Copyright 2000 The Washington Post
The Washington
Post
October 21, 2000, Saturday, Final Edition
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. A04
LENGTH: 482 words
HEADLINE:
WASHINGTON IN BRIEF
BODY:
GOP in Talks Over
Long-Term Care
Striving for a last-minute election year
accomplishment, House Republicans are negotiating with President Clinton on tax
breaks to help people pay for long-term care for the elderly and the disabled as
well as for their own insurance premiums.
The long-term care issue is
one of several health-related tax measures costing $ 75 billion over 10 years
that could emerge in a final package Congress is expected to move next
week--some of them linked to a $ 1 increase in the minimum wage sought by the
president.
With powerful opposition in their own ranks to Clinton's
proposed $ 3,000 tax credit for long-term health care, House GOP leaders have
outlined an alternative that would let people claim a tax deduction on up to $
10,000 a year in long-term care expenses, Republican leadership sources said
yesterday. The bottom-line benefit of the deduction would vary, based on a
taxpayer's income.
Deal Pending on Aid and Abortions
Bargainers seemed to be moving toward an agreement over
restricting U.S. aid to groups that perform abortions overseas, one of the most
intractable of the remaining budget disputes.
A deal would mean an end,
for now, to a battle that has raged since 1984, when President Ronald Reagan
used an executive order to bar aid to groups that perform abortions overseas or
lobby to liberalize other countries' abortion laws. President Clinton revoked
that order upon taking office in 1993.
An agreement would also mean that
one of the three spending bills that White House and congressional negotiators
have yet to resolve--the $ 14.9 billion foreign aid bill--could be ready for
Congress to vote on early next week.
In each of two proposed
compromises, last year's $ 385 million for international family planning would
be boosted to perhaps $ 425 million, aides and lobbyists said. One version would
keep the Reagan-era ban in place until early next year. The other would leave
out the prohibition but would not allow the money to be spent until early next
year, when a new president can decide whether to reinstate the Reagan
restrictions.
For the Record
* President Clinton
signed legislation authorizing more than $ 1 billion a year for AIDS prevention
and treatment. The measure reauthorizes for five years the Ryan White
Care Act, which expired when the new fiscal year began on Oct. 1. The
original law was passed in 1990, the same year Ryan White died. He was an
18-year-old Indiana hemophiliac who contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion.
* The United States would increase its efforts to save the great
apes of Asia and Africa under a bill sent to the White House. The measure,
approved by voice vote in the Senate late Thursday, would provide the Interior
Department with $ 5 million a year for grants to organizations involved in
efforts to protect the great apes.
LOAD-DATE: October 21, 2000
