198

22 | Déjà vu All Over Again

E

XpoL confiti L s RMed thAt MondALe got very little traction on the

deficit. What resonated—and backfired—was his unapologetic ac-

knowledgment that if elected he would raise taxes. When the bud-

get battle was rejoined in the winter of ’85, the president wanted 6 percent

more for defense and deep cuts in domestic spending. The Social Secu-

rity cost-of-living adjustment, however, was now off limits. Domenici and

Gorton kept plugging away. The Senate countered with an inflation ad-

justment for defense in Fiscal Year 1986 and 3 percent real growth in both

FY 87 and 88, plus a one-year freeze on the COLAs. Domenici’s goal was

to trim the deficit by some $60 billion.

Come spring, the White House and the Senate were still entrenched,

bobbing up periodically to exchange grenades. The Senate won a tempo-

rary victory at 1:30 a.m. on May 10 when “a pale and weak” Pete Wilson

was pushed slowly into the Senate Chamber in a wheelchair to a standing

ovation. The Republican from California, who had undergone an emer-

gency appendectomy the day before, brought the house down when he

looked up at Dole before he voted and deadpanned, “What was the ques-

tion?” Wilson’s vote pushed the Senate’s FY1986 budget resolution into

a tie that Vice President Bush promptly broke. In the House, however,

O’Neill’s majority Democrats flatly rejected any compromise on the

COLAs. Reagan took to the airwaves to declare everyone should read his

lips. “I’ll repeat it until I’m blue in the face: I will veto any tax increase the

Congress sends me.”^1

The guns-and-butter debate got even hotter in July after Gorton and

Chiles came up with another bipartisan plan to put a bigger dent in the

deficit. It called for $59 billion in new taxes stretched over three years,

less for defense and no Social Security cost-of-living increases. To soften

the blow, the plan advocated investing 20 percent of the overall savings in

programs to help needy old folks.^2

The president hosted a cocktail hour at the White House. Gorton and

Chiles were invited, together with Dole and O’Neill. Congressman Lowry