Compromise on budget cushions cuts> Education, environment hit; money found for more cops

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency will get 10 percent less money, and job safety spending will be down a bit. Schools with many low-income children will get about the same as a year ago.

In a gauge of how the federal budget climate has changed, Democrats considered these winners in the huge compromise budget bill for fiscal 1996 that Congress sent to President Clinton on Thursday for his signature.

The House approved the legislation 399-25; the Senate followed suit 88-11.

All four members of Maine’s congressional delegation voted for the bill.

The $159 billion measure, covering nine Cabinet-level departments and dozens of agencies for the remaining five months of the fiscal year, will provide additional services for some Americans and fewer for others. There is $1.4 billion to help hire 100,000 local police officers, but $278 million — about a third less than last year — for the Legal Services Corp., which provides lawyers for the poor.

The bill was the product of grueling talks between the White House and Congress. In the end, the administration had won $5 billion more than the House had approved months ago — still leaving spending for all federal agencies a whopping $20 billion below 1995 levels, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

“The world has changed and we’re headed in the right direction,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bob Livingston, R-La., a leader in the GOP drive to slice federal spending and shrink government.

Democrats preferred to focus instead on the money they restored. That included $350 million for Clinton’s prized Goals 2000 education reform program, down $22 million from last year but originally targeted for elimination by the House. And the Occupational Safety and Health Administration would get $305 million — a 2 percent cut from last year instead of the 11 percent reduction the House initially approved.

“We not only know the value of the tax dollar, but we also understand the value of human beings,” said Rep. David Obey, D-Wis.

Democrats pointed to the $7.2 billion that would be spent for education for school districts with large numbers of poor children. That would be the same as last year, but $1.2 billion more than the original House figure, a cut Democrats had warned could cost the jobs of 40,000 teachers.

They also noted that the funds they won for the Environmental Protection Agency bring its 1996 budget to $6.5 billion — $700 million less than it spent last year. The EPA had been forced to cut back on inspection and enforcement activities because of money shortages since last October, but is expected to have additional funds to deal with backlogs, according to administration sources.

Republicans said the measure would eliminate more than 200 programs, though most of them were relatively tiny and obscure. Among them was a favorite of Vice President Al Gore’s, GLOBE — Global Learning and Observation to Benefit the Environment — a year-old program aimed at teaching students about the environment.

But there were big programs, too, that will swallow large reductions.

Grants to states for social services will be $2.4 billion, or $419 million less than a year ago. Pell grants for college students will be $4.8 billion, about a one-fifth cut from last year. The Department of Housing and Urban Development will see a $5.5 billion reduction in its budget, to $19 billion.

NASA’s $14.4 billion budget for 1995 will be $473 million lower this year. And the national service program, a top Clinton initiative aimed at prodding young people to do community work, will be cut in half to $402 million.

Legislative provisions in the bill also had something for everybody. It repealed a law requiring the discharge of military personnel with the AIDS virus. Conservatives won language slashing funds for foreign family planning services and letting hospitals refuse to teach abortion to medical students.

Environmentalists triumphed, too. Riders were dropped or negated allowing more logging in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest than the administration wants, removing EPA review of wetlands development, and opening a Mojave Desert National Park in California to potentially more commercial use.

Among other programs:

The advanced technology program, another Gore initiative that provides grants to companies investing in high-tech efforts, will receive $221 million, compared with $90 million sought by the House.

There will be $625 million for summer jobs for youths, a program the House tried to kill.

Bilingual education will receive $178 million, $75 million more than the House but $29 million less than 1995.