News Digest
Tuesday, November 21, 1995 Page 2
White House, GOP leaders
gear up for more bargaining
W ASHINGTON—With a budget
truce revving the government back to
life, the White House and congres
sional Republicans pledged Monday
to use December talks to champion
divergent spending priorities that have
so far been irreconcilable.
The GOP signaled a possible give
on its prized tax cut.
Democrats and Republicans alike
seemed relieved that the longest-ever
partial federal shutdown was ending,
a six-day ordeal that had both parties
fearing retribution by disgusted vot
ers. But there was doggedness, too,
and White House spokesman Mike
MeCurry warned,“We’llberight back
where we were” unless the two sides
strike a budget deal by mid-Decem
ber.
A day after bipartisan leaders shook
hands on a pact reopening govern
ment through Dec. 15, the House ap
proved the measure, 421 -4, and sent it
to President Clinton, who signed it
Monday night.
The legislation commits both sides
to seeking a balanced budget in seven
years using congressional economic
calculations, which Republicans had
demanded for months, and to protect
social programs, as the White House
insisted. It was approved Sunday by
the Senate
Before recessing for Thanksgiv
ing, the House also gave final con
gressional blessing to the GOP plan
for balancing the budget by 2002 on a
mostly party-line 235-192 vote. It
would overhaul Medicare, slice scores
of programs and trim taxes for mil
lions.
Back in business
Agreement
President Clinton and
Congress agreed in
principle to Balance
the budget by 2002.
Negotiations on taxes,
Metficare, education,
etc*, are sSI to come.
Back to work
Up to 800,000
furloughed workers
returned to work.
Next step
Details of the
agreement must be
worked out and written
into taw by Dac. 15, or
anotoer government
shutdown could follow.
Avoiding default
The government can’t
borrovv, but Treasury
may use trust funds
earmarked for civil
service retirement
AP/Wm. J. Castello
Clinton’s long-promised veto of
hat measure will serve as the starter’s
flag for bargaining that Republican
leaders said they hoped would begin
next Monday. With those sessions in
mind, the GOP prepared to send a
letter to Clinton asking that he provide
them with a detailed, seven-year bud
get-balancing plan of his own next
week.
The president had long said that
the GOP’s seven-year, budget-balanc
ing timetable would force overly harsh
spending cuts. Democrats said Mon
day that to meet that schedule, the key
in upcoming negotiations would be to
force Republicans to shrink their
planned $245 billion tax break for
families and businesses.
“Well, I think that has to be on the
table,” responded House Speaker
Newt Gingrich,R-Ga.,onNBCVTo
day” program. Trimming the tax cut
would make things easier for politi
cians and bureaucrats, but “harder for
parents,” he added.
Clinton met with House Democrats
in a Capitol basement meeting room
to send them home for Thanksgiving
on an upbeat note, promising to hang
tough for Democratic priorities, par
ticipants said.
But he also warned them that “ev
erybody can’t have their way,” said
Rep. Barbara Kennedy, D-Conn., a
reference to compromises he said
would be inevitable.
Both sides said they were mulling
plans for the structure of their negotia
tions. But for now, each stressed that
going in, they had achieved what they
wanted.
“If we do what we should do be
tween now and Dec. 15, it won ’ t make
any difference who won and who lost,”
said Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole,
R-Kan. But he couldn’t resist adding:
“I think we won. We didn’t blink.”
Government
Continued from Page 1
news for all of us, it is only tempo
rary,” Nelson said. “There are still
many difficult issues to be worked
out in the days ahead.”
Nelson, who is seeking the
Democratic Senate nomination in
1996, said Monday during his
weekly telephone conference call
that he was pleased both sides
agreed to balance the budget in
seven years.
The Dec. 15 deadline shouldgive
both sides plenty of time to reach a
compromise, he said.
“It’s incumbent on Washington
to set aside presidential politics to
find an agreement sooner, rather
than later, to resolve the impasse,”
Nelson said. “I don’t think the
American people will tolerate a re
peat of this fiasco.
