Clinton’s Stimulus Package Likely to Remain Mired in Senate, Dole Says

President Clinton’s controversial economic stimulus package is likely to remain mired in the Senate for the foreseeable future, despite his efforts to strike a compromise with GOP opponents of the measure, the chamber’s two top leaders indicated Sunday.

On the eve of scheduled negotiations on how to break the impasse over the package, Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) and Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) both stood firm on their earlier positions, with little sign of any give.

In an appearance on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press,” Dole suggested once again that Clinton scrap everything in the package except his proposal to extend unemployment benefits, then cut spending elsewhere to finance other parts of the plan.

At the same time, Mitchell accused GOP senators of hypocrisy, contending that many of the same GOP senators who are blocking Clinton’s program voted for a similar, albeit much smaller, stimulus package during the Ronald Reagan Administration in 1983.

Clinton has had a difficult time getting the plan through Congress, providing him with a political embarrassment that some say outweighs the modest economic impact that economists predict the package is likely to have.

Although the House quickly approved the plan early on, the legislation has run into a stone wall in the Senate, where there are proportionately more Republicans and conservative Democrats, and whose rules make it more difficult to cut off debate and force a vote.

Clinton offered on Thursday to scale back his proposed $16.3-billion package by $4 billion, but Republicans immediately rejected that, arguing that the economy was doing well enough that it did not need any stimulus and that the plan would only worsen the deficit.

Meanwhile, Republicans spent the weekend in town meetings in major cities across the country, lambasting the Clinton proposal as wasteful in an effort to counter the President’s media campaign last week to drum up support for the plan.

Dole reiterated Sunday that “the size of the package may not be the important thing--it’s whether or not you pay for it. . . . There are no emergencies other than the (provision to extend) unemployment (benefits),” he said.

Asked whether the Senate is likely to enact an economic stimulus package of any kind during the next two weeks, Dole replied bluntly: “I think it’s doubtful.”

The lawmakers return this week after a two-week Easter and Passover recess.

Dole also served notice that Republicans would try to block a Democratic bill to overhaul the campaign finance system when the measure comes to the Senate after House consideration sometime this month.

And he expressed opposition to enacting a value-added tax--a form of national sales tax--to help finance a Clinton health insurance program.

Although Clinton has not yet proposed such a measure, he has acknowledged that he is considering the idea.

The two Senate leaders did agree on one position involving a major foreign affairs issue: that the United States begin arming the Bosnian Muslims and that it launch limited military air strikes against the Serbian-backed forces that have been shelling Sarajevo and Srebrenica.

Dole, who sent Clinton a letter on Saturday urging such action, reiterated his support on Sunday, and Mitchell said he also favors “both courses of action.”

But both men said any U.S. action should be only as part of a “multilateral” move that includes European forces.

In discussing his views on the stimulus package, Dole said repeatedly that the provision to extend unemployment benefits was the only one in the plan that should be passed now.

He has dismissed the remainder, including some jobs programs, as old-fashioned “pork.”