Clinton Calls for Panel to OK Surgeon General Nominee : Health: President urges members to ‘do the right thing’ when they vote today on whether to advance the nomination to the full Senate.

President Clinton on Thursday urged the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee to “do the right thing” and approve Dr. Henry W. Foster Jr. as surgeon general, saying: “If he is not qualified to be America’s doctor, it’s hard to imagine who would be.”

Clinton, who hosted Foster for coffee at the White House and posed for photos with him in the Rose Garden on a sultry spring morning, said: “There’s been a lot of politics and a lot of talk back and forth on this nomination. But now the time has come to do the right thing.”

Foster faces his first critical test today when the committee is slated to vote on whether to send his nomination to the full Senate.

Foster, who received high marks for his performance during his recent confirmation hearings, is expected to survive committee action, despite a conservative campaign against him. The committee can either vote to send the nomination to the floor with a recommendation that the full Senate approve Foster, send it without a recommendation or kill the nomination in committee.

The committee is dominated, 9 to 7, by Republicans. But at least one GOP senator, James M. Jeffords of Vermont, already has announced his support.

Two critical GOP swing votes, Sens. Nancy Landon Kassebaum of Kansas, who chairs the committee, and Bill Frist, who comes from Foster’s home state of Tennessee and is a physician, are regarded as leaning in his favor. The two have not announced how they will vote but Kassebaum has said she believes that Foster deserves consideration by the full Senate.

Presidential spokesman Mike McCurry, asked about the nomination during his White House briefing Thursday, refused to predict the outcome in committee but praised Kassebaum’s handling of the nomination.

“We’re at a point now where I don’t think it’s useful for me to handicap,” he said. “The committee will act accordingly. I’ll just say that we very much appreciate the work that Chairman Kassebaum did to give Dr. Foster a fair hearing within the committee. And exactly as we predicted happened: Dr. Foster, through a very graceful and very eloquent presentation, turned a lot of opinions around. And because of that we are very hopeful.”

McCurry said that the White House still expects Foster to be confirmed.

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) has announced that he will oppose Foster but recently softened his position about whether to allow the nomination to reach the Senate floor.

If Dole allows the nomination to go forward, it then faces a promised filibuster from Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.), Dole’s rival for the GOP presidential nomination. It is still unclear whether Foster’s supporters can muster the 60 votes required to end the debate.

The choice of Foster, acting president of Meharry Medical College in Nashville, became controversial within days of his being named Feb. 2 to replace Dr. Joycelyn Elders, whom Clinton fired Dec. 9.

Questions arose about whether Foster had understated the number of abortions he had performed during his nearly 40-year career. At first he said they were fewer than a dozen. Later, he acknowledged that the correct figure was more than three times the original number.

Questions also were raised about hysterectomies that he had performed many years ago on unconsenting mentally retarded women and about when he first became aware of a controversial syphilis study in Tuskegee, Ala., where available treatment was withheld from infected men. Foster, practicing in Tuskegee at the time, was an officer of the local medical society.