Clinton Urges New Public Spirit, Says Society Is Frayed : State of Union: President exhorts GOP to put aside ‘partisanship, pettiness.’ He vows less intrusive government in a speech designed to claim the moral high ground.

President Clinton on Tuesday exhorted the new Republican Congress to put aside “partisanship, pettiness and pride” and called for new efforts to rekindle a public spirit of community and civic virtue. “Our civil life is suffering,” Clinton said in a State of the Union Address designed to claim the moral high ground and lift his beleaguered presidency above daily political skirmishes.

“Citizens are working together less, shouting at each other more,” he declared. “The common bonds of community which have been the great strength of this country from its beginning are badly frayed.”

Under the sometimes smiling, sometimes impassive gaze of House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), Clinton told a joint session of Congress and a nationwide television audience that he will dedicate the rest of his term in office to a theme revived from his 1992 campaign, a “new covenant” between the citizenry and its government.

Bowing to the November election returns, which delivered both houses of Congress into the hands of the Republicans for the first time in 40 years, Clinton promised a less intrusive and more effective government, saying: “We cannot ask Americans to be better citizens if we are not better servants.”

To meet that pledge, Clinton promised a thorough review of the entire federal bureaucracy and vowed to eliminate “over 100 programs we do not need”--including the Interstate Commerce Commission.

And, in contrast with his two previous State of the Union speeches, Clinton proposed no specific new legislative initiatives to this largely skeptical Congress. Instead, he repeated his longstanding positions on a list of major issues--sometimes conceding points to the Republican majority and asking for its cooperation but often painting GOP positions as extremist or wrongheaded.

In his speech:

* Clinton denounced the proposed balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, asked its Republican sponsors to spell out what spending cuts they would make to implement it and warned them not to “endanger Social Security”--something they have already promised not to do.

* He vowed to stand firm against any repeal of gun-control laws passed by last year’s Democratic-led Congress, including the so-called Brady law, which requires a waiting period for handgun purchases and bans 19 types of assault rifles.

* He acknowledged that his Administration “bit off more than we could chew” with its comprehensive health care proposal last year. The President nonetheless appealed for bipartisan cooperation to enact less-sweeping health insurance reforms.

* Clinton asked Congress to work with the Administration to increase the federal minimum wage, saying: “You can’t make a living on $4.25 an hour.” But he did not publicly announce the goal of $5 an hour that his aides cited on Monday, saying that he wanted to work with Congress on the issue.

* He revived a proposal, first made as part of his welfare reform plan last year, for a national campaign against teen-age pregnancy, including a multimillion-dollar drive to promote pregnancy prevention programs in the nation’s schools.

* He appealed to Congress to approve $40 billion in loan guarantees to stabilize Mexico’s economy, saying that the measure is needed “to secure American jobs, preserve American exports (and) safeguard America’s borders” against increased illegal immigration.

* He proposed increased funding for the U.S. Border Patrol to stop illegal immigration and outlined a plan to create a national registry to enable employers to verify workers’ documents.

Clinton also assailed Hollywood in the most confrontational language he has ever used for what he called “the damage that comes from the incessant, repetitive, mindless violence and irresponsible conduct” that permeates television and the movies.

On his first visit to the Capitol since Republicans seized control of Congress in the November elections, Clinton was greeted warmly by members of both parties. And the President offered his congratulations to the many new Republican members of the House and Senate and to Gingrich.

He said that he had listened to the public’s voice in the November elections and did not hear America singing, he heard it shouting for change.

“All of us, Republicans and Democrats alike, must say, ‘We hear you,’ ” the President declared.

And injecting a personal note, he acknowledged: “I have made my mistakes and have learned again the importance of humility in all human endeavor.”

Despite the opening show of graciousness by both Clinton and his opponents, there were unmistakable signs of the bitter partisan battles to come. As the speech progressed, some Republican members walked out and many refused to stand or applaud Clinton proposals.

Clinton indulged his trademark long-windedness, speaking for 80 minutes--more than twice as long as aides had predicted and 18 minutes longer than last year’s State of the Union speech. His remarks were an amalgam of a dozen earlier addresses, from the speech announcing his candidacy in 1991 to the remarks he delivered last weekend to the Democratic National Committee.

