Editor's Notebook

Our readers have a lot to chew on after Congress' mid-summer flurry of lawmaking. Such a legislative outburst could not have been foreseen during the shutdowns and furloughs of a few months ago. But it seems that the seeds of settlement were sown then, as Republicans ultimately decided that it was better to compromise than to be seen as extremists.

The signature enactment of the 104th Congress is the welfare law. With its approval, the GOP could celebrate a milestone in its devolution agenda and in acceptance of its "values" message. The law was the most important achievement in a legislative year that "fundamentally reshaped the nation's domestic policy and fulfilled long-standing GOP goals to limit the role of government and return control to the states," as Congressional Quarterly put it in a post-recess assessment.

Other important laws were enacted in the summertime sprint from gridlock to governing. Health care reform came back from the dead in the form of a law assuring that workers who lose or leave their jobs can retain their health insurance. The minimum wage was increased. A safe drinking water measure and a package of small-business tax breaks were enacted. The Defense authorization bill was cleared for final action. Earlier, Congress enacted sweeping overhauls of telecommunications regulation and agricultural policy. So we won't be hearing Trumanesque attacks on a "do-nothing Congress" this fall. Instead, Republicans especially will be echoing the exultation of Rep. Bill Archer, R-Texas, who called the 104th the "did-something Congress, an historic Congress."

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Golfers and government-watchers were captivated by the news this summer of Customs Service official Paul Peck's $76,000 round of golf with President Clinton. Peck won the round by outbidding other parents at Chelsea Clinton's private school auction for the privilege of playing with Clinton. This suggests a whole new way of raising money for our cash-starved government. How about a night in the Lincoln Bedroom? I say it's worth $100,000 alone, and $125,000 if it includes dinner with the Clintons. Why can't we auction off Bill Archer's time? After all, he's chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and many lobbyists would pay plenty for a round of golf with him. What's it worth to an agribusiness or aerospace mogul to have a little private time with the secretaries of Agriculture or Defense? Clinton's private school voucher program indicates that his time is worth about $10,000 an hour: The round with Peck took an excruciating seven hours.

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What would a presidential campaign be without a fresh round of assaults on the federal bureaucracy? This year's poster child is the IRS, as seen in this Aug. 5 blast from Bob Dole: "I believe the IRS can be retrained to do something useful. . . .We are going to privatize many IRS functions. We are going to modernize the rest and shift the duties of IRS personnel so that their job is to help Americans give the right answers on their forms, not to punish them for making innocent mistakes."

But let's end on a positive note. Dole added that he doesn't "have any quarrel with the people who work there. They are good people."