Posturing takes precedence over governing

PACKET EDITORIAL, Feb. 22

By: Packet Editorial
   There’s a cynical game being played these days, both in Washington and in Trenton, that might best be called "You go first."
   The object of the game is for one team (which we will call, for the sake of argument, the Republicans) to goad the other team (we’ll call them the Democrats) into taking a stand on an important and complicated issue — the more important and more complicated the better. Then, the team that demurred can gleefully ridicule the team that took a stand by seizing on the complexities of the issue to distort what that stand really means all the way to Election Day.
   In Washington, the issue is Social Security reform. Since the presidential election, there has been little movement in the positions taken by Republicans and Democrats over this important and complicated matter. If anything, President Bush’s stridency in pushing toward privatization of Social Security investments has hardened the positions on both sides.
   But the president recently opened the door a crack toward the possibility of compromise on one very significant component of Social Security reform. He allowed that everything — including discussion of raising the income ceiling on contributions above the current level of $97,000 — is "on the table." This would help offset the huge subsidy that would be required under his plan to finance the transition of Social Security from a public to a partially privatized system.
   In a bipartisan Congress, this might be seen as the key provision around which something resembling consensus might begin to develop. But in today’s bitterly divided Congress, it has had almost the opposite effect. Now that the higher income ceiling is "on the table," each side is waiting for the other to take the first bite. And as soon as it does, the other side will strike. If the Republicans embrace the higher ceiling, the Democrats will accuse them of reneging on their earlier promise to reform Social Security without having to turn to taxpayers for a higher subsidy. If the Democrats embrace it, the Republicans will attack them as the party of tax-and-spend liberals.
   "You go first" is also a popular pastime in the state capital, where reform of the "pay-to-play" practice of awarding lucrative state contracts to large campaign contributors has been a topic of intense discussion in recent years. Like Social Security reform, pay-to-play reform is an important and complicated issue — and there has been no shortage of demagoguery and distortion devoted to this matter on both sides of the political aisle.
   The latest effort at reform finds acting Gov. Richard Codey and the Democrats seeking to implement through legislation what former Gov. James E. McGreevey accomplished through executive order — a rather modest attempt to limit campaign contributions from state contractors to state office-seekers. The bill breezed through the Assembly, but failed in the Senate when the Republicans — all of whom had supported a virtually identical bill last year — failed to produce a single vote for the measure, contending that it was a weak and watered-down version of what they would really like to see enacted.
   What all this transparent maneuvering is designed to do is produce superficial sound bites for legislative elections this fall. If the Republicans don’t vote for the pay-to-play reform bill, the Democrats will accuse them of favoring the corrupt status quo. If the Democrats push the bill through, the Republicans will call it a sham, so riddled with loopholes it is worse than no reform at all.
   The acting governor has called a special session of the Senate to revisit the pay-to-play reform bill next week. When the floor debate begins — and, later, when the big electronic board is opened for senators to record their votes — it’ll be real interesting to see who goes first.