NEWS ANALYSIS : Clinton Proves to GOP He Can’t Be Sidestepped

With his surprise move to endorse a Senate Democratic plan for balancing the federal budget in seven years, President Clinton sought Saturday to show that he is serious about reaching that touchstone goal--and, at the same time, to cement his success in seizing the upper hand from the Republicans who control both houses of Congress.

For months, Clinton dismissed GOP demands that he offer his own balanced-budget plan, arguing that it would mean revealing his bottom line in the middle of negotiations.

But last week, as Republican leaders backed down from their ill-designed attempt to force Clinton’s hand by shutting down much of the federal government, they served notice that they planned to refocus the budget debate on the president’s own failure to offer a budget-balancing plan of his own.

White House aides spent much of Friday and Saturday debating what Clinton’s response should be--and sending contradictory signals about his intent.

In the end, the president decided that he could not risk being painted as intransigent--the way he painted the conservative Republicans who forced the government to shut down last month.

Indeed, for White House aides, the budget battles of the past weeks have centered not only on the endless tactical struggles that make up each day’s negotiations, nor even the fundamental policy issues of how large the federal government should be.

Just as important, for Clinton, has been a raw contest for constitutional power: Could the Republicans who won control of Congress in 1994 succeed in remaking the federal government without the president’s consent?

By forcing House Republicans to back down and reopen the government, Clinton showed they could not.

“One of his major goals for the past year has been getting his presidency back,” an aide noted with satisfaction.

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But now, to deliver on his ever-firmer promise of a seven-year balanced-budget plan, Clinton will have to endorse deeper reductions in projected spending on Medicare or other domestic programs than he has publicly accepted--moves that could cause a revolt among many of his Democratic followers.

That is a change from the political luxury the president has enjoyed in the past, when he could campaign against his opponents’ controversial budget proposals without having to defend any of his own. His position is one reason he came out ahead in the power struggle of the past three weeks.

Before Clinton signed on to the Senate Democrats’ plan, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) had made it clear that they planned to focus the coming three weeks--until the next negotiating deadline of Jan. 26--on Clinton’s reluctance to produce a balanced-budget plan of his own based on the tough benchmarks provided by the Congressional Budget Office.

If the president did present a budget plan, Republican strategists believed, they could make up some of the ground they had lost in past weeks, by pointing out, for example, that Clinton’s balanced budget included cuts in future Medicare spending too.

By late last week, however, Clinton aides were already suggesting that the president might endorse the balanced-budget plan prepared by Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.).

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The Daschle budget proposal has relatively modest cuts in Medicare spending and relies on cuts in discretionary domestic programs, including the business subsidies sometimes pegged as “corporate welfare,” as well as a much smaller tax cut than GOP proposals.

Still, the aides warned, there would be little room for Clinton to move from the provisions of the Daschle plan, and thus no guarantee that a middle-ground could be reached.

“The penalty for giving in on one of our principles is far greater than the penalty for not making a deal,” argued White House aide George Stephanopoulos.

Indeed, aides on both sides of the battle offered this possible scenario: Now that Clinton has endorsed a balanced-budget plan and declared it his bottom line, he demands that the Republicans fund the federal programs even after the current Jan. 26 deadline, after which negotiations deadlock again, possibly for the rest of the year.

Still, both sides acknowledge that they are being nudged toward compromise by two factors: the polls, which last week showed Americans growing increasingly impatient with both the Republicans and Clinton, and the financial markets, which would prefer almost any form of balanced budget to continued chaos.

“I think the American people would be incensed if the government closed down a third time,” said Republican political consultant Eddie Mahe. “The Republicans can’t afford to try that again.”

“The tide may have been turning, and everybody was in danger of becoming a loser,” added political consultant Stuart Rothenberg.

“Clinton and the Democrats succeeded in defining the Republicans not as the party of fiscal responsibility but as the party of tax cuts for the rich and insensitivity to needy seniors,” he noted. “But if this is the first step toward a resolution of the issue, in that sense the Republicans may have won--in that they can now get rid of that debate.”

Paradoxically, he added, one figure who appeared to come through the imbroglio with his political standing largely intact, along with Clinton, was the president’s most likely opponent in November, Sen. Dole.

Dole’s job approval rating among the public at large rose slightly, even though (or perhaps because) he was roundly criticized by some conservatives for urging an early end to the government shutdown.

“Assuming Dole survives the beating he is going to take at the hands of [Sen. Phil] Gramm, he looks more conservative than Clinton but more responsible than the House Republicans--and that’s not a bad place to be,” Rothenberg said.