Gingrich Warns of Stalemate Over Budget

House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) warned Wednesday that a yearlong budget stalemate is increasingly likely unless President Clinton agrees to start bargaining in earnest.

In his second attack in as many days, Gingrich said that short of receiving “ironclad assurances” that the White House is willing to negotiate with Congress, Republicans probably will wait until shortly before a Nov. 13 deadline to give the President all the spending bills they have passed on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.

In the event negotiations collapse, Republicans will attempt to impose a yearlong interim funding measure that would allow the government to continue operating, but under far more stringent spending and policy guidelines than the current interim measure.

Congressional leaders and the White House had agreed to a six-week “continuing resolution” to fund the government after failing to reach agreement on most of the 13 annual spending bills before the start of the new fiscal year, Oct. 1.

If Gingrich and the Republicans carry out their threat, Clinton would be deprived of what the White House anticipated as a series of opportunities to veto several major fiscal 1996 spending bills to make the case that GOP policies governing the environment, the working poor, senior citizens and the nation’s underclass are too extreme.

“I’m not going to give his presidential campaign new cheap-shot photo ops,” Gingrich told reporters. “If they’re into game-playing, let them play by themselves for a while.”

According to Gingrich spokesman Tony Blankley, the White House would then have the choice of keeping the government running on GOP terms or shutting it down. Under that theory, the Republican Congress could argue it did its work and the gridlock was Clinton’s fault.

Clinton vetoed the fiscal 1996 legislative-branch appropriations bill Oct. 3.