Last time the shutdown circus came to town

REPUBLICAN FANATICS taking a stand against "big government." Democrats holding the line against relentless attacks. Tens of thousands of federal workers off the job, and millions of people left without government resources they depend on.

These are the basic elements of the government shutdown that began on October 1--and that shows no signs of ending soon. But for anyone who was around 17 years ago--the last time the federal government closed its doors--the details sound eerily familiar.

There are important differences between then and now. One of the most important is that today's shutdown is having a greater impact on working people since it comes as the U.S. is still enduring the effects of the Great Recession, whereas the 1995-96 shutdown took place as the economy was in the midst of one of the longest economic expansions in U.S. history.

But the story of the shutdown 17 years ago can tell us a lot about today's battle royale between a Democratic White House and a Republican-controlled House--from the dismal fate that awaits arrogant Republican fanatics to the real agenda of Democrats who claim to be the "responsible" ones.

THE REPUBLICANS won the midterm congressional elections in 1994 by landslide margins, taking over control of both the House and the Senate. They called it a "Republican Revolution"--and they obviously weren't talking about a bloodless revolution, given the total war on the poor and working-class people that the GOP unleashed.

The manifesto for this "revolution" was the Contract with America, the blueprint devised by the new House Speaker Newt Gingrich for imposing the Republican agenda, all in their first 100 days in the majority, he promised. The GOP sights were set on "big government"--primarily government services for the poor.

The Republicans' success in the 1994 elections was more a reflection of voters' frustrations with the Clinton administration than any real groundswell of support for Republicans.

Democrat Bill Clinton's election in 1992 had come on the heels of 12 years of Republican rule under Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Millions of people were naturally relieved that a Democrat was back in the White House and hopeful at the prospects for an end to the Republicans' mean-spirited attacks on working people.

But these hopes were dashed pretty quickly. Early on, Clinton failed to make good on a series of promises to Democratic base constituencies, like organized labor. Union members had gotten out the vote for Clinton, but the president and congressional Democrats didn't lift a finger to pass promised legislation to ban permanent replacement workers (scabs) during strikes. Instead, the White House used its political leverage to push through the pro-corporate North American Free Trade Agreement.

Clinton's model for the "New Democrats"--a party that turned its back on its traditional base among unions and civil rights organizations to court big business and conservative social forces--was beginning to look less Democratic and more like "Republican Lite."

Thus, the Republicans were able to win a resounding victory in 1994 because the disillusioned Democratic base stayed home--not because there was a groundswell of popular support for right-wing Republicans like Gingrich, who would soon become one of the most reviled politicians in decades. Even in the aftermath of the election, polls showed that public opinion was solidly against virtually every element in the Contract with America.

But Gingrich and the Republicans came to town in 1995 acting like they had the full support of the American people for their program.

John Boehner, who as House Speaker today supposedly represents Republican moderates, was part of the new group of insurgents in 1994. Once in office, Boehner, along with Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Dick Armey and others, set out to push through their program.

Like today, 1994's freshman class of 74 new Republicans--many of whom had never held elected office before--were built up in the media as a new breed of radical. But the Republicans' contempt for poor and working-class Americans ran through every plank in the Contract With America. Medicare, welfare programs and education were all in line for cuts, with proposals to eliminate some 100 federal programs and replace them with grants to states that would allow local officials to decide how to spend the money.

And while the poor were expected to eat cuts, the Gingrichites were setting a banquet table for big business, with deregulation and more tax breaks. At the same time, they also proposed increased spending on law enforcement and national defense.

This program was propped up by an ideological attack on those who benefited from social welfare programs--poor people, particularly African Americans. Each time a Republican like Newt Gingrich made a speech decrying welfare programs for encouraging fraud and laziness, it was a not-so-veiled code language for open racism.

AFTER A year of battles, the stage was set for a showdown at the end of 1995. The Republican-controlled Congress--after first threatening not to raise the debt ceiling--passed legislation with big cuts in funding for Medicare, education and the environment. Clinton vetoed the bill, leading to two shutdowns--one lasting for less than a week in mid-November, and the second for three weeks starting on December 16 and lasting into the start of the year.

