Unusual Budget Session Yields U.N. Dues Deal

White House budget negotiators, all but resolving the thorniest issue holding up enactment of major spending bills for the new fiscal year, agreed Sunday to accept some limits on the use of U.S. contributions to international institutions in support of abortion activities abroad.

In return, congressional Republicans approved giving President Clinton some of the money he had sought to make overdue U.S. payments to the United Nations.

The agreement, reached during an extraordinary Sunday night bargaining session in the Capitol, could clear the way for a broad agreement later this week on spending legislation for fiscal 2000, which began Oct. 1.

“We have what looks like a tentative deal” on abortion and U.N. dues, said a Clinton administration negotiator who asked not to be further identified. While characterizing the accord as “significant,” this official said there were some difficult disputes still to settle regarding the U.N. contribution and other parts of the spending legislation.

“We do not have a deal on the U.N. until we can work out the question of debt relief” for the world’s very poorest nations, the White House official said.

Ensnarled in the battle over U.N. dues and abortion activities overseas are the spending bills for some of the government’s biggest departments, including Health and Human Services, Education, Labor, Commerce, Justice and Interior.

Some conservative Republicans had used U.N. dues to block U.S. funding of international groups that promote abortion rights in other countries.

The leading Republican negotiator Sunday night was House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, who flew back to Washington from his Illinois district.

The United Nations says Washington owes about $1.6 billion in back dues; the U.S. government puts the figure at $926 million. Congress had agreed to appropriate the smaller figure, provided the abortion dispute is settled.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, herself a proponent of abortion rights, had urged Clinton to bend in the direction of the Republicans’ abortion restrictions. If it failed to pay at least some of its overdue bill to the United Nations by the end of the year, she pointed out, the United States would find itself in the embarrassing position of losing its vote in the U.N. General Assembly. (However, the United States would retain its permanent seat on the more powerful U.N. Security Council.)

Last July, to a bill authorizing the payment of U.N. dues, the House attached a strict prohibition on use of the funds to support overseas organizations that lobby in favor of abortion rights. Then, for the foreign aid appropriations bill, it promptly approved allowing U.S. aid funds to go to international groups that promote abortion as long as they used separate funds for those activities and abortion was legal in the countries where the groups were operating.

Under Sunday night’s agreement, Clinton can waive the restriction on the use of America’s U.N. contribution to support abortion activities abroad, but in that case there would be an automatic 6% reduction in the $385 million appropriation for international family assistance funding. The White House official said the waiver would have “minimal impact.”

Apart from abortion funding and U.N. dues, the White House and Congress must still reach accommodation on Republican-sponsored measures in the Interior Department spending bill that the administration argues would reverse environmental progress. One such provision, for example, would ease federal mining regulations.

But Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D), speaking on CBS-TV’s “Face the Nation,” said he hoped this would be the week that Congress finally cleared the decks of budget disagreements. “We have seen too much acrimony, we have seen too much delay, we have seen too much intransigence.”

Some of that acrimony surrounded Daschle’s appearance on the show. CBS had asked House Majority Whip Tom DeLay of Texas to appear first on the show, followed by Daschle. DeLay said he would appear only if Daschle preceded him; when CBS refused, DeLay dropped out.