Expanded Urban Aid Plan May Be Vetoed Over Cost

Just weeks after he unveiled an emergency urban aid package to help riot-torn Los Angeles, President Bush faces the embarrassing prospect that he may have to veto the measure.

Bush initially endorsed a $495-million version of the bill, but it has been expanded by House and Senate Democratic negotiators to a $2-billion package that also would step up Head Start, summer job programs and inner-city summer school initiatives nationwide.

If both houses endorse the $2-billion total in floor votes later this week, Bush will have to either accept the figure--and thereby seem to abandon his own fight to hold down federal spending--or veto the bill and appear to be blocking aid to Los Angeles.

The dilemma has the President’s top advisers fuming, and they are uneasy over how to respond.

BACKGROUND: Senior White House strategists had hoped that Bush’s enthusiastic backing of the earlier version of the bill would demonstrate his ability to respond forcefully and quickly to a domestic crisis.

Now, however, they fear the effort will reinforce the notion that Bush and Congress are hopelessly paralyzed. They are furious at the Democratic leadership. “They’re trying to nail us to a wall,” one aide said.

“This is the last thing we wanted to do,” a clearly exasperated Robert M. Teeter, Bush’s campaign chairman, said in an interview. “It seems as if Congress just takes what the President offers and turns it 90 degrees, so that he’ll have no choice (but) to veto it.”

William Schneider, political analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, warned that the machinations give a boost to presumed presidential contender Ross Perot, by confirming “the perception, now widespread, that Washington is in gridlock and can’t do anything about anything--including a crisis. That’s why Perot exists.”

It wasn’t immediately clear how the issue would play out. While the Senate is likely to endorse the negotiators’ compromise, the vote in the House is expected to be close, and the measure may be sent back for further negotiation.

Although Bush has not yet publicly threatened to veto the bill, aides confirmed that he indicated to GOP leaders Tuesday morning that he would veto it if he received it in its present form.

Yet White House Budget Director Richard G. Darman also held out a carrot. He said that Bush would “sign immediately” either the House-passed legislation or a sharply pared back measure containing post-riot aid and a smaller summer jobs program.

Darman said that the $675 million for summer jobs in the conference committee version of the bill could not be used efficiently because summer is already under way.

DEBATE: Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) urged Democratic leaders to reconvene the House-Senate conference committee to reconsider the legislation before it goes to the President.

Dole told the Senate on Tuesday that “busting the budget by $2 billion is not the way to do it.”

Said Bush: “The irony is that the Democratic leadership is fighting the balanced-budget constitutional amendment, and at the same time trying to ram through $2 billion in spending that’s not required.”

Democrats insisted their motives are not solely political. They accused the Administration of trying to distort the situation for election-year gain.

“The bill did get loaded up over here, but the intentions were good,” one Democratic strategist said. “The way we look at it, we were trying to go the other way--that is, to get something done in the face of the Administration’s inaction.”

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) said the bill “makes more sense than what the Administration was prepared to do.”

Federal officials, meanwhile, said the delay on the legislation will not impede distribution of aid for Los Angeles. They said most of the money already has been distributed. The legislation is merely to replenish the disaster fund.