Budget Bargaining Shifts to Final Stage

The Senate on Tuesday defied a veto threat and narrowly approved the last and largest spending bill for the new fiscal year, clearing the way for President Clinton and Republican leaders to enter the final stages of budget bargaining that center on education, the environment, law enforcement and foreign aid.

The $314-billion bill, which finances education and other popular social programs, passed 49 to 48, a scant margin that may strengthen Clinton’s hand in the negotiations by exposing qualms among some GOP senators about their party’s budget strategy. Most of the five Republicans who voted against the bill are in close reelection races next year, suggesting concern on their part that the GOP budget may be a political liability in swing states.

Clinton has threatened to veto the bill because it would kill his prized initiative to put 100,000 more teachers into the nation’s schools. Although the bill increases spending for many education and health programs, it also would impose a 1% cut on all government agencies--a provision Democrats called a “poison pill” that guarantees a presidential veto.

Meanwhile, another popular issue may fall victim to partisan warfare, as Clinton has threatened to veto a Republican bill that would link an increase in the minimum wage to a package of $30 billion in tax breaks. Republican leaders have been struggling for a politically advantageous way to handle the minimum-wage increase. Tying it to the tax breaks would broaden support for the proposal within the GOP.

The jockeying over the budget, tax cuts and minimum-wage increase is intensifying as Congress heads into what many hope will be the last week of this year’s legislative session.

Congress is already a month late in putting in place a budget for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, financing the government instead with a series of stopgap measures. Of the 13 appropriation bills needed to finance the government, Clinton has vetoed three and has threatened to veto two others--including the one the Senate passed Tuesday.

That bill would finance the departments of Labor, Education and Health and Human Services. The 1% cut was included by Republicans in an effort to meet their goal of financing the government without borrowing from Social Security revenues. However, both administration and congressional budget analysts say the 13 bills, taken together, would drain $17 billion from the Social Security fund.

Republicans have proposed increases in some health and education programs so big that they would grow even if a 1% cut were enacted. The bill would provide $300 million more for the Department of Education than Clinton wanted. It would increase funding for the HeadStart preschool program by $608 million, to a total of $5.2 billion.

All but two of the Senate’s 45 Democrats voted against the bill. The pair breaking ranks were Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, senior Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, and Charles S. Robb of Virginia, who is facing a tough race for reelection in 2000.

Among the Senate’s 54 Republicans, five voted against the bill. Three of them face tough reelection fights: Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, John Ashcroft of Missouri and Spencer Abraham of Michigan. The other two opponents of the bill are first-term Republicans: Peter G. Fitzgerald of Illinois and George Voinovich of Ohio.

Ashcroft and others said that they voted against the bill because of reports that it would dip into the Social Security surplus.

On the minimum wage, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said he had agreed to Democratic demands to have a vote on the issue in the next week or so. Democrats plan to propose increasing the minimum wage, now $5.15 an hour, by $1 over two years. Republicans will offer an alternative that would link a wage hike with an unspecified amount of tax breaks for small businesses.

House GOP leaders have been trying to build support for a similar package to increase the wage over three years and link it to $30 billion in tax breaks for small businesses, including a reduction in inheritance taxes. The GOP leaders are struggling to nail down a majority behind one proposal because, while moderate Republicans are pushing for a wage hike, many conservative Republicans oppose it. Democrats, meanwhile, think the proposed tax cut is too big.

“What they’ve tried to do is hijack the minimum wage to provide” the tax breaks, said House Minority Whip David E. Bonior (D-Mich.).