DAY THREE, FEDERAL SHUTDOWN II

More than 260,000 federal workers reported to work on Monday, only to be sent home, even as President Clinton was vetoing two federal spending bills that would have ended the second partial government shutdown in as many months. The Senate was trying to pass a stopgap spending bill by the end of the day, but the idea has slim support in the House. "I'm disappointed President Clinton is again playing politics instead of looking at the policy," Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole told Congress. If the President and House Speaker Newt Gingrich don't sit down and iron the matter out by Friday, Dole warned, a budget deal is "not going to happen this year." Clinton has other ideas. After dumping the slim GOP budgets for the Environmental Protection Agency and the departments of the Interior, Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development, the President vowed to veto within hours a third spending bill, for the departments of State, Justice and Commerce. "Republicans in this Congress have tried to roll back decades of bipartisan environmental protection," said Clinton, who spoke to reporters while visiting with a group of sixth-grade science students in the Oval Office. "It's wrong, and I cannot permit it to happen."