House Approves a Return to Work : Budget: Bill would send federal employees back to jobs while talks continue. But plan stalls in Senate as Democrats balk at curbs on debate. Dole hopes for accord today.

As the partial shutdown of the federal government entered its third week, the House approved a bill Saturday that would return 280,000 federal workers to their jobs while Congress and the White House continue wrangling over a plan to balance the budget.

But the measure stalled in the Senate, where Democrats objected because the bill included provisions that would severely limit the Senate’s ability to debate and amend whatever budget-balancing plan emerges from negotiations between President Clinton and congressional leaders.

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) said he remained hopeful that an agreement could be reached by midday today that would allow federal workers to return to their jobs at the start of the new year.

“It seems to me that on Tuesday, federal employees should be back to work,” Dole said.

But Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) said he was afraid that the more confrontational Republicans in the House would reject any such compromise.

“The House wants confrontation, not solutions,” Daschle said.

Even if an agreement can be reached, however, it may fall well short of fully reopening the government. The bill passed by the House would return federal workers to their jobs by reclassifying them. But it would not include money to operate agencies that have not received their budget appropriations, meaning that workers could not spend funds that have not been approved.

“If a forest ranger’s truck runs out of gas in a national park, there’s no money to fill it up,” said Daschle.

Furthermore, under the House proposal, the workers would be paid--but not until after the funding crisis is resolved.

As the House and Senate looked for ways to ease the effects of the 15-day partial government shutdown, Clinton and congressional leaders met for nearly six hours--and for the second straight day--in an intensified effort to find a compromise.

White House and congressional negotiators have been trying to bridge enormous differences in their budget priorities. Republicans want to wring greater savings from Medicare, Medicaid and other social programs than do Clinton and the Democrats, and the GOP is seeking a bigger tax cut for businesses and individuals.

Nonetheless, the president was upbeat in assessing the latest round of talks, which began Friday.

“We are making real progress,” he said in his Saturday radio address to the nation.

Later in the afternoon, White House spokesman Mike McCurry said negotiators “will by this evening really have begun to work in all of the key areas of disagreement . . . Medicaid, taxes, all the issues fundamental to a balanced budget.”

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McCurry said the president and congressional leaders were not yet trying to reach any consensus on the toughest issues but were only analyzing them--with the help of briefings by executive-branch policy experts. The negotiators are “sorting through the implications of possible agreements, rather than making tentative agreements,” McCurry said.

While Friday’s session was largely devoted to some of the less controversial aspects of food stamps, welfare and several other benefit programs, Saturday’s talks reportedly included discussion of some of the more troublesome issues--taxes, welfare and Medicare. Those talks were scheduled to continue this morning and perhaps New Year’s Day as well.

After this morning’s talks, Clinton, Dole and Gingrich will take a two-day break from the rigors of negotiating, while their advisors continue preparing the groundwork for later efforts.

Republicans have refused to pass stopgap funding bills to provide the money that would end the shutdown until after they reach agreement with Clinton on a balanced-budget plan. With polls indicating that the Republicans have suffered politically--at least in the short term--for that position, their latest move was viewed by Democrats as an effort to deflect the blame for the federal furloughs.

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“The government remains shut because some members of the House want it shut,” said Daschle.

But Dole said that if Senate Democrats refuse to go along with some plan to send workers back, “they must bear the responsibility for the federal employees not going to work tomorrow and the next day and the next day.”

Besides arguing that the plan to send workers back was a faulty one, Daschle complained that Republicans’ proposal to limit debate on a budget plan to 10 hours--including the offering of amendments--was unreasonable. Senate rules typically allow unlimited debate, including filibusters that enable a minority of members to block legislation almost indefinitely. For some budget legislation, Senate rules limit debate to 50 hours, while allowing additional time for amendments.

Senate Democrats said they did not want to agree to restrictions on debate of a bill they had not yet seen. Daschle said he proposed an alternative that would have allowed 25 hours of debate, plus more time for amendments. But that compromise was not likely to be acceptable to Republicans in the House, where conservatives have pursued a more confrontational strategy than their Senate counterparts.

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Republicans tried to portray Daschle and his Senate backers as the holdouts against a plan that now had the support of Republicans, the president and even the House Democratic leadership. House Democrats raised objections to the measure Saturday, but did not block it.

While Clinton has stopped short of formally endorsing the GOP back-to-work proposal, he has urged both sides to come to an agreement.

In Clinton’s view, one aide said, “this is a procedural disagreement that they should work out among themselves.”

Aides said that while the past two days’ budget talks produced no breakthroughs, they did produce some momentum.

“The atmosphere has been positive, without acrimonious exchanges,” one aide said. Shrugging, he added: “But that’s how it is in a negotiation--everything goes well, until things blow up.”

Meanwhile, hovering over the talks has been the delicate issue of whether the top negotiators would be able to break free to travel elsewhere today.

Clinton has been fervently hoping to spend New Year’s Eve at the Renaissance Weekend celebration in Hilton Head, S.C.--an annual gathering of high achievers who meet to contemplate serious--and not so serious--issues of the day. But some White House aides urged the president to forgo the event, occurring as it does in the midst of the shutdown.

By Saturday evening, however, it was clear that Clinton would seize his opportunity to golf with the mighty. Aides said he will leave Washington within minutes of the close of today’s negotiating session, to spend New Year’s Eve and a half day of fun-seeking on the coast.

Asked if it were appropriate for the president to take such a break when government beneficiaries are suffering hardship, aides suggested the problem was not of Clinton’s making, but of the Republicans’.

“Every federal worker knows where the president has been all along in this debate,” said McCurry.

Dole, meanwhile, is scheduled for campaigning in New Hampshire. Gingrich was to be a speaker at the conservatives’ alternative to Renaissance, the so-called Dark Ages Weekend underway in Miami. Pressuring other leaders to back down from their travel plans, Gingrich decided Saturday night not to make the trip, but to address its members by satellite hookup. He also plans to visit his congressional district in Georgia.