$1.6 Billion for Russia Backed in Congress : Foreign aid: But Clinton faces a harder sell when he asks lawmakers for additional funding.

Even though it comes at a time when they are sharply divided over proposals for domestic spending cuts and tax increases, members of Congress appear to be broadly supportive of the $1.6-billion Russian aid package announced by President Clinton in Vancouver, Canada.

But Clinton faces a much harder sell over the additional aid he is expected to ask Congress to approve over the next few months, lawmakers warn.

“Finding more money for Russia is not going to be easy when we are cutting major domestic programs and raising taxes,” said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate subcommittee that appropriates foreign aid. “The President is going to have to make a very, very strong case” for a new Russian aid package and he must do it “within the confines of an overall foreign aid budget that is going to be cut this year.”

The package that Clinton announced during his meeting with Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin is unlikely to meet resistance, even from conservatives who traditionally oppose foreign aid, because it is drawn from funds already appropriated but not yet spent because of bureaucratic delays in Washington and Moscow.

“Members can support it because it involves no debate, no politically embarrassing vote on foreign aid, that they then have to go home and explain to their constituents,” said a senior House Foreign Affairs Committee aide.

Also, the package has been “constructed to appeal not only to Russians but to constituents here at home,” noted Rep. Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee. Its largest component--$700 million in grain credits--is a boon to U.S. farmers, while other aspects of the package offer potential benefits to the energy industry and other private sector businesses, Hamilton added.

But the dynamics of the debate will be much different as Clinton consults with Congress in the coming weeks over future aid to Russia. How much more aid he will request from Congress is not clear yet, although Democratic leaders expect to find out in the next few weeks.

Last month, the Administration served notice that it would seek to raise the amount appropriated for Russia in its fiscal 1994 budget request to $700 million--a $300-million increase over 1993. But the White House has yet to present its formal request, and some lawmakers said Monday that Clinton may be about to ask for even more.

In Vancouver, Clinton made it clear that the $1.6-billion aid package was only the first installment on a much larger package of both bilateral and multilateral assistance that he would seek from Congress and the Group of Seven major industrial democracies, whose foreign and finance ministers are to meet in Tokyo on April 14 and 15 to discuss ways of stabilizing Russia’s economy.

White House Communications Director George Stephanopoulos said Monday that Clinton will consult closely with congressional leaders and officials of the other G-7 nations--Germany, Japan, Britain, France, Italy and Canada--”over the next several weeks,” but he refused to comment on the size of the new package that the President may request.

Although it has been overshadowed by the bitter budget debate, a broad bipartisan consensus existed even before the Vancouver summit on the need to do more to help Yeltsin’s reforms succeed.

“It was Yeltsin who . . . faced down the hard-liners and who repudiated communism,” Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) said on the eve of the summit. “We need to show the Russian people that the risk was worth taking, and I’ve told the President he has bipartisan support in Congress for assisting Russia because it is in our national interest.”

But that consensus exists only within the fairly rigid boundaries of an overall foreign aid budget that for political reasons will have to be lower than this year’s total of $14 billion.

Coming on top of spending cuts, tax increases and the unrelated but politically difficult debates that loom over health care reform and gays in the military, anything above this year’s total would be virtually dead, Leahy and others have warned.

Leahy and his House counterpart, Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.), both have argued in recent weeks that the only way to finance a sizable Russian aid package this year is through a total restructuring of the foreign aid budget. Such change would shift to Russia some of the money now going to large aid recipients like Egypt and Israel, which together receive more than one-third of all U.S. foreign assistance. But with the Administration refusing to consider such cuts, the only way to fund a major new aid package for Russia is by raising the overall total spent on foreign aid.

Even while laying the groundwork for congressional approval of a larger Russian aid package, the President’s supporters concede that a significant increase will require a major sales effort by Clinton personally.

“He’s got to sell the American people on this. . . . It’s going to be a difficult job, but the President is superb at that sort of thing,” said California Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City).

“We can be the President’s chorus,” added Leahy, “but he is the one who is going to have to go out and make the case.”