Clinton Plans Diverse Staff, New Jobs Package

Buoyed by his decisive victory, President-elect Bill Clinton plans to move swiftly to assemble a diversified Administration that will include at least some Republicans and to push hard for congressional action on a jobs package and two other major campaign promises--health care and education reform.

The 46-year-old Arkansas governor is only now turning his attention from the campaign to the crucial early decisions he must make on policy and personnel. But aides said that his Administration’s upper echelons will include relatively large numbers of women and minorities and that he will name at least one or perhaps two Republicans to his Cabinet.

Clinton himself, in his Little Rock, Ark., victory speech, said that he is determined to reach beyond his own party for help “among the ranks of independents and Republicans who are willing to roll up their sleeves, be a part of a new partnership and get on with the business of dealing with this nation’s problems.”

And in setting legislative priorities, the Arkansas governor--accurately described by advisers as a policy and politics “junkie”--has told friends that he realizes he must hit the ground running after his inauguration on Jan. 20, if he is to win congressional backing for the far-reaching changes he promised during the campaign.

“He’ll never have more political capital than when he first walks into the Oval Office and he knows it,” said Mickey Kantor, the Los Angeles lawyer who chaired his campaign and now heads his transition team. “He will move quickly with the Democratic Congress and will work with Republicans too,” Kantor predicted.

The Democrats retained control of both houses of Congress in Tuesday’s election. But Clinton’s advisers are well aware that the inherent rivalry and tension between the executive and legislative branches will reassert itself over time, even though the new President and congressional leaders belong to the same party. Moreover, while Clinton won an overwhelming Electoral College victory, his mandate will only be as strong as he can make it.

While Clinton is committed to major efforts on education as well as curbing medical costs and making health care available to all, he is expected to give first priority to the problem that dominated the presidential campaign from beginning to end: the nation’s beleaguered economy.

“I’m going to focus like a laser on this economy,” Clinton said Wednesday in an ABC television interview, starting with steps designed to end the current recession. But he cautioned that the nation’s real economic problems center on a long-term decline in workers’ earnings and that short-term action--presumably including new federal spending--must contribute to long-range solutions.

Specifically, his advisers are known to be weighing three approaches to the task of creating new jobs:

--An infusion of federal money to upgrade the nation’s infrastructure, including roads, bridges, airports and certain new technologies. Clinton has called for $20 billion a year in such spending, funds that he said could be found through budget savings, including on defense, and higher tax collections from the rich and foreign corporations.

--A tax credit for new investments in plants and equipment. Such a tax credit would be “marginal,” unlike past versions of the investment tax credit. In other words, it would apply to some measure of the increase in investment by an entrepreneur, rather than applying to the entire amount of the investment.

Supporters of the investment tax credit assert that it would create jobs two ways: New workers would be needed to produce the equipment that investors would theoretically buy and, in the long run, such equipment would lead to still more jobs by strengthening the U.S. economy.

--Tax credits are relatively slow to take effect, however. And to give the economy a faster kick, aides are looking for ways to speed up the flow of federal money into existing state programs for highways. Even before the inauguration, officials of the new Administration may try to begin jawboning state officials into cutting through red tape and accelerating the contracting process.

In addition to the economic growth package, quick action is expected when the Democratic 103rd Congress convenes next January on issues in which congressional Democrats were stymied by the Bush Administration, such as family leave and changes in campaign finance laws.

The new President is also expected to give high priority to making health insurance available to all Americans; offering educational loans to college students, who would pay the money back from future earnings or through two years of community service, and overhauling the welfare system to provide greater work opportunities.

All these issues involve complex technical and political questions, however, and settling on precise legislative proposals may take more time--and stir more bitter controversy--than putting together the job stimulus program.

And, determined as Clinton is to control the agenda of his fledgling presidency, his best-laid plans could be hindered by domestic and foreign problems already looming on the horizon.

Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), in a truculent reaction to Clinton’s election, said that his failure to win by a majority of the popular vote in the three-way race with President Bush and Ross Perot deprived him of a mandate and served notice that Republicans will pursue their own agenda in Congress. Similarly, private industry and other interest groups already are cranking up to press for their own policy preferences before Clinton and his aides settle on his agenda.

In addition, though Clinton clearly prefers to focus on domestic policy, aides worry that foreign policy crises might intervene. Smoldering problems in Russia, Yugoslavia and the Middle East could erupt during the transition period or immediately afterward, before his national security team has gotten its feet on the ground.

