Democratic Party Chief Scorches Clinton Agenda’s Foes : Politics: Health insurance group draws fire during meeting of national committee members.

In a belligerent speech Saturday, Democratic National Committee Chairman David Wilhelm derided an array of powerful Washington interest groups opposed to aspects of President Clinton’s agenda as defenders of “the status quo” and promised that the DNC would aggressively contest their arguments.

“Let’s be very clear,” Wilhelm told several hundred DNC members. “Our foes are not limited to members of the other political party--there are plenty of people and institutions who will fight us to the end to defend the status quo.”

With combative language that punctuated an otherwise placid two-day gathering, Wilhelm took aim at groups across the issue spectrum.

But topping the DNC’s hit list was the Health Insurance Assn. of America, which has run TV ads opposing Clinton’s health care plan and which last week launched radio advertisements criticizing the proposals, according to DNC officials.

Speaking after Wilhelm, former Ohio Gov. Richard F. Celeste, who heads the DNC’s campaign to promote Clinton’s health care plan, charged that the insurance group’s new ads contain “distortions” and statements that are “flat out wrong.”

Responding to the criticism, Richard Coorsh, a spokesman for the HIAA said: “It’s very disheartening and discouraging in that it seems to be contrary to the statement by the President that he wants to reach out to people and be conciliatory.”

The sharp language at the party gathering reflects a White House decision to escalate its attacks against groups that are opposing the health care plan, while generally keeping the President above the fray.

One ranking White House official said Saturday that DNC officials and other surrogates “absolutely” would continue to target specific groups resisting the health care initiative.

“This will be a bare-knuckled fight,” said the official, who wished to remain anonymous. “A lot of these groups for months have been sucking up to us, and now they are on the verge of launching their assaults against the health care plan on Capitol Hill. Any group that thinks it can two-time the Administration is going to learn otherwise.”

At the DNC meeting, Celeste underscored the extent of the new hard line by criticizing an alternative health care reform package introduced last week by Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), with support from a bipartisan group of lawmakers.

Celeste disparaged the plan for refusing to require that all employers provide health insurance for their workers: “At the heart of their proposal is a failure to meet the test that this health care will always be there,” he said.

It was the health insurance association, however, that drew the sharpest barbs. Celeste said the group had distorted Clinton’s plan by alleging in its ads that the proposal would allow Americans to choose only from health plans approved by the government.

Celeste countered by saying that “consumers will be able to choose from any plan that meets basic quality standards” and suggested that the group’s real concern was that Clinton’s plan would impose limits on insurance premium increases.

Coorsh said the insurance group opposes price controls, but he added that its concern is that such limits will lead to a reduction in services for consumers.

Wilhelm set the day’s pugnacious tone with his remarks. At one point, Wilhelm said that if the National Federation of Independent Business “wants to fight (the health care plan) like they fought Medicare--we’ll meet them in the middle of the ring.”

He also took a swing at the Christian Coalition, an organization of evangelical conservatives associated with Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson, for running ads against members of Congress who supported Clinton’s budget package earlier this year.

And he said that if the National Rifle Assn., which staunchly opposes Administration-backed legislation to impose a waiting period on handgun purchases, “is going to stand in the way of meaningful gun control,” the party organization “would take them on too.”

With all his saber-rattling, Wilhelm managed only intermittently to divert the party regulars from their principal business of exchanging political gossip in the aisles of their large meeting room.

But he drew the loudest ovation of the afternoon when he defended his predecessor as DNC chairman, Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown, who has been buffeted by allegations from a Vietnamese businessman that he accepted a bribe to ease U.S. trade restrictions against Vietnam.