kiss Bush's ass.
It was one of the most astounding gestures by a president in modern times, and posed the inevitable
question: had Bush gone totally psychotic?
"The public is not laughing," commented a White House official. Newsday, the New York tabloid,
went with the headline READ MY FLIPS. The New York Times revived the label that Bushresented most: for the newspaper of record, Bush was "a political wimp." A senior GOP political (^)
consultant noted that "the difference is that Reagan had principles and beliefs. This guy has no
rudder." In the opinion of Newsweek, "Bush took no stand on principle and didn't seem to know
what he wanted....He made incomprehensible jokes. He was strangely eager to please even those
who were fighting him, and powerless to punish defectors. As in the bad old days, he lookedgoofy." [fn 52]
The haggling went on into the third week of October, and then into the fourth. Would it last to
Halloween, to permit a macabre night of the living dead on the Capitol? Newt Gingrich told David
Brinkley on "This Week" of October 21 that most House Republicans were prepared to vote againstany plan to increase taxes, totally disregarding the wishes of Bush. Senator Danforth of Missouri
complained, "I am concerned and a lot of Republicans are concerned that this is becoming a
political rout." At this point the Democrats wanted to place a 1% surtax on all income over 41
million, while the GOP favored reducing the deductions for the rich. In yet another flip-flop, Bush
had conceded on October 20 that he would accept an increase in the top income tax rate from 28%to 31%. By October 24, a deal was finally reached which could be passed, and the next day Bush
attempted to put the best possible face on things by assembling the bruised and bleeding Republican
Congressional leadership, including the renegade Gingrich, for another Rose Garden ceremony.
The final budget plan set the top income tax rate at 31%, and increased taxes on gasoline, cigarettes,airline tickets, increased Medicare payroll taxes and premiums, while cutting Medicare benefit
payouts and government payments to farmers. Another part of the package replaced the Gramm-
Rudman-Hollings once a year sequester threat with a "triple, rolling sequester" with rigid spending
caps for each of the three categories of defense, foreign aid, and discretionary domestic spending,
and no transfers permitted among these. The entire apparatus will require super-majorities of 60votes to change in the future. Naturally, this package was of no use whatever in deficit reduction, (^)
given the existence of an accelerating economic depression. In Bush's famous New World Order
speech on September 11, he had frightened the Congress with the prospect of a deficit of $232
billion. In October of 1991, it was announced that the deficit for the fiscal year ending September
31, 1991, tin all history. Predictions for the deficit in the year beginning on Ohe one that was supposed to show improvement, had come in at $268.7 bictober 1, 1991 were in excess ofllion, the worst
$350 billion, guaranteeing that the 1991 record would not stand long. Bush's travail of October,
1990 had done nothing to improve the picture.
Bush's predicament was that the Reaganomics of the 1980's (which had been in force since theperiod after the Kennedy assassination) had produced more than a depression: they had engendered (^)
the national bankruptcy of the United States. That bankruptcy was now lawfully dismembering the
Reagan coalition, the coalition which Bush had still been able to ride to power in 1988. Since Bush
refused to replace the suicidal, post-industrial economic policies of the last quarter century, he was
obliged to attempt to smother irrepressible political conflicts with police state methods, and withwar hysteria.
But in the interval before he could start the war, Bush would pay a heavy political price. According
to the Newseek poll, Bush's job approval rating had dropped from 67% during the Gulf scare of
August to 48% at the end of the October budget battles. The 20-point free fall was a reminder that