Congress OKs Spending Bill in Race to Meet Deadline

Republicans shoved a $14.5-billion bill for federal land and culture programs through Congress on Thursday, the second straight day they passed spending legislation despite a presidential veto threat.

The House-Senate compromise--which passed the House, 225 to 200, and the Senate by voice vote--encapsulated the GOP’s strategy of mixing confrontation with cooperation.

It added hundreds of millions of dollars to earlier versions and even restored an urban parks and recreation fund Republicans boasted about killing in 1995. But it has provisions for mining, ranching and oil interests the White House says would hurt the environment, and it has less than President Clinton wants for buying park lands.

Republicans hoped to send Clinton the 13th and final spending bill for fiscal 2000 as early as today, providing more than $310 billion for health, education and labor programs. It is among five bills facing veto threats that Republicans have sent Clinton anyway, hoping to show that Congress has completed its budget business without using Social Security surpluses.

“We’ve laid out what our positions are,” said House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). “The message is, talk to us.”

Democrats complained that the GOP drive to keep passing bills would only slow budget talks between White House officials and top lawmakers over unfinished spending measures for fiscal 2000, which began Oct. 1.

“We’re not going to make progress as long as they’re in that mind-set, because that’s just not the way the world works,” said White House spokesman Joe Lockhart.

White House officials and leading lawmakers held no bargaining sessions Thursday, a day after a blowup over GOP leaders’ comments accusing Clinton of wanting to spend Social Security dollars.

Amid the positioning, Clinton signed a stopgap bill letting agencies continue operating through Oct. 29. The first such temporary extension expired Thursday.

To keep their spending bills from eating into Social Security surpluses, Republican leaders were making final decisions on the roughly $5 billion in savings they will need.

The bulk of it--about $4.3 billion--will come from an across-the-board cut in all 13 spending bills, said one Republican, speaking on condition of anonymity. Republicans say such a reduction would be barely felt, which Democrats contest.