House Approves Clinton’s Budget, Stimulus Package : Economy: Democrats hand the President a double victory, passing his deficit-cutting plan and his $16.3-billion spending program to spur recovery.

In a vital double victory for President Clinton, the House approved a five-year budget blueprint and a more controversial $16.3-billion stimulus package to carry out his “vision for change in America.”

Democrats overwhelmingly rallied behind the President on the first major congressional test for his new Administration. The House voted late Thursday, 243 to 183, in favor of the budget resolution that essentially carried out Clinton’s plan, with only 11 Democrats voting against the measure.

The stimulus package, attacked by some conservative Democrats and Republicans as wasteful spending that would drive up the deficit, was approved early today by a vote of 235 to 190, with 22 Democratic defections.

Clearly, repeated urgings by House leaders to give Clinton a chance to prove himself were crucial in mustering the Democratic votes necessary to put his economic program over the top in the House.

“The President has a plan,” said House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) only minutes before the first major showdown on Clinton’s economic plan. “You may not agree with it--but he deserves a chance.”

Republicans, who were united in opposition, contended that the budget resolution would trigger the largest tax increase in history and destroy jobs rather than create them as the President has promised.

Clinton and other advocates portrayed the measures as a turn away from Ronald Reagan’s program of tax cuts for the wealthy and high defense spending financed by large deficits. The new Democratic strategy envisions spending reductions and higher taxes, mainly on the wealthy, that would allow bigger outlays for a variety of social programs and shrink the budget deficit as well.

Several lawmakers from California said the President’s program would provide badly needed help for their state’s depressed economy.

“In California alone, the package will create 80,000 permanent jobs and California needs each of those jobs if it is to join the ranks of those states now in recovery,” said Rep. Vic Fazio (D-West Sacramento), vice chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. Nationwide, he said, “this package promises to create at least 1 million jobs, 325,000 of which will be permanent, full-time jobs.”

Clinton, in a speech to Treasury Department employees obviously aimed at wavering Democrats on Capitol Hill, said before the vote: “It is clear that the time has come to make a fundamental change in policy and direction.”

Rep. Bill Richardson (D-N. M.), a chief deputy whip in the House leadership, said that some Democrats had reservations about parts of the Clinton economic program but decided to support the President anyway on his first major test in Congress.

“The momentum is going to help the President in later battles (over the plan) in the Senate, which will be tough,” Richardson said.

The House budget resolution, which enjoyed strong Democratic backing, would cut spending by $63 billion more than Clinton originally had sought and would achieve deficit reduction of $510 billion over the next five years.

Even so, it would slice only 6% from the total $8.1 trillion that the federal government is expected to spend between now and 1998. Deficit reduction in the fiscal year starting Oct. 1 would amount to less than 3% of the $1.5 trillion in authorized spending.

Overall, the measure calls for $246 billion in tax increases over the next five years. Another $264 billion would be sliced from spending, mainly in the Pentagon budget, and through restraint in the growth of Medicare and Medicaid.

Most of the savings would result from a “hard freeze” that would hold discretionary defense, foreign and domestic spending to current levels, with some programs being eliminated and others getting more funds under Clinton’s plan.

The budget resolution contains few specifics, although it sets ceilings on House committee spending and directs the Ways and Means Committee to raise almost $300 million in new revenues over the five years.

“The real battles are ahead of us,” said House Minority Leader Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.). “We’ll fight them out in the trenches of our committees.”

The stimulus package would raise spending this year and next by $16.3 billion for community development grants, a summer jobs program, small business loans and other projects designed to produce 219,000 jobs this year and more in the future.

But GOP lawmakers--and some Democrats--argued that the package was a political payoff to favored Clinton constituencies that would not spark any economic resurgence.

“This package is full of pork,” complained Rep. Joe Knollenberg (R-Mich.).

Early in the debate, the House rejected two Republican alternative budgets. It defeated a proposal by Rep. John R. Kasich (R-Ohio), ranking minority member of the House Budget Committee, that would have achieved deficit reduction of $425 billion over five years without Clinton’s tax increases. Only three Democrats crossed party lines to support Kasich and 41 Republicans voted against him, as the House voted, 295 to 135, to kill his plan.

Later, Rep. Gerald B. Solomon (R-N. Y.) and other moderate Republicans offered another alternative, combining deep spending cuts and some tax increases on upper-income Americans to lower the deficit. It lost on a lopsided vote of 409 to 20.

A liberal alternative budget offered by the Congressional Black Caucus, with larger tax increases and bigger cuts in defense than the Clinton-backed plan, was defeated, 335 to 87.

Some Republicans, frustrated by the Democratic leadership’s decision to block all but one amendment to the stimulus package, engaged in delaying tactics by forcing roll-call votes on frivolous motions to adjourn the House that were overwhelmingly rejected.

Democrats, however, appeared to have their act together for the first major test of Clinton’s economic plan.

“We’ve had no-pain presidencies for 12 years and now the pain facing the American people is greater than anything we could have possibly imagined,” said Rep. John Bryant (D-Tex.) in a typical allusion to Republican control of the White House by Ronald Reagan and George Bush.

Republicans, however, countered that Democrats’ desire to raise taxes and spending would hurt, not help, economic growth and do little to curb the rising federal deficit that is estimated at more than $300 billion in the current fiscal year.

“The President is stepping on the accelerator with more spending while at the same time he is jamming on the brakes with punitive tax increases,” argued Rep. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.).

Clinton’s plan escaped major surgery in the Senate on Thursday when Democrats defeated, 53 to 46, a move to knock the President’s proposed energy tax out of the budget and replace it with additional spending cuts. The amendment, sponsored by Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.) and Sen. Richard C. Shelby (D-Ala.), was supported by all 43 Republicans and three Democrats.

The relatively close vote, however, indicated that other parts of Clinton’s program would face greater obstacles in the Senate than it has in the House.

In the House, Fazio defended the stimulus package as a key part of Clinton’s economic plan.