Broad Anti-Crime Bill Dies on Threat of Veto : Politics: President Bush called it unacceptable. A waiting period on handgun purchases and changes in appeals rules were sticking points.

A veto threat killed a massive, politically charged anti-crime bill Tuesday night as Congress rushed to adjourn for Thanksgiving.

In the House, nearly all the Republicans and many Democrats who had backed a similar measure in October resisted the new, Democratic-drafted compromise after GOP lawmakers branded it “pro-criminal” and Bush called it unacceptable.

A source said the defecting Democrats included liberals who objected to its broad expansion of death-penalty offenses and conservatives who opposed a federal five-day waiting period on handgun purchases and wanted stiffer curbs on Death Row appeals.

“They were saying why should we stick our necks out for something that is going to be vetoed anyway?” an aide to the Democratic leadership said.

The death of the bill will force Senate and House conferees to negotiate a new compromise when Congress reconvenes.

With the current version of the bill headed for the grave, partisan warfare escalated as the lawmakers jockeyed to frame the politically potent crime issue for next year’s election campaigns.

Thus, some Democratic leaders pressed for a House vote even if it meant defeat.

“If the bill goes down, there will be (Republican) elephant prints all over the body and it will be indisputable that the President killed it,” said an aide to Rep. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), a leading sponsor.

Responding to attacks that their bill was soft on crime, Democrats charged that Bush and his GOP allies were jeopardizing the widely supported waiting period for gun buyers, a provision named for James S. Brady, the former White House press secretary wounded in the 1981 shooting of President Ronald Reagan. His wife, Sarah Brady, has campaigned vigorously for the waiting period.

The partisan brawling hit a peak--or low point--when Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) tried to crash a Democratic news conference featuring the Bradys and Schumer brusquely asked him to leave.

The New York Democrat went on to accuse Bush of saying--by threatening to veto the bill--that “politics is more important than saving lives. . . . The President is holding a gun to the head of the Brady” waiting period.

Sensenbrenner, quickly following with his own news conference, angrily charged that Democrats were more interested in an issue than a bill.

“They want to take the crime issue away from Bush,” who scorched Democrats with it in the 1988 elections, Sensenbrenner said. “They want a 30-second campaign ad that says Bush vetoed 50 death-penalty crimes.”

The slashing exchanges overwhelmed an avowedly nonpartisan plea from the Bradys, who are Republicans, for passage of the five-day waiting period.

“We’re losing over 23,000 lives a year to guns,” said Sarah Brady, who heads Handgun Control Inc. “We’re getting ready to go away for the holidays, but death will not be taking a holiday. It is incumbent on the President and Congress to come up with a solution.”

James Brady, whose speech remains affected from the severe head wound he received, asked: “What does it say if Congress does not take action?” He answered: “Politics is more important than saving lives. And that’s unconscionable.”

Bush, a member of the National Rifle Assn., which opposes the waiting period, has said he would accept it only as part of a comprehensive crime measure.

Democratic leaders began encountering resistance to their omnibus bill shortly after it was rammed through a Senate-House conference on party-line votes Sunday. Republican conferees protested that it was a “pro-criminal bill” and Bush said he would reject it. He complained that the bill did not go far enough in restricting convicts’ habeas corpus appeals and in easing the rules on using illegally seized evidence in trials.

House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) told reporters Tuesday morning that Bush’s veto threat had drained crucial Republican support for the bill.

“The President has added an element of confusion and, I think, misinformation to the debate by suggesting that this is now a bill that weakens federal law with respect to crime,” Foley said.

Actually, he said, the bill was “very powerful,” particularly in its authorization of $3 billion for local police and its expansion of capital punishment.

On Oct. 22, the House handily approved a similar version of the pending bill, 305 to 118, but a key Republican amendment tightening habeas corpus curbs was rejected by 20 votes.

That amendment, offered by Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), represented a compromise between mild restrictions in the House bill and a more drastic crackdown approved by the Senate with Bush’s support. Democratic conferees rejected the Hyde language Sunday, but Schumer suggested Tuesday that it might be considered in negotiating any new bill.