CLINTON VOWS TO HIT DEADBEAT PARENTS IN WALLET.

Byline: Associated Press 

President Clinton, seeking to widen his lead among women voters, promised Saturday to deny government loans and payments to parents who shirk child support. The president also attacked rival Bob Dole, blaming him for congressional gridlock.

Armed with polls that identify deadbeat parents as a popular election-year target, Clinton declared in his weekly radio address, ``If you owe child support, you shouldn't get support of the federal government.''

The address aired as Clinton visited Rhode Island and Massachusetts, energizing partisan crowds, raising cash and opening an assault on Dole.

Praising the budget agreement reached early Saturday on Capitol Hill, the president noted that a series of popular bills - including welfare reform, a minimum wage increase and improvements in health care insurance - have passed Congress in the past three months.

Dole resigned from the Senate three months ago.

``Look what happens when you abandon extremism in favor of working together,'' Clinton told a partisan crowd on the lawn in front of the state capitol, American flags snapping at his side.

Aides said the president was taking aim at Dole. ``All you've got to do is look at the calendar,'' said campaign spokesman Joe Lockhart. ``Our contention is a spirit of bipartisanship grew up in Congress after Bob Dole left the Senate.''

The Dole campaign quickly got into the spirit, accusing the president of ``hypocrisy and gridlock.''

``Now that Bill Clinton has signed much of Bob Dole's common sense conservative agenda, he's claiming credit for some of the very initiatives he obstructed earlier in the session,'' said spokeswoman Christina Martin.

Although congressional logjams did free up after Dole's departure, the passage of the popular bills likely has more to do with the fact that lawmakers from both parties wanted legislative accomplishments for their re-election campaigns. Even Clinton said the budget agreement may be the result of a more practical reality: ``Maybe they want to go home,'' he said with a chuckle, noting that the Congress was adjourning.

The president, who has a virtual lock on Rhode Island and Massachusetts, came here mainly to raise money. In a show of cockiness, Lockhart said Clinton made the trip because, ``If we only went to places where we were behind in the polls or tossups, we wouldn't have many places to go.''

Clinton reveled in the enthusiastic welcome, especially in Massachusetts.

As his motorcade rolled toward Fall River, dozens of people stopped their cars on both sides of the road so they could get out and wave. At least 15,000 people packed a city park to hear him speak.

A late-night Boston fund-raiser for Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., which was keeping the president away from Washington until the wee hours today, was expected to raise several hundred thousand dollars. Clinton also helped collect political loot for Rep. Jack Reed, D-R.I., who is running for the seat of retiring Sen. Claiborne Pell, D-R.I.