‘Fast-Track’ Victory, Economic Prosperity Powering Liberals’ ‘Good Times’ Strategy

WASHINGTON —  Striving to build on their victory over President Clinton in the recent “fast-track” trade fight on Capitol Hill, liberals and their labor allies are thinking big again.

What’s more, they’re aiming to take advantage of one of Clinton’s prime assets: the current economic prosperity for which the president claims much of the credit.

The shrinkage of the federal budget deficit resulting from the strong economy, liberals contend, is not a time for retrenchment or tax cuts with relatively small effect on most people. Instead, they argue, it is a scenario that can allow the government to spend more for education, health care and other programs without walking the political plank by seeking a tax increase.

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“Rather than people getting $100 back in their pockets from a tax cut, I think they’d feel better if the surplus was used to help guarantee their health care,” said Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees Union, one of the nation’s biggest.

Such a “good times” strategy contrasts with the conventional wisdom that the left can only prosper under the darkest of economic conditions.

“I don’t wish for bad times. I wish for good times,” said House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), who led the anti-fast-track forces and whom critics often accuse of predicting gloom to justify the need for government activism.

“I really think people want these things to happen,” Gephardt said, referring to the agenda of social programs that he and other congressional liberals would like to push. “And the better economy gives you the ability to think about these things. Otherwise, you’d just be trying to bail out the boat before it sinks.”

Make no mistake, liberals are not counting on creating a new political Jerusalem, along the lines of Lyndon B. Johnson’s vision of a Great Society. Their objective is more modest but nonetheless significant: to reverse the anti-government trend that took root in the Reagan presidency and has continued to flower under Clinton’s New Democrat regime.

A key factor on their side, liberals contend, is that despite the current economic sunshine, polls show voters remain troubled by recollections of the dark days of the 1991 recession and uneasy about long-range job security.

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Underlying the left’s thinking is the belief that thwarting Clinton’s drive for fast-track authority--which would have bypassed Congress’ amendment power in working out the details of trade deals--has the makings of a political watershed. To some, it is comparable to the defeat of the administration’s health care reform proposal, which contributed to the Republican landslide in the 1994 midterm elections, and the GOP setback in the 1995 budget fight, which in turn paved the way for Clinton’s reelection.

“I think this was a very important vote,” said Stanley Greenberg, Clinton’s former pollster and strategist and now co-editor of a book, “The New Majority: Toward a Popular Progressive Politics.”

“It brought down the curtain on the kind of bipartisan governance that has dominated this period. And it says that for the president to succeed he is going to have to advance a more Democratic agenda on trade and other issues.”

Walter Dean Burnham, a University of Texas political scientist, sees the fast-track outcome as sharpening tensions between the White House and the party’s more liberal congressional wing.

“Maybe 80% of Clinton’s legislative people stuck it to him,” said Burnham, referring to the Democratic lawmakers who refused to support him on fast-track. “He’s very much at risk of becoming a man without a party.”

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But rather than gloat over their success, most of the victors in the fast-track battle seem more concerned with bolstering their ties to Clinton so they can enlist him in their new causes.

“I think there’s a healing process that has to go on,” said Gerald Shea, the top government relations specialist for the AFL-CIO, the chief lobbying force against fast-track.

Shea noted that labor managed to patch over past differences with the White House on the budget and welfare reform. “This is going to be tougher to overcome, because of the intensity of feeling,” he said. “But I think we can do this.”

The first test of the conciliation process will come within the next few weeks over the same overall issue that caused the breach: trade. Said Gephardt: “We’ve got to describe a positive new trade policy that gives the president fast-track but gives it under the right conditions, so that we have trade with value and standards for workers and for the environment as well as for capital and intellectual property.”

Other items on the liberal agenda should have a familiar ring to Clinton, because many sound as if they were borrowed from the “Putting people first” platform on which he first ran for president in 1992.

Topping the list for many liberals is health care.

“I think everyone is missing the fact that we’ve gone from 37 million uninsured adults when Bill Clinton took office to 41 million uninsured now, and 25 million of them go to work every day,” Stern said.

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Despite the debacle Clinton suffered on his first try at health care reform--when the massive legislation was successfully berated by Republicans as too costly, overly bureaucratic and potentially intrusive--Stern argues that another effort could pay off. This time, he said, there may be the projected budget surplus to tap as well as the multibillion-dollar settlement offered the government by the tobacco industry.

“I think we can make progress if we don’t try, as we did last time, to solve every single health care issue in America,” Stern said. “What people are most concerned about with health care is that they have it.”

Regardless of how Clinton reacts, liberals know their agenda will face tough sledding in a Congress dominated by Republicans, many of whom are still looking for ways to cut government. “We are going to have to fight defensive battles,” said Shea.

But even presuming they are defeated, liberals believe that their proposals can help them by serving as rallying points in the 1998 congressional elections.

Gephardt, in fact, believes that the result of the fast-track debate by itself will aid Democratic chances of regaining control of the House. The issues help define a difference between Democrats and Republicans, he said. If the Clinton-GOP fast-track coalition had won, he added, “people wouldn’t quite know what the difference between the parties is.”

Looking further ahead to the 2000 presidential campaign, although Vice President Al Gore clearly remains the heavy favorite to snare the Democratic nomination, the fast-track outcome bolstered Gephardt among liberals and others in the party.

“Dick had been out there as a pretty lonely figure on this issue,” said Bill Carrick, the Los Angeles-based political consultant who managed Gephardt’s 1988 presidential bid. “And now he’s mobilized a congressional majority, and that’s a big change.”

As for Gore, some liberals believe that he will learn from the administration’s defeat on fast-track. Recalling a vigorous pro-labor speech Gore gave at the AFL-CIO convention in September, Nelson Lichtenstein, a University of Virginia history professor, said: “I’m sure Gore is smart enough to understand that, while it’s clear Democrats can win national elections, to put a program in place they must have a coalition [including liberals] behind them.”