Bush Vetoes Stopgap Funding Bill; House Fails to Override : Deficit: The action leaves all but essential government services closed. Democratic leaders plan to unveil a budget alternative today.

President Bush, hoping to force Congress to share the blame for this weekend’s shutdown of the government, vetoed a stopgap spending bill Saturday that the lawmakers had enacted--and was able to make the veto stick.

A few hours after the White House announced the decision, the House fell six votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to override the President’s action, effectively sustaining the veto and leaving all but essential government services closed.

The House action came in a raucous, partisan brawl that highlighted the bitter differences over spending and taxes that have divided the parties over the last decade. Rebellious House Republicans united behind the White House for the first time in the current budget battle.

The tally on the override vote was 260 to 138, with nine of 244 Democrats backing Bush while 25 Republicans out of 154 deserted the White House.

When the lawmakers passed the stopgap bill on Friday, Bush initially said only that he would not sign it--leaving the government without any appropriations and forcing a shutdown of government services. But Saturday, he decided to veto the measure after all.

As the House debated the override action, Democratic leaders labored to develop a more palatable alternative to the five-year, $500-billion budget package that the House soundly rejected early Friday. They plan to unveil the new package sometime today.

It reportedly includes a proposal to soften one of the provisions that proved to be a major stumbling block for many lawmakers--a reduction in Medicare benefits,which many members feared would set off a flood of protests from senior citizens.

In addition, House Budget Committee Chairman Leon E. Panetta (D-Carmel Valley) said he expected to propose eliminating earlier provisions that would have delayed unemployment benefits and imposed a tax on heating oil.

Panetta also is seeking to earmark the full amount of the revenues from the proposed 10-cent-a-gallon hike in gasoline taxes specifically for rebuilding roads and bridges rather than allowing half of the increased take to be used to reduce the deficit.

But while lawmakers struggled to adopt an acceptable budget blueprint in time to allow most federal workers to return to work on Tuesday, the impasse between the White House and Congress left the government without legal authority to pay its bills.

“I’m sorry if people are inconvenienced, but I’m not going to be a part of business as usual by the Congress,” Bush told reporters outside the White House. “Congress has continued to kick this can down the road, and it’s got to act.”

Visitors to Washington, who were outside in droves to enjoy a beautiful fall day, were among the most immediate victims of the shutdown. Museums were closed, the White House gate was barred and the popular National Zoo operated with a skeleton crew of volunteer workers.

“We’re the only real zoo in town,” quipped Senate Republican leader Bob Dole of Kansas after being asked why many people were willing to wait up to three hours in line to observe the proceedings there.

Unable to accomplish anything substantive after the House failed to override Bush’s veto, lawmakers went home for the evening with plans to reconvene this afternoon.

However, congressional leaders said they would continue working late into the night in hopes of bringing a new budget proposal to the floor today. House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) said he and House GOP leader Robert H. Michel of Illinois agreed that it is “very important we obtain a budget agreement this weekend.”

Democrats complained that Bush’s veto, by reopening partisan wounds festering just under the surface during the long negotiations to develop a compromise budget, made it more difficult to break the deadlock.

“President Bush’s decision is unnecessary, unjustified and harmful,” Foley told reporters after returning from a White House meeting.

Bush, in turning up the heat on Congress, said he would sign a temporary spending bill only if lawmakers accepted $40.1 billion in spending cuts, which would be sliced in equal amounts from a variety of government programs, until a permanent budget is adopted.

The figure proposed by the White House is equal to the first-year deficit-reduction total contained in the defeated budget package that Administration officials had negotiated with congressional leaders.

But Democratic leaders rejected the White House proposal, keeping the Administration at arm’s length because of complaints from lawmakers over deteriorating relations between House members and White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu and Budget Director Richard G. Darman.

“Your staff did a lot of insensitive and unnecessary things to Republican members,” protested Rep. Jim Lightfoot (R-Iowa) in a letter to Bush. “Leave the pit bulldogs at the White House.”

Lawmakers in both parties argued that the White House, by insisting that income tax rates were sacrosanct, was standing in the way of a popular compromise that would provide Republicans with a cut in the tax on capital gains in return for accepting a Democratic plan to raise the top rate on wealthy taxpayers to 32% or 33%.

Rep. Silvio O. Conte (R-Mass.) echoed Democrats when he called for “bursting the bubble that gives the richest taxpayers . . . a lower 28% marginal rate than people who earn less . . . . If you want a fair package, you have to shift the burden to the people who can afford it.”

Key conservative Republicans, including House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), confided to other lawmakers that they would support such a trade-off.

In return for lowering capital gains taxes, “the majority of Congress would like to see the bubble burst,” said Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), “but the President won’t buy it.”

Foley, interviewed on CNN, called the proposal “one of the possible compromises that could bring forth a solution to the budget problem.”

But there was little spirit of compromise evident on the House floor Saturday.

Democrats denounced Bush for trying to force action by bringing the government to a halt. To hisses from Republicans, Rep. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) argued that Bush was “treating 2 million federal workers like Saddam Hussein treats his so-called guests in Iraq.”

Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez) contended that Republicans wanted to cut off assistance for 100,000 handicapped individuals “so corporate jets weren’t going to be taxed. . . . We need a budget agreement for the ‘90s, not one that endorses the greed of the ‘80s.”

On the Republican side, tempers ran so hot over Democratic maneuvers that angry conservatives blocked an effort by leaders of both parties to recess for two hours.

Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), for example, urged Bush to stop working so closely with Democrats on a budget package and continue wielding vetoes in an effort to force through a plan developed with congressional Republicans that would limit tax increases and curb domestic spending programs.

“So long as Republicans sustain the President as we did today,” Cox said in an interview, “he can succeed in hammering out an agreement.”

“People want change even if it means closing the Washington Monument,” said Rep. John R. Kasich (R-Ohio). “If they had their way, they’d close the Capitol and keep all the other monuments open.”

The tumult moved Rep. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) to ask his colleagues: “Can we quit lobbing hand grenades back and forth?”

The climax of the debate occurred when Rep. Ronald V. Dellums (D-Berkeley) stepped to the podium at about 4:30 p.m. dressed in white tie and tails. He was greeted by wild applause and a standing ovation.

“My firstborn is to be married at 5,” Dellums said. “Let’s cut off the debate, override this veto and let me love my son.”

Dellums’ plea worked. The House began voting only minutes later.

Staff writer James Gerstenzang contributed to this story.

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