Clinton’s Jobs Bill Remains Locked Up in Senate : Congress: Democrats fail in second attempt to crack filibuster. More votes are planned, but several lawmakers say it is time for compromise.

Senate Democrats failed again Saturday to break a Republican filibuster of President Clinton’s $16.3-billion economic-stimulus package, and several said privately that scaling back the plan may now be the only way to prevent its defeat.

Not yet willing to concede the loss, Democratic leaders put the Senate’s Easter recess on indefinite hold and scheduled two more attempts to break the filibuster--the first on Monday and another on Wednesday in case the Monday vote fails.

But with the Republicans holding firm and several Democrats showing signs of wavering, the emerging consensus among Democrats appeared to be that there is virtually no chance of passing the current version of the package.

“There is no way this can pass without a negotiated compromise,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), adding that it was too soon to say what the outlines of such a compromise might be.

The Democrats failed in their second attempt to break the filibuster by a vote of 52 to 37--eight votes short of the 60 required under Senate rules to end the debate. Five Democrats and six Republicans were absent.

Barring a compromise, the Monday vote to end the filibuster is also certain to fail, Democratic strategists conceded.

“The White House is going to have to listen to compromise proposals. . . . That is the only way we’re going to get out of this now because we’re not going to get 60 votes for cloture,” said Sen. John B. Breaux (D-La.), who favors a less ambitious package but sided with the Democratic leadership in opposing the filibuster.

Breaux and other conservative Democrats who prefer a scaled-back version of the Clinton plan were putting themselves forward as mediators, but there were no immediate plans for formal negotiations.

Feinstein said both sides need a “cooling-off period” to improve the bitterly partisan atmosphere that has deadlocked the Senate for the past week.

That rancor continued Saturday as Republicans and Democrats angrily accused one another of abusing Senate rules for partisan ends. Republicans charged that they were being unfairly “steamrolled” by the Democratic majority and had been denied the opportunity to amend the spending package, which they say is both unnecessary and wasteful.

They said they could support certain parts of the package--such as the $4 billion it allocates for extended unemployment benefits--but ridiculed what they said were its many “tax and spend” provisions aimed at rewarding Democrats with “pork barrel” projects at the expense of raising the deficit.

The Republican alternative, offered by Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), would retain the unemployment benefits contained in the Clinton package but eliminate all but $350 million for other projects, including transportation, highway construction and a summer jobs program.

Democrats countered that the Clinton package, which also contains funds for community development projects, immunization programs, student loans and other initiatives, would create 500,000 jobs and already has been scaled back as far as possible if it is to truly stimulate the economy.

The Democrats hoped that by scheduling repeated cloture votes, they could blame the Republicans for causing gridlock and eventually pressure them into breaking ranks.

“Unfortunately, some people in Washington, D.C., haven’t gotten the message that the people want fundamental change,” Clinton said in his weekly radio address, taped in Portland, Ore., on Saturday shortly before he flew to Vancouver, Canada, for his summit meeting with Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin.

On the Senate floor, criticism was more blunt. “The other side wants gridlock because it wants the presidency back,” said Sen. Donald W. Riegle Jr. (D-Mich.). “It wants to make the President unable to function . . . and (it is) prepared to wound the country to do it.”

Bristling at these characterizations, Republicans countered that, having been denied the opportunity to amend the package, filibustering it was the only way left for them to express opposition.

“The Republican Party wants to work with this President on a broad array of issues,” said Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), who delivered the formal Republican response to Clinton’s radio address. But the Republicans, he added, “are standing firm against this wasteful federal spending because going deeper into debt will undermine the long-term health of our economy.”

The Senate debate, now in its eighth day, has ballooned into the most rancorous partisan split since Clinton took office in January--and finding a compromise, both sides acknowledge, is going to be difficult because the stakes are so high.