House Rebuffs Dole, Clinton, Rejects Bid to End Furloughs

WASHINGTON —  Strained relations between President Clinton and congressional Republicans deteriorated further Wednesday as the House flatly rejected appeals by the White House and the Senate to end the partial shutdown of the government.

The House, voting 206 to 167, blocked an effort to bring up legislation to reopen the government. The vote was largely along party lines, with House Republicans sticking by their strategy of keeping much of the government closed to pressure the president into agreeing to their terms on a plan to balance the budget in seven years.

The hard-line stance of the House Republicans was also a blunt rebuff to Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), the leading contender for the party’s presidential nomination, who pushed the legislation through the Senate on Tuesday.

“Bob Dole made a huge miscalculation,” said Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.), a member of the staunchly conservative freshman class. “It is an act of betrayal.”

Though top budget officials have sought to tone down their partisan rhetoric recently, Clinton went on television midafternoon Wednesday to assail Republicans for using the government closures to try to force him to accept the basics of their spending plan.

“It is an unnatural disaster born of a cynical political strategy,” Clinton said. “Each day the shutdown continues, the consequences grow worse.”

Republicans responded by saying that the government would not be hobbled if Clinton had not vetoed many of the appropriation bills that Congress passed and had produced the seven-year balanced-budget plan he had promised.

“The president of the United States is as much to blame for the closure of the government as Republicans in Congress,” said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.).

Despite the partisan cross-fire, congressional leaders went to the White House late Wednesday afternoon to resume negotiations with Clinton over efforts to balance the budget in seven years. The talks were aimed at trying to bridge huge differences between the parties over Medicare, Medicaid, tax cuts and scores of other federal policies and programs.

The meeting ended after three hours and 15 minutes, with spokesmen reporting continued progress but offering no specifics. White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said that he asked one participant whether the group was closer to an agreement. He quoted the response as: “It is difficult to say.”

Despite the rancorous exchanges earlier in the day, McCurry said, the tone of the meeting was “cordial and candid.”

House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) said of the meeting: “It was acceptable. We’re still talking.”

Tax issues apparently were on the agenda, with the group hearing from Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin, Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and Leslie B. Samuels, assistant secretary for tax policy.

The participants are scheduled to meet again at 3 p.m. today, after Clinton travels to Annapolis, Md., to attend the funeral of Adm. Arleigh A. Burke.

But many observers remained pessimistic about the prospects for compromise, particularly in light of the day’s partisan sniping. “You’re either at the point where this turns into some sort of real negotiation, which it hasn’t been, or it breaks down again,” said one Senate Democratic aide.

Indeed, House Republican leaders are already devising strategy for use if the talks break down. “I sense we’re at a crossroads,” said Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). “We’re not going to play Clinton’s game much longer.”

Republican divisions over ending the partial shutdown came to a head Tuesday when the Senate passed a bill to reopen the government until Jan. 12 while the broader budget talks continue. That move turned the spotlight on the House, where GOP leaders have said that stopgap funding will not be provided until a budget agreement is reached--or until Clinton has put up his own plan for balancing the budget in seven years.

Many House Republicans grumbled about Dole’s move, which is perhaps the most public and far-reaching of the divisions that have emerged between House Republicans and their more moderate Senate counterparts. During a closed-door meeting of the House GOP conference, members circulated a copy of Dole’s statements on the Senate floor, with passages about the differences between the House and Senate underlined.

“This guy has been in Washington so long and made so many deals, he thinks the way to solve the problem is to do a deal,” said Shadegg.

“There is some disgust, some anger,” said another House Republican who asked not to be named. “There’s a feeling that he boxed us in and that they just want to go on the campaign trail.”

Asked about the complaints, Dole told reporters that House Republicans have to decide if he caved in by agreeing to reopen the government without first obtaining a balanced-budget deal. “My view is the two aren’t connected.”

Despite the near-unanimous House Republican vote to block efforts to reopen the government, some GOP lawmakers acknowledged that they are growing uncomfortable with the GOP’s hang-tough strategy.

“Obviously, we have some members who have concerns . . . , who would like to change strategy,” Boehner said.

House GOP leaders, looking for ways to shift blame for the shutdown back to the president, plan a series of votes this week to try to override Clinton vetoes of spending bills for agencies affected by the shutdown.

But the first two votes Wednesday fell far short of the two-thirds majority needed to override. Those votes were on Clinton’s veto of the defense authorization bill and of a bill appropriating funds for the Departments of Commerce, Justice and State.

In his televised remarks criticizing Republicans, Clinton said that the shutdown of nine Cabinet departments and 38 agencies and commissions is not ensuring the progress of negotiations--as Republicans have insisted--but instead is “throwing a shadow over them.”

Clinton, emerging from a meeting with his Cabinet, spun out a list of threatened services: Safety and environmental violations are going unchecked; Medicare contractors are unpaid; U.S. embassies are unable to pay their bills; pension fraud investigations are in limbo; 170,000 veterans are without last month’s education benefits, and federal physicians cannot join the effort of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to fight a fatal flu outbreak in the Midwest.

Ten state unemployment offices are unable to process new claims because of a lack of U.S. funds, and 15 more are likely to be in the same position soon, Clinton said.

Tony Blankley, House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s press secretary, called Clinton’s attack on the GOP “a little unpresidential” and said that it did not help the negotiations. “I don’t think the president, 15 minutes before a high-level negotiation, goes down and throws oil on the ground,” Blankley said.

Earlier in the day, aides to both sides took up the cudgels as well, despite an informal agreement to hold their partisan fire.

McCurry referred to House Republican leaders as a “gruesome group.”

Blankley responded swiftly by calling Clinton and Gore the “budget-busting barons of bankruptcy.”