts in the environment, and their repeal of 25 years of bipartisan commitments to protect the environment and public health.
19:49
SPEAKER_14: On behalf of the American people, I said no.
19:53
SPEAKER_14: If America has to close down access to education, to a clean environment, to affordable health care, to keep our government open, then the price is too high.
20:05
SPEAKER_14: My message to Congress is simple.
20:08
SPEAKER_14: You say you want to balance the budget.
20:11
SPEAKER_14: So let's say yes to balancing the budget.
20:15
SPEAKER_14: But let us together say no to these deep and unwise cuts in education, technology, the environment, Medicare, and Medicaid.
20:26
SPEAKER_14: Let's say no to raising taxes on the hardest-pressed working families in America.
20:31
SPEAKER_14: These things are not necessary to balance the budget.
20:35
SPEAKER_14: Yes to balancing the budget, no to the cuts.
20:39
SPEAKER_14: I know the loss of government service will cause disruption in the lives of millions of Americans.
20:45
SPEAKER_14: We will do our very best to minimize this hardship.
20:49
SPEAKER_14: But there is, after all, a simple solution to the problem.
20:53
SPEAKER_14: All Congress has to do is to pass a straightforward bill to let government perform its duties and pay its debts.
21:01
SPEAKER_14: Then we can get back to work and resolve our differences over the budget in an open, honest, and straightforward manner.
21:09
SPEAKER_14: Before I conclude, I'd like to say a word to the hundreds of thousands of Federal employees who will be affected by this partial shutdown.
21:19
SPEAKER_14: I know, as your fellow citizens know, that the people who are affected by this shutdown are public servants.
21:25
SPEAKER_14: They are the people who process our Social Security applications, help our veterans apply for benefits, care for the national parks that are our natural heritage.
21:35
SPEAKER_14: They conduct the medical research that saves people's lives.
21:39
SPEAKER_14: They are important to America, and they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.
21:45
SPEAKER_14: I will do everything I can to see that they receive back pay and that their families do not suffer because of this.
21:52
SPEAKER_14: But it is my solemn responsibility to stand against a budget plan that is bad for America, and to stand up for a balanced budget that is good for America.
22:05
SPEAKER_14: And that is exactly what I intend to do.
22:23
SPEAKER_04: I think it started on the 14th century.
22:25
SPEAKER_04: In on the 19th of November.
22:27
SPEAKER_04: Um but Clinton had had been getting polling information that said, hey, Medicare is the key to outmaneuvering the Republicans.
22:41
SPEAKER_04: And he sees uh the opportunity in all of this, but at first the Republicans will come back to the table and they'll work out a continual resolution to get the government back open on the 19th, and then it'll continue to escalate.
22:56
SPEAKER_04: Uh and uh I just in fairness and and for full disclosure, I'm gonna let you hear a clip in which I have edited out some of the comments concerning the later shutdown when the Obama administration was going on.
23:10
SPEAKER_04: But this is New Gingrich and um some folks at one of the newspapers who are uh uh analysising the the the the shutdown during the Obama administration, but it's very insightful to uh what was going on in the budget shutdowns in '95 and '96.
23:34
SPEAKER_04: This is from the New York Times.
23:39
SPEAKER_11: At the worst, if we can't reach any agreement with this administration, we were in a stronger position in the sense that we had won an election decisively.
23:49
SPEAKER_11: We had the House and the Senate.
23:51
SPEAKER_11: We'd won on a platform that specifically included balancing the budget.
23:59
SPEAKER_15: In November 1995, then Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, led an effort that resulted in a shutdown of the federal government.
24:06
SPEAKER_15: Now, Congressional Republicans, once again battling a Democratic president over budget and other issues, seem ready to do the same.
24:13
SPEAKER_15: But how do these two episodes compare?
24:16
SPEAKER_17: In so many ways, 1995, 1996 are not really a guide for now.
24:20
SPEAKER_17: Because you had a United Republican front, at least, at least in the beginning, because you had a different kind of um leadership both in the House and the Senate, because you didn't have back then a figure like Ted Cruz, who has sort of made this his raison d'etro, his personal um journey, if you will, on the Senate floor without the support of most of his party.
