CLINTON SIGNS $256 BILLION DEFENSE BILL.

Byline: Todd S. Purdum The New York Times

In an election-year nod to the popularity of military programs, President Clinton signed a $256.6 billion defense spending bill Monday that provides a 3 percent pay raise for military personnel, even though the bill allows $11.2 billion more for national defense than Clinton requested.

Despite his objections to the extra spending - most of it to buy weapons and research new ones - the president long ago said that he would sign the bill because it authorizes a pay raise nearly a full percentage point higher than current law allows. The bill also includes unrelated, but popular, provisions to toughen federal laws against stalking, making it a crime to cross state lines for the purpose of harassing someone.

Clinton's advisers made it clear that he had no intention of allowing himself to be painted as soft on national defense in a campaign year. They also said that the bill - which sets allowable spending levels that cannot take effect until subsequent appropriations bills are passed - was a ceiling, not a floor, and that Clinton intended to use it as a chit to bargain with Congress to help finance other priorities, including new airport security measures to combat terrorism.

``This bill makes good on our pledge to keep our armed forces the best trained, best equipped fighting force on earth,'' Clinton said, adding: ``It gives us the technological edge to prevail on the battlefields of tomorrow.''

In keeping with his effort to dominate the crime issue, Clinton praised the bill's provisions against stalking, as that measure's sponsor, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Republican who has been a stalking victim, looked on in the Oval Office.

The bill makes interstate stalking and harassment a federal crime regardless of whether the stalker has committed an act of violence or is the spouse or an intimate of the victim, and regardless of whether the victim had a court order of protection. It sets penalties from up to five years in prison for harassment to life in prison for bodily injury.

``Today we say loud and clear, if you stalk and harass, the law will follow you wherever you may go,'' Clinton said. ``And if you are the victim of stalking and want to build a new life somewhere else, you will have the full protection of federal law.''

But the main reason Clinton signed the bill was the pay raise, which will take effect Jan. 1. It would provide a 3 percent raise for military personnel, and a 4.6 percent increase in the allowance for off-base living quarters, adding $26 to a month's pay for the average Army private, and $156 a month for a Navy captain or a colonel in the other services.

``Our servicemen and -women go the extra mile for us,'' Clinton said. ``And we, in turn, should do the same for them.''

The bill authorizes $256.6 billion for national defense in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, a $1.3 billion increase over this year's budget.