Unyielding GOP Freshmen Lead Balanced-Budget Siege : Congress: They vow to work through Christmas, keep government idled if it will make Clinton ‘toe the line.’

They were supposed to gather at 5 p.m. Wednesday in another daily strategy session in a Capitol meeting room, but they moved it up to 2:30, they were so hot. The House Republicans were itching to send a message that this budget will be balanced now, the government shutdown notwithstanding, the holidays be damned.

One GOP leader whipped out his harmonica and played a few bars of “Silent Night.” A couple of others sang “Jingle Bells.” Then a near-unanimous voice vote resounded in the jammed room, a word to the wise in the White House and the GOP leadership that there would be no deals cut this time.

“This government is going to remain shut down until he [President Clinton] realizes that we are not going to compromise on a balanced budget,” Rep. Mark W. Neumann of Wisconsin said, fuming. “If that makes us radical freshmen, then so be it.”

Five days into the second partial government shutdown and five days short of Christmas, it looked for a few hours late Tuesday as though Clinton, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) were near an agreement to get the government up and running and negotiate the budget mess with cooler heads prevailing.

But when Gingrich faced his troops at the Republican conference meeting Wednesday, the ranks were steamed. They were as pumped up as linebackers in a pregame locker room pep talk. What set them off was a tape of Vice President Al Gore on Tuesday night insisting that neither a seven-year timeline nor Congressional Budget Office projections were carved in stone.

A groan of disgust filled the room.

“When the vice president stands up and flat-out lies. . ,” Rep. Brian P. Bilbray of San Diego burned, too aghast to finish the sentence. “The credibility of the White House on this thing is going right down the tubes. It has gotten down to one approach: forcing this administration to toe the line.”

It was an unusually emphatic stance to take, considering the season. Many lawmakers will not be going home for the holidays. GOP Rep. Steve Horn of Long Beach will be apart from his wife at Christmas for the first time in 41 years; he wasn’t there for Thanksgiving either. Nonrefundable air fares are going to waste. Staff members are cranky. Trees are untrimmed, shopping is unfinished, gifts are unwrapped, children are waiting at home in the district. And still, this group would not budge.

“This is worth it,” Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands) said adamantly. “Even if it means [working through] Christmas.”

What happened Wednesday was perhaps the most graphic collision of cultures yet seen in the marathon budget struggle. Clinton has done everything a president usually does to get a deal and found, to his amazement, that it does not compute with this group.

To him, they are guerrillas in the mountains, an extremist bunch. Clinton, in an interview with The Times, said that some Republicans probably like it “when half the government is shut down and believe that they have the only truth in the world and that none of the rest of us can be trusted because we’re not pure enough.”

Democrats were disgusted: “The Republicans are holding a gun to the president’s head,” grumbled Rep. Julian C. Dixon (D-Los Angeles). “It is shortsighted. It is not the legislative process where you have give-and-take. The freshmen members of Congress have not learned the art of diplomacy.”

A few weeks ago, such GOP rigidity might have been dismissed as the extremist ramblings of a notoriously rebellious freshman class. And clearly the freshmen are the driving force behind such resolve: “We are the conscience of Congress. We will not accept business as usual. We are keeping the system honest,” Bilbray said.

But this movement is growing. With more than 190 of the GOP’s 236 members in attendance, Republicans of all strains vowed to hang together against a budget compromise. When they called for “no” votes, someone in the room counted “maybe two.”

“I know the Republican freshmen are a pretty aggressive young group and my feelings aren’t quite as strong on some things, but I agree that the president has not lived up to his word,” said Rep. Carlos J. Moorhead (R-Glendale), who has been labeled as far too conciliatory by his younger, more intense colleagues.

The Republicans’ momentum to stand tough on their demands seems to have swelled every day since Friday, when Clinton agreed to a seven-year budget using the more conservative congressional figures and then, Republicans say, broke his promise.

“The freshmen represent about a third of [House Republicans], so we have a good influence,” said Rep. George P. Radanovich, a Mariposa, Calif., freshman. “But there was remarkable unity when we knew we were dealing with a president we couldn’t trust and it really strengthened the resolve of everybody. . . . The broken promise of [Friday] really is what bonded people together.”

Never, it seems, has a budget impasse driven the branches of government so far apart. The on-again, off-again negotiations were on again late Wednesday night.

“They can shut the government down from now until the end of the year if they want to--all next year. It’s not going to have any impact on my decision-making,” the president said flatly during the interview with The Times.

The response from the House GOP side came in the other song they were singing as they drew their line in the sand:

“I’ll be home for Christmas . . . but only in my dreeeeeaaaaaammmmmmms. . . . “

Times staff writers James Bornemeier, Gebe Martinez and Elizabeth Shogren contributed to this story.

* BUDGET TALKS TO RESUME: Agreement to negotiate caps stormy day of accusations. A24