Balkan Emergency Money OKd by House-Senate Panel

A House-Senate conference committee completed work Thursday on a $14.5-billion emergency bill, largely to finance military operations in the Balkans, amid signs that President Clinton may drop his threat to veto the controversial measure.

Approval came after a flurry of meetings among various factions involved in the negotiations--and increased pressure from House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) to resolve outstanding differences.

Committee leaders said the House could take up the measure today, to be followed quickly by the Senate, in an effort to speed the bill to the president’s desk. The Pentagon has said it needs the money by Memorial Day, May 31, or U.S. military operations worldwide will suffer.

The measure would provide $11.8 billion in emergency spending for U.S. military and humanitarian operations in Kosovo, nearly double what Clinton had requested, and $2.7 billion in aid for U.S. farmers, Midwest tornado victims and Central American victims of Hurricane Mitch.

It also would kill Clinton’s hope of claiming for the federal government a share of the $246-billion legal settlement that the states won from tobacco companies last year. Over Clinton’s opposition, lawmakers voted to prohibit Washington from using any of the states’ awards.

Clinton earlier had warned that he might veto the entire measure if lawmakers increased by too much his Kosovo-related spending request. He also called on conferees to cut extraneous amendments from the overall bill. On Thursday, he reported “some effort to trim the bill . . . and to get it . . . where I can sign it.”

The pressure from Hastert and Lott reflected a worry by Republican leaders that unless the bill were stripped of extraneous amendments, it might face opposition from GOP conservatives who fear that too many such provisions might cut into the Social Security surplus.

Emergency appropriations of this sort are not limited by the usual congressional budget restraints, which require that lawmakers make offsetting cuts in other programs. As a result, the outlays reduce the overall budget surplus, which comes mostly from Social Security taxes.

The bill nearly became snagged Thursday by a House-Senate wrangle over an amendment by Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) to set up a loan guarantee program to help steel companies hit hard by import competition.

The conferees had agreed on Wednesday to accept the Byrd proposal, but under pressure from Hastert, House negotiators reversed their position Thursday. Meanwhile, Senate conferees voted to insist that it be kept in the bill.

Byrd finally relented after House conferees offered him a promise from Hastert to bring the proposal up on the House floor soon as a separate bill. The chairmen of the House and Senate appropriations committees were to meet with Byrd Thursday night to work the issue out.

Just before adjourning, the conferees reached agreement on another contentious section of the bill: whether to mandate offsetting spending cuts in other programs to help reduce the effect of the overall Kosovo measure on the federal budget deficit.

The panel agreed to make $1.65 billion in offsetting cuts: $1.25 billion in the food stamp program, $350 million in housing construction for the poor, $25 million in a global environment fund, $20 million for the U.S. Information Agency and $5 million in economic aid.

The marathon negotiations contained a series of trade-offs for Clinton. Although the president could not prevent GOP lawmakers from providing more money for the Pentagon than he had requested, he did manage to reduce the bill from the level passed by the House.

At the same time, although Clinton lost his claim on the states’ tobacco settlement money, he did succeed in persuading conferees to pare back offsetting cuts in federal programs and in ridding the bill of its most extraneous riders.