Agricultural Funding Vetoed Over Farm Aid

Partisan wrangling between Congress and the White House over key budget issues intensified Thursday as President Clinton vetoed the agricultural appropriations bill and both sides reported slow progress in ironing out differences on other spending measures.

After a second day of negotiating, top White House officials said that, while they had made some progress with Republican congressional leaders, 150 separate issues remained to be resolved. The talks were sidelined for several hours Thursday because of the debate on whether to authorize the Clinton impeachment inquiry.

The GOP leaders said they hope to avert a government shutdown this weekend by passing stopgap spending measures that would cover five unpassed appropriations bills--as well as the one for the Agriculture Department--and keep the agencies running at last year’s funding levels.

But White House officials remained skeptical that the two sides will be able to strike a deal before midnight tonight, when the current temporary spending authority expires. The temporary authority is necessary because funding ran out when the government began a new fiscal year on Oct. 1.

Clinton vetoed the $60-billion agriculture bill on the ground that it contains too little money for emergency aid to farmers, who have been hard hit by the global economic crisis. The White House and Democrats had sought $7.3 billion in extra subsidies for farmers, but the Republican-crafted bill would provide only $4.2 billion.

Republicans Want to Put Off Policy Debates

Besides the agriculture bill, Congress still has not passed individual spending measures affecting the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, State, Commerce, Justice and Interior. It also must approve funding for the government’s foreign operations and the District of Columbia.

Republicans, confident that they will widen their majorities in Congress in the November election, suggested simply postponing negotiations over key policy disputes and compromising on the amount of money that each bill should contain.

“When you get a money agreement, if there is a policy dispute, pitch it--on either side,” Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) told reporters. “There will be people back here next year who can fight policy battles.”

GOP leaders also have conceded that they are loathe to risk a government shutdown such as the one that they forced in 1995. Adverse public reaction to that shutdown left the Republicans scrambling to recover politically.

As a result, Stanley Collender, a budget watcher for the nonpartisan Federal Budgeting Consulting Group, said that the Republicans appear to be shelving many of their once-critical demands in hopes of averting the kind of stalemates that might bring on another shutdown.

“Pragmatism is pushing ideology out of the way as far as the Republican leaders are concerned,” Collender said. “There’s pretty much wholesale capitulation going on” in the current budget talks, he said.

Despite the slow progress in the negotiations, lawmakers continued to chip away at the appropriations logjam. The Senate passed and sent to the president a $93.4-billion measure covering housing, veterans’ and environmental programs, which Clinton is expected to sign.

And Republicans drafted a proposal for resolving the dispute over providing an $18-billion line of credit to the International Monetary Fund, which Clinton has designated as his economic priority. Negotiations on the issue were expected to continue today.

Even so, the two sides remained apart on a spate of policy disputes ranging from laws making it easier for growers to hire foreign workers to a GOP effort to deny $35 million in aid promised to North Korea for limiting its nuclear weapon program.

On Thursday, the White House also threatened to veto a sweeping GOP-backed bankruptcy reform bill that Clinton contends does not provide adequate protection for low-income borrowers. The bill would make it harder for consumers to abandon their debts.

Clinton told an impromptu press conference late Thursday afternoon that he hopes to work out an accord on the budget that would help preserve the Social Security system, keep the economy going and promote education and the environment, but he gave no details.

Reaction to the president’s veto of the agricultural appropriations bill was predictably split along party lines.

Compromise Expected in Today’s Package

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) called the move “irresponsible,” saying that the president was “playing a high-stakes game of poker . . . because of his political troubles.”

But Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), one of a group of lawmakers from north-central states who have been pressing for more emergency aid for farmers than Republicans want to provide, said that the veto gives sponsors “the leverage to get a stronger package.”

The two sides are expected to hammer out a compromise figure and include it in the omnibus continuing resolution--or stopgap spending bill--that they hope to pass sometime today. If lawmakers complete action on the resolution in time, they plan to adjourn Saturday.

The negotiations, presided over by White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, were expected to continue through Thursday night and most of today. Bowles told reporters earlier that the talks had resulted in “some reasonable progress.”