24:40
SPEAKER_17: It's really so different.
24:41
SPEAKER_17: I'm not sure you can take a lot of lessons from it.
24:43
SPEAKER_17: The other fundamental difference was that at the time of 95, Newt Gingrich was this dynamic new speaker.
24:51
SPEAKER_17: And at the same time, that President Clinton's popularity was plummeting.
24:54
SPEAKER_17: The House Republicans were really on the rise.
24:56
SPEAKER_17: It was a united political front on the hill.
25:03
SPEAKER_15: In fact, the 1996 shutdown was politically disastrous for Republicans.
25:08
SPEAKER_15: Two years later, Newt Gingrich was out of Congress while President Clinton's numbers had rebounded.
25:30
SPEAKER_17: At the time, especially the 21-day shutdown, Congress had passed a fair number of large appropriations bills.
25:37
SPEAKER_17: At this point, there are no appropriations bills passed.
25:39
SPEAKER_17: So if we do go into a government shutdown, I would suspect it would be far more impactful and more dire and certainly affect far more federal employees.
25:50
SPEAKER_18: Social Security is one of the handful of federal services supposedly guaranteed during the shutdown.
25:55
SPEAKER_18: But just in case, Medford's Social Security Office says it learned lessons 17 years ago that would pay off if things get any worse.
26:04
SPEAKER_18: The two shutdowns, which happened in late 1995 and early 1996, happened at a different time, socially and politically, but they share many similarities.
26:14
SPEAKER_18: During a bustling economy at the end of the fiscal year in 1995, Midnight came and went without a long-term solution.
26:22
SPEAKER_18: At that time, President Bill Clinton and Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, disagreed on federal spending levels.
26:29
SPEAKER_18: The Speaker refused to increase the debt limit.
26:31
SPEAKER_18: The President refused to cut the budget, prioritizing health care, education, and the environment.
26:37
SPEAKER_14: And we have to do it without raising taxes on working families.
26:41
SPEAKER_14: This agreement reflects my principles.
26:54
SPEAKER_18: And like Tuesday morning, by mid-November, workers at Medford's BLM office showed up only to shut down, furloughed for a week, as Congress compromised.
27:16
SPEAKER_14: And the real winners tonight are the American people because now we can have an open, honest, straightforward discussion about how best to balance the budget.
27:24
SPEAKER_18: When a temporary spending bill expired with no long-term solution, they were furloughed once again from December 16th all the way through January 6th.
28:35
SPEAKER_04: And so Clinton brought him in, and they looked at how to survive this thing because all the momentum was with the Republicans.
28:41
SPEAKER_04: You gotta remember, right up to this point, even though Bill Clinton's had these opportunities like the Oklahoma City bombing and and uh Ireland and he's been fighting this budget battle, he's been on the ropes since 1994's uh election, midterm elections.
28:56
SPEAKER_04: Uh, but Dick Morris figured a path for Bill Clinton.
29:01
SPEAKER_04: And the American Experience uh does a section segment in their Clinton documentary about Morris's strategy, and this is the strategy that Bill Clinton followed.
29:13
SPEAKER_04: Triangulation that put him in the Catburn seat going into 1996.
29:22
SPEAKER_09: Gingrich would not yield to Clinton's charms unless the president agreed to huge cuts in Medicare and Medicaid.
29:30
SPEAKER_09: Congress would refuse to appropriate money for the federal government, shutting it down.
29:37
SPEAKER_06: The one thing that the House of Representatives has is the power of the person.
29:42
SPEAKER_06: We can deny money.
29:44
SPEAKER_06: It is the only thing that the House of Representatives alone can do.
29:49
SPEAKER_06: They can refuse to vote on appropriation.
29:51
SPEAKER_06: So inevitably, whatever the fight was gonna be, it was gonna come down to us denying the the the White House money.
30:02
SPEAKER_09: Clinton seemed caught between two toxic political choices.
30:07
SPEAKER_09: If he opposed Gingrich's balanced budget plan, he would be portrayed as a defender of big government deficits.
30:14
SPEAKER_09: If he gave in, he would effectively cede control of the government to Gingrich and the Republicans.
