Clinton Blasts Senate GOP for Delaying Spending Bill : Budget: The President accuses the lawmakers of wanting to keep people jobless. But behind the scenes, a compromise appears to be in the works.

President Clinton accused Senate Republicans who are delaying his $16.3-billion stimulus package of wanting “more people to stay out of work,” while Administration officials acknowledged that they almost certainly will have to sacrifice some of the plan’s spending provisions to keep the measure alive.

Turning up the political heat on an issue that has developed into a major test of wills, Clinton used the occasion of the annual children’s Easter egg roll on the White House lawn to mount a sharp attack on Senate Republicans.

“Look out there at those kids,” said Clinton. “They are the hostages” of the Republican action. The stimulus plan includes $300 million to be used to begin immunizing 1 million children nationwide this summer.

Behind the public war of words, however, Administration officials said that Clinton knows it will now be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to win approval for his entire stimulus package. “I think he (Clinton) views it as a high probability that we won’t get the whole thing,” said one White House official.

In fact, Clinton’s remarks Monday reflected a two-track strategy of bashing the Senate Republicans in public while trying to make a deal with them in private, a senior Administration official said. Clinton and his aides now hope that the public criticism will begin to loosen some of the bricks in what, so far, has been a solid wall of Republican opposition to Clinton’s plan.

But White House officials said that they cannot string out their political strategy for very long, making it increasingly likely that Clinton will have to move toward a compromise in coming days. Any deal with the Republicans must be struck quickly, Administration officials stressed, if youth job programs and other projects in the stimulus package that are set to begin this summer are to get off the ground on time.

Although Republicans are in the minority in both houses of Congress, they have enough voting power in the Senate to maintain a filibuster, preventing a vote on the bill. Although the legislation has passed the House, Republican senators have charged that the stimulus measure is full of unnecessary spending--so-called “political pork”--that will merely worsen the federal deficit.

So Administration policy-makers, while awaiting a final political decision on whether a compromise can be reached with Senate Republicans, expect to begin in the next week or so deciding which elements of the stimulus plan to fight for--and which to abandon.

Officials stressed, however, that Clinton has not given up on the idea of achieving total victory: passage of the entire stimulus package.

But sources say that, if the President decides to compromise and scale back his spending, the first piece likely to get jettisoned is also the most controversial: $2.5 billion in community development block grants for cities. Republicans have denounced that spending as pure pork for Democratic constituencies.

Meanwhile, the one part of the package that is virtually guaranteed passage is the $4 billion in unemployment benefits. Of the remaining $12.3 billion, the highest priority for the White House is $1 billion for summer jobs for teen-agers this year, an Administration official said.

After that, the next priorities are money for highway projects and mass transit--spending that generates large amounts of relatively well-paid, blue-collar construction jobs--and the $300 million for childhood immunizations--the first phase of Clinton’s plan to immunize all American children. The bill as passed by the House also includes $500 million for the preschool Head Start program and $500 million for expanded summer schools, both of which are likely to be reduced.

The White House is not likely to fight quite so ardently to preserve the community development block grants, however. Republicans have focused their fire on that money, claiming that cities will use the funds to build swimming pools, parking garages, community centers and similar projects. Administration officials have defended the money, saying that the construction generates jobs and that many of the projects, such as swimming pools in poor neighborhoods, are well worth the money.

“You can restrict the (block grant) money, but you can’t get rid of it entirely,” one Administration official said. “That’s the basis for a lot of the support” in the House.

Negotiators probably also will agree to scale back significantly $2 billion in the bill for expanding the college loan program, $2.6 billion to back additional loans from banks to small businesses and some $800 million for building sewage treatment plants.

Yet Clinton faces serious political constraint in dealing with the GOP. If he gives up too much to get the bill through the Senate, he will lose support from Democrats in the House.

In addition, the White House also is becoming more pessimistic about the outlook for the tax incentives for business investment in the stimulus plan. The temporary investment tax credit included in the stimulus plan now appears doomed, Administration and congressional sources said. But Administration officials said that they hope to preserve a separate tax credit aimed at small businesses, which is included in Clinton’s long-term economic plan.

Yet the mounting troubles on Capitol Hill for the short-term stimulus plan may be only the beginning. White House sources acknowledged Monday that they face an uphill battle in preserving the long-term domestic spending initiatives included in Clinton’s economic plan once Congress begins to debate the details of the Clinton budget.

Congress already has established stringent spending ceilings in its new budget resolutions, and Clinton’s 1994 budget, which includes his “investment agenda,” exceeds those spending caps. That sets the stage for a bitter fight between the White House and Congress over domestic spending priorities.

“We are painfully aware of the troubles facing the investment program,” said one Administration source.