Senate Panel Curbs House Attack on EPA : Congress: Action signals that proponents of limits face tough fight. Move also presages a likely confrontation between legislative bodies.

In a move likely to provoke a sharp confrontation with the House, a Senate panel took a large step back Monday from the dramatic restrictions that the House had voted to impose on enforcement of environmental laws.

The 6-3 party-line vote by an appropriations subcommittee makes it clear that while the House was willing to accept a conservative-led effort to sharply limit the operations of the Environmental Protection Agency, proponents of the restrictions face a difficult battle in the Senate.

The Senate subcommittee also decided to restore $750 million in environmental funding that was stripped by the House, although the bill would still trim President Clinton’s request for the EPA by $1.7 billion, to $5.7 billion. That figure is $900 million less than the agency has had to spend in this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

The Senate appropriations subcommittee--responsible for the budgets of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and independent government agencies--did endorse a House decision to deny Clinton funding for his national service program, which provides tuition funds for college students in exchange for volunteer work. The panel also lopped nearly $1.3 billion from the $38.6 billion that the President requested for the VA. The White House has indicated that the President is likely to veto the bill in its present form.

The Appropriations Committee is expected to pass the bill without major changes and send it to the Senate floor, perhaps as early as next week.

At the center of the differences between the House and the Senate is the debate over the degree to which government agencies can order state and local governments and private businesses to follow Washington’s dictates on the environment and social programs.

The House plan includes 17 provisions to prevent the EPA from enforcing certain regulations protecting wetlands, governing automobile emission inspections and setting drinking water standards, among other measures.

The Senate panel accepted only one, a measure prohibiting the environmental agency from requiring states to force employers to draw up car-pooling plans. Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.), subcommittee chairman, indicated that his opposition was based not so much on the provisions’ content as on his concern that the appropriations measure was not the proper vehicle for considering them.

The Clinton Administration took sharp issue with some of the subcommittee’s decisions. For example, it was unhappy with a proposed cut in the Superfund, which pays for cleaning up toxic wastes. The fund would receive $504 million less than the $1.5 billion Clinton had sought.

“On Capitol Hill, splitting the difference between the House and the Senate is the name of the budget game, and in this game the American people will be the losers,” EPA Administrator Carol Browner said. “A 34% cut by House Republicans and a 23% cut by Senate Republicans means Americans will lose vital public health and environmental protections.”