Democrats Near Child-Care Accord : Congress: Leaders say they have the votes to pass a compromise to authorize $1.7 billion a year in subsidies. President Bush has issued a veto warning.

Warring Democrats moved close to a breakthrough agreement Monday on child-care legislation they expect to pass in the House this week, thus reviving a major item on the party’s congressional agenda.

Barring a last-minute glitch in negotiations between rival Democratic factions, the measure will be presented today to the House Rules Committee to clear the way for debate and key votes on Wednesday and Thursday.

Democratic leaders said they are confident they now have the votes to pass a compromise plan that would authorize $1.7 billion a year in subsidies to child care providers and payments to parents despite objections from President Bush and his GOP allies that the measure would impose overly rigid federal controls and exclude church-based day-care centers from participation.

As envisioned by its sponsors, the final measure would provide the federal grants and establish expanded tax credits worth $14.4 billion over five years to help “working poor” parents pay for care. The bill would also enlarge the Head Start program for preschool youngsters from poor families.

President Bush, however, has warned that he would veto any bill that included the new federal grants since he favors addressing the need for additional child-care services through tax credits alone.

The Democrats’ immediate problem, however, has been getting enough unanimity within their own ranks to get a bill through the House. Once the House passes legislation, it will be sent to a Senate-House conference where a final version will be worked out and returned for ratification later this year by both chambers.

The Senate last June passed child-care legislation that authorized $1.75 billion in grants to the states for child-care subsidies and payments to parents. The bill, known as the Act for Better Child Care, also imposed safety and quality standards on day-care centers.

Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) and his lieutenants Monday brushed off Republican protests that the bill was being rammed through the House without even a printed copy available to lawmakers by mid-afternoon Monday.

“When you think you got the river bridged, you cross it,” said a spokesman for the Speaker. The White House, however, renewed its warnings that President Bush might veto the child-care legislation if it were too much like the Senate-passed bill.

“We have a pretty basic difference,” said Marlin Fitzwater, spokesman for the President, alluding to Bush’s preference for the tax credit approach.

Until now, the Democrats themselves have been fighting to get a consensus in their own ranks. Democratic aides said two issues--the amount of funds that would be provided for child-care grants and the status of church-sponsored centers--blocked an agreement.

Rep. Augustus F. Hawkins (D-Los Angeles) and Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.) have engaged in a power-and-policy struggle over different methods of allocating funds to help low-income parents pay for child care.

Hawkins, chairman of the Education and Labor Committee, favors a new federal program to channel funds directly to child-care providers or parents. He argued that would result in better quality service and assure permanence.

Rostenkowski, the aggressive chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, has argued for making grants to the states and allowing them to allocate funds through child-care vouchers or other systems that would limit creation of a new bureaucracy.

Under the delicate compromise arranged at Foley’s direction, Rostenkowski would get more of what he wants in the bill prepared for House action this week. Hawkins, however, would get backing for a new preschool and after-school child development program.

Moreover, Hawkins presumably would get his way eventually in the bill that emerges from a Senate-House conference because the leading Senate negotiator, Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), agrees with his approach, as do other key senators.

“They basically declared a temporary truce in the House to get the bill approved, and then the fighting will resume when they go to conference,” said one source close to the Democratic leadership.

Even so, the nagging church-state issue remained an obstacle up to the last hour. One version of the bill favored by Hawkins included a ban on any “sectarian activities” in centers operated with federal funds. Many Democrats objected that it would exclude religious institutions now providing one-third of all child-care services.

House Democratic leader Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, however, assured the chamber last fall that the final bill emerging from a Senate-House conference would give more leeway for church-sponsored centers to receive federal money.

The Senate-passed bill, for example, bars religious discrimination in the admission of children to child-care centers, but specifically allows church-sponsored centers to accept federal vouchers from parents. It also would allow churches to give hiring preferences to their own members.

“It’s going to be tough--it’s still up in the air,” said one Democratic insider about the church-state language.

But other sources close to the negotiations said they were optimistic the measure would be adopted by the House this week because of Foley’s decision to apply pressure on the rival factions.

“It was an action-forcing mechanism, but unlike most of them, it worked,” said one Democratic staff aide.