Budget, Medicare Issues Push Congress Into Unusual Sunday Session : Legislation: A filibuster over killing catastrophic care is threatened. It could delay adjournment.

Congress, rushing to adjourn for the year, will hold an extraordinary Sunday session today in an effort to complete work on a budget compromise and repeal of Medicare’s controversial catastrophic care program.

But lawmakers may be thwarted in their plans to leave town this week because dissident senators, including Republican Minority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas, are threatening a filibuster to save remnants of the catastrophic program.

The House and Senate will vote separately on compromise deals fashioned in the early morning hours Saturday by weary negotiators who wrangled over the two major issues standing in the way of adjournment.

The budget deficit package includes a combination of spending and tax measures, including continuation of the 3% federal tax on telephone service. The tax was scheduled to end next year, but it will be extended indefinitely if the compromise is approved.

The package calls for some reduction in federal spending for payments to doctors and hospitals under Medicare, but these changes would not directly raise the amounts paid out of pocket by Medicare’s 33 million beneficiaries.

Senate and House conferees also tentatively agreed on continuation of tax credits for subsidized housing and for research and development. The credits will result in a revenue loss for the Treasury, but the decline should be offset by savings in other areas.

If President Bush accepts the budget package, the government can avert the full impact of $16 billion in spending cuts triggered automatically on Oct. 1, when Congress failed to meet a deadline for deficit reduction. The Gramm-Rudman law, which mandates a balanced federal budget by 1993, requires automatic cuts if Congress is unable to reach deficit goals.

However, both the President and Congress regard the automatic cuts as too rigid, because spending must be reduced for all government activities except Social Security and some programs for the poor.

More flexibility would be offered by the package of tax measures and spending cuts tentatively accepted by conferees Saturday morning after days of bargaining.

In a separate vote, Congress must settle the furor over the catastrophic care program that it overwhelmingly approved just 17 months ago. At the time, the law was hailed as the biggest expansion of federal health benefits since Medicare was created in 1965.

The catastrophic care program offered unlimited days of hospital care after a Medicare beneficiary paid for the first day. It provided a ceiling on personal spending for doctor bills and coverage of prescription drugs for the first time.

But the financing of the new benefits outraged millions of senior citizens. Most of the money for the program was to come from a special surtax paid by the 40% of Medicare beneficiaries who pay federal income taxes. The surtax, ranging from $22 to $800 a year, touched off a flood of protests.

The House voted 360 to 66 last month for total repeal of the catastrophic care program. The Senate voted 99 to 0 for a plan by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to preserve the extended hospital care and several other benefits. The McCain plan would pay for the stripped-down package by retaining a special monthly premium of $4 paid by all Medicare beneficiaries.

The House insisted on total repeal, however, and weary Senate conferees eventually went along. But an outraged McCain said it would be unfair to senior citizens to abolish the new benefits completely, and he pledged a filibuster to try to salvage some benefits.

In other action late Friday and early Saturday, Congress approved a package of economic assistance for Poland and Hungary, passed an intelligence authorization measure and neared final approval of a defense spending bill for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1.

Both houses approved an economic aid bill containing $938 million in aid for Poland and Hungary, nearly double the amount sought by President Bush. Of the total, $846.5 million would go to Poland.

A separate measure that would provide $532 million in short-term aid to the two nations is pending in the Senate, but it faces a presidential veto threat because it provides $15 million for a controversial United Nations family planning program.

The Senate passed and sent to the President a compromise intelligence authorization bill containing new guidelines on reporting covert operations to Congress. The rules are intended to ensure that the White House does not conceal such operations as the Iran-Contra affair, which was not reported to lawmakers for months.

Also, the Senate approved and sent back to the House a compromise $286-billion defense spending bill for fiscal year 1990 after rejecting an amendment by Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) that would have halted procurement of the B-2 Stealth bomber.