Clinton Signals Willingness to Agree on School Prayer : Congress: He says he’s always supported voluntary concept. Panetta indicates areas of accord, conflict.

President Clinton signaled Tuesday that he might be willing to reach agreement with the new Republican congressional majority on school prayer.

“I’ll be glad to discuss it with them,” the President said at a press conference at an economic conference in Indonesia. “I want to see what the details (of a school prayer proposal) are. I certainly wouldn’t rule it out. It depends on what it says.”

In Washington, White House Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta indicated further agreement with GOP leaders, saying that the two sides can agree on trade and congressional reform. Emerging from the first post-election meeting between an Administration official and the new Republican leadership, Panetta rejected proposed Republican tax cuts, saying that they would swell the federal deficit and weaken the strengthening economy.

Clinton was asked at his press conference if the country “needs” a constitutional amendment restoring prayer to public schools.

“What I think the country needs and what I think the schools need is a sense that there are certain basic values of citizenship, including valuing the right of people to have and express their faith, which can be advocated without crossing the line of separation of church and state and without in any way undermining the fabric of our society. . . ,” the President said.

“I have always supported voluntary prayer in the schools, I have always thought that the question was when does voluntary prayer really become coercive to people who have different religious views from those who are in the majority in any particular classroom. . . . I personally did not believe that it was coercive to have a prayer at an outdoor sporting event or at a graduation event because I don’t believe that is coercive to people who don’t participate in it. So I think there may, there is room for that,” Clinton said.

“Obviously, I want to reserve judgment, I want to see the specifics, but I think this whole values debate will go forward and will intensify in the next year. And again, I would say this ought to be something that unites the American people, not something that divides us. This ought not to be a partisan debate.

“The American people do not want us to be partisan, but they do want us to proceed in a way that is consistent with their values and that communicates those values to our children,” he said.

After an hourlong “courtesy call” with Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), who is expected to be Speaker of the House in the next Congress, and Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.), who is expected to be Senate majority leader, in Dole’s Capitol Hill offices, Panetta said that if the Republicans are serious about balancing the federal budget in five years, their proposed tax cuts and increased defense spending would require cutting a trillion dollars from the federal government at the same time.

“Whatever the outcome of the election, we all have a responsibility of helping to move this country forward,” Panetta said. “We have to be very straight with the American people.”

Neither Dole nor Gingrich offered any public comment after the meeting.

Further marking the ideological yaw, Administration budget chief Alice Rivlin told reporters at a breakfast meeting that the proposed Republican tax cuts, if enacted, would swell inflation, ignite interest rates and “probably throw the economy into recession.”

The likely new chairman of the House Budget Committee, Rep. John Kasich (R-Ohio), promptly accused her of “alarmist and inflammatory” rhetoric.

Although Gingrich did not comment Tuesday, Monday night he promised Republican contributors that his ideas could transform American society “within two or three years,” a speech that even his own aides called “exuberant” and a sign that the Speaker-to-be was “feeling his oats.”

Panetta called the vote later this month on a new world trade agreement “the first test of the relationship” between the Democratic Administration and the new Republican majority in Congress, although that majority will not be seated until January.

Gingrich and other GOP leaders have generally indicated that they will support the agreement, but the likely new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), signaled his intention to delay consideration of the pact. In a letter to Clinton, Helms threatened to make trouble on foreign policy matters unless Clinton agrees to put off the trade vote until next year.

Helms’ letter said: “I can assure that it will have an exceedingly positive effect on my making certain that the Administration positions on all foreign policy matters during the 104th Congress will be considered fully and fairly.”

Panetta said that there are other reforms that the Clinton Administration and the Republican leadership agree on, including lobbying reform, campaign finance reform, welfare reform, health care reform and the line-item veto. Referring obliquely to the Helms threat, he added that foreign affairs was an area where it was “extremely important” that Congress and the White House work together.

He also said that he praised Gingrich for his promise to cut House committee staffs by one-third and noted that the Clinton Administration had cut the White House staff by 25% and the executive branch by some 270,000 jobs.

But when it came to economic policy, Panetta, despite an effort to sound conciliatory, could go only so far. “As the President has made clear . . . whoever proposes . . . tax cuts, the important thing is that they are paid for, and that they not increase the deficit in the process of doing that.

“That is a very fundamental discipline that we have put in place in the budget process here on Capitol Hill and throughout the government,” he said, and if tax cuts are not matched with spending cuts, “you are simply increasing taxes on our kids for the future.”

* POLITICAL VETERANS: Majority in new Congress have past political experience. A20

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