Many workers felt the effects of "balancing the budget" personally. Some 260,000 federal employees considered "non-essential" were furloughed. Around 475,000 "essential" federal employees continued to work, but they weren't paid until after the shutdown ended.

What's "non-essential," you ask? According to the federal government, Head Start and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women fall in that category.

A 1997 Congressional Research Service report listed the effects of the shutdown, including:

-- Some 10,000 new Medicare applications and 212,000 Social Security card requests were turned away each day.

13 million recipients of Aid to Families with Dependent Children, 273,000 foster care children, over 100,000 children receiving adoption assistance services, and over 100,000 Head Start children experienced delays.

11 states and the District of Columbia temporarily suspended unemployment assistance for lack of funds.

IN THE context of the cruel Republican attacks, Bill Clinton--who had yet to lift a finger to improve the lives of working-class people--started to look better to a lot of people.

But at the same time, he was taking advantage of the image he projected of standing firm against an extremist Republican foe to move to his right--a strategy that was named "triangulation." Ultimately, Clinton and the Democrats made huge concessions to Republican proposals on the budget, including deep cuts in social spending--but called it "compromise." The New York Times Magazine described the process in 1996:

Clinton's first plan envisioned annual deficits of $200 billion and more, as far as the eye could see. His latest, at least theoretically, reaches balance by the year 2002. "Let me say, we have come a long way," Clinton also said, referring to himself and the Republican Congress. "We have come very close together, I believe."

But is that a boast? Or a confession? The significance of Clinton's journey lies not just in the math but also in the shift of underlying aspirations. Where fiscal discipline has won, his activist agenda has lost. Gone is the talk of greater public investment; gone is the talk of universal health care. Now the President fights a rear-guard action simply to preserve victories won a generation ago, like the Medicaid entitlement for the poor. He came to office promising welfare families new opportunities to work or be trained for work. By the fall, his own proposal, like the Republicans', agreed to strip poor children of the right to federal aid they have held for 60 years.

If the partisan battles that led to the shutdown were bad for working people, bipartisan budget-cutting was even worse. As soon as it looked like he had the upper hand, Clinton settled the shutdown--and shifted his attention to working with the Republicans. In 1996, with Clinton's re-election campaign in full swing, the White House announced it would support a proposal for welfare "reform" that originated with the Republicans.

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act had been a cornerstone of the Contract with America. It imposed harsh restrictions on the federal government's Aid for Families with Dependent Children program, including a five-year lifetime limit and two-year continuous limit on receiving benefits. Immigrants were barred from the roll, and the bill cut $24 billion from food stamps.

According to the Health and Human Services Department's conservative estimate at the time, the bill becoming law would throw at least 1.1 million children into poverty.

Clinton and Gingrich actually shared a lot of ground on the welfare law. Welfare "reform" was central to Clinton's campaign promise of "ending welfare as we know it." The two me even sat down together to hammer out the details of the eventual bill.

The bipartisanship didn't stop here. In 1997, for example, Clinton worked with Republicans on a balanced budget agreement that slashed billions from programs like Medicare and Medicaid. In the guise of a response to the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act put draconian restrictions on death row appeals.

In the end, the shutdown and the rest of their bullying techniques exposed the Republican revolutionaries for what they were--and led to their political downfall. The story of Gingrich's political trajectory can be told with two Time magazine covers. One in 1995 called him "Man of the Year"--another three years later, after he resigned as speaker, showed a lonely head sinking into the darkness with the headline "The Fall of Newt."

What the federal government shutdown of 1995-96 revealed more than anything else was the fact that the politicians--Democrats and Republicans alike--thought nothing of playing politics with the futures of workers and the poor. The real winners in this showdown were those at the top of society, who benefited from every tax break and giveaway, while the social safety net was shredded--not as quickly as the Republican revolutionaries hoped for, but shredded it was.