Healthy Agenda Awaits as Congress Goes Back to Work : Legislation: Besides medical care, lawmakers face issues of crime, balancing the budget, campaign finance and perhaps welfare reform.

Prodded by the voters on one hand and by President Clinton on the other, Congress settled down Tuesday to an election-year session focused tightly on health care and crime.

“We’re back and ready to go to work,” Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kans.) said.

Lawmakers had little but ceremonial duties on the first day, and the main business was to gather at mid-evening to hear Clinton’s State of the Union Address.

Democrats and Republicans alike agreed on the main order of business for the year but quickly sketched differing visions about how to tackle them.

“I expect the session to be a tough one,” said Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.), as Republicans called for Clinton to scale back his health care proposal and to step up his commitment to crime-fighting legislation.

Health care and crime aside, bills on education, the environment and the Los Angeles earthquake also crowd the agenda. The Administration said it would ask for more than $7 billion in relief money, and a struggle was expected over whether to cut spending elsewhere in the budget to offset the impact on the deficit.

Before the year is out, leaders say the 103rd Congress will render verdicts on a constitutional amendment for a balanced budget, on changes in campaign finance law and possibly on welfare reform.

Whatever lawmakers do, they will be judged in November--when all 435 House seats and 34 Senate seats will be on the ballot--by an electorate demanding action on pressing social problems.

Clinton has proposed a top-to-bottom revision of the health care system, including permanent and universal coverage, requirements that employers help pay for it and huge purchasing cooperatives.

Competing bills are generally less ambitious, and Republicans are calling for a less comprehensive approach with a smaller role for government.

Dole pledged Republican efforts to enact some type of health care legislation but said Americans have a system that is the “envy of the world,” and he cautioned against weakening it in the name of reform.

Mitchell and House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) pledged to work toward enactment of Clinton’s plan.

Foley said Democrats’ efforts would be directed to “where the President has placed the emphasis . . . secure health insurance for every American that will not be subject to cancellation.”

Clinton and the Democrats also are bidding to take credit for a tough anti-crime measure that was left half-completed when lawmakers wrapped up their business in 1993. The Senate overwhelmingly approved a measure authorizing more than 100,000 more police on the streets, money for prisons and an expanded death penalty.

But the House has yet to act on these tougher measures, and a partisan struggle is under way. Democratic liberals generally oppose the death penalty and favor preventive programs as much as punitive ones. House GOP Whip Newt Gingrich of Georgia launched a sharp attack on Clinton last weekend, saying the Administration “acts weak” on crime.

The prospect for welfare reform is uncertain, despite support from Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the New York Democrat who chairs the Senate Finance Committee. Democratic leaders say they hope to pass a bill this year, but Clinton has yet to submit one.

Other issues:

* Senate debate is set for next month on a proposed balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution. Lawmakers must decide how much money to provide for the cleanup and reconstruction from the Los Angeles earthquake--as well as whether to cut other programs to offset the spending.

* Four major bills with environmental impact, including a revision of the nation’s mining law. Others cover drinking-water safety, the Clean Water Act and the Superfund toxic waste cleanup program.

* A measure for voluntary standards for learning achievement for students completing grades 4, 8 and 12. Opponents say the measure would open the way to an intrusive federal presence in local schools.

* Campaign finance legislation cleared the House and Senate last year, but difficult trade-offs will be necessary to forge a compromise that can pass.