Congressional Black Caucus Turns Up Heat on Clinton : Politics: Lawmakers maneuver to gain concessions in exchange for supporting the President’s economic plan.

For the first time in its 20-year history, the Congressional Black Caucus is flexing real political muscle--thanks to the precarious state of President Clinton’s economic agenda on Capitol Hill.

The political arithmetic of the splintered Democratic vote in both the House and the Senate has given the 39-member group the potential ability to make or break the Administration’s economic plan--and it is using that leverage to try to wrangle concessions.

The caucus has rebuffed an invitation to meet with Clinton, launched a potentially embarrassing “re-evaluation and reassessment” of the Administration’s solidarity with black lawmakers and directed civil rights organizations to publicly heckle the White House.

“The notion that some people carry that in this institution you should be seen and not heard is something that we want to explode immediately,” declared the caucus chairman, Kweisi Mfume (D-Md.).

The caucus’s openly confrontational stance is more than mere political theatrics. Clinton needs the votes of virtually every Democrat in the House to secure passage of his budget package and cannot afford to lose the support of even a few Black Caucus members.

Behind the scenes, caucus members are working to smooth over internal differences over policy priorities and political strategy in dealing with the White House, and the nature any specific concessions they can achieve remains unclear.

For now, the caucus is threatening to withhold support for the Administration’s budget if Clinton acquiesces to Senate demands for further spending cuts in such areas as Medicare, the earned income tax credit, child hunger programs and summer jobs for young people. Some Senate Democrats are seeking reductions in these and other entitlement programs so they can scale back Clinton’s proposed energy tax.

“Our position is that we want full-class partnership in the workings of the House and to some extent the Senate as it fashions its compromise, and certainly with this President and with this Administration,” said Mfume.

Larry Sabato, a professor of politics at the University of Virginia, said caucus leaders are aware that Clinton and Congress are likely to agree to make bigger cuts in entitlement programs than currently called for in the White House program. Even so, he said, the caucus is making a “very smart political move” by drawing attention to its concerns and putting pressure on the Administration to stand up for programs that benefit their districts.

“Their bloc of votes is absolutely critical,” Sabato said. “The caucus has to be, if not satisfied, mollified.”

Black legislators, who have been among Clinton’s most loyal legislative backers, are understandably distraught by White House willingness to make concessions to conservative and moderate Democrats, said Scott Lilly, executive director of the Democratic Study Group, a research organization sponsored by liberal House members.

“They came in here at the outset trying to be very supportive of his programs and of the President,” Lilly said. “They have gone a great distance in trying to be cooperative. I guess they are now trying to give the White House and the leadership in the House adequate notice that they are beginning to run out of room.”

Still, caucus members may decide that it is not in their best interests to go to the mat with Clinton, who at least shares many of the same broad policy priorities as black lawmakers. At some point, they could wind up hurting their own causes by engaging in confrontation.

The caucus is likely to seek specific concessions to offset the impact of additional cuts in entitlements. Any deals they negotiate are likely to involve something “near and dear to the hearts of the Black Caucus, like a little more spending in urban programs,” Sabato said. In that scenario, the Administration would get the caucus votes it needs for its economic package and black legislators would have trophies to bring back to their districts.

To obtain even that degree of success, however, conflicting opinions within the caucus itself must be resolved. Sources familiar with the group’s closed-door strategy discussions said that it is divided over how to respond to members’ anger over Clinton’s recent moves.

“There are at least three factions within the caucus,” said a source close to the caucus. “One group wants to make the President crawl and beg for mercy. Another wants to support Clinton, no matter what he does. And another group just can’t seem to make up its minds.”

While the current focus of the caucus’s attention is Clinton’s economic agenda, the event that really provoked its anger was Clinton’s withdrawal of C. Lani Guinier as his nominee to head the civil rights division at the Justice Department.

The Guinier affair was the latest in what the caucus perceived as a series of critical retreats by Clinton. Some members were already seething because they thought that Clinton should have fought harder for his defeated economic stimulus package, which would have benefited the big cities and urban areas that many black lawmakers represent.

Others, like Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), had grown distrustful of the Administration after it seemed to cave in to conservative pressure for cuts in a summer jobs program that would have helped youths in depressed areas like South-Central Los Angeles.