Moynihan Pushes for Action on Health Bill : Reform: Committee chairman urges Clinton to work with Congress before July 4 recess. Senator says compromise on universal coverage necessary.

Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) urged President Clinton on Sunday to stay in Washington and work with Congress on passing a health care reform bill, warning that committee action is critical by the July 4 recess.

While contending that odds are better than 50-50 for final passage of a bill this year, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee said Congress will not provide universal coverage immediately but will go a long way toward the President’s goal.

In February, Clinton told Congress he would veto any bill that does not cover all Americans. But some Administration officials have indicated the White House might consider a phased-in approach.

Moynihan, on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press,” likened the situation to the initial enactment of Social Security in 1935, which started out covering primarily males in manufacturing, about 60% of the population. Four years later, Congress extended retirement benefits to include spouses and added survivors’ insurance, he noted.

Despite Clinton’s veto threat, Moynihan said: “I think a bill that took you a long way toward universal coverage and declared universal coverage to be the policy of the United States to be achieved in a time certain, that fits his conditions.”

When asked if backers of health reform needed a signal from the President, Moynihan said Clinton should say, “ ‘I’m staying right here in town working with you until we get this thing done.’ ”

Clinton is scheduled to attend a fund-raiser in St. Louis on Friday for House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.).

House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), also appearing Sunday on the NBC news program, denied reports that he is leading a drive to block any health care bill.

Gingrich said he hoped “a genuinely bipartisan bill” would be passed by a large margin rather than enacting a bill by a slim margin, which he denounced as “the tax increase strategy from last year” when the President’s budget was narrowly approved.

He also defended accepting more than $500,000 in campaign contributions from interests opposed to Clinton’s health bill, claiming that it did not impair his objectivity.

“I find this a very bizarre double standard, where people whose newspapers and whose television stations take advertising from virtually anybody and are somehow pristine pure, that then they turn to politics,” Gingrich said.

Moynihan acknowledged that some of his colleagues on the finance panel are trying to broker deals on other tax issues as part of health reform, notably Sen. John B. Breaux (D-La.), who wants breaks for the oil and gas industry.

“They won’t be in the bill,” Moynihan said, after observing that “you can’t be on the Finance Committee and be a senator from Louisiana without wanting to have tax breaks for the oil and gas industry on anything.”

Moynihan also said he wanted to open hearings on Clinton’s welfare reform proposal “the minute we have just a moment’s window in the health care proceedings.” While saying that Congress “might surprise” those who see no likelihood of a welfare bill this year, Moynihan acknowledged that “paying for it is a problem.”

He went along with one suggestion that, like health care reform, the welfare bill will be incremental--not ending welfare as “we know it,” which Clinton promised during his presidential campaign.

“Life is incremental, one day at a time,” Moynihan said. “And thank God. I couldn’t take much more.”