Clinton Agrees to Deep Cuts in Crime Bill

Unable to get more votes from Democrats without dropping an assault-weapons ban, President Clinton agreed Thursday to make major spending cuts in his anti-crime initiative in order to win more Republican support for the threatened measure, White House and congressional sources said.

After another day of intensive but largely fruitless efforts to win over a handful of elusive votes, Clinton summoned Democratic House and Senate leaders to the White House for a crisis session on the crime bill. The legislation has been stalled in the House for the last week because of opposition from Republicans and conservative Democrats opposed to its ban on assault weapons.

Congressional sources said after the meeting that, given a choice between making the steep cuts Republicans favor in the bill’s crime prevention programs or siding with approximately 40 conservative Democrats by dropping the assault-weapons ban, Clinton opted for more cuts beyond the $1 billion he had been offering to shave from the $33-billion bill.

Although the sources cautioned that no deal had been cut, they said that House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) and other Democratic House leaders are working on a proposal that would strip more than $3 billion from the bill and make other concessions--but leave the assault-weapons ban intact.

There was no immediate comment from House GOP leaders, who earlier in the day had said they would insist on cuts of at least $5.5 billion--mostly from the $7.4 billion the bill provides for crime prevention programs such as midnight basketball leagues and after-school activities for violence-prone youths.

But Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), the leader of a group of 11 moderate Republicans who voted with the Administration when opponents used a procedural motion to block the crime bill from coming to the House floor last week, indicated earlier that more of his GOP colleagues would vote for the bill if Clinton would accept cuts “in the $2-billion to $3-billion range.”

Democratic sources said those reductions probably would be accomplished by an across-the-board cut of 10% in all of the omnibus bill’s prevention and law enforcement provisions for an overall savings of about $3.3 billion.

In addition, they said, some of the remaining $6.5 billion in funding for crime prevention initiatives likely would be turned into grants that city and state governments could use as they see fit--a concession that would meet another Republican demand.

The concessions were hammered out only after a difficult meeting at which Clinton resisted calls from the Democratic leadership to keep the spending intact and jettison the assault-weapons ban, White House officials said. Clinton will hold a 10:30 a.m. PDT press conference today to answer questions about the bill and other issues.

The congressional leaders “wanted to be able to say we did it all with Democrats,” but Clinton’s strategists argued that this would have put the White House in the untenable position of arguing in favor of what the public sees as “pork,” while killing the gun ban, which polls show is among the most popular provisions of the bill.

“The (congressional) leadership understands the President’s position on the assault-weapons ban. It was made very clear to them,” one White House official said.

The crime bill proposals were being refined late Thursday night and will be “shopped around” to lawmakers Friday in the hope that the measure can be brought back to the floor with enough bipartisan support to pass it by Sunday or Monday, the sources said.

However, a source close to the negotiations cautioned that the proposals still are subject to change.

Moreover, this source said, it is by no means certain that the compromise would mean passage of the bill because members of the Congressional Black Caucus and other liberal lawmakers have threatened to turn against it if Clinton agrees to cuts of more than $350 million in crime prevention programs. Democratic leaders have been offering cuts in that range to Republicans for several days.

“It’s not clear that we can pick up enough Republicans to compensate for the liberals we lose, and if we can’t, then it will be back to the drawing boards,” said another senior Democratic source, who, like everyone else associated with the delicate negotiations, would not speak on the record.

The likelihood of a liberal stampede away from the bill was confirmed earlier in the day by Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Kweisi Mfume (D-Md.), who said that the 33 caucus members who have thus far agreed to support the bill would begin to “drop off” if the crime prevention programs they favor are cut by more than $350 million.

Two of those members, Reps. Craig Washington (D-Tex.) and Louis Stokes (D-Ohio), only reluctantly agreed to support the package Thursday, bringing the Administration to within three votes of the 218 it needs to win the procedural motion that opponents had been using to block the bill.

But neither lawmaker, who had opposed the bill because of its expanded death penalties, have officially announced their support yet, and a Democratic leadership aide said he fears that they may refuse now that the package is being changed to make it more acceptable to Republicans.

Nevertheless, the mood at the White House after the emergency strategy session was decidedly more upbeat than it had been just a few hours earlier, when frustrated Democrats were talking for the first time about the possibility that the crime bill would not pass at all this year.

“I think we’re going to come up with a bill that meets the President’s objectives, and I think it’s going to pass,” White House adviser George Stephanopoulos said after the meeting between Clinton, Foley, Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) and House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.).

Once the House completes action on the bill, it will move immediately to the Senate, where it is expected to pass without difficulty.

Although funding for things like prison construction and additional police officers on the streets would also be trimmed back by the cuts, the bill would retain such provisions as expanded death penalties for federal offenses, legislation to help protect the victims of spousal abuse and the so-called “three strikes and you’re out” clause mandating sentences of life imprisonment for three-time convicted felons.

Tougher language sought by the Republicans on the registration of paroled sexual offenders would also be included in the bill.

Most important for Clinton, however, the bill would retain the 10-year ban on the manufacture and sale of 19 assault weapons, which has been fiercely opposed by the National Rifle Assn. and other gun lobby groups as well as a broad cross-section of Democrats and Republicans.

Cutting back on funding for more police and other anti-crime programs is a price that White House aides said Clinton is willing to pay for keeping the assault-weapons ban intact.

“We get 90% of what we wanted on the spending, 100% of what we wanted on assault weapons and a chance to show the President is capable of taking on a powerful Washington interest group and winning,” said one aide.

Times staff writer John M. Broder contributed to this story.