Clinton Questions Perot’s Lobbying of Lawmakers : Politics: Democratic front-runner says the self-styled outsider must explain if he made ‘vast contributions’ to members of Congress.

In his first attack on Ross Perot, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton said Friday the potential presidential candidate and self-styled outsider needs to answer questions about whether he has made “vast contributions to congressmen to get special deals for himself.”

Speaking to reporters at the Columbus airport, the Democratic presidential candidate asked, if Perot “hates Washington so much, what has his relationship with the United States Congress been?”

“Does he in fact lobby and make vast contributions to congressmen to get special deals for himself through the Congress?” Clinton asked. “What is his background? He’s got a contribution to make, but he’s been as political as anybody else has been.”

Perot, a Dallas billionaire who made his fortune in designing and selling computer systems, has said he will spend whatever is required to win if volunteers get his name on all 50 state ballots as an independent.

Clinton and his aides later said the reference to special deals was an allusion to a Washington Post article that said Perot contributed $55,000 to the campaigns of congressional tax-law writers who favored legislation that would have given Perot a $15-million tax break.

According to the story, Perot later denied that he had personally pushed for the tax break, and he offered to give the money back if the legislation became law.

Dee Dee Myers, Clinton’s press secretary, said the Arkansas governor’s suggestion was that Perot “has been very effective at playing by the rules” of Washington politics. “No one is accusing him of breaking the rules,” she said.

Clinton’s criticism suggested that the Democratic front-runner is viewing Perot’s threat with a new seriousness. The attack came on a day when a Gallup-CNN-USA Today poll indicated that in a three-way race, President Bush would receive 41% of the vote, Clinton 26% and Perot 25%.

Although Clinton later in the afternoon played down the criticism, he said Perot now represents more of a threat to him than to Bush.

For the moment, Perot “has what votes he would get on his own merits . . . plus the people that have heard bad things about me and not seen anything better,” he said.

But Clinton asserted that if Perot’s candidacy weakens later--as third-party candidacies often have--then Perot’s presence might hurt Bush more.

“I think his core vote comes from people in Texas who would otherwise vote for George Bush,” Clinton said.

Clinton criticized Bush for failing to enact a national health care plan, and he promised that such a plan would be forthcoming early in a Clinton presidency.

The Arkansas governor toured the neonatal center at The Pennsylvania Hospital with Sen. Harris Wofford (D-Pa.), who won a stunning upset last year over Dick Thornburgh, Bush’s former attorney general, after a campaign in which Wofford put health care at the top of his agenda.

Clinton cuddled a tiny, premature baby inside the Philadelphia hospital. Later, appearing with Wofford in a courtyard outside the facility, Clinton told reporters that the nation could reduce its rates of infant mortality and low-birth-weight babies--while saving money--through expanded prenatal-care programs.

“In any system in which we design for health care for all Americans, there must be a strategy to impose delivery of these services in primary and preventive care,” he said.

If such a federal program was begun, in every year after the first “we’d have major savings,” Clinton said.

He said that while an average hospital childbirth costs about $3,000, for an infant of less than five pounds, the cost averages $50,000. The cost rises to $150,000 for babies born at less than three pounds, according to Clinton, who noted that the bill for one child in the hospital’s neonatal unit was expected to be $250,000.