Congress, Clinton play shutdown politics

Key congressional leaders and President Clinton are once again sparring over the issue of who will take the blame if appropriations bills are not completed before the end of the fiscal year and the government is forced to shut down.

Late last week, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., and House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., sent President Clinton a letter challenging him to assure the American people that he is not committed to a shutdown strategy by vetoing several of the annual funding bills.

"Before the members of Congress return home for the August recess, we want to publicly reaffirm our determination to keep open the vital functions of the federal government at the end of this fiscal year," the two leaders wrote Clinton.

White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles fired back Monday with letters to Gingrich and Lott.

"There is no need for a government shutdown," Bowles wrote, "but if there is one, it will be because Republicans have either not done their job on time and finished the budget or have decided to short-change critical investments in our nation's future."

Also on Monday, Clinton vowed to veto the fiscal 1999 Labor-HHS appropriations bill if it remains in its current form, accusing House Republicans of putting "politics ahead of people" by failing to fully fund a host of his education initiatives.

"If a bill that is proposed by the House Republicans passes, I will veto it," Clinton said.

For the second time in less than a week, Clinton pounded Republicans for not agreeing to funding levels he has proposed for the Summer Jobs initiative, the Head Start program, voluntary national testing, the America Reads initiative to hire tutors, after- and before-school programs, plans to place more computers in classrooms and to decrease the size of classrooms, and the High Hopes mentoring and tutoring program.

Addressing a group of children enrolled in a summer jobs program, Clinton also demanded Congress add to the bill his $180 million proposal to improve health and safety standards at childcare facilities. In addition, he slammed the GOP for seeking to eliminate the Low Income Home Energy Assistance program, which provides aid for paying heating and cooling bills.

Clinton also appeared to indicate a willingness to wage war with Congress this fall across the entire budget battlefront. "So far, Congress hasn't passed [my] budget, or one of its own," Clinton said. "Because of the delay, they may decide to send me a bare-bones budget that fails to expand the critical investments we need to make from education to summer jobs to school modernization to child care. But the last budget of the 20th century should be preparing our nation for the challenges of the next. I will not accept a budget that fails to do this."

However, a Republican House Appropriations Committee aide defended the FY99 Labor-HHS spending bill, arguing that last year's budget deal forced appropriators to set priorities. "We had to live with the budget agreement that the president and the Congress set last year," the aide said. "The funding levels were tight."