30:22
SPEAKER_09: But there was a third option.
30:24
SPEAKER_09: Dick Morris had been polling the Republicans' proposed budget cuts and believed he had found an opening.
30:32
SPEAKER_01: I did a poll for Clinton where I tested each of those cuts and its impact.
30:37
SPEAKER_01: And I said to him, Do you want the four-hour briefing or the one-word briefing?
30:41
SPEAKER_01: And he said, Start with the one-word.
30:43
SPEAKER_01: I said, Medicare.
30:44
SPEAKER_01: I said, You none of the other cuts are nearly as important as the cut they're proposing in Medicare.
30:50
SPEAKER_09: The public supported a balanced budget, Morris argued.
30:54
SPEAKER_09: But not at the expense of their most cherished federal program.
30:59
SPEAKER_01: I said that what's important is that you take away from the Republicans the balanced budget issue.
31:11
SPEAKER_01: But by cutting everything else, then you can call their bluff.
31:15
SPEAKER_01: And then all of a sudden it becomes a question of what do we cut, not do we cut.
31:21
SPEAKER_09: Morris called his strategy triangulation.
31:25
SPEAKER_09: Clinton seized on it as a way to regain the initiative from the Republicans.
31:30
SPEAKER_09: In June, over the strong objections of liberals on his staff, he announced his own balanced budget plan protecting Medicare and Medicaid.
31:47
SPEAKER_13: We ought to do that.
31:48
SPEAKER_13: I believe we're going to do that.
31:49
SPEAKER_13: But we don't have to do it in a draconian way that hurts the American people.
31:59
SPEAKER_00: Once you accept that we're going to balance the budget, now let's have a fight about what we're going to cut and what we're going to protect.
32:04
SPEAKER_00: That's a fight we can win.
32:15
SPEAKER_04: President Clinton and the Republican Congress reopened the government while continuing negotiations, each believing public opinion would eventually move in their favor.
32:24
SPEAKER_04: The underlying disagreements remained unresolved, and within weeks the temporary truce collapsed, leading to an even larger confrontation as the Christmas season approached.
32:36
SPEAKER_04: And we'll tell that story a little later in this season.
32:50
SPEAKER_02: Did you know that the federal government shut down 17 times over the past 30 years?
32:54
SPEAKER_02: For the next few minutes, we'll take a look at the recent history of government shutdowns.
32:58
SPEAKER_02: Hello, everyone, and welcome to Comcast Newsmakers.
33:00
SPEAKER_02: I'm Robert Tranum, and I'm joined by Scott Horsley, White House correspondent for NPR News.
33:04
SPEAKER_02: Scott, welcome to the program.
33:05
SPEAKER_02: Good to be with you, Robert.
33:06
SPEAKER_02: We re of course we remember the government shutdown in 1995 and 1996.
33:11
SPEAKER_02: I'm not sure people remember, if they're old enough to remember this, that over the past 30 years there's been 17 government shutdowns.
33:18
SPEAKER_08: That's kind of an interesting history.
33:19
SPEAKER_08: If you go back into the 60s and 70s, there was actually sort of a quaint uh tradition now that when Congress couldn't agree on a spending bill to keep some government function running, uh Congress just disagreed and the function kept running.
33:35
SPEAKER_08: We we might not have had a spending authorization bill, but the thinking was, well, the lawmakers will work it out eventually, and the functions of government just continued uh as normal.
33:44
SPEAKER_08: Until the last year of the Carter administration, and that's when his Attorney General, Benjamin Sivelletti, wrote a memo which basically said if Congress hasn't uh sanctioned spending, spending must stop.
33:57
SPEAKER_08: And that was sort of the beginning of what we now know as the real government shutdown.
34:01
SPEAKER_08: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
34:01
SPEAKER_02: Well, you obviously I'm not a uh a lawyer or or even a legal historian, but I remember the Federalist papers, and I think it was Federalist paper number 54 that James Madison authored, and he said that Congress does have the power of the purse string.
34:13
SPEAKER_02: And if in fact government does not function, it's because of Congress not paying the bill, if you will.
34:18
SPEAKER_02: So I I I can see that point there.
