Clinton Would Pay a Price for Getting Kosovo Funding

President Clinton can count on Congress giving him the $6 billion he wants for the war in Kosovo, but he’s going to have to pay a price.

He’ll probably have to give up control of billions of dollars in revenue from state tobacco settlements. He’ll have to swallow funding for a new military parking lot and other construction projects. He faces pressure to give ground on environmental policy. He may even have to come up with some goodies for the small but powerful Alaska delegation, whose senior senator oversees the Senate’s appropriations committee.

The president is on the spot because key lawmakers are moving to link the Kosovo funding bill--a must-pass measure barreling through Congress--to a laundry list of unrelated matters, including some that Clinton would otherwise want to veto.

Thus a measure that was supposed to be about urgent funding for America’s fighting force abroad is fast becoming a bazaar for domestic political horse-trading. The House today is expected to approve a $12.9-billion emergency defense bill--more than twice as much as Clinton wants. The measure then is expected to be linked to another money bill: a long-stalled measure to provide about $1 billion for Central American countries ravaged by Hurricane Mitch last year.

That disaster aid bill has been stalled in House-Senate negotiations, in part because it is laden with spending cuts and other legislative riders the administration opposes, including one that would give states, rather than the federal government, control over about $250 billion in revenue from last year’s legal settlements with the tobacco industry.

Now that those issues are likely to be linked to the Kosovo funding, Republicans believe they will have more leverage over Clinton on the side issues.

“I’d be pretty surprised if the president decides to veto this bill,” even with objectionable provisions like the tobacco revenue proposal, said John Feehery, spokesman for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). “If he vetoes it, it would be a disaster for his presidency.”

Still, some Republicans worry that their party will overplay its hand, push Clinton to veto the bill and leave the GOP to take the heat for slowing the emergency military funding. To avoid that, House Appropriations Chairman C. W. Bill Young (R-Fla.) is urging his colleagues to keep the bill as free of controversial amendments as possible.

“We don’t want to do anything to this bill that slows it down or makes it potential veto bait,” said Elizabeth Morra, a committee spokeswoman.

Linda Ricci, a spokeswoman for the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, reiterated the administration’s opposition to the riders and spending cuts in the disaster aid bill, but declined to elaborate on what would provoke a veto.

A House Democratic leadership aide warned: “There is a point at which the White House would veto this thing if the Republicans really load it up.”

Efforts to lard emergency bills with projects and riders opposed by the White House are hardly unique to the Kosovo bill. But the add-ons may be particularly important to greasing the skids for this measure because many Republicans are opposed to the war and may need other inducements to vote for the bill.

It’s in part with an eye to attracting those votes that House Republican leaders are trying to force Clinton to accept more defense spending than he had requested. Although that effort has met some resistance among Senate Republicans, the House version of the bill would more than double the $6 billion Clinton requested for Kosovo. Among the add-ons are $1 billion worth of military construction projects--many of which the Pentagon has not even requested, such as a parking lot at a military base in Germany. Still, Clinton has indicated he would not veto the bill over those provisions.

Another test of wills between Clinton and Congress will be the tobacco rider, whose fate will be decided by a House-Senate conference committee that is expected to meet next week to combine the Kosovo and disaster aid bills and iron out differences.

At issue is the $250 billion the tobacco industry has agreed to pay over the next 25 years to settle lawsuits pressed by the states.

State officials claim the money is theirs alone because it comes from lawsuits the states pressed. The Clinton administration argues that the federal government has a legal right to some of the money--or at least to require that states use the money for anti-smoking and public health initiatives--because a key part of the suits was recovery of costs incurred under Medicaid, a federal-state program.

A Senate amendment to the disaster aid bill pushed by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) would deny the federal government a share of the funds, allowing states to use the money as they see fit. The House did not include such language in its emergency spending measure, in part because lawmakers were afraid Clinton would veto the bill over it.

Now, top Republicans in both the House and Senate predict the provision will be part of the final bill. “It will be included,” said House Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas.

Republicans are not alone in trying to use the emergency funding bill as a vehicle for home state interests. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) is pressing for $20 million to help poor farm workers in California’s Central Valley who lost their jobs as a result of last year’s citrus freeze. And Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W. Va.) is pushing for inclusion of a loan program for the beleaguered steel industry.

The administration has not opposed those add-ons. But a White House statement Wednesday urged Congress to “avoid confrontation by acting quickly to enact these requests [for Kosovo and disaster aid] without extraneous riders and spending.”

One of the items provoking potential veto threats is one of several Senate provisions helping Republican Ted Stevens’ home state of Alaska. The most contentious would indefinitely postpone restrictions on commercial fishing in certain parts of Alaska’s Glacier Bay.

That is one of many environmental policy riders the White House has called “strongly objectionable.” But environmentalists are pessimistic the administration will bargain hard over the issue.

“People know the president is interested in getting this aid over to Kosovo, so I think it bodes very poorly,” said Marcia Argust, who is lobbying against the Glacier Bay rider for the National Parks and Conservation Assn.

There may be even more for environmentalists to worry about. Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.) may try to overturn an administration decision to block a mining project in his home state.

Although the issue is not addressed in either versions of the funding bills, a Gorton spokeswoman said it was possible he would try to insert language to help the mining project during House-Senate negotiations on the bill next week.

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