Clinton Assails GOP for Backing Bills Linked to Special Interests : Politics: He threatens to veto legislation on the environment and telecommunications. He accuses Congress of being ‘on the wrong track.’

Accusing the Republican Congress of taking its lead from extremists and special interests, President Clinton threatened House legislation with two vetoes Tuesday, singling out a bill that would gut federal environmental laws and another that would deregulate the telecommunications industry.

“It is clear that this Congress is on the wrong track,” the President said at a morning news conference. Environmental bills are being written by “lobbyists for the polluters,” he charged.

Meanwhile, he said, the National Rifle Assn. is helping direct one congressional investigation while House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) has pledged that no gun-control bills, even a restriction on “cop-killer bullets,” will move forward.

“You can see who’s in control in this Congress and it’s not good,” the President said.

With the conservative agenda in Congress now gaining momentum and Clinton hard-pressed to advance his own legislative agenda, the threat of vetoes is becoming more commonplace. Before, Clinton has wavered between a strategy of cooperation and confrontation. But this week, as the Republicans used high-profile hearings to revisit the twin 1993 tragedies of Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster’s suicide and the 1993 Branch Davidian conflagration near Waco, Tex., Clinton signaled that he is turning toward confrontation.

He focused his ire on a House Republican vote Monday night to strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its power to enforce anti-pollution standards for drinking water, auto emissions and wetlands.

“This is Washington special-interest politics at its most effective and at its worst,” the President said. “It allows poisons in our drinking water, raw sewage on our beaches, oil refineries to pollute, and limits the community’s right to know what [toxic] chemicals . . . are released in their neighborhoods. It would be bad for our children, our health and our environment.”

By the narrowest of margins, the House Republican leadership defeated an attempt to keep the EPA regulations in place. The legislation now goes to the Senate, which is expected to look more favorably on the EPA’s regulatory role. Nonetheless, Clinton sounded as though he would be delighted to have the opportunity to veto the House bill.

“The minute this ‘Polluters Protection Act’ hits my desk, I will veto it,” he said.

While Clinton said that he opposes the Republican deregulatory approach on the environmental front, he said that he agrees with the general move to deregulate the fast-evolving communications industry. But, he said, the House Republicans’ bill goes too far.

“I do think it would be an error to set up a situation in the United States where one person could own half the television stations in the country or half of the media outlets,” Clinton said.

While the President did not mention the “one person” who might stand to benefit from those changes, a White House official in an interview with The Times on Monday said that the House legislation amounts to “a sweetheart deal” for Australian media magnate Rupert Murdoch and his News Corp.

The pending House bill would drop the current rule that limits a single owner to 12 television stations. It would also allow a single corporation to own television stations that reach 50% of the national market, up from the current 25%.

“The very week they are investigating the sweetheart deal for Gingrich, they are giving a sweetheart deal for Murdoch,” the White House official said. The official was referring to the House Ethics Committee, which is looking into allegations that Murdoch’s HarperCollins book publishing firm offered Gingrich a huge book advance to win his favor.

The bill would also lift government controls on cable television rates and allow local phone companies to provide long-distance service. The bill’s sponsors say that competition would hold down rates, although critics say that neither local cable companies nor local phone companies currently have direct competition.

The Senate overwhelmingly passed its telecommunications bill in June, and the House is expected to take up its broader version soon.

“I want very badly to sign a telecommunications bill,” Clinton said. But, unless substantial changes are made in the House version, “I will be compelled to veto it in the best interests of the public and our national economic well-being.”

The President deferred comment on Monday’s merger of the Walt Disney Co. and Capital Cities/ABC Inc.

“Under our law and as a matter of economics, you have to take [these mergers] case by case and analyze them,” he said in response to a question. “And all I know about the proposed merger is what I read this morning when I woke up, so I can’t comment on that.”