Gore Pitches Economic Program to Nebraskans

While President Clinton was in Washington Wednesday attending to matters of state, Vice President Al Gore was here doing the floor-scrubbing of domestic politics.

In the ceaseless effort to sell Clinton’s economic program, Gore was in Omaha to take questions at a town hall meeting and to apply pressure on the state’s congressional delegation to get behind the Administration package of tax increases and spending cuts.

Conservative Democratic Sen. J. James Exon of Nebraska, a member of the pivotal Senate Budget Committee, is a particular target of the White House political re-education efforts.

Exon was an early critic of the Clinton plan, complaining publicly and privately that programs for farmers were cut too much and other domestic spending was not cut enough. He said that the plan concentrates too much on reducing the federal budget deficit and not enough on trimming the $4-trillion government debt.

Clinton and Gore summoned Exon to the White House last week for an hour of proselytizing, but the wayward Nebraskan remains unconverted. Exon declined Gore’s invitation to accompany him aboard Air Force Two for the Omaha visit.

“He has a severe head cold,” an Exon aide explained.

The White House would have liked to have had Exon seen and photographed standing beside the vice president at the University of Nebraska at Omaha Wednesday as at least a tacit endorsement of the Administration’s plans. Instead, the White House will try to sell the package directly to Nebraska voters and use them to bring pressure on their senator to get on board.

The whole idea, one senior White House strategist said, is “How do you help the members (of Congress) help you?”

Embarrassing them in their home districts is one way, he said. U.S. Rep. Peter Hoagland, a three-term Democrat from Omaha, did accept the ride aboard the vice president’s plane even though he, too, is skeptical about the White House economic program.

Hoagland was peppered with hostile questions about the plan at a town meeting in Omaha last Sunday and he said that he hopes Gore can do a better job of selling the plan than he did.

Nebraska is not particularly fertile territory for the new Democratic Administration, Hoagland noted. Former President George Bush won the state and independent Ross Perot took 26% of the vote, well above his national tally of 19%.

In the town meeting, Gore said that the country faces two choices: adopt the Clinton plan or condemn itself to more years of political gridlock and economic decay.

And he laid his agenda bare in a reply to a question about how to stop the flight of U.S. manufacturing businesses overseas.

“Here’s what you ought to do: Encourage your senator or congressman to vote for President Clinton’s plan,” Gore said.