DeLay's First Strike

By: Aaron Crowell

When Congress opened for business last week, one thing was instantly clear: It's Tom DeLay's House first and Hastert's second. Recently elevated to majority leader, the former exterminator from Sugarland, Texas, has installed his deputies in almost every position of power and is now free to pursue his agenda at full throttle.

On day one of the DeLay era, he did just that when he introduced new rules for the House which received unanimous Republican support. At first glance they're arcane but they speak volumes about how DeLay will practice his version of American democracy. Here are the highlights:

• He gutted House ethics provisions to enable lobbyists to cater better meals for members' offices. Carving a loophole in the 1995 gift ban, this rule change allows members to exceed the normal $50 dollar limit on gifts of "perishable food" to their offices. Now the limit will apply not to a congressperson's office as a whole, but to each staff member in that office individually. This little change renders the ban meaningless: Grateful drug company lobbyists can now lavish a $1,000 banquet on Mr. DeLay's office - just as long as there are 20 staffers there to share it with him. Although he voted for the gift ban in 1995, DeLay called it a "ridiculous charade of public virtue". In the DeLay House, venality needn't bother to pay any tribute to virtue.
  
  
• He ended the need for a congressional vote to raise the debt ceiling. Now that President Bush's economic policies are producing deficits as far as the eye can see, formerly fiscally conservative Republicans are being forced to vote to raise the national debt ceiling every few months. Originally, conservatives demanded a separate vote allowing the debt limit to be exceeded. They thought this would help lasso high-rolling liberals. But now that their guy is running the country, they want to give him the right-of-way to spend like there's no tomorrow. Always count on DeLay to abandon principle for partisanship.
  
  
• He mandated fuzzy-math analysis of budget bills so tax cuts appear cost-free. The "dynamic scoring" method of analyzing the potential budgetary effects of tax cuts has long been favored by practitioners of what the former President Bush called "voodoo economics". Basically, it is a way of claiming that tax cuts will generate increased tax revenues because of economic growth. So DeLay's House members won't be getting very honest numbers about how much money will be lost when Bush pushes for tax cuts. With a "dynamic" approach, tax breaks for the rich will seem less painful. If this witchcraft sounds familiar, it should: It's exactly how Reagan sold his huge tax cuts that "dynamically" tripled the national debt in eight years.
  
  

These changes have received very little media attention. Perhaps Tom DeLay's reputation as a lobbyist-hugging right winger have rendered his actions too predictable to deserve ink - there's no shock factor left. Unfortunately, though, he's now one of the most powerful people in the country and the press should take him to task. Putting these new rules on the books was his first gesture. It took him less than a day. Imagine what the next two years will bring.