Clinton Chides GOP on Congressional Priorities

President Clinton assailed Congress’ GOP leaders for launching an eleventh-hour “spending spree,” loading up spending bills with pet projects whose cost, he warned, could derail deficit-reduction plans and put a damper on the nation’s economic boom.

Meanwhile, he complained, Congress “can’t seem to find the time to raise the minimum wage or pass the patients’ bill of rights, or drug benefits for our seniors through Medicare or tax cuts for long-term care, child care or a college education.”

Clinton’s remarks were the latest in what has become a near-daily fit of public pique about congressional priorities. With a lengthy wish list of initiatives and dwindling time to see them through Congress, the president has taken to prodding congressional Republicans regularly, by turns threatening and cajoling them.

But White House aides and political analysts acknowledge that Clinton’s appeals contain a political stick: If GOP lawmakers fail to pass his most popular initiatives, Clinton will flog them often and publicly. And he will gladly share the political club with House and Senate Democrats to use against their Republican opponents in this fall’s elections.

“If Republicans agree to his terms, Clinton will happily take them, and congressional Democrats would too and declare victory,” said Thomas Mann of the nonpartisan Brookings Institution. “But the next best thing is to be given a chance to air the subject as a point of disagreement and deadlock.”

Because his own legacy will be heavily influenced by the outcome of the coming election, “Bill Clinton is going to do everything humanly possible to help Al Gore get elected and the Democrats retake Congress,” Mann added. “He’s not working at cross-purposes with any Democrats.”

Exhibit A of this “you win even if you lose” strategy is hate crime legislation. The measure sought by Clinton would make criminal suspects motivated by hatred on the basis of sexual orientation subject to prosecution under federal hate crime statutes. It has passed the Senate and won a majority of House votes in a nonbinding vote but is languishing in House-Senate negotiations over a defense spending bill.

Clinton pointedly noted Wednesday that “over two-thirds of the American people believe that no one should be subject to a crime because of who they are.” And with words that verged on political taunt, he challenged Congress’ Republican leaders to allow the measure to reach his desk.

“But we all know what the deal is here. This is not complicated,” said Clinton, who later Wednesday spoke at a fund-raiser attended by prominent gay activists in Dallas. “The Republican majority does not want a bill that explicitly provides hate crimes protections for gay Americans, and I think they think it will split their base or something.”

His comments came as the Human Rights Campaign, a homosexual rights organization, launched a $75,000 television, radio and newspaper advertising campaign targeting seven prominent Republicans who have opposed Clinton’s hate crime legislation, including Rep. James E. Rogan (R-Glendale).

Clinton on Wednesday went on to cite a litany of initiatives that have been popular with voters but problematic for many congressional Republicans. He complained that lawmakers “haven’t found the funds for education, for continuing to hire 100,000 qualified teachers, to reduce class size, to build and modernize schools, to provide after-school programs for children who need it and to have real accountability for failing schools, requiring them to turn around or shut down or be put under new management.”

Mann, of Brookings, noted that issues such as these, as well as a minimum-wage hike, patients’ bill of rights legislation and a measure to extend prescription-drug coverage, “are all matters on which the Clinton-Gore administration is pretty close to the sentiment of the public.” If Clinton succeeds in portraying congressional Republicans as the obstacle to their passage, GOP candidates could suffer, he added.

“I don’t see it as anything other than teamwork to help Democrats prosper in the election,” said Mann. “It’s the most natural thing in the world, but historically, it hasn’t always happened that way.”