Gore Says Clinton Will Remain Focused on Nation’s Economy : Politics: He calls ‘middle-class bill of rights’ the top domestic priority for ’95. President won’t hide behind foreign policy, vice president says.

Facing a Republican onslaught in Congress, the Clinton Administration plans to emphasize the strategy that won the White House for the Democrats in 1992: a sharp focus on the economy.

Vice President Al Gore made that clear Friday in a luncheon interview at The Times’ Washington Bureau, saying that President Clinton’s proposed “middle-class bill of rights,” a package of middle-class tax cuts, represents the Administration’s most important domestic policy initiative for 1995.

He also strongly disputed suggestions that the Administration, appearing to be outflanked by the GOP on domestic and economic issues, would emphasize foreign policy matters instead in the final two years of Clinton’s term.

“I don’t care how hard you tried, if you did try, you could not get President Bill Clinton to shift his attention away from the economy and away from creating jobs and opportunity for the American people,” Gore said. “That’s his passion. He focuses on that every single day.”

And, seizing on Friday’s report that U.S. unemployment fell to 5.4% in December, Gore emphasized that Clinton deserves far more credit for his handling of the economy than he has received. Gore signaled that he believes a drumbeat of good economic data is the best tonic for Clinton’s political problems.

“We’ve got the best economy we’ve had in a long time,” Gore said. “Strong economic growth, historically low inflation, millions of new jobs being created, the first time the deficit has come down three years in a row since Harry Truman was President and an active effort to reinvent government. Any efforts by the Republicans to prevent that or to turn that around, we’ll fight against.”

Yet he also said that the Administration is willing to consider modifying its economic agenda as Republican tax and budget plans roll out of Congress. He suggested, for instance, that the White House might look at how to fashion its own capital gains tax proposal. A capital gains tax cut is a central element of the House GOP campaign manifesto, the “contract with America.”

“If we could write a capital gains tax reduction bill, of course we could write one that would be good for the country in our view and that we could support,” Gore said. “But our opponents in the Congress have made it very clear that the kind they want to pass is aimed at putting a great deal more money in the hands of those making more than $200,000 per year.

“I don’t share that theory, and we will oppose any provision that is designed according to that formula. But we want to work with the Congress. There was a very cordial and constructive meeting with the bipartisan leadership yesterday. And I think you’re going to see a lot more cooperation and joint work effort than many people expect with this new divided government.”

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Gore also said that the Administration will present its own welfare reform initiative and will renew the fight over health care, despite the defeat of the President’s health plan last year.

But he said the Administration now sees health care reform as a way to cut federal health care costs and reduce the size of the budget, not as a way to extend health care coverage to all Americans.

While the Administration will not touch Social Security to cut the deficit, Gore said that it will consider cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and other entitlement programs.

“We think you can find savings in the entitlement area, outside of Social Security, and we haven’t ruled that off-limits at all.” As for his own political future, Gore insisted he has no interest in replacing Clinton on the Democratic ticket in 1996. “President Clinton is going to be renominated and is going to run a very strong campaign.”

But Gore also demonstrated that he is interested in a future run at the White House. He noted that the family situation that convinced him not to run for President--his son’s injury in a car accident--has changed for the better.

“The family circumstances which caused me to decide it wasn’t the right thing for me to run back then in 1991 and 1992 have--thank goodness, thank God--changed,” Gore said.