Request for More Quake Aid May Face Fight in Congress : Recovery: President proposes spending $4.9 billion. But some lawmakers say too much money is going to disaster-ravaged California.

President Clinton asked Congress on Monday to spend another $4.9 billion in emergency funds to repair the destruction that remains from the Northridge earthquake, warning that the federal government will have to shut off further relief if the money is not approved by May.

But there appeared to be an uphill fight ahead for California lawmakers, who must now persuade their budget-minded colleagues to approve spending that--not offset by budget cuts--would add directly to the nation’s notorious deficit.

“We have been at our best when we respond to disasters as a country, Americans responding to help Americans. Disaster knows no partisan lines,” said Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands), chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that is the first stop in a long approval process. “I will urge my colleagues to be most cautious about treating this as one state against another.”

If approved, the added emergency money would bring to $16 billion the amount of federal funds spent to bring Southern California back from the costliest natural disaster in the nation’s history. Another $500,000 was requested to clean up flood damage from last month’s torrential rains.

The total request for supplemental disaster relief made in Clinton’s 1995 budget unveiled Monday was $6.7 billion and would benefit 40 states. But California clearly would take the bulk of it--about 75%--and recent rumblings on Capitol Hill suggest that lawmakers from states less victimized by nature’s wrath are tiring of paying for California’s catastrophes.

“Millions of people choose to live in coastal areas and in earthquake zones because of other compensating attributes of those areas. I don’t see why taxpayers in the rest of the country have to subsidize that decision,” Rep. David Obey (D-Wisconsin) told reporters last week as he and two other senior Democrats proposed a bill that would end the billions of dollars in federal disaster relief paid yearly to states ravaged by quake, fire and flood.

Obey’s office noted that over the past five years, two-thirds of all federal disaster payments have gone to California, Florida and South Carolina. His bill proposes that the current program be replaced by a voluntary state insurance plan that could cost states such as California tens of billions of dollars a year in premiums.

But Lewis stressed that California is not to blame for a numbing string of fires, quakes and floods. Disasters can strike anywhere, he said, citing the nation’s fiercest earthquake, which hit in the winter of 1811 at New Madrid, Mo., and had a magnitude of 8.7.

“There is little doubt California has had more than its share of disasters,” said Lewis, who as chairman of the subcommittee that controls the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s budget is well positioned to lead his state’s battle for more aid. “I would hope Americans will recognize you can’t tell when the next disaster is going to strike. . . . We want to begin to deliver that message today--these are American problems, not regional problems.”

Lewis conceded that convincing lawmakers from 49 other states that California deserves so much of the pie could be a hard sell. He said bipartisan efforts are under way to enlist the state’s 52 House members--known as a fractious and feuding delegation--to work together to pass the President’s request.

“It is not going to be a simple matter to say this money will automatically be added to the deficit. . . . We will have to make this sale member by member,” Lewis said after meeting with FEMA Director James Lee Witt and Rep. Julian C. Dixon (D-Los Angeles).

In a sign of the uphill struggle that the additional quake aid will face, even one San Fernando Valley lawmaker expressed concerns about the size of the FEMA request.

“This is more money than we had anticipated, so we’re going to have to take a hard look at it,” said Armando Azarloza, spokesman for Rep. Howard P. (Buck) McKeon (R-Santa Clarita). “We will be supporting this supplemental aid, but the exact level needs to be reviewed.”

The estimate of structural damage first given by FEMA two weeks after the Jan. 17 quake has tripled since engineers took a closer look at scores of cracked or flattened buildings. Cal State Northridge alone is estimated to have as much as $400 million in unrepaired damage. Even that figure remains uncertain because three buildings are so structurally unsound that engineers have been unable to properly inspect them.

Times staff writer Marc Lacey in Washington contributed to this story.