“It’s not going to do any good
for us to sit around and talk about
the blame. We need a budget that
the American people can come to
terms with and consider fair.”
U.S. Sen. James Exon, D-Neb.,
who returned to Lincoln from Wash
ington D.C. Monday afternoon,
said he could not promise federal
employees that the government
would not shut down again Dec. 15,
“I would just say to our dedi
cated federal workers that they have
a reason for concern,” Exon said. “I
am concerned about it, and I repre
sent them. I’ll be doing everything
I can as a key player to try and get
this mess straightened out.”
Blomberg said the furlough
added yet another strain to an al
ready stressful year.
“I think from the perspective of
a federal worker it has been a bad
year,” Blomberg said, referring to
the Oklahoma City bombing in
April. “It leads people to wonder if
anybody cares about us.”
Exon
Continued from Page 1
“If we don’t continue in the bi
partisan framework that contributed
to the agreement, we are going to find
ourselves in the same mess again.”
Exon said he and seven Demo
cratic colleagues were working on a
plan to unite the party.
The plan includes slicing the GOP’s
proposed tax cuts in hal f and restoring
cuts made in Medicare, agricultural
programs and environmental funding,
he said.
President Bill Clinton’s agreement
to reach a balanced budget in seven
years instead of 10 did not represent a
“major cave-in” of the president’s
philosophy, as the Republican Party
has suggested, Exon said.
Exon said he was pleased that
Clinton agreed to the seven-year plan
as long as the government didn’t cut
health care, education and environ
mental funding.
However, Exon said the both par
ties in the House and Senate must
reach concessions for any plan to work.
“We are going to have to have a bi
partisan agreement, a compromise
where everybody at the end won’t be
able to go in front of television cam
eras and give the high five or give the
wave like we do at Comhusker foot
ball games,” Exon said.
“What this is going to be is a com
_ promise that will be goodfor America,
but it will not be a particular political
victory for either the GOP or the Demo
cratic party. If we can’t reach that,
then we’re going to be in the soup
again on the 15th.”
Woman plotted
to kill for baby,
authorities say
ADDISON, 111.—Jacqueline Wil
liams told friends she was going to
have a baby. Authorities say she ac
complished that by concocting a plot
with her boyfriend and another man to
shoot and stab a pregnant woman.
According to police, they killed
the former girl friend ofonc of the men
and stabbed to death her 10-year-old
daughter, then sliced open the dead
woman's abdomen with scissors and
plucked out a healthy boy.
- They abducted the infant, who was
due to be born Monday, and the slain
woman' s 8-year-old son, then slashed
the older boy’s throat and dumped his
body in an alley.
Hours later, Williams’ boyfriend
told a relative that she had given birth
to a son.
“This is unimaginable,” said Joe
Birkctt, chief of criminal prosecution
for the DuPage County state’s attor
ney. “You could not give a horror
writer a better script. This puts' Natu
ral Born Killers’ to shame in terms of
violence.”
A judge Monday ordered the three
held without bond on charges of mur
der and aggravated kidnapping. They
could face the death penalty if con
victed. s
“I’d just like to know why I’m
being charged,” a disheveled Will
iams, 28, said as she appeared in court.
Her boyfriend, Fedell Caffey, 22, and
Levern Ward, 24, of Wheaton, also
were held in the DuPage County Jail.
They are accused of fatally stab
bing Deborah Evans, 28, and killing
her daughter, Samantha, 10, and son
Joshua, 8. Another son, 17-month-old
Jordan, was found unharmed early
Friday in the bloody apartment; au
thorities say Ward is his father.
The baby, named Elijah as his
mother intended, was said to be doing
well.
Assassin: Justice was served
RAMAT GAN, Israel — Yigal
Amir’s world was one of black and
white—organized by a moral cer
tainty that extended from his reli
gious studies to the murder of Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
At a court hearing Monday, the
25-year-old Amir announced coolly
that justice was served when he
shot and killed Rabin, whom he
blamed for attacks by Islamic mili
i tants that have killed dozens of Is
| raelis.
