BY MARTÍN KOPPEL
As 1996 began, the Clinton administration and leaders of both parties in Congress stepped up their joint campaign for deep cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, and other social gains of working people - all under the banner of "balancing the budget" within the next seven years.
But as capitalist politicians used a partial shutdown of federal offices to try to drive through the cutback plans, their decision to force half a million government employees to work without pay backfired. Federal workers staged protests in the U.S. capital and many other cities January 3. The White House and Congress were forced to back off from the blatant assault on federal workers, but pressed ahead on the overall bipartisan effort to gut entitlements.
After orchestrating a three-week shutdown of numerous federal offices and cutting off pay for 760,000 government employees, White House officials and Congressional leaders announced they were closer to an agreement on cutbacks in social spending.
On January 6 President Bill Clinton announced his latest plan. He proposed slashing Medicare payments for retired people by $102 billion. The president also called for reductions in Medicaid, a program covering impoverished working people, by $52 billion.
The White House has proposed a series of other attacks on social benefits as well, such as raising monthly Medicare premiums, now $46, to $77 over the next seven years.
The Republican Congressional leaders countered with their latest proposal - to chop Medicare by $168 billion and Medicaid by $89 billion.
At the same time, both sides have also called for billions of dollars in tax cuts for the wealthy.
Each round of negotiations has shifted the bipartisan debate toward sharper attacks on these social gains. The White House, for example, had previously called for axing Medicare by $97 billion and Medicaid by $37 billion. Announcing his latest proposal, the Democratic president declared it was time to "put aside partisanship and work to craft a balanced-budget agreement that upholds our values."
In the bipartisan dance over the budget, Clinton has postured as an alternative to the "heartless" Republicans whose measures would hurt the aged and poor. A January 9 editorial in the New York Times, however, while backing what it called Clinton's "less harmful budget," acknowledged that the differences between the White House and Congressional positions were somewhat "illusory."
Because of number-juggling, the proposed cuts might all be considerably greater than the figures cited. Clinton's seven-year plan, the Times editorial noted, piles up many of its cuts in the last two years, so that by the year 2002 spending "might be cut by 30 percent or more."
The Democratic administration, in fact, has been the driving force in the assault on welfare programs. Clinton has taken the initiative since the 1992 election campaign, with his vow to "end welfare as we know it." While criticizing the Republican cutback proposals as too "tough on children," Clinton has continued to call for gutting the program. In December the administration proposed making most "legal" immigrants ineligible for the Supplemental Security Income program.
Clinton vetoed a Republican welfare "reform" bill January 9. The bill would end the federal guarantee of welfare payments for all those deemed eligible for it, and instead would give each state government a fixed sum of federal funds to dole out. The president chided the Republican plan, saying it did "too little to move people from welfare to work."
In mid-December, a quarter of a million federal employees were laid off when Congress let government agencies' spending authority expire. Federal offices, from the Social Security Administration to passport offices, were closed for three weeks. Others, such as the Pentagon and the postal service, remained open. Some 480,000 workers involved in "essential services" were required to stay on the job, but were told they would not receive their paychecks until a budget deal was concluded. Both Democratic and Republican politicians used the shutdown to press their case for social cutbacks.
Protests by federal workers
As the shutdown dragged on, 96,000 federal employees
were forced to apply for unemployment compensation. The
House of Representatives voted December 30 to order the
260,000 laid-off employees to return to work with no pay
January 2.
This added insult to injury, and government workers took to the streets. Members of the American Federation of Government Employees and other unions held protest rallies January 3 at the State Department and other federal offices.
"To me, it's a higher class of slavery," said a furious Aleta Hicks, who works as a secretary at the Justice Department. "They are not physically preventing me from going home. But if I choose to, I risk repercussions later on, a reprimand, a warning, even loss of my job."
Working people were incensed at the arrogant statements of Congresspeople such as George Nethercutt, who justified the mass layoffs by declaring, "It's a greater principle than just today's federal worker." Further outrage was sparked by a federal judge who rejected a request by the federal employees unions to prohibit the government from forcing workers back to their jobs without pay.
Faced with the prospect of growing protests and public support for the workers, Congress backed down. By the end of the week it voted to end the shutdown of federal offices and reinstate pay for employees who had been forced to remain at their jobs.
Budget talks, which were suspended for a few days, are due to resume after Clinton returns from a trip to Bosnia to rally support for Washington's war drive there.