GOP Threatens to Block Crime Bill : Legislation: Forty-one Republican senators--enough to stymie the measure--call on Clinton to negotiate major changes. But their resolve is questioned.

At least 41 Republican senators, enough to block passage of a $30-billion crime measure, called on President Clinton Tuesday to negotiate major changes in the bill that passed the House and now is the center of a heated battle in the Senate.

The demand came as the debate over the measure grew increasingly bitter and partisan--a return to the normal mode of recent business in Congress after a brief respite Sunday, when a bipartisan coalition in the House passed its version of the crime bill.

A total of 40 senators signed a letter to Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), saying that, unless Clinton and the Democratic leadership agree to address most of their objections by modifying the bill, they would support Dole in voting for a procedural motion to open the legislation to amendment. The number is significant because 41 votes, including Dole’s, are precisely what it would take to prevail on the arcane “point of order.”

However, there were doubts about whether all of those senators actually would do as they threatened, because they would risk being branded as obstructionists on an issue that opinion polls indicate is at the top of the American public’s agenda.

Indeed, by the time Dole formally presented the letter to Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) Tuesday evening, he instead broached the idea of allowing votes on a series of amendments, rather than conducting full-blown negotiations to rewrite the bill.

Mitchell rejected that. Any amendments on the Senate floor could threaten the bill’s survival by upsetting the delicate balance of political interests that came together to pass the bill in the House.

If the legislation were amended, it would require approval again by the House, where the majority that passed the bill the first time is a fragile coalition whose balance could easily be upset by any change in the measure.

“This reopens the process in a manner that sends the matter back to the House and an indefinite future,” Mitchell said. “One could infer that never-ending changes represent one way to kill the bill.”

Mitchell instead offered a counterproposal, under which the bill would be approved and changes could be written into future legislation. Dole, however, deemed the idea unacceptable.

Thus, as the Senate debated into the night, the bill was at a legislative standoff, with neither side sure it had the votes it needs. Both were concentrating their efforts on a handful of Republicans whose intentions are not yet clear.

The showdown vote could come as early as today, but its timing is uncertain. Clearly, neither side will try to force the issue until it believes it has the votes it needs.

Mitchell also suggested that the GOP’s real goal is “the elimination of the assault weapons ban. On this issue, the Republicans are under the control of the National Rifle Assn.”

Dole and other Republicans vehemently denied that the bill’s ban on 19 types of assault-style weapons is the source of their objections and said that they are resigned to defeat on the issue. Instead, they said, the legislation is too heavy on social spending disguised as crime prevention funds and too light on punishment for violent and drug offenses.

“We want a tough crime bill. We want a no-nonsense crime bill,” Dole said.

Clinton appealed in vain that “every senator, without regard to party, ought to continue the bipartisan spirit that was established in the House for an American approach to an American problem.”

Yet Dole accused Clinton of ignoring the concerns of Senate Republicans and noted that the President had only begun to consult them in a series of late-night phone calls Monday.

“There are only 44 of us. There are liable to be more of us next year (after the fall elections). Why not talk to us?” Dole said, adding that the Administration’s strategy appeared to boil down to “demonize Dole, demonize Dole, demonize Dole.”

Along those lines, some Democrats said that only with the most heavy-handed of tactics was Dole able to force his GOP troops into line.

The only Republicans who did not sign the letter were Sens. William V. Roth Jr. of Delaware, James M. Jeffords of Vermont and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.

“Dole’s bringing the hammer down so hard on anybody who dares to vote against” the procedural point that many Republicans want to approve the legislation “and get the heck out of town, so he cannot do retribution on them,” said Sen. John D. (Jay) Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.).

If that proves to be the case, he added, the Senate might insist on recessing immediately after the crime bill vote, putting off its deliberations on health care legislation.

For many lawmakers, bringing home the first major piece of crime legislation in time for the fall elections is a top priority.

In its latest incarnation, the compromise that won House passage, the six-year bill would authorize $13.5 billion for law enforcement. Of that amount, $8.8 billion would be aimed at putting 100,000 more police on the streets--although Republicans say that the legislation would fund only small fraction of that number.

It also would create more than 50 new federal death penalty crimes and includes the much-touted three-strikes-and-you’re-out provision, which would impose life sentences on the small percentage of violent and drug felons whose third convictions occurred in federal court.

What Republicans object to most vocally is the bill’s expenditure of $6.9 billion for crime prevention programs, which they say are merely social spending with little restriction.

They repeatedly noted, for instance, that $1.6 billion for flexible Local Partnership Act grants was resurrected from Clinton’s failed economic stimulus package last year, which thus far has been his biggest legislative defeat.

At one point during the debate on the Senate floor, Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) waved a note that contained a message from Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, a Republican who Biden said “strongly supports” the latest version of the bill.