200 sLAde goRton: A hALf centuRy in poLitics
cused he could do that. In a way, he’s an automaton.... He was very good
to have on your side.”^6
Ted Stevens was madder than hell when he discovered Gorton was not
on his side. A senior member of the Appropriations Committee, Alaska’s
powerful, often petulant senator was intent on securing an unprece-
dented $7 million “experimental technology” grant for a Sitka pulp mill.
Gorton was having none of it. To meet the same Environmental Protec-
tion Agency mandate Alaska Pulp Company was facing, the ITT-Rayonier
mill at Port Angeles in his state had installed new pollution-control equip-
ment at its own expense, Gorton said. Why should the taxpayers foot the
bill in Sitka?
One foot plopped on a chair, Stevens twirled his glasses in frustration
and glared at his upstart Republican colleague. Alaska Pulp’s problems
with the EPA all began when Gorton got involved, Stevens fumed. Gorton
simply wasn’t listening to him. He had violated senatorial courtesy. The
vote would reveal who his “real friends” were. The implication was clear:
Anyone who opposed him on this one better understand that their own
projects would be DOA at Appropriations. Gorton insisted the subsidy
was grossly unfair. He won.^7
Reagan was as stubborn as Stevens. He wouldn’t budge on his budget,
insisting that big deficits posed no real threat to the economic upswing.
Domenici and Gorton made another run, suggesting a tax on oil imports,
slower increases in Social Security benefits and a delay in adjusting in-
come tax brackets for inflation. The plan was flatly rejected by the White
House. “I regret to say that the president has sold us down the river
again,” Gorton said. The stick didn’t work, so he offered a carrot a few
days later, saying, “He’s the greatest political asset we have and he re-
mains that asset.”^8
Then it came to pass that “two things happened that never could have
if the ordinary logic of politics had applied”—tax reform and the Gramm-
Rudman-Hollings Act. Gramm-Rudman or GRH for short, mandated
automatic across-the-board spending cuts if the president and Congress
failed to reach established targets to balance the budget. Foley, the House
Democratic whip, summed it up with a Tom Clancy metaphor: Gramm-
Rudman was “about the kidnapping of the only child of the president’s
official family that he loves” (think Defense) “and holding it in a dark
basement and sending the president its ear.” But the hostage game
worked two ways. “Democrats could slice defense’s ear only by doing the
same to their own ‘children.’”^9
Phil Gramm, the former Democrat whose Texas drawl disguised a doc-