Senate Rejects Wilson Bid to Ban Newsletters : Congress: The $58 million saved would have aided ‘crack babies.’ He is accused of grandstanding.

The Senate reversed field Thursday and killed Sen. Pete Wilson’s proposal to ban taxpayer-funded congressional newsletters and spend the $58 million saved on babies damaged by their mothers’ cocaine addiction.

In a 66-29 vote, senators brushed aside Wilson’s plea to stop “putting our perks ahead of public needs.” Several accused the California Republican of grandstanding in his campaign for governor.

“It would occur to me that he does not have any real interest in the issue since he won’t be here (if he is elected governor),” Sen. Terry Sanford (D-N. C.) said in an interview. “So it must be related to his campaign.”

Both the Senate and the House originally voted overwhelmingly to ban the newsletters and shift the funding to a program that treats “crack babies.” But skeptics suggested at the time that the lawmakers were merely making a political statement and expected the ban to be dropped.

That skepticism was borne out when Senate and House conferees swiftly struck the ban from a bill funding the legislative branch for the current fiscal year. On Wilson’s failed attempt to restore the ban Thursday, 51 senators, including Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), switched sides and voted against the measure.

Cranston aide Roy Greenaway said that, if the Senate had insisted on the newsletter ban, it would have jeopardized new restrictions on newsletters already adopted by a House-Senate conference committee.

The conferees’ main change was to cut from six to three the number of newsletters that lawmakers may send at taxpayers’ expense. The $1.9-billion measure incorporating the changes later was sent to the President, who is expected to sign it.

During his 1988 reelection campaign, Wilson aired television commercials publicizing his past salvos against taxpayer-funded newsletters. Last September, he caused a small ruckus by leading a network camera crew through the Senate facility where the newsletters are printed and mailed. The Senate sergeant-at-arms accused him of breeching Senate rules, and critics assailed the action as grandstanding.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if he got a 30-second television campaign spot out of this one,” said Rep. Vic Fazio (D-Sacramento), a defender of congressional newsletters.

Wilson’s press secretary, Bill Livingstone, said after the vote Thursday: “We haven’t sent out a newsletter since 1985, so this is not being done purely because he is running for governor. There is no grandstanding here.”

In Senate debate, Wilson called newsletters “thinly disguised campaign pieces.”

“My basic conviction is that it is a far more urgent priority to deal with the substance abuse of pregnant women than to send out unwanted congressional newsletters,” he said.

The senator contended that the $4.5 million a year currently spent on helping “crack babies” is “a pittance,” considering that the problem affects about 15% of the newborn in many parts of the country and is estimated to cost an average of $130,000 a child each year in health care and special education expenses.

Although a pending appropriations bill would increase spending on the program to $50 million, that still would be “not nearly enough,” Wilson said.

“Our constituents did not elect us to put perks above principles, to put junk mail ahead of providing the kind of outreach and treatment that will go a long way toward solving this exploding epidemic,” he declared.

Sens. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) led the attack against Wilson’s proposal, stressing the “reforms” already contained in the funding bill.

Reid argued that a ban on unsolicited mass mailings would severely hamper senators’ ability to communicate their views to constituents, especially in states with rural areas not extensively served by the news media.

Reid protested also that Wilson had added a provision subjecting lawmakers to fines and imprisonment if they exceeded postal spending ceilings.

“We would have to keep a battery of Philadelphia lawyers and congressional staff on this for years,” he said.