The energizer.

• Author: Henderson, Rick

It's a humid May afternoon. In the dark basement of a packed capitol Hill restaurant, Ohio Rep. John Kasich, the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, talks to a group of conservatives about budget reform. Though most of his 70 listeners are sympathetic, and not even his constituents, Kasich treats the speech like a campaign event. Speaking without notes, he becomes part policy wonk, part Dale Carnegie disciple, part stand-up comic.

In the style of Ross Perot, Kasich holds up a colorful chart with bar graphs that spell out how the proposal Republicans on his committee developed will cut the deficit more than Bill Clinton's budget. Then, in mock exasperation, he pauses and says, "Even under our program, we're bankrupting America." Ross Perot, Warren Rudman, and Paul Tsongas have begun to convince millions of Americans that the federal deficit is a moral outrage. In February, when Bill Clinton called for "deep cuts in existing government programs"--surprise!--people agreed. For the first time since the Eisenhower administration, real spending cuts are possible.

But Clinton's budget outline, which claimed to cut the deficit by $473 billion over five years, relied mostly on tax hikes. When the president challenged critics either to get on board or to come up with a specific alternative plan, Republican leaders opted simply to gripe.

Kasich and his 16 Republican colleagues on the Budget Committee decided to call the president's bluff, however. In less than a month, they and a couple dozen staffers developed an item-by-item alternative that accomplished what Democrats and pundits said was impossible: It Would reduce the federal deficit by more than Clinton's plan--$479 billion over five years--without raising taxes or affecting Social Security. The Republican plan spends $233 billion less than Clinton's, making the GOP deficit figures more credible.

"Kasich did the impossible. He got conservative, liberal, and moderate Republicans to agree to spending cuts," says Matthew Kibbe, budget associate for Rep. Dan Miller (R-Fla.). "Kasich was the first person on the Hill to realize that people will consider specific spending cuts."

Like the tax revolt that fueled Ronald Reagan's bid for the White House, a revolution against government spending may be starting to rumble--and it, too, will need an identifiable leader. For now, at least, 40-year-old Kasich looks like the most likely prospect. After putting together three earlier budget alternatives in relative obscurity, he has become a Washington celebrity. Friends and professional acquaintances compare Kasich favorably with David Stockman (for his grasp of the complexity of the budget), Reagan (for his populist approach to limited government), and the Energizer Bunny (for his frenetic working style). In January, the influential weekly National Journal named Kasich one of Washington's rising stars.

The brash, assertive Ohioan has made an impression, especially on his less-experienced colleagues. Kasich "has galvanized the Republican party and focused it on economic issues," says a freshman House Republican. "He's also made [Minority Leader Bob] Michel a one-termer."

Kasich's first budget-cutting experience came as a state senator in Ohio. In 1978, four years after graduating from Ohio State University, Kasich unseated a veteran Democrat by visiting every home in his Columbus senate district at least once. Mary Anne Sharkey, politics editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, was the newspaper's Columbus bureau chief at that time. "John was thought of as a smart-alecky kid," she says. "He was the type of guy who would go to the floor of the Senate...