President Clinton vetoed the $8.6 billion supplemental spending bill in a matter of minutes today, despite this weekend's Congressional effort to encourage federal employees' support of the measure.
White House Press Secretary Michael McCurry said Clinton would not sign the bill because he did not agree with the provisions for an automatic continuing resolution and banning sampling in the 2000 census.
Congressional leaders mounted a grassroots effort this weekend to encourage federal employees to call President Clinton and urge him to sign the disaster relief legislation. The supplemental bill contained a controversial measure that would prevent a government shutdown if Congress and the Administration couldn't agree on spending levels for agencies.
House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, and other GOP members representing districts with large numbers of federal workers encouraged them to support the bill, which would fund agencies at their fiscal 1997 levels next year in the event of an appropriations stalemate.
The House and Senate passed the disaster relief measure last week, but did not send it to the president because they were hoping that the grassroots effort would convince him not to veto the bill.
Elena Temple, press secretary for Rep. Albert Wynn, D-Md., said late last week that Wynn is "definitely urging his consitutents to contact whoever is necessary." However, she said that he had not made any formal appeal to federal workers.
Wynn spoke in favor of the shutdown prevention measure when it was introduced earlier this year. "This amendment gives us the power to prevent a government shutdown," he said. "We can avoid harming the lives of hundreds of thousands of federal employees and a massive disruption of government service by passing this amendment."
A spokeswoman for the American Federation of Government Employees said the union neither opposes nor supports the measure. The union, she said, has "some concerns" with the proposal. "We want language added to say that no RIFs or furloughs would occur as a result of maintaining the 100 percent appropriations level," she said.
A spokeswoman for Armey said Friday that it would be beneficial for federal employees to back the shutdown prevention proposal.
"It would do them good to pick up their phones," she said. "They certainly called us when the last shutdown happened."
House Appropriations Chairman Bob Livingston, R-La., today told CongressDaily that GOP leaders still have not developed a post-veto strategy. "We have yet to come to a consensus," he said.
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