Buddy, Can You Spare a Vote?

By Michael Duffy/Washington

Even by his talk-'til-they-drop standards, Bill Clinton was in danger of developing laryngitis. In less than a week the President had met with 30 different groups to build support for his embattled budget and had telephoned scores more. Yet he was still several votes short of a majority in the Senate. So as conferees from the House and Senate haggled over the remaining differences between their versions of the budget plan, the President scheduled more lunches, dinners and jogging dates with lawmakers.

For the third time in as many months, the President found himself scrounging for two or three votes for a half-trillion-dollar package. The compromise was virtually complete, but reluctance by rank-and-file Democrats to go along could spell defeat when the House and Senate vote on the plan this week. Party discipline might work in the House, but White House officials expected Al Gore would have to cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate. "The big question," joked a senior official, visibly exhausted from hours of lobbying, "is whether we can hold Gore."

Even as the conferees pared down the budget to better satisfy key Senators, liberal House members claimed that the compromise was cutting too deep into spending for social-welfare programs. The marketing marathon, meanwhile, was already showing signs of diminishing returns: an invitation to 40 moderate Democrats on Tuesday generated 19 regrets. Hours before a small White House dinner for 14 Thursday night, two undecided Democratic Senators begged off. "You know," fretted a White House official, "we might be overdoing this."

Though the compromise was clearly falling short of the $500 billion deficit- reduction target, Clinton embraced the final package even before the conference committee had concluded negotiations. In an Oval Office interview with TIME Friday afternoon, the President pronounced himself "very pleased with the basic outlines" of the plan. "This is a big first step," he said, "but only a first step. Most Americans will see this as a very modest price to pay for getting the deficit under control and keeping interest rates down."

Four hours after Clinton spoke those words, conference co-chairman Daniel Patrick Moynihan appeared with Senate majority leader George Mitchell and House Speaker Thomas Foley at the Capitol to announce agreement on the "broad outline" of a deal that cuts $250 billion in spending, raises $243 billion in new revenues and promises to reduce the deficit about $490 billion over the next five years. While some details remained to be worked out Monday, the big breakthrough came Thursday night when Moynihan and House Ways and Means Committee chairman Dan Rostenkowski agreed to accept the Senate proposal for a 4.3 cents-per-gal. hike in the cost of gasoline. Senators from rural states, led by Montana's Max Baucus, had declared the 4.3 cents hike a ceiling and refused to support anything higher. Though Moynihan floated 6.5 cents and 6 cents alternatives, both failed. White House aides were disappointed, but recognized that the smaller tax would help keep Baucus and Connecticut's Joseph Lieberman on board.

But the smaller increase in energy taxes meant that the conferees had fewer revenues to pay for Clinton's cherished "investments" in new programs and tax deductions for business. That development set off a second round of negotiations Friday that left conferees between $10 billion and $13 billion short of Clinton's cherished $500 billion deficit-reduction goal. Knowing that his shaky coalition might not hold together for long, Clinton urged speedy action in a Rose Garden speech Saturday morning: "We have talked and dawdled long enough."

The immediate problem was that even this tenuous deal left Clinton well short of the 51 votes he needs to gain Senate approval. With the slim margin afforded by a 56-to-44 vote in the Senate, Democrats can afford to lose only six colleagues if they hope to save the measure. Already, Richard Shelby of Alabama, Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey and Dennis DeConcini of Arizona have made it clear that they cannot support the President. Of the six other Democratic votes up for grabs, Clinton must win three. Louisiana's Bennett Johnston voted against the package in June, and the White House expects him to do so again. Georgia's Sam Nunn, who has been a thorn in Clinton's side for weeks on the issue of gays in the military, hasn't been sounding any more supportive on the budget. "The package is not making a whole lot of economic sense," Nunn said. But a senior Senate aide had another interpretation, saying Nunn is still angry that a multiyear budget-reform plan he proposed last year received little attention.

