Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 17, 1993 TAG: 9304170232
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
CLINTON OFFERS JOB-PACKAGE CUTS GOP LEADER REJECTS BID TO END STANDOFF OVER
President Clinton, in a major concession to Senate Republicans who have blocked passage of his $16.3 billion economic stimulus package, offered to eliminate $4 billion in "emergency" spending proposals that his opponents charge are laden with political pork.Yet in a direct rebuke, the president's compromise was quickly rejected by Senate Minority Leader Robert Dole, R-Kan. So while the standoff continues, it was clear Friday that in his first major test of wills with the Republican opposition, Clinton blinked first.
"I make this recommendation reluctantly, and regret the unwillingness of the minority to let the Senate act on the original legislation," Clinton wrote in a letter to congressional leaders. "But our mandate is to achieve change and to move our country forward and to end business as usual in Washington."
In his response, Dole said, "Trimming a huge pork bill is no gift to the beleaguered taxpayers, and neither is raising the deficit. No wonder even Democrats are running away from the package . . . it's a fundamental difference between Republicans and most Democrats, and it is a principle we won't compromise."
Clinton said he is willing to accept a 25 percent reduction in the stimulus bill, trimming it to $12 billion but retaining key spending provisions. Those include programs to create summer jobs, an extension of jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed, and funding for highway construction, childhood immunization, AIDS prevention, wastewater treatment, meat inspection, and small business loans.
In an apparent effort to make the package more attractive to conservatives, Clinton also proposed to add $200 million for grants to local governments to hire police.
The president offered to impose 44 percent across-the-board cuts on the rest of the proposals, including such programs as community development block grants for big cities, Pell grants for student aid, funding for mass transit and for new money for upgrading Amtrak rail transportation.
The urban block grants have been the focus of the most controversy in the Senate over the stimulus. Republicans have charged it is little more than pork for key Democratic constituency groups.
Clinton's willingness to scale back his stimulus plan, designed to create 500,000 jobs over the next year, raised questions about his ability to sell Congress on an even more ambitious long-term economic agenda and on his health-care reform initiative. In fact, the Clinton administration is already considering whether to scale back or defer key elements of the president's long-term plan because of tough budget constraints.
"The botched stimulus drive does signal . . . increased White House difficulty in enacting its [overall] economic program," political analyst Kevin Phillips wrote recently in his newsletter, The American Political Report.
In attempting to enact his more far-reaching programs, the president will continue to confront the hard realities of political arithmetic - specifically, that he is three Democrats short of the 60 votes that he needs to proceed in the Senate. With anything short of that, he will always face the prospect of a crippling filibuster, such as the one that has kept his economic stimulus package in limbo for several weeks.
Senators of both parties fault the president for attempting to get his program through on Democratic votes alone, rather than tailoring it to win the support of a few moderate Republicans as well. In passing his budget resolution, for example, Senate Democrats beat back dozens of politically popular GOP-backed amendments, depriving the minority of even a single victory.
As a result, the Republicans blocked the next piece of Clinton's program - the stimulus package - with a filibuster. Such a confrontational tactic is virtually unheard of at the outset of a young administration, when lawmakers of both parties traditionally give the newly elected president what he wants.
Clinton's best hope now is to win the support of enough moderate Republicans to break the filibuster. Toward that end, he is planning to stump for his economic package today in Pennsylvania.
Republican unity has been strengthened by new polling data that shows public support declining for the stimulus and Clinton's economic policies. A Wirthlin Group survey released Friday found that 49 percent of those surveyed support Clinton's plan, down from 54 percent in March.