Clinton Keeps Edge Over GOP in Budget Talks

As White House and congressional negotiators struggle to put the finishing touches on a sweeping compromise for this year’s federal budget, one conclusion is already clear: A year that began with Republicans trying to drive President Clinton out of office ended with the GOP agreeing to much of his wish list.

Over the last few weeks, Republicans made significant concessions to Clinton’s spending priorities and, like last year, vastly exceeded spending caps that the party once pledged to uphold.

According to a senior aide to the House Appropriations Committee, Republicans met Clinton more than halfway by giving him about $3.2 billion of the $5.3 billion in additional spending he sought in end-game talks on foreign aid, the environment, education and other programs.

Surveying the gamut of year-end bargaining--over Medicare and other policy issues as well as money--Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said: “Probably 95% of what the president wanted, he’s got.”

Republican leaders insisted that they have not simply caved in to the president. While giving Clinton more money for his priorities, they argued, they have demanded that he come up with offsetting cuts to make good on their promise not to borrow from Social Security reserves for other government spending.

“We are going to close this budget without touching Social Security,” House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) said Thursday. “Conservatives are feeling quite pleased that, given all the pressures to increase spending . . . , we are in fact holding the line.”

Still, Armey acknowledged that Clinton, who in February was acquitted on impeachment charges in the Senate, astutely used the powers of his office. “The president of the United States has priorities,” Armey said. “No legislative body can ignore them.”

Indeed, the offsets for Clinton’s increased spending have not yet been agreed upon, and budget hawks fear that the Social Security goal will be achieved only with a heavy dose of gimmickry and accounting legerdemain.

Republicans had tried to strengthen their hand in this year’s budget process by forcing Clinton to proceed, bill by bill, through the 13 measures needed to fund the government, rather than ending up in the kind of omnibus negotiations that last year gave the president more leverage. At the least, that made the additional spending easier for Republicans to swallow--slice by slice rather than in one indigestible mass.

“They are ending up with a result that is not too different from the result they were left with last year,” said Robert D. Reischauer, a budget expert at the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington. “But, rather than giving up ground in one large move, they gave ground step by step. The bottom line is pretty much the same: The president got much of what he wanted.”

And while last year’s spending spree--which blew a $20-billion hole in the annual budget ceilings set by 1997’s historic balanced-budget agreement--prompted a revolt in the party’s right wing, conservatives so far have been remarkably quiet about this year’s result. Even before they entered negotiations with the president, Republicans had passed spending bills that exceeded the year’s spending caps by nearly $30 billion, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

A key question is whether conservative qualms about all the spending will come bursting into the open next week when both houses of Congress vote on the bill codifying the budget deal. A crucial factor in keeping conservatives on board may be whether negotiators, in determining spending offsets, can salvage any fraction of Republicans’ proposal to impose a 1% across-the-board cut. That cut faces stiff opposition from the administration--as well as from leading Senate Republicans.

At the center of the budget talks are five of the 13 appropriation bills needed to run the government. (The other eight have been signed into law.) The five bills have been the subject of weeks of negotiations between Clinton and Congress.

A major obstacle that had stalled final action was cleared Wednesday night when Republican and White House negotiators reached agreement on continuing Clinton’s prized initiative to hire 100,000 new teachers to reduce the size of classes. Under the compromise, the program will receive $1.3 billion for its second year. (Clinton had sought $1.4 billion.) The administration agreed to allow schools to use an increased part of the money for teacher training as well as hiring, responding to GOP demands for more local discretion in spending the money.

A handful of other nettlesome policy issues are holding up a final budget deal, including disputes over payment of dues to the United Nations and international debt relief financing. “They are both bogging down,” Armey said Thursday.

Armey predicted that the dispute over providing the $926 million in back U.N. dues will be the last item settled. Lawmakers who oppose abortion rights have linked the dues issue to their bid to block federal money to international groups that seek to ease abortion restrictions in other countries.

But apart from those policy disputes, negotiators essentially have shaken hands on the spending levels that are the core of the budget. And Clinton on Thursday pronounced himself pleased with the results.

“In addition to reducing class size, we’ve made progress on other vital education initiatives as well,” he said. “We’re also making progress on other vital budget priorities, from hiring up to 50,000 new community police officers to setting aside funds to preserve natural resources and protect our environment for future generations.

According to the House Appropriations Committee, Clinton came to the bargaining table asking Republicans to provide $2.2 billion more for the departments of Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services. Republicans agreed to $1.4 billion.

For the Interior Department and related natural resource programs, Clinton asked for $575 million. Republicans countered with about two-thirds that amount.

In foreign aid, the administration asked for $1.4 billion and got about $800 million.

And for the departments of Commerce, Justice and State, Republicans provided about $600 million of the $1.1 billion the president sought.

They may not have been able to kill Clinton’s spending requests, but Republicans pride themselves on at least holding them in check. “The biggest difference is that, for the first time in my memory, the White House feels compelled to pay for . . . additional requests,” said a House Republican leadership aide.

House Republican leaders on Wednesday had told all members that they should plan on being in Washington today for a possible budget vote. But with many lawmakers in their home districts Thursday for Veterans Day ceremonies--and grumbling about having to make a quick return to Washington--the GOP leaders decided to delay the vote until next week.

Times staff writer Nick Anderson contributed to this story.