Gingrich Says He’s Not Dragging His Heels On Campaign Reform House Speaker Claims President Engaging In ‘Cheap Posturing,’ Diverting Attention

House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Sunday that President Clinton was engaging in “cheap posturing” when he recently criticized the speaker for not moving fast enough to set up a commission on campaign finance reform.

The flap goes back to a joint appearance Gingrich and Clinton made earlier this summer in New Hampshire where they shook hands in public and agreed to jointly form a commission to work on campaign finance and lobbying issues.

Clinton said recently he has been pushing Gingrich on the matter but has been met by “five weeks of silence.”

“It’s almost as though Dick Morris, his chief of staff for politics, has said to him, ‘Every time there’s another Whitewater hearing, why don’t you hold a press conference on this topic?’ - or ‘Every time there’s new evidence that … they didn’t pay all their taxes on Whitewater, let’s do another press conference,”’ Gingrich said on CNN.

“I think that it’s very cheap posturing,” continued Gingrich. “I’ve told Leon Panetta, the president’s chief of staff, that once we can finish solving … the challenge of Medicare, I am prepared to look at campaign financing.”

The speaker was asked whether he really thinks Clinton is just trying to divert attention from Whitewater.

“I think it is absolutely being done as a deliberate gimmick,” he replied.

“He’s got his secretary of commerce who’s under investigation. He’s got his secretary of housing and urban development who’s under investigation. He’s got his secretary of agriculture who had to resign. He had a deputy attorney general who’s been convicted of felonies, who was the managing partner of the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock. He has the governor of Arkansas who’s been indicted. He has open hearings on whether or not the White House staff obstructed the investigation in the (Vince) Foster case. … They keep meeting with the special counsel on Whitewater.

“And in the middle of this,” Gingrich continued, “we suddenly get this posturing as though somehow this administration is serious about political reform. If he’s serious about political reform, he ought to fire (Commerce Secretary) Ron Brown tomorrow morning. … Ron Brown as secretary of commerce is a joke.

“And I think that we’ve had enough posturing from this president. When we get done with Medicare, I’ll be glad to talk about how we do campaign reform. But for the senior citizens of this country, the Medicare program is vital, and it deserves to have some attention paid to it.”

In addition to a special counsel looking into Whitewater, other special counsels are to investigate Brown, HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros and former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy.

On other matters, Gingrich said he fully expects the president to veto a number of appropriations bills and that the House will not waste much time trying to override them.

“I think we’ve got to go through a round where the president sort of sets down his markers for re-election next year, and then we have to see what we can agree to,” Gingrich said.

But he said Republicans will hold fast to their plans to reach a balanced budget in seven years and will “cooperate but not compromise” with the president on spending bills.

Pointing to a recent measure cutting $16 billion from current-year spending as a possible model, Gingrich pointed out that, while some priorities were rearranged to accommodate the president, the total amount of cuts made in the bill Clinton eventually signed was the same as in the version he initially had vetoed.