Somewhere between operations Desert Shield (the defense of Saudi Arabia) and Desert Storm (the war with Iraq over its invasion of Kuwait), it was quietly decided that we needed to kill
Gramm-Rudman until this military situation was past.
In Part II, we apply our analysis to a wide range of entrenchment-related problems, including the validity of the Senate cloture rules, the
Gramm-Rudman law, legislatively enacted canons of statutory interpretation, statutes that regulate internal congressional procedures, government contracts, treaties, and entrenchment within the executive and judicial branches.
After briefly summarizing his family background, formative years, and pre-Washington career, Rudman paints four pictures of the contemporary Senate at work: the
Gramm-Rudman deficit reduction law; the investigation of the Iran-Contra affair; the nomination of David Souter, his close friend, to the Supreme Court; and the ethics problems raised by the so-called Keating Five.
If Congress decides it wants to, it may merely ignore the amendment without penalty, as it does now with other laws, such as
Gramm-Rudman and the Bill of Rights.
It is worthwhile to note that one of the prime features of George Bush's 1990 budget deal with Congress--besides doing away with the effective
Gramm-Rudman spending limits--was a record tax hike, similar to Bill Clinton's.
In 1990, once Congress realized it couldn't keep pace with G-R's schedule--and realized how ugly across the board cuts would be--it voted itself out of the
Gramm-Rudman noose.
They call our attention to the simply disgusting duplicity of the administration and most of both parties in Congress in disguising real budget deficits with saved-ahead Social Security Trust Funds to "meet"
Gramm-Rudman targets-a practice that does matter, economically and morally, because we're making future workers pay back what we have proudly claimed we were now investing.
deficit, budget dissensus, and the less than satisfactory performance of the
Gramm-Rudman deficit reduction procedure) argues against the likelihood of such restraint in the U.
Another worry is the possibility that, if real GNP growth were less than 1 percent again in the first quarter, the
Gramm-Rudman deficit targets could be suspended.
Another gimmick used to meet
Gramm-Rudman targets is to shift federal paydays from the next fiscal year to the current year.
If properly structured, Rumbaugh explained that such a program would have minimal impact on the budget deficit, and would therefore be consistent with
Gramm-Rudman guidelines and the President's pledge not to raise taxes.
Froelich, after the passage of the
Gramm-Rudman Act, which effectively blocked the government from allotting funds to combat health care costs in favor of reducing the deficit, Sen.
