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Document 31 of 96.

July 22, 2000

SECTION: WHITE HOUSE; Pg. 2398; Vol. 32, No. 30

LENGTH: 3029 words

HEADLINE: Wish List for the Final Days

BYLINE: Alexis Simendinger

BODY:

At 9:35 one morning this week, 15 White House aides shoehorned
themselves into the second-floor West Wing office of National
Economic Council Director Gene B. Sperling for their daily staff
meeting. Sitting at the head of a crowded conference table with a
Diet Coke and the morning's news clips in front of him, Sperling
went patiently around the room, calling on each of the assembled
NEC experts to brief him on nearly every economic issue that was
spinning like a plate in front of the White House that day.

It took about 50 minutes to complete the circle, as the
team skittered through at least 26 separate agenda items-
everything from the many pieces of legislation President Clinton
is trying to nudge or bury in Congress to the Organization of the
Petroleum Exporting Countries' latest maneuverings on oil
production and the significance of Russian President Vladimir V.
Putin's very public break with a Moscow tycoon. Sperling's team
was preparing for its famously hands-on boss's scheduled
departure to Japan, where he would accompany Clinton at the
annual summit of the seven major industrialized countries and
Russia. Thus, the discussion went beyond the business of the next
few hours and in the business of the following week, when
Sperling was expected to arrive back into his cluttered office to
prepare for Congress's fire-drill exit from Washington on July 28
for a summer recess that won't end until after Labor Day.

The lawmakers' intention to be at home campaigning by
Oct. 7 means that the last threads of Bill Clinton's legislative
agenda will have 29 business days to come together before the
Clinton White House is effectively shuttered. This reality is not
lost on anyone in the West Wing.

"Can you write me a natural-gas memo, for when I come
back?" Sperling asked aide Ronald Minsk, who had just told
Sperling about upcoming meetings in the Clinton Administration
with utility executives and natural-gas producers. Budget expert
Jason Furman whipped through the outlook for the GOP's marriage
penalty tax relief legislation, to which the boss responded with
ideas about veto strategy and "cleaner" comebacks from the White
House.

Aide Sarah Rosen Wartell walked Sperling through the
latest blips on bankruptcy legislation (now stuck in conference)
and described one Senator's ideas. "I cannot sell it to the
President," Sperling said firmly. The two agreed to caucus with
White House Legislative Affairs Director Chuck Brain later in the
day, and then conference with the staff of Senate Majority Leader
Trent Lott, R-Miss., to try to unstick the bill. Aide Daniel
Rosen summarized the bleak news that the Senate's vote on
permanent normal trade relations with China probably would not
occur before Congress's August recess, as the White House had
wanted.

"Listen, everyone," Sperling finally said to his huddle,
"I'm really worried about the next three days." To the NEC
director, the thought of being in Japan at a time when Congress
might pass politically sensitive legislation was clearly
unsettling. "Take things that have any sense of urgency to
Melissa (Green) and let her make the call to wake me up at three
in the morning, or not to wake me up," Sperling said, referring
to one of his trusted assistants. "Please, please stay on top of
things. It's not like we have that many days left in the
session."
Time Is Running Out
Legislation isn't everything, but it's where all the big
remaining pieces of Clinton's agenda happen to be. Ever busy,
ever optimistic, the President has said since late in 1999 that
election years are sometimes his best years, even when he's not
running for office. Pointing to the legislative achievements of
1996 and 1998 as precedents, Clinton has been saying for months
that the expected election-year gridlock and his lame-duck status
have been greatly exaggerated. Congress, he tells his audiences,
can be moved this year to adopt important bills that have
bipartisan support.

"Time is running out for Congress to meet its obligations
to the American people," Clinton warned on June 28 at a White
House news conference. "It's time to get down to business."

The wish list of pending bills is not, of course, short.
As enumerated by Clinton last month, it looks like this: a new
prescription drug benefit for Medicare; a Medicare lockbox
provision that devotes Medicare surpluses to reducing the
publicly held debt; a managed care patients' bill of rights;
another $ 1 added to the hourly minimum wage over the next two
years; gun control legislation; anti-smoking tobacco payments
tied to the health care costs of smoking; hate crimes
legislation; approval of permanent normal trade relations with
China; "new markets" incentives for private investment in
forgotten parts of the country; and appropriations for new
teachers and for school construction.

Even the sunniest of advisers working for the President
do not expect half the items on Clinton's list to be enacted on
his watch. There is no longer enough time, and Republicans-and
even some congressional Democrats-have their own ideas about
whether sending bills to the President actually benefits them in
the November elections. Republican lawmakers, as witnessed this
week, are happy enough to campaign this fall on legislation that
they know the President will not sign, such as too-generous tax
relief for married couples and the elimination of the estate tax.
For their part, many Capitol Hill Democrats believe they win
either way-they can help Clinton to enact legislation that they
can brag about to voters at home, or pocket their stalemates with
Republicans as proof of their righteousness on health care, guns,
taxes, and fiscal discipline.

