Gop Joins Democrats To Restore Domestic Funds Senate Returns $2.7 Million Clinton Earmarked For Education, Training, Head Start

Senate Republicans, nervous about their election year prospects, joined with Democrats Tuesday to restore $2.7 billion of President Clinton’s domestic spending priorities, halting the budget brinkmanship that threatened a third partial government shutdown.

By a vote of 84 to 16, the Senate added back funds Republicans had cut this year from education, job training and Head Start as part of a comprehensive spending bill to keep the government fully operating through Sept. 30, the remainder of the fiscal year.

The measure funds the nine Cabinet departments and dozens of other agencies that have been operating without permanent spending authority since last Oct. 1. A short-term bill funding those agencies expires at midnight Friday. The White House has been insisting that Congress increase the spending levels of that bill.

In the House, which will take up the spending measure later this week, GOP leaders reacted cautiously to the Senate’s action. House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bob Livingston, R-La., told reporters, “We’ll have to take a hard look at anything they send us.” However, one well-placed GOP source said that House Republican leaders may be inclined to work out a compromise with the White House over 1996 spending and get on to the budget debate for the upcoming fiscal year.

The swift restoration of the education funding by the Senate surprised the White House, where Clinton, several aides and Cabinet members spent Tuesday making the case that the GOP Congress was irresponsible in failing to adequately fund education, the environment and other key domestic programs.

Republican leaders said Tuesday that Congress would likely approve a brief, one-week extension of temporary spending legislation to provide time for congressional leaders and the White House to work out compromise legislation.

Congress and Clinton already have agreed to put off further confrontation over the debt ceiling. Before leaving on a trip to the Middle East Tuesday afternoon, Clinton signed legislation temporarily increasing the government’s borrowing authority beyond a $4.9 trillion ceiling through March 29. A long-term extension of the government’s ability to borrow money is another measure that for months has been caught up in the budget battle between Clinton and the Republican Congress.

The measure passed by the Senate Tuesday is an amendment to a more stringent spending bill approved by the House last week and pending in the Senate. The White House said Clinton would veto the House-passed bill unless Republicans agreed to restore as much as $8 billion that was cut from education, environment, job training and scores of other domestic programs. The White also objected to a provision demanding the administration agree to a budget deal that would make offsetting cuts and other changes in major entitlement programs like Medicaid and welfare.

Tuesday, however, under mounting pressure from the education lobby and school districts across the country that are unable to plan for the coming year because of uncertainty over federal funding, Republicans joined in a bipartisan amendment that guaranteed the additional funds and that specified offsetting reductions that are acceptable to the White House.