Now Comes Porklock

By MICHAEL DUFFY WASHINGTON

For "Gentleman" Jim Jeffords, those fleeting 15 minutes of fame had finally arrived. A part-time Civil War buff who just happens to be about the most liberal Republican in the U.S. Senate, Jeffords sat at his peaceful mountaintop farmhouse near Burlington, Vermont, last week taking half- desperate telephone calls from the likes of Vice President Al Gore, Education Secretary Dick Riley, Labor chief Robert Reich and Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala. All were calling to persuade Jeffords to vote for Bill Clinton's embattled economic stimulus package when it comes up for a vote this week. The White House left nothing to chance: behind the scenes, Clinton aides offered highly prized exclusive interviews with Clinton and Gore to Vermont television stations and newspapers in an attempt to turn the screws on Jeffords even tighter.

Not long ago, Jeffords was the Republican that the Bush and Reagan White Houses loved to hate. But last week old sins were forgiven. Senate minority leader Robert Dole, sensing he had Clinton cornered for the first time, hurriedly flew to Burlington Wednesday to attend one of Jeffords' quiet, $20- a-head, appetizer-and-Chablis fund raisers that are typical of Vermont's small-town politics. What wasn't typical was that more than a dozen reporters and seven television crews attended too, in the hope of seeing Dole close the deal.

Jeffords was far too smart for that. "We have many things in common," he said, speaking of Dole. "He's a plainspoken Senator from the Plains, and I'm a succinct, let-you-know-what-I-think person from Vermont." What Jeffords thought of Clinton's stimulus package was hardly nonnegotiable. "I'm holding firm. If they slice $8 billion or $9 billion out of it, I can live with it. Otherwise, no deal."

Clinton would go a long way toward meeting Jeffords' demands by the time the week was out. After insisting for several weeks that he would not compromise with Republicans, Clinton agreed to reduce his spending package by $4 billion and perhaps more, rather than risk losing a measure he believes represents a "booster shot" to the anemic economic recovery. The President had learned the hard way that as long as the Democrats hold only a narrow six-vote majority (Democrat Richard Shelby of Alabama has been voting Republican recently) in the Senate, Clinton will need the votes of Jeffords and four or five other moderates to avoid the filibustering of more conservative Republicans.

As his presidency nears the 100-day mark, Clinton is losing some traction. After winning speedy approval of his overall budget plan in March, Clinton is beset by distractions. In the middle of the stimulus fight last week, the White House had to confirm reports that Hillary Rodham Clinton's health-care task force was considering a new, value-added tax to pay for the $60 billion in reforms her team is contemplating. Just as millions of Americans prepared to file their income tax returns, a USA Today report quoted Shalala as saying that the health-care task force was examining some form of VAT in addition to Clinton's already announced plans for new energy taxes, higher sin taxes and rising top marginal rates. Coming two months after Clinton himself called the VAT a "radical" idea, the story could not have been more poorly timed.

White House communications director George Stephanopoulos acknowledged that a vat might be one way to help pay for health care for uninsured Americans. But Administration officials fanned out to pour cold water on the idea, and Gore said last Friday that it was not an option in the "near term." Shalala, who, as yet, plays no pivotal role in either tax policy or health-care reform, was invited to the woodshed for a talk with White House chief of staff Mack McLarty. "It is classic Shalala," said one angry White House aide. "She's independent, and now everyone here is furious with her."

But it wasn't all Shalala's fault. The VAT incident proved that Clinton, despite his best efforts, cannot stay abreast of everything his Administration is contemplating. He is already, in the view of some aides, trying to do too much too soon: though he promised to focus "like a laser beam" on the economy, he has to worry about health care, meetings with a dozen foreign leaders, consultations on a new Supreme Court Justice as well as a day-long forest summit, not to mention aid to Russia and the crisis in Bosnia. Even before the stimulus plan began to run aground three weeks ago, White House officials feared that Clinton was overextended. "Here we are at day 72 having a forest conference." said one slightly exasperated senior official. "We may be in danger of overloading the circuits."

