Spending Cuts OKd Despite Veto Threat : Budget: House Republicans warn that emergency relief will be delayed if Clinton fails to sign bill. Measure slashes programs by $16.4 billion.

WASHINGTON —  Defying President Clinton’s veto threat, House Republicans passed a $16.4-billion spending cut bill Thursday and warned that his failure to sign it will only delay the emergency relief he wants for California and Oklahoma City.

Hours after passing a resolution to balance the budget by 2002, the GOP-controlled House voted, 235 to 189, to approve a bill that would take a small step toward finding the more than $1 trillion in savings needed to achieve the ambitious aim of eliminating the federal deficit.

The Senate must also pass the bill, a compromise version of differing measures passed earlier by both houses, before it can be sent to Clinton.

The $16.4 billion in cuts would come from funds already appropriated--but not yet spent. The money would come mostly from environmental programs, housing assistance for the poor and education.

While much of the savings would go toward deficit reduction, $6.7 billion would be used to offset the costs of disaster relief for California and other states. About $240 million would finance new anti-terrorism measures and the reconstruction of the Oklahoma City federal building destroyed in last month’s bombing.

The vote and the bitter debate that preceded it followed sharply partisan lines, as both sides sought to use the issue of budget cuts to define their differences.

Republicans said the vote showed that Democrats are not serious about balancing the budget and that they care less about disaster relief for the victims of the Oklahoma City bomb blast and the Northridge earthquake than they do about wasteful government spending.

Democrats countered that the cuts the Republicans proposed would gut education, job training, housing and other programs for the poor while protecting wasteful pork-barrel programs like highway demonstration projects in GOP districts.

“This bill cuts things we should keep and keeps things we should cut,” said Rep. Joe Moakley (D-Mass.). “We’re left holding a big pile of favors for the well-off at the expense of everyone else.”

Hoping to pressure Clinton to sign the bill, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and other Republicans warned before the vote that a veto would jeopardize the relief money and other items Clinton wants, such as $250 million in debt forgiveness for Jordan.

“We can’t override the veto and that means more difficulty for Oklahoma City, more difficulty for the FBI and more difficulty for California,” Gingrich said.

But Clinton, reiterating his threat to veto the bill, sought to shift responsibility for the delay in providing disaster relief back to the Republicans by calling on Congress to send him a new version of the legislation.

“The people of Oklahoma City, California, Louisiana and the other states . . . can get that aid tomorrow with more deficit reduction than is in this bill . . . if the Congress will just take out the pork and put back the people,” Clinton said.

Despite warnings by some Republicans that a veto would kill the bill, lawmakers and White House officials predicted that the GOP leadership would be forced to come up with an alternative package because no one wants to risk being blamed for failing to respond to the Oklahoma City bombing or the California earthquake.

“Ultimately they’ve got to move a package,” White House Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta said in an interview.

Times staff writer Paul Richter contributed to this story.