THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 6, 1996 TAG: 9601060248
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: FROM WIRE REPORTS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long : 125 lines
Moving to end the longest government shutdown in history, Congress voted Friday to put 760,000 federal workers back on the payroll for three weeks, but denied many of them the funding to fully perform their work.
President Clinton complained bitterly that the bill did not fund all government operations, but the White House said he would sign it into law.
``We're not anywhere near raising a white flag,'' Rep. John Kasich, R-Ohio, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, insisted. He spent much of the morning convincing dubious Republican freshmen that they were not giving up a vital advantage, which some had said was their only tool to force concessions from Clinton.
Republicans insisted the partial reopening would enable them to refocus public attention away from sad stories about the effect of the 21-day partial government shutdown, and toward Clinton and what they called his refusal to propose a federal budget that would be balanced within seven years.
However, budget negotiators reported progress Friday night after a two-hour session at the White House. House Speaker Newt Gingrich said after the meeting that he was now hopeful that the president would propose a balanced budget this weekend.
Meetings were scheduled for today and Sunday. A member of the Republican leadership who declined to be identified said the White House had indeed promised to make a balanced budget proposal. He said the Republicans took it seriously but ``we've been through these false labor pains before.''
The day began with the House voting overwhelmingly to end the 21-day government shutdown. By a 401-17 margin, the House agreed to send 280,000 furloughed employees back to work and provide back pay to another 480,000 who had been working without it.
The Senate later approved the same measure on a voice vote. Most workers would return Monday.
``What we've done is let the hostages off the plane,'' said Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., whose district in the Washington suburbs has thousands of furloughed federal employees. ``It also puts the monkey on the president's back.''
Democrats reluctantly supported the GOP bill, House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, D-Mo., said, ``because it's better than what we're doing. We've gone from a bad strategy to a little less bad strategy.''
Among the government activities either reopened or protected from closing were pension payments to veterans, national parks, Meals on Wheels, state unemployment insurance offices, railroad retirement pensions, passports and visas, national museums, child welfare and Indian welfare programs, and the District of Columbia government. Those activities would be valid for nine months, while Aid to Families with Dependent Children and foster care as well as adoption grants would operate until March 15.
The House later moved to expand that list significantly to include courts, federal law-enforcement functions, Federal Housing Administration loan processing, Medicare contract employees and claims processing, Medicaid payments to states, the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control.
But departments and agencies whose annual appropriations measures have either been vetoed or not yet passed by Congress, like the Department of Labor and the Environmental Protection Agency, would get only money for salaries. In those cases, thousands of workers would come to the office but be unable to do their work, because there would be no money to issue grants or perform inspections or almost anything else federal workers do.
Democrats complained that college grants and other vital activities would not be restored under the bill, which was offered by Rep. Robert Livingston, R-La., the chairman of the Appropriations Committee.
The Clinton administration indicated it would accept the bill, but Clinton took the offensive nonetheless, when he visited a Meals on Wheels site.
``This shutdown is hurting people in every state of the union,'' he said. ``The time has come to stop playing politics.''
As part of the Republican exercise to concentrate attention on the balanced budget issue, the House also passed a brief stop-gap spending bill for all of government. But that would take effect only if Clinton proposed a seven-year balanced budget plan, judged to be effective by the Congressional Budget Office.
The Senate did not take up that measure, which would last only until Jan. 26. Republicans said that date was chosen so that the president could not claim they were at fault if the government was shut when he gives his State of the Union Message on Jan. 23.
The 480,000 unpaid federal workers in departments and agencies without appropriations - but who have been ordered to work because their duties were deemed essential to public health - would be paid from Dec. 16 to Jan. 26, as would the 280,000 employees now on furlough.
Gingrich told a House caucus Thursday night that he felt it was unfair to put federal workers in the middle of the budget battle. But his original proposal, to allow them to be paid through March 15, met strong opposition from junior members, who said that closing the government was the only leverage they had to force Clinton to negotiate seriously.
Late Thursday night, Gingrich decided to go forward on a more limited approach, allowing pay until Jan. 26. He did not consult with the unhappy freshmen about his new plan until Friday morning, but most of them went along with the three-week measure anyhow. MEMO: This story was compiled from reports by The New York Times,
Knight-Ridder News Service and The Associated Press.
WHERE THE MONEY WENT:
FULLY FUNDED
veterans' pensions payments
national parks and museums
Meals on Wheels for the elderly
some child-welfare programs
unemployment-insurance operations
passport and visa services
Aid to Families with Dependent Children
foster care and adoption grants
federal courts
law-enforcement
Federal Housing Administration loan processing
Medicare claims processing
Medicaid payments to states
NOT FULLY FUNDED
Commerce Department
Labor Department
Department of Health and Human Services
Environmental Protection Agency.
KEYWORDS: BUDGET LAYOFF FEDERAL EMPLOYEE by CNB