Clinton hopes to woo Nunn with promises of additional cuts that he says Al Gore will propose this fall when he unveils his scheme for "reinventing government." "There are more cuts coming," Clinton told TIME. If that doesn't work, Clinton will try party loyalty. "They aren't going to get Nunn or Johnston," said a Democratic Senator, "unless it's clear that it's going to fail without them."

Oklahoma's David Boren, who thinks the deal relies too heavily on taxes, has been getting the VIP treatment: he met with Clinton on Saturday, with David Gergen on Sunday, spoke with chief of staff Mack McLarty on Monday, and even received a prized visit from Janet Reno on Tuesday. Two days later, he had lunch with Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen. Boren seems to be undergoing something of a personal crisis over the vote, talking at length to nearly everyone and acknowledging, "This isn't fun for me. Everyone is very cordial to my face, then I hear they say things about me behind my back."

There is some truth to that. White House officials hoot at Boren's idea that Clinton convene a bipartisan deficit summit. They believe they will win Boren over, but they don't know exactly how. "He's playing an emotionally needy game," said an official. "He just wants attention."

The man who has the White House really guessing is Bob Kerrey of Nebraska. White House officials believe that Kerrey, Clinton's onetime rival in the Democratic primaries, resents the fact that Clinton campaigned for a middle- class tax cut and against a gasoline tax, only now to call upon Kerrey to bail him out on the Senate floor. Kerrey has been telling friends in the Senate that Clinton "doesn't deserve this" and has confounded Administration lobbyists by not asking for any concessions in exchange for a vote. "Kerrey," said a top White House political operative, "is the least predictable."

Late last week Clinton's team was concentrating its fire on Richard Bryan of Nevada and Herbert Kohl of Wisconsin. Worried about the impact that limited deductions for entertainment would have on Nevada's casinos, conferees wrestled with an exemption on "live entertainment" that they dubbed the "Wayne Newton provision." Kohl, who wanted more tax cuts and incentives for business, dined at the White House last Thursday night but was surprised to find that Clinton didn't ask him for his vote. "There was not a word said about the budget bill," said Lieberman, who attended the same dinner. "If this had been Lyndon Johnson, we would have been pulled into a private room."

Clinton said last week that the string of close votes is unpleasant but inevitable. "((I am)) asking these people to be very brave and very tough, cut spending and raise new revenues," he told TIME. "I don't like anything about this part of it." What does Clinton like? "I like the fact that we've put in a lot more tax fairness, we've done something for poor people, and we've got some business incentives to generate jobs and income. I like that a lot."

Clinton surely hopes the rest of the nation will too. White House adviser Paul Begala is working on a speech to be broadcast from the Oval Office this week. More than 20 senior officials have been installed in a "war room" in the Old Executive Office Building, where, aided by telephones, computers, faxes and printers, they are spreading the gospel of deficit reduction. Cabinet officers and senior officials were scheduled by war-room operatives for radio interviews and courtesy calls on lawmakers. The Democratic National Committee released a 30-second television ad that will run in four states -- Arizona, Nebraska, Nevada and Wisconsin -- blasting the "forces of gridlock" without mentioning that the chief culprits are a handful of Democrats.

But it is Clinton who will have to make the difference. Two weekends ago, deputy White House communications chief David Dreyer dug up videotapes of George Bush literally running away from a controversial deficit-reduction deal in October 1990, when he dismissed the package with a glib invitation to "Read my hips" during a jog in Florida. Bush's diffidence at the time was an invitation for members of his own party to revolt, and infuriated Budget Director Richard Darman, who later called it the "biggest mistake of Bush's presidency." After watching the Bush tapes, Clinton's aides vowed to make sure that Clinton sells -- and if necessary oversells -- his plan, if that's what it takes to convince Americans of the plan's wisdom.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: TIME Graphic

CAPTION: HOW CLINTON IS FARING

What the White House wanted

Congress's plan

With reporting by Nancy Traver/Washington