THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, December 19, 1995 TAG: 9512190263
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TODD S. PURDUM, THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium: 83 lines
With a sizable chunk of the government shut down over stalemated negotiations on a balanced budget, President Clinton used both carrot and stick on congressional Republicans on Monday by vetoing two more spending bills but then holding out the possibility of renewed face-to-face talks and compromise.
The second partial government closing in a month idled about 260,000 federal employees, who were sent home around the nation because the temporary spending measure that had financed their offices expired at midnight Friday. The resulting uncertainty helped send the stock market skidding more than 100 points.
The furlough included nearly all of the 4,500 employees of NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton.
Monday morning, the president vetoed two bills that would have provided funding and thusreopened portions of the government. One was for the Interior Department and other agencies; the other, for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Environmental Protection Agency and the nation's space agency, among others.
The White House said Clinton would veto a third spending measure today that seeks to cut his cops-on-the-street program.
After once again denouncing the Republicans, in his veto message, as too eager to cut programs for health, education and the environment, Clinton offered a private olive branch at midafternoon. In separate telephone calls to House Speaker Newt Gingrich and the Senate majority leader, Bob Dole, the president proposed two alternatives to end the standoff, White House aides said.
By evening, the two leaders had formally accepted neither but said they wanted to go to the White House today for talks with the president alone. White House aides said no meeting was yet scheduled but suggested that one was likely.
In his phone call, aides said, Clinton proposed that if the Republicans agreed to drop their insistence on using Congressional Budget Office estimates to balance the budget in seven years, he would agree to join the talks personally, with no preconditions and everything negotiable.
Or, if the Republicans insisted on using the congressional estimates, aides said, Clinton would demand that they drop their proposed cuts in the growth of Medicare and Medicaid spending in favor of his own, smaller cuts before negotiations could resume with senior White House aides. The Republicans' initial response was circumspect enough to suggest that serious talks might be in the offing.
Dole said the telephone conversation had been encouraging, adding, ``It's time for adult leadership.''
``There will be a 30-minute private conversation, just the three of us,'' Gingrich said on Monday night after a meeting of the Republican leadership. ``We're not discussing either option. We're going down there.''
Later, Gingrich and Dole issued a joint statement saying: ``We have asked to meet with President Clinton tomorrow to discuss fulfillment of the commitment he made 29 days ago to enact a seven-year balanced budget using nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates. We do not view this as a negotiating session but as an opportunity to discuss face-to-face the importance of getting a balanced budget agreement this year, and how we might achieve that goal.''
After the president's phone call Dole said, ``The president's call does demonstrate that he has at least heard our pleas over the weekend, and indicates a willingness to talk about a balanced budget over seven years using CBO figures.''
For weeks, negotiations over balancing the budget have been tangled up in disputes over the assumptions about national economic performance that would underlie any spending projections. Republicans have insisted on using the figures of the Congressional Budget Office, which are only slightly more conservative than the administration's, but which translate into multibillion-dollar differences over seven years.
Last month, to re-open the government after a six-day shutdown, Clinton agreed to balance the budget in seven years with congressional assumptions, but only if doing so protected his own spending priorities. White House aides said that his second proposal to Dole and Gingrich on Monday was merely meant to enforce the second half of the earlier agreement. MEMO: The Associated Press and the Newport News Daily Press also contributed
to this report.
by CNB