Democrats Lobbied on Budget Bill : Economy: Clinton buttonholes senators as vote nears on $347-billion package of taxes and spending cuts. Party leaders expect passage.

With many Democrats voicing misgivings about his deficit-reduction plan, President Clinton lobbied wavering members of his party on Tuesday as the Senate neared a showdown on the $347-billion package of tax increases and spending cuts.

Clinton met with five Democratic senators who have reservations about the massive budget reconciliation bill, which was passed by the Senate Budget Committee on a party-line vote.

Final action is expected by Thursday night.

Even supporters of the measure expressed lukewarm support. “It’s the best we can do,” said Sen. J. James Exon (D-Neb.). “Maybe this is a phony (deficit-reduction) plan too. . . . It’s just not as phony as those previous ones. It can’t be any worse.”

Despite the widespread grumbling by Democrats and all-out opposition by Republicans, Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) agreed with his counterpart, Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) that the bill will be approved.

“They’ve got the votes. It’ll pass,” Dole told reporters after he and other GOP leaders in the Senate said they would introduce an alternative plan to reduce the deficit below $200 billion by 1998, entirely with spending cuts.

The Republicans provided no details of their proposal, but separate GOP amendments are expected to eliminate the proposed 4.3-cent-a-gallon increase in gasoline taxes and a proposed tax increase on Social Security benefits for better-off retirees.

Defenders of the legislation approved Friday by the Senate Finance Committee said that Americans with taxable incomes of $200,000 a year or more would pay for 78.5% of the $249-billion tax increase in Clinton’s plan, while those with incomes below $30,000 would get a tax cut.

A typical family with an income between $30,000 and $40,000 would pay an extra $61 a year because of the motor fuels tax, the Congressional Budget Office said in a new analysis of the plan.

Some Democrats, however, said they might try to change provisions of the legislation to restore a share of the $69-billion cut in Medicare outlays over the next five years. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said that the higher cuts in the bill are “the wrong direction for the Democratic Party to take.”

Another possible change on the Senate floor is to increase the top corporate income tax rate to 36%, as opposed to 35% in the committee bill, said Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.). “There could be some modest changes, but I think the basic package that emerged from the Senate Finance Committee will pass the Senate.”

Once approved by the Senate, the legislation will move to a Senate-House conference committee, where most lawmakers expect it to be modified to make it more palatable to a Democratic majority in each chamber. Some liberal Democratic critics of the Senate bill said that they may wait for that step to press for revisions.

Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.) was among the five lawmakers who spoke with Clinton about the measure Tuesday. “The problem here is that deficit reduction is tough,” Kerrey said afterward. “You have to tell people they will have a lower standard of living in the short term to have a better life in the long term.”

Clinton also spoke with Democratic Sens. Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey, Herbert Kohl of Wisconsin, Howell Heflin of Alabama and Dennis DeConcini of Arizona as part of his personal lobbying campaign.

Later, addressing the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ convention by satellite broadcast, the President charged that his Republican predecessors had submitted “make-believe budgets” and warned that the nation would pay a heavy price if fiscal policies followed for the past 12 years are not changed.

“I wonder what the middle class, the working poor, the old, the sick and the veterans will do if the failed policies of the past are not abandoned,” Clinton said. “I also wonder what they’ll do if we don’t ask all the rest of us to pay our fair share so that we can still continue to take care of them.”