House Wavers on Tough Drug Bill : May Accept Softer Senate Version as Filibuster Is Weighed

House Democratic leaders, uncomfortable with many of the thorny civil liberties questions raised by their anti-drug legislation, Wednesday were considering accepting a stripped-down Senate version of the bill.

Meanwhile, 11 moderate Senate Republicans suggested in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) that they would be willing to filibuster to block the legislation, possibly killing it, if the House insisted on retaining the controversial provisions in the final bill.

With time running out on this year’s legislative session, a House-Senate conference to iron out the differences in the two versions would be “almost a sure-fire recipe for failure,” a House Democratic aide said.

‘Avoiding a Conference’

As a result, he said, House Democrats are “pursuing the idea of avoiding a conference” by compromising.

California Rep. Don Edwards (D-San Jose), chairman of a key House Judiciary subcommittee, agreed that it is “getting more likely all the time” that the House will accept the Senate bill with few modifications.

The move would allow the heavily Democratic House to back away from its own amendments that require the military to seal U.S. borders against drugs, that impose the death penalty for certain drug-related crimes and that permit courts to accept illegally obtained evidence under some circumstances.

It would maintain the basic thrusts of the House and Senate bills, which include beefing up the budgets of drug interdiction agencies and providing funds for drug education and treatment.

Sponsors of the hotly debated House-passed amendments had argued that drastic changes in the procedures for apprehending, trying and punishing drug criminals are needed if the other parts of the anti-drug package are to work.

Although the amendments involving civil liberties passed the House by huge margins, many moderates and liberals in the chamber had acknowledged that they voted for them only because they feared the political consequences of appearing “soft on drugs.”

Hot Issue

As election season enters its final month, controlling illegal narcotics has become one of the hottest political issues.

The Senate, under threat of filibuster by members of both parties, passed its legislation Tuesday with none of the provisions of the House amendments.

“A conference with the House of Representatives would once again complicate the progress of the legislation with issues such as the death penalty,” the Republican senators warned in their letter to Dole. “We believe that reintroducing these issues into the debate would make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to complete action on this vital legislation.”

Senate Republicans eventually might muster enough votes to break a filibuster, but such a process could use up enough time to effectively kill the bill in the final days of this year’s legislative session.

Less Spending

Accepting the Senate legislation would mean that the House would also have to agree to sharply lower anti-drug spending levels contained in the Senate bill. However, Edwards said, key House backers of the bill “have already given up” on bargaining for the higher amounts.

Any effort to avoid a conference is likely to draw strong opposition from House Republicans, who had sponsored many of the controversial amendments.

“We really felt we achieved some measure of unanimity in the House,” a GOP aide said. “Our members are not of the mind to accept the Senate bill wholesale.”