It Won’t Happen, GOP Suggests

WASHINGTON —  Challenged by President Clinton to expand significantly several health, education and social programs, congressional Republicans served notice Thursday that they will push through a much more limited legislative agenda, with compromises likely on only a handful of election-year issues.

In a televised response to the president’s State of the Union address, GOP spokesmen pledged that they will work to hammer out bipartisan versions of some health and education proposals, but they hinted that the bulk of the president’s new initiatives would be rejected or ignored.

“The president has proposed some 77 new programs that we figure would cost about $20 billion,” House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) told reporters separately.

Rep. John R. Kasich (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Budget Committee, said: “Let him promise everything to the world--it’s not something I take too seriously. He isn’t going to get all these things that he’s promising. I don’t want a lame-duck president setting the agenda in the new millennium.”

On the campaign trail in New Hampshire, Texas Gov. George W. Bush said: “The litany of spending programs the president announced tonight proves my point that if you leave a large surplus in Washington, the money will be spent on bigger government.”

Similarly, Steve Forbes slammed the speech as a reaffirmation of big government in an interview on MSNBC. “I must say that, sadly, it appears that despite the prosperity, the era of big government is back. [Clinton] had a long laundry list of things that sounded nice, but the bottom line is that the American people are going to be taken to the cleaners.”

Instead of significant new domestic spending, Republican leaders in Washington indicated, the GOP will promote a sizable tax cut for middle- and upper-income taxpayers and another sharp boost in defense spending. They said that their education proposals would boost grants to local schools rather than add federally directed initiatives.

“Our Republican agenda is driven by the simple but powerful truth that America will continue to lead the world as long as our government allows opportunity, initiative and freedom to flourish,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said in the GOP’s televised response.

Expectations for compromises are relatively low by any measure. The two parties still are sharply divided along ideological lines, with deep bitterness remaining from last year’s congressional impeachment of Clinton.

Nevertheless, the two sides have begun moving closer together on some key issues:

* The new $350-billion tax-cut plan that Clinton proposed may be small by GOP standards, but preferable to a presidential veto of a larger tax cut, as occurred last year. Meanwhile, the president has embraced GOP plans to reduce the tax bite for married taxpayers.

* Republicans pledged on Thursday that, beginning this year, they would seek to “protect” the Medicare trust fund from being used to help finance government operating costs, just as they did with Social Security funds in 1999--a step that Clinton has been urging for months.

* Republicans finally appear ready to embrace the president’s proposal to extend prescription drug benefits to Medicare recipients--a move that he suggested last year to nearly unanimous criticism by the GOP.

In a first step toward compromise Thursday, Hastert created a special task force--headed by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Archer (R-Texas)--to develop a plan to provide drug benefits for Medicare recipients.

Hastert said that Republicans are prepared to seek a compromise with the White House on another major health-related measure--a plan for a so-called patient’s bill of rights to guarantee customers of health maintenance organizations more legal protections.

Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), who joined Collins in delivering the Republican response to the president’s address, indicated that the GOP would fight to keep new health benefits within more modest limits and free of elaborate federal bureaucracy. He said that Clinton’s plan to provide health insurance to the parents of children protected by the Children’s Health Insurance Program is “just as bad” as his unsuccessful plan early in his administration to provide universal health insurance.

Doubts abound that the two sides actually will be able to work out real compromises before the November elections. To make room for campaigning, lawmakers hope to adjourn by October--barely leaving time to pass routine appropriations bills.

As a result, some Congress-watchers believe the two sides will agree only on token legislation.

“The election-year session will be too short for any major legislation,” said Marshall Wittmann, analyst for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative advocacy group. “Instead, both sides are going to try to inoculate themselves to protect against opponents’ charges.”

A battle over a tax cut will consume some of that time.

“I appreciate President Clinton’s $350-billion tax cut proposal,” Sen. William V. Roth Jr. (R-Del.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said Thursday. “But I think we can do more.”