KIINER'S COMMENTARY: BUDGET BATTLES AND DEMAGOGUERY

The budget battle about to commence in Washington will prove decisive for years to come. As President Bill Clinton frames the issue: "The decisions made in the next 60 to 90 days will determine what kind of country we're going to be heading into the 21st century." For once I agree.

For weeks now, House and Senate Democrats, echoed by state-level politicians here in Missouri, have been shouting their shrillest and most time-tested demagoguery concerning budget cuts, especially at GOP plans to overhaul Medicare. In one of the lowest and most disgraceful stunts ever pulled by one member of Congress on a colleague, Georgia Democrat John Lewis led a noisy group of protesters in shouting down speakers at an Atlanta forum on Medicare sponsored by House Speaker Newt Gingrich. (As evidence of sincere bipartisan intent, Gingrich had invited all members of the Georgia congressional delegation to engage in serious discussion about Medicare.)

Refusing to give the mob the TV footage they had hoped for, Gingrich stayed out of the hall until the unruly protesters departed. He later arrived to make his principled case that the GOP has a plan to try to save a Medicare program that all agree is going bankrupt, while the Democrats have no plan but to try to scare old people and demagogue the volatile issue. Score one for the speaker. Rep. Lewis should be ashamed.

Sensing an issue they can demagogue in their sleep, Missouri Democrats have piled on as well. Last month, Lt. Gov. Roger Wilson toured the Bootheel peddling fear and hysteria in the state's poorest region about alleged Republican "cuts" in Medicare. Wilson wasn't alone. House Speaker Bob Griffin chimed in, singing from the same song sheet of fear, fear and more fear.

All this is validating the remark of House Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas concerning the torpor, the sense of intellectual and spiritual exhaustion now gripping the Democratic Party. Rep. Armey recalls the ringing declaration of President Franklin Roosevelt, from his first inaugural address: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Today's Democrats, Armey says, have no program, literally nothing to offer except "fear itself."

How's all this playing?

Some early portents are telling. Under the heading "No Backlash?" a national, overnight newsletter out of Washington contains the following useful information: "Some of the Republican senators returning to town this week say they were surprised that at town meetings in their home states there was almost no opposition to proposed budget cuts. Even the sensitive Medicare cuts didn't cause much of a reaction. House members will be coming in throughout the week, and it will be interesting to see whether they experienced the same thing."

Rep. Bill Emerson, for one, reports similar non-reaction from a public awakening to the fact that Medicare can't continue as it has without major reforms designed to improve benefits and preserve choices for seniors. The Wall Street Journal reports that "the instinctively aggressive House Republicans returned from district meetings this week in an upbeat mood" about the tough work that lies ahead. Further, the Journal reports, "Gail Wilensky, a former federal health official, conducted forums with GOP members on both coasts and reports the public attitude has shifted from `you touch what's mine, and I'll tear your heart out' to `an acceptance that the program will have to be changed.'"

As this battle unfolds, a devastating column from Robert Novak, "Democratic Party Suffers from Boniorism," describes the leftist populism of the House Democratic leadership that is driving converts into the House Republican caucus. "Boniorism," writes Novak, "is a term coined by veteran Democratic strategist Ted Van Dyk, who defined it as `looking out for people who make less than $10,000 a year and letting everybody else look out for themselves.'

"... Van Dyk's memo to Democratic leaders contends that `the party can't continue to position itself with a Boniorism that delights in punishing capitalists and investors even though it does no good for poor and middle-income people.' He asserts that domestically, `we've fallen back on whining class warfare responses' and internationally, `we've embraced a bullying neo-mercantilism more characteristic of Mussolini's Italy."

A neat description of a Democratic leadership mouthing class warfare slogans straight out of the 1930s, while majority Republicans struggle to govern and to gain control of a federal budget that was last balanced in 1969. Should be an interesting fall.

~Peter Kinder is the associate publisher of the Southeast Missourian and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.