One consequence of all the conflicting priorities is that Clinton never made a clear case for the $16 billion stimulus outlay. His aides ginned up the emergency-spending package during the transition, but immediately encountered opposition from members of his own party, who pointed out that it added $19.4 billion to the deficit just when Clinton said he was trying to cut it. The President countered by saying the stimulus package would create work for the unemployed in a "jobless recovery," though nearly one-quarter of the money would go to unemployment insurance, and $1 billion would be devoted to short- lived summer-jobs programs.

Because its ostensible purpose was to kick-start a weak recovery, the stimulus plan put Clinton in the awkward position of rooting for a bad economy in order to get it passed. Last week the White House was forced to acknowledge that Labor Secretary Reich had mischaracterized an exceptional jump in new jobs in February to give the impression that the economy was in worse shape than in fact it was. To bolster the case for the stimulus, Reich asserted at a special news conference that 90% of the 365,000 new jobs were part time, though it was later revealed that the Labor Department has scant evidence to back up Reich's assertion. Stephanopoulos admitted Reich's exercise in gloom and doom was "misleading."

But it was not until the Republicans seized on the $2.5 billion in community-development block grants to cities and states that the stimulus began to falter. They circulated a U.S. Conference of Mayors survey of potential projects -- including an "alpine slide" in Puerto Rico, a brewery renovation in Minnesota, tennis-court resurfacing in Alabama, an ice-skating warming hut in Connecticut -- that suggested Clinton's stimulus included some old-fashioned federal largesse. That none of these items were officially in the budget hardly mattered; "The Republicans," said a White House aide, "did a very good job of defining it as pork."

More damaging was that Clinton, who in his brief time as President has shown a willingness to compromise with ranchers, miners or almost anyone else to win converts to his cause, refused to heed warnings from moderate Democrats that the package needed tinkering. Clinton balked at a proposal by David Boren of Oklahoma and John Breaux of Louisiana to shrink the plan by 25% to win moderate Republican votes such as Jeffords' and avoid a filibuster. When Robert Byrd, the imperious Appropriations Committee chairman, used esoteric rules to block even moderate Republicans from offering similar amendments, a long-divided G.O.P. unified instantly. "When Jim Jeffords and Jesse Helms are locked arm in arm," chortled conservative Bill Bennett later, "something interesting is happening." A filibuster ensued, and Senate Democrats thrice failed to break it before adjourning for spring recess.

Last week Clinton mounted a half-hearted campaign to win the 60 votes he , needed. His aides faxed press releases to media outlets in the states of 13 swing Republicans, explaining, for example, how Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter could "break the gridlock in the Senate, support this initiative and put 25,000 of his constituents back to work." The campaign had hardly begun when White House officials admitted privately that it was futile. "We're trying to put pressure on Republicans at home," said one. "We have to peel off votes. And I don't think we can." Late last week Clinton capitulated, reluctantly agreeing on Friday to cut the package 25%, preserving funds for summer jobs, immunizations, unemployment and highway projects.

The victory energized long-divided Republicans, who were beginning to get used to the idea of rolling over for the Clinton juggernaut. Public support both for Clinton and his package is weakening. Few Presidents have attempted so much so soon, but Clinton's approval rating is already at record lows for a President three months into his term. And as Americans learn more about the specifics of Clinton's program, asserts Republican national chairman Haley Barbour, support declines rapidly. A poll of more than 1,000 Americans by Richard Wirthlin two weeks ago turned up support for Clinton's plan, 54% to 33%. But after Wirthlin explained Clinton's tax plan in detail, opponents outnumbered proponents 49% to 46%. "What the stimulus fight showed people is that Clinton's economic plan is a gigantic new spending program paid for by taxes," Barbour asserted last week. "It confirms people's worst suspicions that the Democrats will take the money and spend it again."

For Clinton, the stimulus fight also exposes a lost opportunity. In the last days of the Clinton transition, top political aides boasted privately that, just as only a diehard anticommunist like Richard Nixon could have visited China, Clinton was preparing to strike at the spending programs dear to Democrats. But in the biggest miscalculation of his presidency to date, Clinton underestimated the public's appetite for change in the form of spending cuts. One senior official acknowledged last week that the unexpected success of Clinton's Feb. 17 speech -- and the public demand for real sacrifice it spawned -- caught the White House by surprise. "There was," he said, "an unanticipated snowball effect." Last week the snowball caught up with Clinton.

With reporting by Laurence I. Barrett and Nancy Traver/Washington