Democrats Deride GOP Legislative Record : Congress: In rebuttal to Gingrich, Gephardt says policies aid the wealthy at the expense of the middle class. ‘Is this what you voted for?’ he asks viewers.

WASHINGTON — Congressional Democrats, singing a sour note in response to Republicans’ jubilant celebration of their legislative accomplishments, said Friday that the GOP is pushing extreme and unfair policies that benefit the rich at the expense of the middle class.

“Never has so much been done in so little time to help so few at the expense of so many,” said House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) in the Democratic response to the televised address of House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). “We have seen a hundred days of tax cuts for the wealthy and budget cuts for the middle class.”

Gephardt’s speech--and an accompanying response by Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.)--provided a glimpse of the Democrats’ emerging strategy for fighting the Republicans in the months to come as the focus shifts from the popular elements of the GOP “contract with America” to more specific, controversial budget cuts.

Although Democrats began this year seemingly timid and fearful of mounting vigorous opposition to a resurgent Republican Party, the minority party in recent weeks has become more aggressive in attacking GOP tax, welfare and other policies, while portraying themselves as the guardians of the middle class.

“Let’s recognize that if we don’t begin to protect, preserve and defend the middle class, we may not have one in 20 years,” Gephardt said Friday night. He contended that taxpayers earning $350,000 a year would pay $13,000 less in taxes under the GOP tax cut bill, while a taxpayer earning $30,000 a year would get back just 50 cents a week.

Democratic leaders delivered their party’s response from an elementary schoolroom in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, against a backdrop of a blackboard and American flag. The setting was chosen as part of a continuing Democratic effort to highlight the effects of GOP policies on education and children.

Speaking just moments after Gingrich complained that critics had exaggerated the ill effects of GOP proposals on nutrition programs, Gephardt contended that Republican policies would take school lunches away from children at the Virginia school.

Democrats are clearly hoping that the public will be less supportive of the GOP platform when they know more about its details. “Is this what you voted for last November?” Gephardt asked.

But Democrats are sensitive to the political disadvantages of appearing to be champions of the status quo. “The question before us at the end of these 100 days isn’t: Who stands for change?” Daschle said. “The issue is: What kind of change is it going to be?”

Daschle predicted that much of the House GOP’s agenda, including the tax cut approved by the House on Wednesday, will founder in the Senate. “Many of Speaker Gingrich’s ideas are so extreme, so unfair and so wrong that even the Republican-controlled Senate will refuse to pass them,” he said.

Republicans surely will continue to control the agenda beyond the first 100 days, but Gephardt and Daschle suggested some areas that will be Democratic priorities in the months to come: increasing the minimum wage, an idea that top Republicans fiercely oppose; overhauling welfare; improving education and health care reform. Gephardt called on Gingrich to negotiate a bipartisan “solution to America’s health care crisis” and Daschle called for insurance reforms that would make it harder for people to lose their health care coverage.

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In a speech to the National Press Club earlier Friday, Gephardt said that Democrats would also continue to push for lobbying and campaign finance reform, including an effort to make campaigns “shorter, cheaper and more focused on real and substantive issues.”

In that earlier speech, Gephardt complained that the 100-day dash through the GOP legislative agenda had given the bum’s rush to major policy changes.

“Something even deeper, even more fundamental, has been lost in these hundred days--a respect for democracy itself, a belief that the American people deserve more than a slogan and a bumper-sticker and a few hours of hurried debate on the House floor,” Gephardt said.

Also earlier in the day, Daschle told reporters that the GOP hoopla surrounding the end of the first 100 days amounted to “showmanship rather than statesmanship.” But he acknowledged that Democrats had something to learn from Republicans’ skill at getting their message out. “We’ve been slow to recognize the importance of that kind of coordinated communications effort,” he said.