Students at Bar-Ilan University,
( where Amir studied law, computer
, science and Torah studies, de
scribed their classmate Monday as
j a dedicated student, self-confident
and unshakable in his convictions.
They expressed little surprise at
reports that Amir was once trained
as a guard by Israel’s Shin Bet
security service, which taught him
; ^
Peace talks go into ‘extra innings’
DAYTON, Ohio — Balkan nego
tiators headed into a second all-night
session Monday in a desperate effort
to settle Europe’s bloodiest conflict
since World War II. Prospects for an
agreement remained uncertain.
“It’sreally still 50-50,” a U.S. offi
cial said in declaring a news “lid”
shortly after 10 p.m. EST, ruling out
further announcements at least until
after dawn.
Some Balkan leaders suggested a
new round of talks may be needed to
resolve the contentious issue of how
todividc Bosnia into ethnic republics.
As the talks teetered on a knife’s
edge beyond a U.S.-imposed dead
line, President Clinton intervened from
Washington with a last-ditch telephone
call to Croatia’s President Franjo
Tudjman.
Senior members of both the
Bosnian and the Serbian delegations
confirmed that the talks had run into
trouble over territorial issues but
stressed that negotiations were con
tinuing into the night.
“I think the people here are deter
mined to continue these negotiations,”
State Department spokesman Nicholas
Bums said Monday night. “I think they
have a legitimate shot at succeeding.”
From the Serb delegation, mean
while, came late word the negotia
tions were on the upswing after a
gloomy morning and afternoon. It was
anyone’s guess what the outcome
would be.
And from the Croatian delegation
later came word than only 1 percent of
Bosnian territory was in dispute.
In New York, a U.S. diplomat said
the U.N. Security Council was pre
pared to convene hours after any agree
ment was initialed to consider sus
pending the U.N. economic embargo
against Serbia.
“We are in extra innings,” said a
senior U.S. official as Secretary of
State Warren Christopher rejoined the
talks Monday morning with only two
hours’ sleep. “Maybe at the end of the
day we’ll take stock of where we are.
We’ll take it one step at atime, hour by
hour.”
Workers began loading baggage
onto a Yugoslav airliner after they
were checked by bomb-sniffing dogs.
The second official, speaking on con
dition of anonymity, said Christopher
and all three Balkan presidents were
leaving Monday night — agreement
or not.
“Everything that he does, he does perfectly. ”
CHAIM MICHAELIS
Took computer classes with Yigal Amir
to fire a pistol and analyze security
measures.
“Everythingthat he does, he does
perfectly,” said Chaim Michaelis,
who took computer classes with
Amir. “He killed the prime minis
ter. This, too, he did perfectly.”
Amir was ordered held unt il Nov.
30 while police complete their in
vestigation of him and a half-dozen
other suspects in custody. Police
believe there was a carefully
planned conspiracy to kil 1 the prime
minister, although Amir has insisted
he acted alone.
Wearing a gray patterned
sweater and a skullcap, Amir told i
reporters Monday that when he re- |
enacted the assassination for police
last week, he thought of Israeli vic
tims of attacks by Islamic militants.
“I said, 'Finally, justice is
served,”’ he said.
When the judge stopped Amir
from lecturing the courtroom on the
illegitimacy of Rabin’s government,
Amir laughed bitterly and blurted:
“You just don’t want to hear the
truth.”
Police said Amir will be charged
with murder, attempted murder and
conspiracy.
Shuttle Atlantis
returns home
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.
— The shuttle astronauts re
turned to Earth from Russia’s
Mir space station on Monday
with warm memories of their
eight-day visit and three friends
they left behind.
“Yeah, we would have liked
to stay a little bit longer,” com
mander Kenneth Cameron said
after touchdown. “But, I mean,
! Atlantis has other missions to
fly, and we had a mission to
carry out. We’d done it.”
[_ ;
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