In case his optimism is misplaced, the President already
is tuning up his defense: He has suggested that Congress is being
"dragged down by the weight of special interests" and succumbing
to partisan venom. If something about that sounds familiar, it
may be because Vice President Al Gore recently resurrected his
version of the People vs. Powerful campaign playbook by wagging
his finger at the "do-nothing-for-people" Congress and baying
about the links between inaction and the corporate cash that is
flowing to the GOP and his political opponent, Gov. George W.
Bush.

Despite the suspended-animation feel of an election year
on Capitol Hill, it is a stretch for Democrats to assert that the
Republican majority has been satisfied to do nothing. Even
Clinton admits that while Congress should do more, it has also
done plenty this year. "There's been some encouraging
developments in this Congress," the President said three weeks
ago. "We lifted the earnings limit on Social Security; we passed
the Africa-Caribbean Basin trade bill. Apparently, the bill to
aid Colombia is making good progress (Clinton signed it on July
13). And I think the China legislation (approved after a muscular
campaign in the House) will pass if we can get it up to a vote in
a timely fashion," he said. Congress also whipped up a surprising
success on a narrowly crafted piece of campaign finance reform
legislation that Clinton had little to do with; he promptly
signed it on July 1.

The lay of the land looks bleaker, White House officials
and Hill Democrats admit, for positive congressional action on a
patients' bill of rights, Medicare prescription drugs, bankruptcy
reform legislation, electricity restructuring, and an expansion
of the allowable cap on visas granted to skilled professionals
seeking to work in the United States. Gun control measures are
going nowhere, as is the five-year reauthorization of the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act (the first time it has
stalled in its 35-year history). The President's judicial
nominations remain in Senate limbo: nine are pending in committee
and 27 have not yet been taken up in committee. Clinton will not
press to launch a new round of multilateral trade negotiations,
sources said.

Inside the White House this week, hope rose that Gore's
ascendancy against Bush in some polls would continue, which,
aides calculate, might make Republicans less confident about
baiting the President into a series of politically motivated
vetoes. Gore's fortunes might also sway the prospects for such
items as the minimum wage. Nevertheless, the bulk of Clinton's
agenda that White House officials and Democratic analysts
privately believe may yet get through Congress will most likely
have to be salvaged as part of the annual autumn budget battles.
Debt relief funding for poor countries; money for more teachers
and for school construction and Head Start; funding to preserve
sensitive lands under the watchful eye of the government; taking
Medicare surpluses off-budget to help pay down the debt-these are
the scuffles Clinton may yet win with Republicans, simply because
the White House excels at pressing the advantage in must-do
appropriations negotiations when GOP lawmakers want to flee the
city. The question White House officials are asking this week is
whether there will be a tax vehicle Clinton can accept, into
which some of his targeted initiatives can be woven.

"On education appropriations, I think we'll do terrific,"
predicted one Democrat, who expressed regret that the
Administration had not aimed higher on some of its education
funding requests for fiscal 2001. The Democrats' calculation for
the year has always been that a skirmish with Republicans over
education in September works to the party's advantage: "If we
fight, it's fine; if they just decide to give, which they do at
times, (we) make the price high. So, if they don't want to fight,
they have to give a lot of money."
Ambitious Goals
The President began the year with a State of the Union address
that invited Americans to follow the lead of Theodore Roosevelt,
who encouraged a "long look ahead" into the next century. In
Clinton's fit of rhetorical grandeur on Jan. 27, he told the
country that, as President, he wanted to "set great goals for our
nation." And, in keeping with State of the Union addresses, his
goals both celebrated the achievements of seven years in office
and underscored ideals for the years to follow. "To 21st-century
America, let us pledge these things: Every child will begin
school ready to learn and graduate ready to succeed.... No child
will be raised in poverty. We will meet the challenge of the
aging of America. We will assure quality, affordable health care,
at last, for all.... We will bring prosperity to every American
community. We will reverse the course of climate change and leave
a safer, cleaner planet.... And we will become ... one nation,
under God, indivisible."

This, in fact, encompasses Bill Clinton's unfinished
agenda-the seismic changes he dreamed about before he left
office, but which eluded him. He did not find willing partners to
join him in overhauling Social Security, and he bowed to
opponents in his own party who balked at modernizing Medicare.
Clinton did not find a way to give every American "health care
that is always there." He did not ensure that every child can
read by the third grade, or that failing schools are held
accountable for cheating the kids they're supposed to serve. He
did not define the United States' role in the world as the
"indispensable nation," nor did he persuade Congress to join a
global treaty to tackle the man-made causes of the Earth's
changing climate. And he did not quiet the nation's unease about
free trade, or mend affirmative action, or prevent the
mistreatment of homosexuals serving in the military.

