Clinton Hints of Veto, ‘Train Wreck’ on Spending Bill : Budget: President seeks compromise on education, job training, Medicare, welfare. Comments meant to pressure GOP.

President Clinton hinted broadly Monday that Republicans risk a veto and a government-stopping fiscal “train wreck” this fall unless they start working with him on a compromise spending plan.

Opening a two-week effort to raise pressure on congressional adversaries who largely have been ignoring him, Clinton prodded the GOP leadership to join him in what he described as the political middle on education, job training, Medicare and welfare programs.

“I invite senators and members of Congress from both parties to join with me in balancing the budget while protecting our common ground,” Clinton told teen-agers from the Boys Nation youth conference, a good-government program that sponsored a young Clinton’s 1963 meeting with President John F. Kennedy. “If they refuse, I must continue to act, alone if necessary.”

Clinton did not explicitly threaten a veto, but later in the day his spokesman warned that the Republicans risk a veto of the upcoming reconciliation bill that could bring government spending to a halt, in the so-called “train wreck” scenario.

“The President is concerned that the congressional leadership is not getting the message,” said White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry. “The President was standing there today with a red flag saying let’s not have this train wreck, let’s stop, let’s get off the train and let’s sit down and work out the budget.”

The reconciliation bill, expected to reach Clinton in late September, concludes the year’s budget work and is likely to include major decisions on tax cuts, Medicare, welfare reform and other key spending decisions.

Administration officials have been increasingly frustrated in recent weeks as they have watched the Republican majority shun the revamped spending blueprint that Clinton offered in June as a way to balance the budget over 10 years. As they have continued work in the congressional appropriations committees, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and some other GOP leaders have boasted that they do not fear the prospect of a “train wreck” because the blame would fall primarily on the President.

In talking publicly about his concerns, Clinton hopes to increase citizen pressure against cuts in future services and force the GOP to the bargaining table. In raising the alarm about Medicare spending, “Clinton has already seen pay dirt,” said Allen Schick, a budget specialist at the liberal Brookings Institution in Washington.

Clinton will make two other speeches this week on the budget: one discussing Medicare, in observance of the program’s 30th birthday, and another to members of the American Federation of Teachers on the need for continued education spending.

Republican officials reacted to Clinton’s speech by pointedly observing that the Congressional Budget Office has found that the White House plan would leave a $209-billion deficit in 2005.

“I’m glad to see the President recognizes how important it is that we balance the federal budget. It’s too bad he has no plan to get us there,” said Rep. Bob Franks (R-N.J.), a member of the House Budget Committee.

Clinton sought to portray his budget’s health, education, environmental and welfare programs as embodying a bipartisan consensus that had been worked out over years. He portrayed the Republicans’ plan as an extreme and hasty proposal.

“These priorities are not Democratic or Republican priorities,” he said. “They are common sense national decisions that have served us very, very well over the last generation.”

And he warned that “when we ignore the evidence of what has plainly worked in the attempt to fix what is plainly wrong, we pay a terrible price.”

“We mustn’t attempt to throw over, in a moment of partisan zeal, the common sense and bipartisan conclusions of our fathers and mothers, derived from lifetimes of experience,” he said.

Clinton called federal education spending “a necessity” and said that planned cuts in job training programs are “most troubling of all” because of the way they could affect family incomes. He said that the Medicare program is “a basic American value” and must be protected as much as possible.

Clinton was blunt about GOP plans for about $250 billion in tax cuts and their effort to balance the budget in seven years, compared to his 10-year plan. “The haste of their schedule and the scope of their tax cuts are luxuries, and this is not a time for luxuries.”