Clinton Vetoes $2-Billion Congressional Budget : Spending: Bill cut funds for operations on Capitol Hill. President says his rejection is over the lack of action on most other appropriations.

President Clinton, issuing only the third veto of his presidency, refused to sign a bill Tuesday that provides money for the operation of Congress.

Although the bill cuts congressional spending by more than $200 million from current levels, Clinton said he was vetoing it because he believes members of Congress have shirked their responsibility to complete work on the 1996 budget and other legislation.

White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry described Congress’ efforts in recent weeks on the budget, Medicare reform, education funding and other issues as “pretty pathetic.’

He said that Clinton would consider signing the $2.1-billion congressional spending bill “after they’ve completed the people’s work.” Congress has acted on only two of 13 appropriation bills for the fiscal year that started Sunday.

Clinton believes it would be “inappropriate” to provide full spending authority for Congress “while funding for most other activities--the government--remains incomplete, unresolved and uncertain,” McCurry said.

All other agencies are operating at roughly 90% of their previous year’s appropriation under a “continuing resolution” that keeps government functioning until the 1996 budget is passed.

Ironically, Congress will get more money under the continuing resolution than under the bill that Clinton just vetoed, McCurry acknowledged. He said that Clinton felt that signing the bill would send the public the wrong message “symbolically, metaphorically, politically.”

The Republican leaders of Congress reacted predictably. Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said that it was “regrettable” that Clinton had vetoed a bill that cuts congressional spending by $206 million, 8.5% from last year.

“Instead of sending an important signal to the American people that spending cuts will start right here on Capitol Hill, President Clinton has sent the wrong message,” the GOP leaders said in a joint statement.

Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, called Clinton’s action “nothing more than muscle-flexing with a veto pen. . . . The President has no substantive grounds for a veto.”

Clinton signed the other spending bill Tuesday that had reached his desk, the Military Construction Act, which pays for housing and recreation projects on military bases.

McCurry said that the military spending bill illustrates the need for the line-item veto, which Congress has promised to give the White House.

“The President is disappointed that the act provides more funding than requested” by the Pentagon, McCurry said. “For that reason, the President indicates that if he had access to the line-item veto . . . those certainly would have been provisions that would have been stricken from this bill.”

Clinton’s other vetoes came on a Dole-sponsored bill to lift the arms embargo in Bosnia and a “recisions” bill to cut spending in the fiscal year just ended on a number of education and job training programs that Clinton supported.

Times staff writer Edwin Chen contributed to this story.