THE LEDGER-STAR
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, November 21, 1994 TAG: 9411210244
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAN BALZ, WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: WILLIAMSBURG LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines
Republican governors are warning congressional Republicans not to be diverted by potentially divisive social issues such as school prayer, and they are calling for a significant shift in power and responsibility from Washington to the states from the new Republican Congress.
Bolstered by the midterm elections that have given them a majority of the governorships for the first time since 1970, Republican governors said they want explicit language in any proposed constitutional amendment to balance the budget to protect the states from any undue fiscal burden.
They also said that as the Republican Congress sets out to shrink the federal government, states want more freedom from federal mandates so they can design their own solutions to problems such as welfare.
``Our message will be to the Republican congressional leaders and the people of this country, `Give us the ball and then get out of the way. We can solve these problems,' '' said Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, the incoming chairman of the Republican Governors Association.
At the three-day meeting of the Republican Governors Association that started Sunday, the governors plan to shape an agenda for the new congressional majority. Already their new status was evident.
The normally uneventful opening news conference was packed with observers, and the colonial park that is playing host to the governors is overrun with people, including corporate lobbyists, sniffing out the other new power center in American politics.
House Speaker-to-be Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., and Senate Minority Leader Robert J. Dole, R-Kan., are among the Republican congressional leaders who will address the governors as the Republicans jointly attempt to plot a restructuring of a federal government that Republicans said is too big, too unresponsive and too costly.
Governors differ on whether they support a school prayer amendment, but they said congressional Republicans should concentrate on the issues that brought about the Republican landslide two weeks ago.
``I think Newt Gingrich should dance with the gal that brung him,'' Massachusetts Gov. William F. Weld said Sunday on NBC's ``Meet the Press.'' ``And the gal that brung him was the tax-and-spend issue and crime and welfare.''
Weld was supported in that view by social moderates such as California Gov. Pete Wilson and New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, who said the GOP could ``squander'' its mandate by entering into a debate over school prayer.
Michigan Gov. John Engler, who is more conservative on social issues, said he did not believe congressional Republicans intended to let that happen, but added, ``If we don't deal with economic issues, we'll need more than prayer to solve our problems.''
Dole said on ABC's ``This Week With David Brinkley'' that school prayer faced a ``tough battle'' in the Senate and said Congress should concentrate on measures that it can pass, rather than getting ``bogged down'' in a long debate over such an amendment.
The governors said they were optimistic that their congressional colleagues would look more kindly on letting states solve their own problems, free of mandates from Washington, than were congressional Democrats or even President Clinton, a former governor who has sounded sympathetic to their problems but has not delivered enough relief to suit them.
But as Leavitt made clear, the governors will not sit passively while the Republican Congress works its will.
KEYWORDS: REPUBLICAN GOVERNOR'S CONVENTION WILLIAMSBURG by CNB