KINDER'S COMMENTARY: BIG LABOR TARGETS GOP IN CONGRESS

Any doubt that 1996 will be a real barnburner of a campaign year was dispelled this week by an announcement from the AFL-CIO. In a bold attempt to reverse the 1994 election results, Big Labor has budgeted $35 million for a massive and unprecedented effort to target and defeat 75 Republican members of Congress. The result of any such effort, were it to prove successful, would be a return to lopsided Democratic control, with a Speaker Gephardt and a Majority Floor Leader David Bonior.

Especially within Big Labor's crosshairs are the 73 freshmen of the huge class of 1994, those members who have so valiantly been fighting to cut taxes and spending, reversing decades of special-interest pleading in order send back power to the people from whom, the Declaration of Independence ringingly declares, it derives.

You gotta hand it to Big Labor. There's nothing subtle about their approach. All chips are being shoved to the middle of the table in one huge, high-stakes bet. They want to return to the status quo ante, their wonderful days of Golden Oldies liberalism and business as usual, before the great American middle class awoke to try to win back our freedom.

How vigorous and how effective will be the resistance offered by business owners large and small, together with all other elements of the emerging Freedom Coalition -- gun owners, property rights activists, home schoolers, private schoolers, pro-lifers, Christian Coalitioners and all the rest? Much hinges on the answer to that question. Should be an interesting year.

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As the budget battles rage in Washington, it is useful to recall that Ronald Reagan often rued the day he was forced into a "compromise" widely hailed by the Washington establishment back in 1982. Called the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 or TEFRA, the compromise supposedly meant that Tip O'Neill's Democratic Congress would deliver $3 of spending cuts for every $1 of the tax increases Reagan agreed to so reluctantly. With TEFRA, presto, we would reduce the deficit and move toward balance!

At the time, Reagan heavily lobbied members of Congress. Rep. Bill Emerson was even summoned up to Camp David for an extended chat. To his everlasting credit, Emerson resisted the Gipper's storied charms and voted no.

Soon, the foreseeable truth was clear: Tip O'Neill had hornswoggled the Gipper. The promised spending cuts never materialized. Reagan later declared TEFRA to be the biggest mistake of his presidency. Deficits remained large for years as the economy struggled under the newly increased taxes.

Campaigning as Reagan's heir, in 1988 George Bush essentially won what voters thought would be Reagan's third term, becoming the first sitting vice president to win the White House since Martin Van Buren in 1836. He hadn't been in office two years before the same Washington establishment types hornswoggled him into betraying his supporters and raising taxes.

Now comes ex-President Bush:

"The biggest mistake of my presidency was that I damaged my credibility by agreeing to a tax increase. Frankly, it didn't have that adverse an effect on the economy, because when I left office, we handed the current president of the United States an economy that was growing at 5.8 percent. ...

"So the economic effects were not horrible, but the effects to my credibility were. And I didn't want to see the government shut down. ... So I worked out a compromise, and it cost me plenty."

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