WASHINGTON INSIGHT

BUDGET BLUES: Congressional preoccupation with budget negotiations is distracting the lawmakers from other major agenda items and creating a huge logjam of unfinished business. Besides the spate of appropriations bills held up by the budget impasse, the two houses are moving slowly on other matters, such as child care legislation. Even if a deficit reduction accord is reached, the budget package still could take three weeks to clear both the House and Senate, according to leadership timetables.

The seemingly endless budget talks have wrecked lawmakers’ plans for an early election-year getaway on Oct. 5. The backlog of money bills and other “must” measures is now so large that Capitol Hill insiders believe the lawmakers cannot adjourn until Oct. 20 at the earliest. That leaves only 16 days for incumbents to get in their final campaigning before the voters cast ballots on Nov. 6.

GROUSING ABOUT GEPHARDT: House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) is drawing fire from fellow Democrats for giving away too much in the budget negotiations with the Bush Administration. Although the tough-talking Missourian has carefully cultivated an image as an aggressive, highly partisan critic of GOP policies, rank-and-file Democrats complain that he has become too much of a statesman in his role as the Democrats’ chief budget negotiator, agreeing to hefty concessions on Medicare and other longtime Democratic issues. “He’s become a lightning rod for all the rank-and-file complaints” about the budget talks, one Congress watcher said.

Gephardt’s defenders say he hasn’t given up his partisan fervor--for example, he is still holding out for higher tax rates for the rich--but that he simply is trying for a deficit-reduction package that will protect Democrats from getting too much of the blame if the budget talks fall apart. But hard-line Democrats aren’t buying that. Particularly irksome to them: President Bush’s praise of Gephardt for his cooperation in the budget talks.

FED FRUSTRATIONS: The past weekend’s accord among the Group of Seven finance ministers and central bankers to keep interest rates high may bolster the dollar temporarily but isn’t likely to ease the friction between the Treasury and the Federal Reserve, analysts say. The two have sharply conflicting views as to what should be done about interest rates and the dollar--the Treasury wants the Fed to lower interest rates, but the central bank is fearful that to do so would only send financial markets into a tizzy.

So far, the markets are backing the Fed. The dollar has been plunging and, over the weekend, finance ministers of America’s economic allies served notice that they expect the United States to join in holding monetary policy relatively tight to ward off inflation. The man on the spot: Treasury Secretary Nicholas F. Brady. Those familiar with internal policy discussions in the Administration say that the rift between Brady and the Fed is leaving him increasingly isolated.

GLOBAL PLANNING: Interest groups pushing to resume U.S. participation in global family-planning efforts are counting on an abortion-rights majority in the November elections to help boost their cause with Congress. The abortion-rights advocates have two goals on Capitol Hill this year--to increase overall funding and to restore the U.S. contribution to the two major international population-control groups--money that Congress cut off in 1985.