NEWS ANALYSIS : Mexico Aid Debate Hurting U.S. Credibility : Policy: Efforts to derail Administration’s attempt to help rebuild confidence south of the border may be contributing to dollar’s fall.

WASHINGTON — One day, the flak came from a House banking subcommittee. Another day, it was from a committee working on a defense bill. And until late Thursday, the nemesis was Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.).

All were quixotic attempts to overturn the Administration’s $20-billion effort to avert a financial calamity in Mexico. Even as members of Congress kept trying to throw obstacles in the way of the Administration, the loans and loan guarantees--$5 billion so far--continued to flow to Mexico.

But on a deeper level, each new shot by the opposition brought home the difficulty faced by the Administration as it tries to conduct international economic policy during a period of budgetary retrenchment at home and skepticism about U.S. involvement abroad.

With Congress exerting increasing pressure in an arena once run exclusively by the executive branch, analysts said, the United States is risking its credibility as a dependable player in global financial matters. The repercussions are spreading beyond Mexico to such matters as the Administration’s effort to prop up the value of the dollar.

And the approach of the presidential election is making life even more complicated for President Clinton and Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin as they try to keep the dollars flowing and build confidence in the Mexican economy.

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), who originally supported the Administration’s Mexican aid program and might have been expected to carry the Administration’s water on the issue, successfully fought D’Amato’s legislative attempt to halt the program. But Dole appears to be unenthusiastic about fighting for a plan that is sending billions of dollars to a foreign country as he enters the fight for the Republican presidential nomination.

Questions about whether the United States will make good on its pledge to help Mexico are typical of the doubts being raised about Washington’s role in the international economy--exemplified by its seemingly futile gestures to prop up the sinking U.S. dollar.

“The sense of stability in international economic affairs is being eroded,” said Norman Strauss, an associate fellow at Templeton College of Britain’s Oxford University, and a senior adviser at 10 Downing Street when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister. “It’s the business of statesmen-politicians to worry about that. It is not the business of log-rolling politicians to worry about that.”

The difficulty Clinton is having as he tries to keep the assistance flowing to Mexico, Strauss said, goes to the heart of the United States’ credibility on the world stage.

“It does begin to make one doubt the word of the United States,” he said. “It says these buggers aren’t to be trusted.”

The question of whether the Mexican aid would be cut off has been hanging over the program nearly since it was announced Jan. 31 as a rewritten version of a package that originally was much larger and required congressional approval.

When criticism from an adamant faction of Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate made it clear that such approval was out of reach, Clinton had the program redrawn, cutting in half the U.S. contribution but offering it to Mexico under his own executive authority. Pledging money from a presidentially controlled fund, he was able to act without first securing a legislative vote.

Nevertheless, a rump group of House Republicans pressed ahead with its opposition until last week when the full House Republican caucus decided not to demand a vote overturning the President’s action.

Then on Wednesday evening, the committee of House and Senate members working on the defense bill slipped in a provision cutting off the loans if the Administration failed to meet a Thursday deadline for delivering some 2,300 pages of documents related to the Mexican economy. The House approved the measure and sent it to the Senate on Thursday even after most of the papers had been delivered hours earlier to the House Banking oversight subcommittee.

Irked by the demands, White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry complained that the Treasury Department had been forced to put in 10,000 hours of work responding to Republican requests for information on the Mexico deal. This, he said, was part of a broader campaign by the “minions” of GOP house members to “harass and intimidate” executive branch agencies and prevent them from doing their work.

Elsewhere, members of the oversight panel challenged the program as a bailout for wealthy investors.

For Dole, the D’Amato campaign was particularly bothersome.

In January, Dole had joined House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) in supporting the Administration’s program for Mexico, viewing it as an unpleasant but necessary step to head off an economic disaster on the country’s southern border.

So, throughout the week, Dole tried to placate D’Amato to avoid getting caught in the backwash of opposition to the Mexico program, while not short-circuiting the aid itself--treading ground between the role of a bipartisan statesman and that of a presidential contender who must pay heed to an angry populace.

“There’s a significant political exposure,” said Greg Mastel, a trade expert sympathetic to Dole’s predicament. “His instincts are to move toward good government and address the problem. But that’s not always good politics (because) there’s an easy sound bite against the aid package.”

Times staff writer Paul Richter contributed to this story.