By Eric Pianin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 29, 1998; Page A04

President Clinton yesterday joined in the mounting criticism of the $271 billion highway bill, warning that it threatens the fiscal discipline of last year's balanced budget agreement and jeopardizes spending on education and other priorities.

"Transportation is an important domestic priority but we must strike a balance so that we do not allow one priority to squeeze out other critical investments," Clinton said in a statement issued in Washington during the president's African tour.

The president's statement stopped short of threatening a veto of the six-year highway bill that was overwhelmingly approved in the Senate two weeks ago and appears headed for passage in the House early this week.

But administration officials are concerned that in their rush to adopt a 42 percent increase in highway and mass transit spending, many Republicans and Democrats are overlooking the fact that other spending proposals such as the president's education, child care and health care initiatives may get crowded out.

"The transportation bill has gotten a bit out of hand," said chief White House economics adviser Gene Sperling. "We support a strong transportation bill but we are putting people on notice both for now and for the appropriations battles in the fall that we're not going to sit by idly and let our key investment plans" get shoved aside.

House Budget Committee Chairman John R. Kasich (R-Ohio) on Friday denounced the House version of the bill as an "abomination" of pork-barrel spending and vowed to try to force cuts in the measure. House GOP leaders were predicting the bill would easily pass intact.

Kasich, who lost out in an internal Republican debate over the size and shape of the bill, told reporters, "Frankly, this bill really is a hog; it is way over the top."

Kasich and a coalition of other conservative Republicans and moderate Democrats are backing amendments to strike nearly $18 billion of spending for nearly 1,600 "high-priority" highway and mass transit projects from the bill.

House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bud Shuster (R-Pa.) defended those projects as responding to legitimate needs and making better use of the surpluses in the highway trust fund.

However, critics including Reps. Steve Largent (R-Okla.), Sue Myrick (R-N.C.) and David L. Hobson (R-Ohio) have accused Shuster of using pork-barrel projects to "buy votes" for his bill.

The White House is also alarmed by the sheer number of earmarked projects and troubled that the proposed spending overall would exceed Clinton's budget request by nearly $34 billion.

Sperling indicated that Clinton's statement yesterday was designed more to steer House and Senate GOP leaders toward a more reasonable spending level than to scuttle a bill that contains many provisions strongly favored by the administration.

The administration, for instance, is pleased with an environmental protection measure contained in the bill and the nearly $150 million allocated annually to cover the cost of transporting former welfare recipients to work. The White House also favors a provision contained in the Senate version that would impose a tough new anti-drunken driving standard on all the states.