Clinton Visits Chicago, Pays His Debt to Rostenkowski : Politics: The President stops short of endorsing beleaguered House leader’s reelection bid. But he praises his leadership qualities.

President Clinton made a controversial trip here Monday to pay a political debt to Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.), the powerful but beleaguered chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee.

Rostenkowski, 66, faces possible federal indictment on corruption charges and a tough reelection fight in a March 15 Democratic primary.

But the gravel-voiced Rostenkowski also was a major White House ally in last year’s budget battle and is a key deal maker on health care reform.

The President, who volunteered his support, spoke on crime and health care in Rostenkowski’s presence before police, doctors and students at city-run Wright College, dramatizing Monday’s effective date of the Brady law requiring background checks for handgun purchasers.

Stopping short of endorsing the 36-year congressional veteran, Clinton praised Rostenkowski for “his leadership last year” on economic matters and indicated that he is needed to pass important legislation this year.

“If you want me to get things done,” Clinton said, “you have to say to the members of Congress: Act. The one person you don’t have to say it to is Dan Rostenkowski. It’s in his bones, and he will do it too.”

However, Clinton fidgeted in his chair as Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley linked him with Rostenkowski as an exemplar of leadership.

Rostenkowski told Clinton: “I applaud you because you’re not afraid to take on the tough ones.”

A near-legendary powerbroker, Rostenkowski has spent $750,000 on legal bills during a two-year federal investigation into suspicions that he embezzled $21,000 through bogus House post office stamp purchases, put no-show workers on his payroll, rented campaign offices from himself and bought personal cars with public money.

He has denied any wrongdoing, though last month he reimbursed the Treasury $82,095 for china, jewelry and other gift items he had “inadvertently” billed to taxpayers. The $750,000, for staffers’ legal fees as well as his own, has been paid from his campaign funds and from a legal defense fund he recently set up.

With Justice Department officials deciding soon whether to seek an indictment, reporters asked Atty. Gen. Janet Reno last week whether she had any views on the appropriateness of Clinton’s Chicago trip. She answered only, “Yes.”

Clinton defended the trip Friday, saying, “There is still a presumption of innocence in this country.”

Illinois State Sen. John Cullerton, one of Rostenkowski’s two major rivals in the primary, called Clinton’s visit “ill-advised.” Noting the trip’s law and order motif and Clinton’s Whitewater land-development troubles, Cullerton gibed: “Both these guys are under investigation. It makes for interesting parallels.”

Presidential aides emphasized that Clinton did not attend an official campaign event. But political observers said that simply by showing up alongside Rostenkowski, Clinton was underscoring the congressman’s campaign theme: that he is close to the President and can bring home the pork for Chicago.

After his trip to Chicago, the President later Monday treated British Prime Minister John Major to an extraordinary show of hospitality: a tour of Pittsburgh, Pa., by limousine and an elegant dinner, capped by a ride on Air Force One and a White House sleepover in the Lincoln Bedroom.

The five-hour visit was a sentimental trip for Major, whose father and grandfather lived in Pittsburgh in the late 19th Century.

“I want to emphasize to all of you here in the heartland of America how important the relationship between the United States and Great Britain is,” Clinton said, standing alongside Major in an airport hangar.

Although they have had sharp differences on Bosnia and Northern Ireland, the two leaders emphasized areas of agreement and cooperation, such as the importance of economic reform in Russia, expanding world trade and strengthening NATO.