Even before he begins to address the major policy choices awaiting him, Clinton faces a crucial transition task:

Forming the first Democratic Administration in 12 years and only the second in 24 years. Speculation has been rampant about prospective appointments but Clinton, saying that he did not want to “get the cart before the horse,” did not begin seriously addressing the matter until after Tuesday’s election.

The President-elect, in naming top Administration officials, will confer closely with his wife, Hillary, who like him is a lawyer. Clinton was deadly serious early in the campaign when, referring to Hillary, he told voters that if they elected him they would “get two for the price of one.”

“You can bet your booties that Hillary will be in on every key appointment and key appointments won’t stop with Cabinet secretaries,” a Clinton adviser said.

Vice President-elect Al Gore, with whom Clinton developed a close working relationship during the campaign, is also expected to have an important voice in staffing decisions.

Clinton will draw appointees not only from his campaign, but also from a huge pool of friends and associates from around the country that he and his wife have formed during his 12 years as Arkansas governor.

Kantor and the other five members of the transition team are major contenders for top jobs: Los Angeles lawyer Warren Christopher, Washington lawyer Vernon Jordan, former Vermont Gov. Madeleine M. Kunin; former San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros and Thomas (Mack) McLarty, chairman of Arkansas-Louisiana Gas Co. and a longtime Clinton friend.

Kantor is one of a number of friends the governor met through his wife, a prominent lawyer with wide national contacts. Kantor, who served with Hillary Clinton on the Legal Services Corp. board during the Jimmy Carter Administration, is among those considered a possibility for White House chief of staff or a Cabinet post.

Christopher, who served as Carter’s deputy secretary of state, is widely regarded as the top contender to be secretary of state in the Clinton Administration and has been mentioned for attorney general. Christopher chaired a three-member committee, which included Jordan and Kunin, that recommended Clinton select Gore, a Tennessee senator, as his running mate.

Some Clinton advisers said that Jordan, a civil rights leader and former executive director of the Urban League, could become the country’s first black attorney general. He has been close to both Clintons and is known to be interested in the appointment and to believe that it would send a strong signal that the President-elect intends to put new government emphasis on civil rights enforcement.

While a few of Clinton’s Arkansas associates undoubtedly will join his Administration, he will not have a home-grown inner circle like the “Georgia mafia” that Carter brought to Washington from his campaign organization. Most of the Carter group were inexperienced in the way Washington operates, and friends and foes alike agree that this got the Georgian’s Administration off to a bad start from which it never fully recovered.

Clinton will not make the same mistake. Although he ran as an outsider, he has been a frequent visitor to Washington, knows the system and has many friends and advisers in Congress and the Washington Establishment.

His campaign contained not a single member of his state in a key policy position. He had a campaign chairman (Kantor) and press secretary (Dee Dee Myers) from California, a chief strategist from Louisiana (James Carville), a communications director from the nation’s capital (George Stephanopoulos), a media consultant from Alabama (Frank Geer), an advertising director from New York (Mandy Grunwald), a pollster from Connecticut (Stanley Greenberg) and a campaign manger from Chicago (David Wilhelm).

Stephanopoulos probably will be Clinton’s press secretary or communications director. Carville is not expected to join the new Administration and there has been little speculation about the other campaign officials.

Former Democratic Govs. Bruce Babbitt of Arizona, Richard W. Riley of South Carolina, James J. Blanchard of Michigan and Ray Mabus and Bill Winter of Mississippi are all Clinton friends who may be considered for posts in his Administration.

Although nobody really knows who might be appointed, speculating on the movers and shakers of a new Administration has always been Washington’s favorite guessing game. Here are a few possibilities based on what Clinton advisers and others are saying:

--Treasury secretary could go to Goldman Sachs executive Robert Rubin or one of several others, including former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul A. Volcker, investment banker Roger Altman or financier Felix Rohatyn.

--Contenders to be director of the Office of Management and Budget include Alice Rivlin, a senior fellow of the Brookings Institution and former director of the Congressional Budget Office, and former House Budget Committee Chairman James Jones (D-Okla.), who now heads the American Stock Exchange.

--Despite having just been reelected, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Les Aspin (D-Wis.) is widely believed to be a contender for the job of secretary of defense.

Clinton also is expected to replace Robert M. Gates as director of central intelligence. Ranking officials within the U.S. intelligence community speculate that front-runners for Gates’ job are Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman David L. Boren (D-Okla.) and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Dave McCurdy (D-Okla.), both friends of Clinton.