Grueling negotiations that await President Clinton and Congress couldn’t diminish the relief felt in the White House Friday over the Senate’s narrow approval earlier of his five-year economic plan.
The president stayed up to watch the 3 a.m. roll call that he won 50-49 with the help of a tiebreaking vote by Vice President Al Gore, whom White House News Secretary Dee Dee Myers described as the administration’s “silver bullet.”
Despite the closeness of the tally, Myers said, “We feel very good about the victory that the president enjoyed.”
Clinton stayed out of the shaping of the bill in the Senate but worked the telephone well into the early morning to convince wavering Democrats.
In the end, six Democrats abandoned him: Richard Shelby of Alabama, Dennis DeConcini of Arizona, Richard Bryan of Nevada, Sam Nunn of Georgia, Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey and Bennett Johnston of Louisiana.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who was at home recovering from surgery, would have come to Clinton’s aid if needed, and DeConcini, who may face a tough re-election bid, reportedly was ready to switch his vote if necessary.
Praising those who voted with him for their “remarkable degree of courage,” Clinton said he won despite divisions within his party because “there was an institutional feeling there (Thursday), which crystalized in the late afternoon, that the worst thing they could do is not to go forward.”
After a two-week recess for the 4th of July, members of Congress return to the capital the week of July 11 for intense bargaining between House and Senate negotiators who will write the final version of the bill.
The administration actively will participate in this round and is expected to work to restore some of the tax breaks for businesses that the Senate cut out.
Tax negotiators led by House Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.) and Senate Finance Committee chairman Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) also will need to reach a compromise between the broad Btu energy tax contained in the House version of the plan and favored by Clinton, and the transportation fuels tax that the Senate included.
“They’ll try to bridge those gaps. I don’t think they are particularly large. I think it’s quite encouraging,” Clinton said.
But if the higher Btu tax allows more spending, Clinton could lose some of the moderate votes he gained in the Senate. Similarly, if some of the Senate’s spending cuts are not restored, he could lose liberal House members, where the measure barely passed 219-213 on May 27.
“You can’t step a foot in either direction without falling off a cliff,” a Rostenkowski aide said.
The two-week break frees Clinton to attend to other matters. He will prepare for the conference of economic powers in Tokyo July 7-9, which will be followed by a summit meeting in South Korea and a couple of days off in Hawaii.
The president also is expected to announce his compromise for allowing gays and lesbians to serve in the military.
On Friday, he kept a campaign promise by naming a national AIDS policy coordinator, Kristine Gebbie, a nurse who was secretary of health in Washington state from 1989 until resigning this spring. Prior to that she was Oregon’s health administrator for 11 years.
As the nation’s first such official, Gebbie will coordinate the government’s $2.7 billion commitment to research, treatment and prevention of the disease that has claimed more than 182,000 Americans since 1981.
Clinton also talked to Henry Leon Ritzenthaler, the man who believes he is the president’s half-brother, by phone at Ritzenthaler’s home in Paradise, Calif.
“They had a warm conversation and agreed to get together at some point in the future,” Myers said.
