Clinton Signs Aid Bill; California to Get $2.4 Billion

After nearly three months of political bickering, Republicans retreated Thursday from a showdown with the White House and both houses of Congress passed an $8.6-billion relief package that finally will deliver aid to California and 34 other disaster-stricken states.

The bill, signed by President Clinton on Thursday night, carries $5.6 billion in long-awaited aid to disaster victims, including about $2.4 billion to help California recover from a destructive spate of January storms. But passage came only after congressional Republicans took a public relations drubbing over an attempt to tack onto the bill two extraneous amendments that Clinton strongly opposed.

Clinton raised his fist in a victory salute after signing the bill as eight members of Congress, including Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), applauded in the Oval Office.

“I am especially pleased that the congressional majority heeded the call of common sense by ensuring that the people who need this assistance will get it and by ensuring that the controversial and extraneous provisions of the bill were dropped,” Clinton said in a written statement.

Rep. Vic Fazio (D-West Sacramento) applauded the GOP’s willingness to “compromise and lose face at the last in order to move the public interest forward. . . . The people of Northern California who suffered in the floods are now assured we can put the [flood control] system back in place and protect their property and their lives next winter, unlike last winter.”

Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), a member of the House GOP leadership, conceded: “Tactically, we certainly have taken a couple of hits.”

The House passed the bill 348 to 74, and the Senate 78 to 21.

Along with the disaster relief, the bill contains $1.9 billion for peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and the Middle East, plus $10 million for a new transportation system at Yosemite National Park.

The money may have come in the nick of time for Yosemite, where officials warned that the park’s high country might have to be closed to visitors this season if road and sewage repairs are not begun within three weeks, according to Boxer.

Not a single member of Congress objected to the need for federal disaster relief, but the measure ran into trouble when Republicans pinned on the two controversial amendments. One would have prevented future government shutdowns over budget disputes like those of 1995 and 1996. The second would have banned a proposed sampling technique for the census in 2000 that Republicans feared would give Democrats a political advantage.

The GOP gambled that Clinton would be forced to swallow the provisions rather than veto badly needed assistance to disaster victims. The strategy backfired when Clinton sent the bill back with his veto Monday, and worse, polls showed that the nation blamed the Republicans--not the White House--for playing politics with disaster relief.

“The Republicans tried to pull a fast one,” said Thomas Mann, an expert on Congress at the Brookings Institution think tank. “The public has already concluded that, when it comes to shutting down the government, the president is to be trusted and the Republicans are not.”

Huddling after the veto, GOP leaders began to rethink their strategy. They were further nudged toward concession by a letter signed by 20 moderate House Republicans urging House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) to send a clean bill to the floor.

“We are in trouble on this,” said Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), one of 20 who signed the letter. “It drags up the old argument about government shutdowns of 1995. We are getting pounded.”

Republican leaders had hoped to use the anti-shutdown amendment to hold the president accountable for any future federal work stoppages. But political experts said the GOP succeeded only in raising the ghost of the shutdowns of 1995 and 1996, for which the party was roundly blamed in public opinion polls.

“It’s so obviously a play for leverage,” Gary L. Jacobson, a political scientist at UC San Diego, said this week. “People in North Dakota are not going to say it’s Clinton’s fault.”

Senate Democrats weighed in Tuesday by holding up all business on the floor and then, armed with blankets and pillows, staging an all-night talkathon from the Capitol to take their case to the nation via radio and television.

In the end, a new bill was unveiled Thursday afternoon--minus the shutdown language and with a scaled-back version on the census provision requiring only that the administration report on how the Census Bureau plans to proceed. The census sampling technique that the GOP sought to prohibit would attempt to compensate for apparent undercounts of minorities in urban areas, many of whom tend to be Democrats.

Republicans argued that holding up the bill has no immediate effect because most of the money would be used to replenish federal funds being spent on relief efforts.

But Democrats countered that the delay was holding up money from a proposed $500-million program that helps victims relocate their homes outside flooded areas. In California, the delay was said to be keeping farmers from replenishing orchards and cattle lost in the floods and from repairing levees needed to prevent future damage.

Some Republicans sought to discount the political cost to their party. “Most people I talk to don’t even know it is going on,” said Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), the House majority whip. “It’s a blip in the political annals of time.”

Times staff writers Elizabeth Shogren and Heather Knight contributed to this story.