Clinton Defends Jobs Plan, Attacks Foes : Economy: The Senate’s swimming pool becomes unlikely focus of debate. President hints he may go on the road to stump for his stimulus program.

Sounding more combative than conciliatory, President Clinton Wednesday defended the use of public funds for swimming pools in his $16.3-billion stimulus package, noting scornfully that even the U.S. Senate has a pool financed with taxpayer money.

Clinton declared that he will fight to save as much of his jobs-creating program as he can, despite solid Republican opposition that blocked pre-Easter approval of his plan in the Senate.

White House and Cabinet officials focused their lobbying on five GOP senators in hopes that they would abandon a filibuster and help Democrats pass most of the President’s package when the Senate returns on April 19. Clinton indicated that he may go on the road to stump for his jobs program while Congress is taking its spring break.

Clinton excoriated some Republican opposition as “spurious” and rejected GOP criticism that part of the funds would be used to build swimming pools or other recreational facilities. “I mean, the Senate’s got a swimming pool, doesn’t it?” Clinton asked reporters. “And it was built with taxpayers’ money and somebody had a job building it.”

Republicans have criticized elements of the stimulus package that would provide $2.5 billion to local governments for projects to aid those with low and moderate incomes or to prevent “slum and blight” conditions. A lengthy list of possible projects, drawn up by the U.S. Conference of Mayors in February, includes swimming pools and recreational facilities, some of which could be built with federal money if the stimulus plan is approved.

“If you put people to work in a city or a suburb or a small town building a city park that gives people--kids--the chance to have recreational opportunities in the summertime and you create jobs doing it, is that a waste of money?” the President asked.

Underscoring Clinton’s jab at Senate perquisites, White House Communications Director George Stephanopoulos told reporters later that the Senate actually has two swimming pools, not just the one cited by the President. Asked how much he was willing to cut the stimulus package to move it through the Senate, the President replied: “No more than I have to to get the thing passed. . . . I want some action.”

Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), however, showed no sign of meeting the Administration halfway.

“President Clinton can’t lock out Republicans and hide behind the ‘gridlock’ gimmick any longer,” Dole said in a statement. “We’re not stopping the government--we’re stopping the Democrats’ deficit spending and saving the taxpayers a bundle.”

Senate Minority Whip Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.) had a sharp rejoinder to the President’s remarks about the Senate swimming pool.

“I don’t know where it came from but I know we pay for it--$520 a year,” Simpson said. “I’ve used it three times in 14 years.”

As for Clinton’s tactics in the struggle with the Senate Republicans, Simpson said: “He’s using some strokes and some powers we haven’t seen since the days of Lyndon Johnson. Sometimes that will work and sometimes it won’t. If he wants to play hardball, the rules of the Senate were made for hardball--little steel marbles.”

White House aides said that Clinton hopes to persuade five moderate GOP senators to change their stance and vote to halt the filibuster that has tied up the stimulus package for two weeks.

The quintet includes Sens. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, Alfonse M. D’Amato of New York, John H. Chafee of Rhode Island, James M. Jeffords of Vermont and Mark O. Hatfield of Oregon.

Supporters of the Clinton package--including most of the nation’s mayors and governors, contractors and building trades unions--plan to lobby the senators in their home states during the congressional recess.

“He is going to fight for as much of this program as he can get,” Stephanopoulos said. “At the same time, if adjustments are needed to allow for a debate and vote on the President’s package, he is willing to consider those adjustments.”

But Secretary of Labor Robert B. Reich said major parts of the package are not negotiable.

“If you can pinpoint exactly what you’re concerned about, in terms of what you call pork . . . then maybe we can strike a compromise,” he said in a Fox Morning News television interview. “If you’re calling . . . training or investments in roads and bridges and all of those things, pork, we’re not going to deal with you.”