
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, August 2, 1993                   TAG: 9308020040
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

BUDGET DEAL DOWN TO WIRE

President Clinton and Democratic congressional leaders prepared for a week of arm-twisting and argument as the administration's controversial economic plan rumbles toward a resolution.

With announcement of a House-Senate compromise expected today, Democratic leaders in the House and the Senate said the measure will have enough votes to pass by the end of the week. They said their confidence was not shaken by a key Democratic senator's announcement Sunday that he would oppose the president's plan, reversing his earlier support.

For Clinton, the political stakes are hard to overstate. The plan is the legislative centerpiece of his new administration, and his allies are making the case that Democrats who control both houses of Congress must affirm the plan in order to demonstrate that the president, and the party, can govern.

The defection of Sen. David Boren, D-Okla., while expected, complicates the arithmetic for Democrats because Boren backed an earlier version of the plan that passed the Senate last month, 50-49, with Vice President Al Gore casting the tie-breaking vote.

Gore and Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, D-Maine, insisted Sunday that the compromise legislation would pass the House and the Senate later this week - without Boren.

"We haven't counted on Sen. Boren in some time," Gore said on CBS's "Face the Nation," on which Boren also spoke.

But with Boren gone, one of the six Democrats who voted against the earlier version of the Clinton plan must be won back.

Without a single Republican vote expected, Democrats are trying to cobble together a shaky coalition of liberal and conservative members in what many view as a referendum on Clinton's presidency.

Senate Republican Leader Bob Dole of Kansas, who has been predicting that Democrats would round up enough votes for passage, said Sunday that Clinton's prospects are now "50-50."

In May, the House version of the plan, which included a now-defunct Btu tax and fewer cuts in social spending, passed by just six votes, with nearly 40 Democrats defecting.

House Speaker Thomas Foley, D-Wash., has expressed confidence that the president's plan will this time pass the House by a more comfortable margin.

The drama is in the Senate, where controversies over the size of a gasoline tax increase, now believed to be set at 4.3 cents a gallon, and in the scope of controls on future increases in Medicare benefits, have divided Democrats.

To that end, the president spent the weekend engaged in a frenzied round of meetings and phone calls with on-the-fence Democrats, particularly in the Senate.

by CNB