GOP still pushing across-the-board spending cuts

White House and congressional negotiators broke off budget talks Tuesday night without agreement on how to offset roughly $6.5 billion in new spending and whether to use an across-the- board cut. House and Senate leaders also agreed to renew the existing continuing resolution, which expires tonight at midnight, through Nov. 24.

Office of Management and Budget Director Jacob Lew, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, and House Appropriations ranking member David Obey, D-Wis., emerged from more than three hours of haggling saying they were close to a deal, but needed to meet again today to resolve several remaining issues.

Lew would not comment on what those issues were, but Stevens insisted the White House had not offered credible offsets to substitute for an across-the-board cut, adding that no pay-fors would be agreed to until all are. "Is it just something that scores, or is it real money?" Stevens said of the White House offsets.

He and Domenici said Republicans still were pressing for an across-the-board spending cut, an issue which provoked sharp exchanges in the negotiating room. Stevens said the reduction was now pegged at 0.42 percent, far less than the GOP originally proposed.

But Obey said Lew "laid out more than enough offsets" to replace the across-the-board cut, but "one by one they were taken off the table," mostly, he indicated, by GOP leaders who were not involved in the face-to-face talks.

Even after a deal is struck, House and Senate leaders still face the arduous task of rounding up the votes to pass the five- bill package. And given the outlines of the final agreement, Republican and Democratic leaders could face revolts from a number of factions within their parties.

A deal between the White House and GOP negotiators on international family planning and payment of United Nations dues already has provoked a backlash among House Democrats.

Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., circulated a letter Tuesday to President Clinton protesting the deal, saying it "would be a major obstacle to our supporting the legislative vehicle that would include such a link." Woolsey claimed to have 100 co- signatories.

About a dozen women Democrats met with White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Ricchetti in the office of House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., Tuesday to express their opposition to the deal.

The administration agreed to the compromise barring international family planning groups that get U.S. funds from lobbying foreign governments on abortion in exchange for release of nearly $1 billion in U.N. arrears. The president could waive the restrictions, but would lose international family planning funding.

To mollify the group of Democrats, the administration said it would work to remove a provision in the omnibus bill that prohibits the health plan for federal employees from providing coverage for contraceptives as part of a prescription drug benefit, according to a Democratic aide.

Democrats who support abortion rights will not be the only critics of the package. Fiscal conservatives who believe the deal will tap Social Security surpluses may also balk.

"We've worked too hard to get here," said Rep. John Tanner, D- Tenn., who pointed to the deficit reducing budget deals of 1990 and 1993, adding that he was undecided how he would vote. GOP attack ads that ran this fall could cause some Democrats in vulnerable districts to vote against the package.

A GOP leadership decision to include dairy legislation in the bill could also drive away the votes of members from the Upper Midwest. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., called it a "deal killer," and the entire state delegation could vote against it. Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., has vowed to halt action in the Senate over the issue.

Members said Gephardt told fellow Democrats at a Caucus meeting Tuesday they were free to vote their conscience on the bill, and Democratic leaders themselves may be less than sanguine about the package negotiated largely by the White House.

"We're not necessarily thrilled," said a House Democratic leadership aide. "We don't like the omnibus. We don't like the ads. We don't like the family planning thing."

Meanwhile, there will be other problems on the Republican side. While the U.N. funding was a priority for the administration, its inclusion has angered Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., a U.N. critic. "From a personal perspective, this is a killer," he said.

While Rep. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and some other fiscal conservatives sounded positive after a GOP Conference meeting Tuesday, an aide to the Conservative Action Team said last week that several members might oppose it.

Despite the litany of obstacles, Democratic and Republican leadership aides both said the final package would probably pass, primarily because of the most important faction at all, what another Democratic aide termed the "get out of town caucus."

Earlier in the day, one hangup was removed when Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Phil Gramm, R-Texas, agreed on a plan backed by Clinton that will provide the International Monetary Fund money for international debt relief, according to White House and congressional sources.