News in Brief: A Washington Roundup

As expected, President Clinton last week vetoed the spending bill that includes education, arguing that it would undermine his program to help school districts reduce class sizes and other administration priorities.

Earlier in the week, the Senate narrowly approved the bill by a largely party-line vote of 49-48. The week before, the House passed the measure 218-211. With the president's Nov. 3 veto, the White House and Republican leaders in Congress now must find an acceptable compromise. The spending bill for the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education would provide about the same amount for education programs in fiscal 2000—roughly $34.7 billion—as the president requested.

But Republican lawmakers rewrote Mr. Clinton's class-size-reduction program so that districts could use the money for a variety of

purposes. They also maintained its current funding level of $1.2 billion, rejecting the president's request to increase the...