Nevertheless, many of Clinton's successes-on the economy
and the federal budget, for example-are evident. Some observers
also argue that the Administration should receive more credit for
accomplishments built cumulatively, brick by brick, and they
insist that some of the smaller appropriations victories hoped
for this year will seem more significant when they are measured
over the span of Clinton's two terms in office. In 1993, for
example, funding for Head Start was $ 2.8 billion; in 2000, it
reached $ 5.3 billion, and Clinton wants another billion dollars
for fiscal 2001.

"Any one-year's increase may have been modest, but
looking back over eight years, the Administration has won
enormous increases in important programs, such as in Head Start
and the dislocated worker program," said Jonathan M. Orszag, a
former White House policy aide and now the managing director of
Sebago Associates in California. "In this last year, it's about
taking the final step, which may be relatively modest, but is the
completion of the President's vision from 1992."

Will Marshall, president of the centrist Progressive
Policy Institute, lauds the Clinton Administration for "a
revolution in social policy." Expanding the earned-income tax
credit in 1993 and signing welfare reform legislation in 1996
amounted to "a sea change in thinking about the government's
responsibility to the poor" from dependency to work, he said.
"That's a bigger change in government than anything Ronald Reagan
accomplished in eight years in office."

Even without a cooperative Congress, Clinton still
possesses the maneuvering room to exercise his brand of
leadership. The President can rely on regulations, executive
actions, and negotiations (on Middle East peace, for instance),
as well as federal appointments and the use of his pardon powers.
Even lame-duck Presidents have clout, and before he leaves in
January, myriad constituencies are sure to lobby Clinton to take
eleventh-hour actions in their favor. The following are examples:

* Regulation. The U.S. Forest Service plans to issue a
final regulation banning road-building and other development on
parts of the national forests not yet crisscrossed with roads,
which amounts to about one-fifth of all federal forests.
Environmental advocates are urging Clinton not to exempt the
Tongass National Forest in Alaska, as the Administration has said
it might. Those who oppose the regulation include the timber
industry, mining companies, and ranchers-and their congressional
representatives.

* Executive Action. To support the expansion of health
insurance coverage, the White House is contemplating expanding
the state Children's Health Insurance Program-designed to benefit
low-income children-to parents. Granting states the authority to
give parents unused CHIP funds that carry a September expiration
date is one mechanism for accomplishing this. "If there is a way
to improve our abilities to enhance quality or coverage
expansions-that is legally appropriate-then we're interested in
doing that," said White House health policy adviser Christopher
C. Jennings.

* Federal Appointments. When Congress goes home, look for
the President to make recess appointments on some nominations
that are currently stalled in the Senate. Recess appointments
would carry over through the first session of the new Congress,
which will be sworn in next January. And if Gore wins, Clinton's
recess appointments could be more than symbolic and a poke in
Republicans' eyes. Without Senate involvement, Clinton has
control over about 1,500 part-time positions on various boards,
commissions, and task forces that do not require confirmation.
According to the White House, Clinton could fill at least 198
expected vacancies between July and January 2001, and some
individuals are currently working their way through the clearance
process for some of the 460 seats that are set to expire after
Jan. 21. In addition, Clinton has sole authority over a total of
83 posts that carry lifetime terms.

* Clemency Powers. Clinton, according to Senate and White
House accounting, has granted fewer clemency requests than any of
his recent predecessors. But when he did so for Puerto Rican
terrorists late last year, the President found out just how
politically potent clemency can be. After the November elections,
Clinton may be more active about brandishing his mercy. Possible
candidates? Patricia Hearst Shaw, who served 21 months of a
seven-year prison term for armed robbery before President Carter
commuted her sentence in 1979 (Carter is among those pressing the
White House for a pardon); former Rep. Mel Reynolds, D-Ill., who
is serving time in South Carolina following his 1995 conviction
for sexual misconduct with an underage campaign volunteer, and
his 1997 federal conviction for lying to obtain loans and for
illegally making personal use of campaign contributions; and
Leonard Peltier, who is serving two consecutive life sentences
for his conviction in the 1975 shooting deaths of two FBI agents
at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota (Clinton is
said to have some sympathy for the ailing 55-year-old, which FBI
Director Louis Freeh does not share).

The demands for post-election presidential mischief can
get fierce, warned lawyer A.B. Culvahouse, the White House
counsel at the end of the Reagan Administration. Reagan's allies
sought everything from an executive order banning pornography at
military bases to pardons for the Iran-Contra masterminds. To
Bill Clinton, Culvahouse offered this simple advice: "Be
prepared, and don't let your lawyers leave early."

Contributors to this report: Staff Correspondents Eliza
Newlin Carney, Richard E. Cohen, James Kitfield, Margaret Kriz,
Neil Munro, Marilyn Werber Serafini, Bruce Stokes, and Kirk
Victor; Reporters Siobhan Gorman and Mark Murray; and
Contributing Editor Jerry Hagstrom.

LOAD-DATE: July 25, 2000

Document 31 of 96.


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