Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 27, 1993 TAG: 9303270005
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
In a day of colorful rhetoric but little action, the Appropriations Committee chairman taunted his colleagues - Republicans and conservative fellow Democrats - who criticized the president's package but haven't found the votes to change it.
"Emerson said that God does not manifest himself to cowards," Byrd said, daring them to offer their amendments.
The bill includes $16.3 billion for summer youth jobs, unemployment insurance, highway projects, and various other civic improvements. The president is selling it as a tonic for the economy at a time when the strength of the recovery is uncertain.
Leon Panetta, the president's budget chief, told a National Press Club luncheon that the jobs bill was "absolutely essential" to keeping the economic recovery moving.
"The chance is too great that it will remain weak and that it could fall back into a recession" without the added push provided by the jobs bill, Panetta said.
Conservative senators attacked the plan as unnecessarily adding to the federal deficit, because Clinton has not proposed how to pay for it.
"This is not the right kind of stimulus package," said Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho. "The only way we truly will create long term, high paying jobs is to get government out of the way . . . of the private sector."
Byrd was especially critical of Democrats who were seeking to change the bill.
"I am startled, I am amazed and chagrined," said Byrd. "Why can't we as Democrats support the leader. . . . Are we going to put chains on him?"
Byrd, an expert on Senate rules, was doing his best to make sure it was his fellow senators who were chained down. He maneuvered Clinton's bill so that even if an amendment won, it could be wiped out later.
Not bad, he boasted, for someone who went to a two-room schoolhouse in hillbilly country and now stands toe to toe with other powers in Washington.
"A rustic boob they would say, I suppose, a rustic boob from West Virginia," he said. "A country boy between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats," he mused, a lawyer himself.
"Why, there are enough Republican senators here to lynch me. They could ride me out of town on a rail," he chuckled at one point when fellow Democrats were somehow absent.
He compared himself to the boy with his finger in the dike, and to other brave, lonely figures in literature. "If he's in the right, then God stands in the dim shadows and holds sway over his home. So I am here now," he said.
Byrd talked about his dog, Billy, a Maltese terrier he praised for its loyalty. And, eventually, Democratic colleagues arrived to pick up the debate.
Sen. James Sasser, D-Tenn., talked of how Clinton's plan was like eating spinach. "That spinach is what made Popeye the Sailor Man so strong," and would have the same effect on the country, he said.
Senate leaders said they hoped to finish work on the jobs bill, work out any differences with the House and get it to Clinton's desk by the end of next week.
by CNB