Lott Calls on Clinton to Tell All to Public, Starr

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott said Monday that the Monica S. Lewinsky controversy is hampering how Washington deals with key domestic and foreign policy issues and called on President Clinton to give a full accounting of his relationship with Lewinsky so the nation can move on.

“I think it is beginning to have an impact on the presidency, on the president and on his ability to deal with many very important issues for the future of our country--from Social Security to what’s going on in Iraq and now what’s going on in Kosovo,” Lott told reporters.

But the White House fired back, insisting that Clinton has remained focused on major issues and accusing Lott, a Republican from Mississippi, of using the notoriety of independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr’s investigation as an excuse for congressional inaction. Starr is trying to determine whether Clinton had sex with Lewinsky and then urged her to lie about it.

“What do Monica Lewinsky and Ken Starr have to do with scheduling business in the Senate?” White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry retorted. “That’s Majority Leader Lott’s responsibility.”

McCurry quipped that Lott and his colleagues “haven’t done much yet” besides renaming Washington National Airport in honor of former President Reagan and labeling Lake Champlain one of the “Great Lakes” in an effort to win it research money.

Clinton aides also accused Lott of launching his verbal grenades for the benefit of his GOP colleagues--some of whom had criticized the majority leader’s call over the weekend for a hasty end to Starr’s investigation and his discussion of a possible censure of the president instead of impeachment.

In an interview broadcast on CNN’s “Evans and Novak,” Lott called on Starr to “show his cards” and speculated that Congress could vote to censure Clinton as an alternative to voting him out of office.

To dispel the notion of a breach among GOP leaders, Lott on Monday heaped praise on Starr and distanced himself from the idea of censure. Lott also said that he had telephoned a concerned House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) to explain his comments.

Election-year congresses are typically sluggish, with lawmakers eager to be home frequently as campaigns kick into gear. Still, Lott said, he believes this year’s legislative agenda would flow more smoothly if Clinton ended his “stonewalling” and told “the whole truth” about his relationship with Lewinsky, the former White House intern.

In brief comments since the story surfaced in January, Clinton has flatly denied having had a sexual relationship with Lewinsky, but refused to comment further. He has insisted that he is constrained by legal considerations from providing more information.

Lott said: “I today call on the president to come forward, tell the American people what has happened. . . . What is the whole truth? Tell that to the independent counsel. . . . Get this behind us so that we can go on with the people’s business.”

In one of the few specifics he offered about how Clinton’s problems were affecting public policy, Lott charged that “the president has been AWOL” in advancing a specific White House proposal for overhauling the nation’s tobacco policies. Federal officials and lawmakers have been grappling with this issue since a sweeping deal was proposed last June between the tobacco industry and a group of state attorneys general.

Lott himself has recused himself from direct involvement in tobacco legislation because his brother-in-law’s legal firm is in line to make hundreds of millions of dollars if a settlement is enacted.

While Lott spoke, Clinton was delivering a speech to the American Medical Assn. in which he suggested it was Congress that was dragging its feet on revamping tobacco policy.

“If we know that the lives of 1,000 children a day are at stake, how can we walk away from this legislative session without a solution to the tobacco issue?” Clinton asked.

White House officials conceded that--since the Lewinsky controversy broke--the president has had a hard time getting the media to focus on other issues, diluting the impact of his bully pulpit. But that responsibility, they said, belongs to the media, not the White House.

Rep. Tom Campbell, a moderate Republican from San Jose, agreed with Lott that Starr’s investigation ought to be closed quickly. In an interview Monday, Campbell called for the initiation of impeachment proceedings against Clinton so the House Judiciary Committee can immediately weigh the evidence that Starr and his staff have gathered.

“President Clinton does owe us all a complete explanation,” said Campbell, one of 23 lawmakers who has endorsed an impeachment motion introduced by Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.).

“It is simply not true, as he claims, that rules of court prohibit him from comment,” Barr said. “They do not. It is his choice alone that keeps him from comment.”

Times staff writer Alissa J. Rubin contributed to this story.