Clinton Appears Willing to Deal on Crime Bill

After three days of attacking congressional Republicans for scuttling his $33.2-billion anti-crime package, President Clinton on Monday abruptly shifted course, signaling a willingness to deal with GOP leaders to secure passage of the measure.

One of the key points of contention in the bill--the ban on assault weapons--could be modified and still be acceptable to the Administration, officials indicated, although Clinton has publicly insisted that the ban must remain in the bill.

Aides said the Administration is more likely to win Republican votes than to convert many of the 58 Democrats who voted against the bill last week. Clinton, thus, is softening the harsh partisan tone of his remarks since the measure’s startling defeat in a House procedural vote last Thursday.

“There should be no more excuses, no more tricks, no more delays and no more discussion about whether this bill is a Democratic bill or a Republican bill or a Clinton bill,” the President said in a Rose Garden event intended to drum up support for the crime package. “I don’t know when I will ever be able to get it across to people here that what we do here is not about us, it is about the rest of America.”

Earlier in the day, Clinton, borrowing a pen once used by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, signed into law a measure establishing the Social Security Administration as an independent agency.

The $325-billion program, established under Roosevelt 59 years ago, has until now been housed within the Department of Health and Human Services. With 64,000 employees and 1,300 field offices, the newly autonomous agency will be one of the largest in the federal government. More than 40 million elderly and disabled Americans receive Social Security benefits and 135 million pay into the fund.

Last week’s defeat of the crime bill on a 225-210 procedural vote is generally credited to the National Rifle Assn.’s furious lobbying against the assault weapons ban.

White House Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta said on the NBC-TV’s “Today” program Monday that the Administration was ready to deal. “Look, again, we are willing to work with both sides to try to find the compromises necessary to bring this crime bill back. There’s no question about that.”

Other aides said the bill’s $7.4 billion in spending on social programs designed to reduce crime almost certainly will be pared back.

One senior White House official said Clinton is looking to pick up the eight votes he needs one at a time, using his powers of persuasion and accepting the compromises he needs to make.

“We’re going to get a bill,” the official said. “The President is very clear on this. He wants a bill.”

House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) acknowledged that programs offering youths an alternative to crime and gang membership--such as midnight basketball--are negotiable. “If we have to pay the price to take out some good programs to satisfy the critics, I’m not opposed to doing that,” the Speaker said.

In its continuing campaign to build public pressure for the crime measure, the White House on Monday flew relatives of three homicide victims to Washington for an emotional Rose Garden plea for the bill’s passage.

“Fear of crime is the most important issue facing the American people today,” said Marc Klaas, father of 12-year-old Polly Klaas of Petaluma who was abducted and killed last year. “This issue is not about money. It’s about life and death.”

Steven Sposato, whose wife Jody was killed in a San Francisco law office massacre last July, picked up the partisan cudgel on Clinton’s behalf, scoring Republican leaders for helping engineer the defeat of the crime measure last week.

“I have been a Republican for 19 years and, frankly, I am totally disappointed in my party, especially the leadership of my party,” Sposato said.

Then, noting that the weapons the gunman in the law office shootings used would be banned under the defeated legislation, Sposato turned his ire on the NRA. “The fact is, the NRA doesn’t give a damn that my wife, Jody, is dead. The fact is, the NRA doesn’t give a damn that my daughter, Meghan, will grow up never knowing her mother.”

Janice Payne of New Orleans, mother of 9-year-old James Darby who was killed in a drive-by shooting last Mother’s Day, noted that her son had written a letter to Clinton just nine days before his slaying, pleading with the President to do what he could to stop the killings.

“I’m asking you nicely to stop it,” James wrote. “I know you can do it. Do it. I know you could.”

In his remarks, Clinton paid homage to the slain boy and said: “Well, my fellow Americans, we have asked the Congress nicely long enough. . . . So let Congress hear this: Pass the Darby-Klaas-Sposato crime bill and do it now.”

On Capitol Hill, Democratic leaders were still hoping to bring the crime bill back to the floor Thursday or Friday. But in another sign that the Administration is having difficulty rounding up the eight votes it needs, sources close to the Democratic leadership indicated that the bill could be held over until the following week, delaying for a second time the summer recess that lawmakers running for reelection in November are eager to begin.

“At this point we’re sure of only two things--this bill needs to be passed before the recess and we can’t go back to the floor until we’re sure we have the votes, however long that takes,” one leadership source said.

Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen echoed that assessment in a meeting with reporters, saying the Administration is making “an all-out effort to turn eight votes” and expects Congress to stay in session until it can pass the crime bill.

“We have a reasonable shot at doing it but it’s going to be tough,” he added.

With the leadership having all but given up trying to win back the votes of 48 conservative Democrats opposed to the assault weapons ban, the brunt of the Administration’s efforts is focused on two groups: liberal Democrats from urban areas, including 10 Congressional Black Caucus members who opposed the bill’s death penalty provisions, and 19 moderate Republicans who voted for both the crime bill and the assault weapons ban earlier this year, but against the procedural motion that would have cleared the way for final passage last week.

This latter group includes two Republicans, Reps. Stephen Horn of Long Beach and Mike Huffington of Santa Barbara.

Paring back at least some of the money for crime prevention programs and other initiatives that the Republicans have derided as pork may be enough to attract a few more GOP votes, but the Administration also runs the risk of losing liberal Democratic votes if it cuts too deeply into programs that affect crime-prone urban areas, Bentsen and others conceded.

“If any changes are made (in this bill) it will be on the prevention side . . . but it will be a question of shaving,” not deep cutting, Bentsen said.