GOP Offers Challenge to Clinton Budget Veto Threat

Hoping to jump-start stalled budget talks, Republican leaders Tuesday night threatened to ignore President Clinton’s veto threat and push forward with a spending bill that would replace his signature program to put 100,000 new teachers in the nation’s schools.

The GOP leaders said that they are prepared today to push through Congress a wide-ranging budget bill that includes their alternative proposal to give states and school districts flexibility to use the program’s funds for purposes other than hiring teachers.

“We’re not going to concede on teachers,” said Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, lead Senate GOP negotiator on the issue. He said the education funding bill probably would be packaged with other eleventh-hour spending measures and possibly would include concessions to Clinton on the level of education spending.

That tough talk may be a bluff designed to force the administration to give more in negotiations. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) left open the possibility that a compromise still could be struck. But the maneuvering made clear that both Republicans and Clinton are determined to make their differences on education the marquee political issue as the budget debate winds down.

It also was plain that Congress would not live up to Republican hopes of finishing the budget and recessing for the year this week. With temporary funding for the government expiring tonight, the House approved Tuesday a one-week extension of a stopgap funding measure. The bill gives Congress until Nov. 17 to finish the budget.

Positions were hardening on the high-profile education debate even as White House and congressional negotiators were making progress toward resolving differences in other areas of the budget. The two sides reached agreement on funding for Clinton’s initiative to hire more community police. And they moved toward an accord on a $15-billion Interior Department appropriations bill that would include funding for the purchase of a large swath of desert land in Southern California.

Even after the remaining sticking points are resolved, negotiators will have to decide how to bring the whole budget in line with the promise made by both Clinton and Republican leaders that they would not borrow from excess Social Security revenues to pay for other programs. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) indicated that Republicans probably would back down from their proposed 1% across-the-board cut in programs, but that negotiators were still trying to come up with alternative sources of savings.

At issue is funding for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. Only eight of the 13 bills needed to keep the government running have been signed into law. The rest of the government has run on stopgap funding legislation like that passed Tuesday by the House.

The most controversial of the bills is the one to finance the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and Education. Negotiators have managed to narrow their differences on spending levels, as Republicans indicated that they would agree to $1 billion of the $2 billion in additional money Clinton sought.

But the two sides remained bitterly divided over continuing Clinton’s program to hire 100,000 new teachers over the next several years. The program began last year.

Republicans want to replace its funding with a grant that gives states more flexibility in how they use the money. They argue that such spending decisions are better made at the state and local levels than by the federal government.

With neither side showing any give on the question, Specter said that the GOP is prepared to bring to a vote today a funding bill that includes the Republican alternative--essentially daring Clinton to veto the bill over the teacher issue.

In talks on another bill--funding the departments of Justice, Commerce and State--the White House and Republicans made a breakthrough and agreed to provide $800 million for Clinton’s initiative to hire more community police officers. That is about three-quarters of the $1.3 billion the president wanted.

“We are seeing encouraging signs of real progress in our efforts to put 50,000 more community police officers on our streets to keep the crime rate coming down,” Clinton said. He also cited the “first signs of agreement” on environmental funding and policy.

He was referring to progress on a bill financing the Interior Department. Clinton opposed the first version of the measure passed by Congress, objecting that it did not include enough money for his initiative to buy environmentally sensitive lands threatened by development and that it contained many policy riders that environmentalists said would weaken regulation of mining, oil and other industries.

House Appropriations Chairman C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.) said Republicans are refusing to drop any of the riders but have modified some to make them more acceptable to Clinton. On funding, Young said, Republicans proposed adding $376 million to the $14.6 billion they had previously approved for the bill, including additional money for acquisition of land in the Mojave Desert and other environmentally sensitive areas around the country.

Congressional sources said that Republicans had proposed $15 million for preserving a wide portion of the Southern California desert--up from the $10 million included in their earlier version of the bill. That would be enough to buy about 120,000 acres, preserving habitat for big horn sheep and the desert tortoise and a large stand of Bigelow cholla cactus.

Late Tuesday, the funding was still at issue in final negotiations with the White House over the land acquisition budget. A key question was whether the funding would be tied to resolving a dispute over expansion of a U.S. Army tank training center at Ft. Irwin.

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Times staff writer Richard Simon contributed to this story.