WASHINGTON -- Defying President Clinton's veto threat, House Republicans passed a $16.4 billion spending-cut bill yesterday and warned that his failure to sign it will only delay the emergency relief he wants for California and Oklahoma City.
Hours after passing a resolution to balance the budget by 2002, the GOP-controlled House voted 235-189 to give final approval to a bill that would take the first step toward finding the more than $1 trillion in savings needed to achieve the ambitious aim.
The $16.4 billion would be cut from funds already appropriated ++ but not yet spent. The money would come mostly from environmental programs, housing assistance for the poor and education.
While much of the savings would go toward deficit reduction, $6.7 billion would be used to offset the costs of disaster relief for California and other states. Some $240 million would finance new anti-terrorism measures and the reconstruction of the Oklahoma City federal building destroyed in last month's bombing.
The vote and the bitter debate that preceded it followed sharply partisan lines, as both sides sought to use the issue of budget cuts to define their differences.
Republicans said the vote showed that Democrats were not serious about balancing the budget and cared less about disaster relief for the victims of the Oklahoma City bomb blast and the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake than they do about wasteful government spending.
Democrats countered that the cuts the Republicans proposed would gut education, job training, housing and other programs for the poor while protecting wasteful pork barrel programs in GOP districts.
"This bill cuts things we should keep and keeps things we should cut," said Rep. Joseph Moakley, a Massachusetts Democrat.
Hoping to pressure Mr. Clinton to sign the bill, House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia and other Republicans warned before the vote that a veto would jeopardize the relief money and other items Mr. Clinton sought, such as $250 million in debt forgiveness for Jordan.
"We can't override the veto, and that means more difficulty for Oklahoma City, more difficulty for the FBI and more difficulty for California," Mr. Gingrich said.
But Mr. Clinton, reiterating his threat to veto the bill, sought to shift responsibility for the delay in providing disaster relief back to the Republicans by calling on Congress to send him a new version of the legislation.
Despite Republican warnings that a veto would kill the bill, lawmakers and White House officials predicted that the GOP leadership would be forced to come up with an alternative package because no one wanted to risk being blamed for the failure to respond to the Oklahoma or California disasters.
