10-23-1999

CONGRESS: Pivotal Events in Congress, October 18-21

Budget Summit, Take One


Don't "spend" the Social Security surplus. That was the
agreement reached on Oct. 19 between President Clinton and a bipartisan
group of congressional leaders at the White House as they searched for a
fiscal 2000 budget endgame. The Republicans thought that a tobacco tax
increase, sought by Clinton to help pay for his spending priorities, was
dead, especially considering the House's 419-0 defeat of the proposal on
Oct. 19. But the President insisted that less could still be more. "I
still believe that it would be good health policy to have a more modest
increase," Clinton said the next day. He also promised to withhold
his signature for a while from the remaining appropriations bills, to
preserve maximum maneuvering room. "Let's look at all these bills
together, see where we are and where we need to go," he told
reporters. Republicans, however, prefer to work on the bills individually,
and have repeatedly emphasized their desire not to bundle them into one
omnibus measure. White House budget officials will continue meeting with
key congressional appropriators into next week to chisel compromises.
Still looming is the problem of how to leave the Social Security trust
fund untouched, although Republicans have plenty of budget gimmicks up
their sleeves.--Alexis Simendinger/National Journal


Continuing Resolution, Take Two


The House and Senate on Oct. 19 passed the second continuing resolution of
the budget season, this one to keep the federal government running through
Oct. 29 while appropriators and Clinton Administration officials haggle
over funding for specific programs. As the first CR expired on Oct. 21,
President Clinton had signed six of the 13 fiscal 2000 appropriations
bills and vetoed two others. Four other bills were ready, or nearly ready,
for the President to consider. House Republicans appeared poised to boost
funding for education in an attempt to ease some of the tension over the
remaining appropriations bill, the one covering the Labor, Health and
Human Services, and Education departments. But differences persist over
specific programs in that bill. --David Baumann/National Journal


Campaign Reform Is Dead Again


The Senate killed campaign finance reform legislation when it voted on
Oct. 19 not to limit debate on two reform measures. "It's dead for
the year," Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., declared after
the vote. But Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Russell Feingold, D-Wis.,
said they did not get the full debate they were promised on their reform
bill, and may still try to tack it onto other legislation this year.
"We intend to exercise every option we can conceive," McCain
said. "We never give up on this issue." Reformers fell seven
votes short of the 60 needed to end debate on the McCain-Feingold bill;
they called it an improvement over the 52 votes they won last year on a
more comprehensive bill. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the chief reform
opponent, called the Senate action a defeat for the "speech
police" and a victory for the First Amendment. Reps. Christopher
Shays, R-Conn.--who with Rep. Martin T. Meehan, D-Mass., pushed House
reform legislation to passage--predicted it would take a huge campaign
finance scandal to move Congress to change the system. "We have all
been corrupted by a system that is compromising our integrity and our
values," Shays said.	--Mark Wegner/CongressDaily


Banking Reform Is Not Dead Yet


House-Senate conferees negotiating financial services modernization moved
on Oct. 21 toward completing a bill, despite warnings from the White House
that President Clinton would issue a veto because of its Community
Reinvestment Act provisions. Late on Oct. 20, Senate Banking Committee
Chairman Phil Gramm, R-Texas, offered the White House compromise CRA
language, but that proposal barely made the trip down Pennsylvania Avenue
before it was rejected. Unfazed, Gramm has suggested that he would not
mind revisiting the legislation in 2001, when he believes Texas GOP Gov.
George W. Bush, a friend of his, will be in the White House. But House
Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., reportedly sent a message to House
Banking Committee Chairman Jim Leach, R-Iowa, reiterating his desire for
the legislation to move forward, minus a veto threat. Senate Majority
Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., is said to be firmly behind Gramm and
supportive of his decisions in the conference.	    --Pamela
Barnett/CongressDaily


Senate Revisits Abortion Debate


The Senate on Oct. 21 approved legislation to ban
"partial-birth" abortions by a 63-34 vote, short of the 67 votes
that would be needed to overturn a veto. It was the Senate's third debate
on the bill since 1995. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., and other backers of
the ban were looking to the eight new Senators sworn in last January for
the additional votes they need to enact the measure over the objections of
President Clinton. The House has twice voted to override Clinton vetoes of
the ban, while the Senate has twice failed--in 1998, by just three
votes--to muster the two-thirds needed to override. Last month, the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit struck down as unconstitutional
prohibitions on the procedure in Arkansas, Iowa, and Nebraska. And the
American Medical Association has rescinded its endorsement of the measure.
--Julie Rovner/CongressDaily


House Haggles Over Education


Republicans and Democrats competed for political bragging rights on
education issues as the House on Oct. 21 passed, 358-67, a consensus bill
to overhaul federal education aid for disadvantaged students, and prepared
to take up a divisive GOP proposal to allow some states to convert federal
education programs into block grants. The bipartisan bill (H.R. 2) to
reauthorize Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act
reflected major compromises by both parties. Democrats won floor victories
when the House agreed to continue the 25-year-old Women's Educational
Equity Act and to increase Title I funds by $1.5 billion. But lawmakers
share little common ground on the block-grants bill (H.R. 2300), called
the "Straight A's" Act. Republicans said the bill would reduce
federal red tape and sharpen the focus on student achievement. Democrats
protested that it would eliminate the targeting of aid to the neediest
students.--Molly M. Peterson/National Journal News Service


Taking a Hike on the Minimum Wage


The proposal to raise the minimum wage and give businesses $36 billion in
tax breaks to help with higher payroll costs ran into trouble this week in
the House. First, about a dozen Republican moderates told leaders they
wanted the $1 per-hour wage increase to take effect in two, rather than
three, years. They also objected to some of the two dozen tax cuts
included in the bipartisan bill offered by Rep. Rick A. Lazio, R-N.Y.
Then, the Ways and Means Committee asserted its prerogative to consider
tax legislation, especially since the Lazio measure raised a few questions
among committee members, although the panel postponed a markup. The
challenge for GOP leaders is keeping some Democrats on board the Lazio
bill, while preventing moderates in their own party from signing onto an
alternative wage increase proposal offered by Minority Whip David E.
Bonior, D-Mich. That measure has only a quarter of the tax relief
contained in the Lazio bill, and the business community opposes
it.--Stephen Norton/CongressDaily


The Week Ahead


Here is the outlook for legislative activity during the week of Oct.
25:


HOUSE


The floor schedule for the House, as well as the Senate, remained in flux
because of the drive to complete the appropriations bills by Oct. 26, the
target set by President Clinton and congressional leaders.


SENATE


In addition to continuing work on appropriations, action is expected on
trade legislation dealing with the Caribbean Basin and Africa.


CongressDaily's Final Word


"Y'all come back."


--Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, speaking to White House officials and key
lawmakers as they left his hideaway office around midnight on Oct. 18
after lengthy and intense negotiations over the financial services reform
bill


Jill Graham and Charlie Mitchell

National Journal