Adjournment Kills Bills on Pesticides, Speed Limit

Congress abandoned major efforts to toughen controls on pesticides and raise the 55-m.p.h. maximum speed limit on many rural highways before it adjourned Saturday night, as members began lurching home like drowsy party goers who had overstayed their welcome.

Nearly paralyzed by haggling over federal spending and arms control, the session had dragged into more than two weeks of wearying overtime, and many members, eager to get home to campaign for reelection, had begun to wonder if contentious colleagues were ever ready to say “die” let alone “sine die. “

The final gavels banged down in the Senate at 9:14 p.m. and 20 minutes later in the House. But most lawmakers had already fled town. The next Congress, the 100th since the ratification of the Constitution, is scheduled to convene on Jan. 6 and will feature a new look at the top.

Rep. Jim Wright (D-Tex.), the current House majority leader, will take over unofficially as Speaker from Rep. Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill Jr. (D-Mass.), who is retiring. And if Democrats wrest control of the Senate from Republicans in the Nov. 4 elections, then Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) will be replaced as leader of that chamber.

As Congress slowly wrapped up its business, President Reagan reluctantly signed a $57-billion, five-year aid to education bill lawmakers had sent to him recently. Reagan said the measure will aid deserving students and fund important school programs, but he also complained that it authorized 30% more spending--about $13 billion--than is needed.

Despite his signature, Reagan had little good to say about the measure. He complained that it “fails to simplify and streamline the major student aid programs, to reduce fraud and error, and to cut the extremely burdensome and unnecessary red tape with which students, parents, schools, lenders and others now struggle.”

Legislation to authorize construction of a new space shuttle to replace the ill-fated Challenger was passed and sent to the White House, the last bill approved before adjournment.

The last major spending impasse of the 99th Congress was cleared Friday, but House and Senate leaders spent several hours Saturday cleaning up minor legislative affairs dismissed by Senate Majority Leader Dole as “cats and dogs.” Even they produced last-minute snarling.

Non-Controversial Bills

Action on dozens of non-controversial bills needed to clear the calendar was delayed for hours in a dispute over an Interior Department plan to let a Flathead Indian tribe manage a federally owned utility in Montana. Sen. John Melcher (D-Mont.) had sought to block the transfer after local non-Indian residents complained about it.

In the end, a compromise was reached to delay the formal transfer until next year, giving the next Congress time to decide whether to call it off or let it go through.

Lost in the 11th-hour squabbling was a major piece of environmental legislation that would have forced the federal government to expedite health and safety testing of hundreds of pesticide products already on the market, from farm chemicals to bug sprays for the home.

Thorny Differences

Both the House and Senate had passed competing versions of the bill, but sponsors ran out of time before they could reconcile thorny differences over how the measure would affect chemical patents as well as the right of states such as California to set tougher standards than does the federal government for allowable chemical residues on foods.

Unlikely Allies

Environmentalists and chemical industry representatives, frequently at odds with each other, had formed a surprising alliance to press for passage of the measure, which would have overhauled federal pesticide laws for the first time in 14 years.

In a statement, Dr. Jack D. Early, president of the National Agricultural Chemicals Assn., expressed “deep disappointment” at the death of the legislation. The chemical industry had hoped that its passage would help ease public fears about the safety of its products.

Complaints From Industry

Industry officials, complaining that government testing procedures often delayed marketing of their products for years, had reached agreement with environmentalists on a plan to lengthen their rights to exclusive patents from 17 years to 22 years.

But negotiations over the bill became snagged when Sen. Howard M. Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) insisted that, after seven years, the term of patents granted for new products revert back to the less generous length. Metzenbaum said lengthening patents was anti-competitive and would tend to squeeze small firms out of the chemical industry.

The Senate version of the bill also would have allowed states to set more stringent pesticide standards than the federal government. But the House insisted that such rules be uniform throughout the country.

Another bill that died without action was a $90.7-billion measure to reauthorize federal spending over the next five years for highway and transit projects around the country. Lawmakers said failure to pass the bill will have no immediate impact on current projects.

Agreement on the bill was blocked by a dispute over raising the 55-m.p.h. speed limit. House members, citing safety concerns, refused to go along with a Senate demand that drivers be allowed to go 65 m.p.h. along rural portions of federal interstate highways.