Clinton to play up fed deficit

Sonya Ross

Monday, Oct. 28, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

ST. LOUIS -- President Clinton headed down the electoral home stretch ready to take credit for a bit of sunny economic news: The federal budget deficit continues to shrink.

The ever-diminishing deficit was one item on the four-point sales pitch Clinton was making as he courted voters from the Washington suburbs to politically vital Pennsylvania and the Midwest in the finals days of the campaign against Republican Bob Dole.

Today, the president was campaigning in St. Louis, where he planned to credit his administration's reforms with lowering federal debt.

The government was announcing the estimated deficit today. But two GOP congressional leaders -- looking to take some wind from Clinton's sails -- reported 19 days ago that the deficit fell to $109 billion in fiscal 1996, the lowest since early in the Reagan administration.

Clinton, who already was saying he has kept his pledge to cut the deficit in half, began to take credit anyway.

Before arriving in St. Louis, he told a crowd in Nashville, Tenn., on Sunday that the nation would be better off with the targeted tax cut he has proposed because his plan would not cause the deficit to climb again.

"Now we can finish the job of balancing the budget, and do it in a way that reflects our values," Clinton said.

Besides the budget deficit, Clinton's four-point agenda also includes education, safe communities and welfare.

In Nashville, he stressed that the welfare law he signed last August was "a good thing" that will succeed only if private sector companies hire people as they come off the public assistance rolls.

The government, Clinton said, will not be able to put massive numbers of people to work as it has in the past. "This is not the New Deal and the Great Depression anymore," he said.

"We may not be able to get enough private sector jobs in the short run," Clinton cautioned. "But in the end, we can do this. We have got to take this law and make it live in the lives of all people."

The president concentrated his efforts Sunday on building support in places where Republicans have enjoyed a solid base.

Before traveling to Tennessee, a state he carried in 1992, Clinton addressed a rally in northern Virginia, which last supported a Democrat for president in 1964, when Lyndon Johnson won in a landslide.

Clinton joked that Sen. Chuck Robb, D-Va. -- who married Johnson's daughter -- urged him to campaign in the state, where polls show Clinton ahead of Dole by six to nine points.

"Senator Robb called me abut a week ago and he said, 'You know, my father-in-law was the last Democrat to carry the state of Virginia. But I think if you'll come across the river and see us, you might be the next,"' Clinton said. "And here I am."

A vote for him, Clinton said, will decide "whether we balance the budget and move away from the dangerous and reckless fiscal policies that quadrupled our debt in the 12 years before I came to Washington."

The estimated deficit announced by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and House Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich, R-Ohio, represents the lowest deficit since $79 billion in 1981.

It is the fourth consecutive decline, down 33 percent from $164 billion last year. The deficit reached its height, $290 billion, in 1992.

After today's stop in Missouri, Clinton planned to campaign in Minnesota, Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania before going back to the White House Tuesday evening. He is campaigning nonstop until Nov. 5 election.