In a sermon-like speech from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s former pulpit, Vice President Al Gore marked the King holiday Monday by laying out a plan to increase civil rights spending by $86-million. In the 1999 budget, the Clinton administration will propose spending $602-million to enforce civil rights laws, up from $516-million this year, Gore said. "This is a priority. That is why it received such an enormous increase when almost everything else in the budget is being decreased," Gore said at Ebenezer Baptist Church. Gore, speaking to a crowd that included King's widow, used the Bible story of Joseph being left for dead by his brothers to address contemporary violence. "They felt disrespected because their father regarded them differently than Joseph," he said. "Why do so many young men on the streets with empty lives and loaded guns slay their brothers? They tell us time and again that their brothers disrespected them." Gore said the proposed civil rights spending boost will include a $22-million increase for the Department of Housing and Urban Development to fight housing discrimination. Other changes would strengthen investigations of police brutality and enforcement of the Americans With Disabilities Act. Details will be included in the budget submitted by President Clinton next month. King "would be proud to see how much we have done to banish discrimination from our laws," Gore said. "But I believe he would tell us that we still have much to do in banishing discrimination from our hearts." Coretta Scott King, King's widow, said any new federal effort to improve race relations is a step in the right direction. "Whatever initiatives that are going to lead toward the progress for all people, especially for African Americans and minorities, it will be good," she said. The service was one of hundreds of events around the country honoring King, who would have turned 69 last week. King was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4, 1968. In Washington, Clinton joined members of AmeriCorps and community volunteers to repair and paint classrooms at the District of Columbia's Cardozo High School as a King Day service project. "We really wanted to emphasize that Martin Luther King's birthday is a day of service _ a day on, not a day off," Clinton said as he applied beige paint to the walls of a third-floor classroom. In Oklahoma City, Gov. Frank Keating helped reopen a church damaged by the April 1995 federal building bombing. In Philadelphia, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt patted the Liberty Bell, which is too fragile to ring, 12 times at noon. "When we attack our problems together, we learn very quickly that our differences are small and our similarities are great," he said. Several hundred people ignored the cold in St. Louis for observances that included a ceremony at the Old Courthouse where the Dred Scott case, a pivotal test of pre-Civil War slavery law, was tried more than 150 years ago.