Although Clinton appealed to the Republicans for bipartisan cooperation, the political ill will and intense partisanship that clearly pervaded the House chamber created a tension that was as palpable as it was rare for a State of the Union speech.

That this was a House too deeply divided to come together even for decorum’s sake for the State of the Union Address was evident as Clinton entered the chamber to chants of “Bill, Bill, Bill” by Democrats mimicking the greeting that Republicans gave Gingrich when he assumed the speakership on the same rostrum earlier this month.

While Republicans sat stonily in their seats, Democrats lustily cheered such proposals as an immediate ban on gifts to members of Congress from lobbyists. The tables were turned when Clinton endorsed more conservative actions, such as downsizing of government and radical welfare reform.

Indeed, on several occasions it was liberal Democrats like Georgia Reps. Cynthia A. McKinney and John Lewis who sat immobile in their seats as Clinton sought to shake free of his image as a “tax-and-spend liberal” and stake out common ground with the new GOP majority by criticizing unfunded mandates and vowing to use the line-item veto that Republicans want to give him to eliminate unnecessary and wasteful spending.

Much of the speech was given over to lofty language extolling the virtues of voluntarism, community service and family responsibility.

“We must repair the damaged bonds in our society and come together behind our common purpose,” Clinton said, defining that purpose as nothing less than remaking “our economy, our government and ourselves.”

While reaching out to Republicans, Clinton deliberately drew clear contrasts between his approach and theirs, saying that there are things Americans still want their federal government to do, such as helping displaced workers, responding to natural disasters and protecting the environment.

He urged the GOP leadership to work with him to raise incomes for struggling American workers but stopped short of a specific proposal for an increase in the minimum wage.

Noting that the minimum wage, when adjusted for inflation, is at a 40-year low, Clinton said: “That’s not my idea of how the new economy ought to work.”

He said he had studied the economic effects of an increase in the minimum wage and concluded that “the weight of the evidence is that a modest increase does not cost jobs and may even lure people back into the job market.”

He observed that by the end of this week, members of Congress will have earned as much as a minimum-wage worker earns all year and challenged Congress to “find a way to make the minimum wage a living wage.”

In proposing the increase, Clinton deliberately chose a position that is widely popular with the public--but opposed by most Republican members of Congress.

It is one of several issues that White House aides call “contrast issues,” opportunities for the President to show where his position differs from the GOP--and to paint the Republicans as uncaring toward ordinary working people.

Clinton’s effort to position himself in the politically advantageous center was especially clear in his statements on welfare reform. Noting that he had long championed changes in the present system, he endorsed Draconian measures against parents who refuse to support their children and more demanding efforts to put the able-bodied to work.

But he also insisted that children and others who cannot help themselves must not be treated inhumanely.

“I want to work with you, with all of you, to pass welfare reform. But our goal must be to liberate people and lift them up from dependence to independence, from welfare to work, from mere child-bearing to responsible parenting. Our goal should not be to punish them because they happen to be poor,” Clinton said.

For instance, he said, “We should promote responsibility by requiring young mothers to live at home with their parents or in other supervised settings, by requiring them to finish school, but we shouldn’t put them and their children out on the street.

The speech was, in effect, the launch of a two-year campaign to win back the hearts of the middle-class voters who supported him in 1992, then repudiated him in 1994 and who will decide the election of 1996.

As has become the custom for such events, Clinton invited several guests to watch the speech from the balcony of the House chamber.

Seated there with First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton were a dozen citizens chosen to embody Clinton’s rhetorical themes: Jack Lucas of Hattiesburg, Miss., a Marine Corps Medal of Honor winner from World War II, his son and grandson; four volunteers from Clinton’s national service program, AmeriCorps; and Steve Bishop, police chief of Kansas City, Mo., an advocate of community-based policing.

Clinton challenged the opposition party to tell the American people how they intend to balance the budget, as the GOP “contract with America” promises to do by the year 2002.

Times staff writers Edwin Chen and Michael Ross contributed to this story.

* PROGRAMS COMPARED: Highlights of key positions of GOP leaders, President. A8

* SPEECH EXCERPTS: A9