President Vetoes GOP Defense Legislation : Spending: He says bill is too generous to Pentagon, creates ‘unnecessary’ anti-missile system. Move comes on eve of new budget talks.

President Clinton, driving another wedge between himself and the Republican Congress over federal spending priorities, on Thursday vetoed the annual bill authorizing defense programs.

Clinton’s veto of the bill, which he said would be too generous to the Pentagon, came on a day when Republican congressional leaders cast doubt that the budget deadlock could be resolved before the middle of next week. And Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) asked Clinton to sign the three spending bills that he has already vetoed.

The latest outbreak of budgetary conflict came on the eve of the first face-to-face meeting scheduled between Clinton and Congress’ top two Republicans, Dole and Gingrich, since last week.

“Having meetings does not count as progress,” Gingrich said when asked what it would take for House members to reopen the various government offices that have been shuttered since Dec. 16. “We’ve got to get an agreement.”

Behind the scenes Thursday, administration and congressional aides tried to work through a morass of issues that divides the two sides over how to balance the budget by the year 2002. Those issues include health care spending and tax cuts.

Without a long-term agreement, congressional Republicans have refused to approve temporary spending for many federal agencies whose annual appropriations have expired. As a result, about 280,000 federal workers have been furloughed for nearly two weeks.

In vetoing the $264.7-billion defense authorization bill, Clinton cited as his chief concern its call for development of an anti-missile system that he said would be “costly and unnecessary” and would violate a treaty with Russia.

The bill would call for development of such a “Star Wars”-style system by 2003, even though the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty limits the United States to only one U.S. site for such a weapon.

Even as he vetoed the bill, Clinton moved separately to give military personnel a pay raise. The measure passed by Congress would have provided a 2.4% pay raise. The president issued an executive order providing for a 2% pay increase, the maximum raise that he can implement unilaterally. And he called on Congress to pass a measure providing the additional 0.4%.

The pay raise has become an emotional issue at a time when the president has ordered thousands of troops on a risky mission in Bosnia.

Clinton’s veto of the defense bill is likely to be sustained by Congress, observers said. But the real effect will be questionable because Clinton has already allowed a bill funding Defense Department programs for the current fiscal year to become law.

Authorization bills are highly detailed documents that contain lengthy instructions to the military services on many policy issues and programs. Appropriations bills, a later step in the legislative cycle, are written to assign money for particular goals.

The passage of a defense appropriations bill without authorizing legislation takes the federal government into uncharted legal waters, congressional staff members said.

Although other agencies, such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, have operated without authorization bills in the past, the Pentagon has never in memory gone without one, they said.

If Congress fails to override Clinton’s veto or pass a new bill, experts said they expect administration officials to reach some accords with congressional leaders informally on issues that are not in dispute.

One issue between them is the B-2 bomber, a project that means thousands of jobs in Southern California.

Congress has appropriated $493 million for additional production beyond the currently authorized 20 B-2 aircraft. The bill that Clinton vetoed would have lifted previously enacted restrictions that capped B-2 production at 20 aircraft and also limited total spending on the program.

Clinton did not explicitly cite an objection to the bill’s B-2 spending.

In his veto, the 11th of his presidency, Clinton cited objections to:

* Spending that would have totaled $7 billion more than he had sought.

* A provision that would require him to ask for funding within 45 days of ordering a troop deployment abroad. This, he said, would “infringe on his authority as commander in chief.”

* Restrictions on the ability of female military personnel and dependents to obtain privately financed abortions at overseas military facilities.

* Rules forcing him to make “unwarranted” discharges of HIV-positive military personnel.

* Restrictions on aid to former Soviet republics in order to help them reduce nuclear stockpiles.

As the budget standoff was dragging on, fallout from the closure of many government offices continued to spread.

The California county adjacent to Yosemite National Park has launched an effort to win federal disaster relief to offset the economic harm it has suffered from the closure of the top-drawing national park.

Citing about 1,600 layoffs of tourist-industry workers, the Mariposa County Board of Supervisors has asked the state government to declare the jurisdiction a disaster area. That step is a necessary prerequisite for federal officials to consider releasing federal disaster-aid funds.

County Administrative Officer Mike Coffield acknowledged that the request was somewhat unusual but he said that the layoffs represent about one-quarter of the county’s 6,200-person work force.

When the park was closed on Dec. 20, “the layoffs started immediately, and they’ve been picking up since then,” he said. “The effects have been tremendous.”

Gov. Pete Wilson’s lawyers were researching the question Thursday but his spokesman, Sean Walsh, said they had found no precedent for declaring such an emergency for economic reasons. Federal officials renewed warnings Thursday about the spreading effects of the closures.

Officials said funding for the Securities and Exchange Commission will run out about mid-January, forcing it to curtail its efforts to protect investors and financial markets and to oversee corporate transactions. The independent agency has been running on carry-over funding from the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.

Jim McConnell, SEC executive director, said the money is likely to run out about Jan. 12 “and then we may be in trouble.” The agency would furlough all but about 180 of its 2,700 employees and use the remaining skeleton staff for emergencies.

Corporate mergers, for example, may still get approvals but with little more than cursory reviews. The agency would not start new fraud investigations and it would be forced to rely on a far smaller group of employees to watch for solvency problems among investment houses, McConnell said.

The Environmental Protection Agency, which already has halted many nonemergency functions, runs out of money Tuesday to pay the staff that oversees cleanup of the nation’s 1,283 Superfund toxic-waste sites.

All but about 80 of the 2,000 EPA staff members who work on the program will be furloughed then. The contractors who do the cleanup work will be able to continue for about five days.

Members of Congress are acutely aware of the danger that voters would view the partial government shutdown as an example of political ineptitude. Yet House Republicans remained adamant that the price of ending the shutdown is a deal to balance the budget by 2002 using projections of federal income and spending endorsed by the Congressional Budget Office.

Seeking to focus public ire on the White House, Gingrich and Dole asked the president to reconsider some appropriations bills that he has vetoed, including those affecting the departments of Interior, Commerce, Justice, State and Veterans Affairs.

“Although we may have differing views about how much the federal government should be funded and in what areas, putting hard-working federal employees back to work is one area we agree is a top priority,” the Republican leaders said in a letter.

The failure of Congress and the administration to agree on those annual spending bills, along with the inability of Congress to finish work on others, set the stage for the shutdown.

But White House officials said that Clinton is not about to sign spending bills that he considers defective on a promise to work out their flaws later.

“We think that’s putting the cart before the horse,” said White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry.

A group of freshmen House members acknowledged the growing public pique with the budget situation, although they did not indicate plans to alter their negotiating position.

“People aren’t bashing the president. People aren’t bashing Congress,” said Rep. Joe Scarborough (R-Fla.) “They’re bashing everybody.”