34:20
SPEAKER_02: Uh but most of the government shutdowns were only last, what, a couple of hours or maybe a day or so?
34:25
SPEAKER_02: Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.
34:25
SPEAKER_08: Well, during the period when it was all taken very casually and things continue to function, uh, sometimes there would be a long period of time when there wouldn't be a formal authorization for spending.
34:35
SPEAKER_08: After Civiletti wrote his opinion, uh and it people kind of had to get serious and say, okay, a shutdown is for real, uh, they got a lot shorter.
34:44
SPEAKER_08: And throughout the 80s, most of the shutdowns lasted only a day or two, often over a weekend.
34:49
SPEAKER_08: When Monday morning came around, uh there was a real incentive to get things done.
34:52
SPEAKER_08: Now, Civiletti actually wrote two opinions.
34:54
SPEAKER_08: The first one was very tough and said, uh if there's no authorization, the spending government shuts down.
35:01
SPEAKER_08: But when he wrote that, he was really just talking about one agency, the Federal Trade Commission.
35:05
SPEAKER_08: Then there was uh another period where there wasn't spending authorization for a much broader swath of government.
35:10
SPEAKER_08: And he, uh as uh as one lawyer told me, when he felt the noose around his own neck, he decided to give it some slack.
35:16
SPEAKER_08: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
35:16
SPEAKER_02: And so the question becomes, he actually uh loosened, if you will, some of the rules or regular, or his interpretation, if you will, the rules because of the question of whether it's essential or not essential government employees.
35:25
SPEAKER_08: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
35:26
SPEAKER_08: And so now we have this sort of hybrid shutdown where large sections of government are in fact shut down, hundreds of thousands of workers are for example the Park Service.
35:35
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
35:35
SPEAKER_02: Or NIH or something like that.
35:36
SPEAKER_02: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
35:37
SPEAKER_08: But those functions that are deemed most critical continue.
35:40
SPEAKER_08: Which would be Department of Defense, military workers, so forth.
35:43
SPEAKER_08: Aaron Ross Powell And that's right.
35:44
SPEAKER_08: And what that's really allowed to happen is for us to have a sort of extended stalemate.
35:49
SPEAKER_08: Imagine, if you will, if the government shutdown extended to the FAA controllers and planes couldn't take care of And that's when the real pain, I believe, would probably be felt by the American people where there would be a big outrage.
36:00
SPEAKER_02: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
36:00
SPEAKER_02: And the shutdown would last about five minutes.
36:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
36:03
SPEAKER_02: So the question becomes, Scott, is whether or not uh Americans really care uh that the government shuts down from an historical perspective.
36:10
SPEAKER_08: Do you have any analysis?
36:11
SPEAKER_08: Aaron Powell Here's the question is is are we creating this fiction where a lot of people can think, oh, the government shut down and it doesn't affect me because the part of the government that they're most dependent on doesn't really shut down.
36:25
SPEAKER_08: Maybe we'd be better off if we went with Civiletti's original opinion and we said if there's no authorization, you really have to shut down, and then people would realize what the government does.
36:34
SPEAKER_02: We have about 20 seconds left, Scott.
36:35
SPEAKER_02: Um, do you believe is Mr.
36:37
SPEAKER_02: Civilelli still around?
36:38
SPEAKER_02: Does he I'm curious to know whether or not he uh has taken a look at the other government shutdowns since his ruling over the past 25 years.
36:45
SPEAKER_08: He's still around, although when I've tried to interview him on this subject, he's uh he's stayed mom.
36:49
SPEAKER_02: Very quickly, last question.
36:50
SPEAKER_02: Do you believe James Madison would be comfortable with all of the government shutdowns we've had over the last 30 years?
36:54
SPEAKER_08: I guess Madison would be on Social Security by now, so as long as his check kept coming.
36:58
SPEAKER_02: Scott Horsley, MPR News, thank you for joining us.
37:00
SPEAKER_02: And thank you for joining us for this edition of Comcast Newsmakers.
37:02
SPEAKER_02: I'm Robert Tranum.
37:03
SPEAKER_02: Have a great day.
37:04
SPEAKER_02: We'll see you next time.
37:04
SPEAKER_02: Bye-bye.