Senate Rejects Law to Oust HIV Carriers From Military

Handing a big concession to President Clinton on a politically sensitive issue, the Senate voted Tuesday to repeal a controversial law requiring the Pentagon to discharge military personnel infected with the virus that causes AIDS.

The repeal was approved without debate and by voice vote as an amendment to a far-reaching appropriations bill which would provide spending authority for the rest of this budget year to the many government agencies that have been staggering along for months on temporary funding. The appropriations bill passed, 79 to 21.

In another concession to Clinton, the Senate also voted, 81 to 19, to add back $487 million for environmental programs and $17 million for the president’s cherished national service program. The amounts, however, were not as high as Clinton had sought.

But before the bill can become law, House and Senate Republicans and the White House will have to resolve major differences over such hot-button issues as education, abortion and the environment, as well as the AIDS law.

The law requiring discharge of military personnel found to be HIV-positive was included in a defense bill that Clinton signed in February despite his opposition to the requirement. In signing that bill, Clinton pledged to work for repeal of the discharge requirement and ordered the Justice Department not to defend the legislation in court.

A provision to repeal the law was introduced by Sens. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and William S. Cohen (R-Maine) and had gathered 54 co-sponsors in the Senate.

An aide to Senate Appropriations Chairman Mark O. Hatfield (R-Ore.) said that the amendment repealing the discharge requirement was included at Cohen’s request and that opponents seemed to shy away from a fight because it was clearly a losing cause. “Nobody wanted a roll-call vote,” the aide said.

Kennedy said that the Senate’s action “clearly demonstrates that this misguided policy’s days on the statute books are numbered. The reality is that military personnel with HIV are serving their country effectively and should be allowed to continue to serve.”

The repeal provision has much stiffer opposition in the House, where it could send the entire appropriations bill down to defeat. “It will meet a dead end when it hits the House,” said a spokesman for Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove), author of the discharge requirement. “It won’t be something we will go for.”

The House has passed a more austere version of the spending bill, and a House-Senate conference committee will have to reconcile the differences between the two versions.

Clinton has threatened to veto the House-passed bill. A White House official said that the Senate version was an improvement, although “there are still some problems with the bill.”

The official cited amendments allowing more logging on public lands, limiting federal protection of wetlands and other environmental provisions.

The latest temporary spending bill, which provides funds to nine Cabinet departments and dozens of smaller agencies, lasts only through Friday. Lawmakers are expected to extend that deadline for another week while they work on the longer-range legislation.

The repeal provision is just one more flash point in what were already expected to be heated negotiations among Republicans themselves and between Congress and the White House as they struggle to resolve the budget impasse. The current fiscal year is already half over, and many federal agencies--including the departments of State, Commerce and Health and Human Services--still do not have their final budgets.

Clinton is expected to discuss ways to break the logjam when he meets today with Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), his all-but-certain opponent in the presidential contest, and House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.).

Administration officials have complained that both the House and Senate versions of the bill did not provide enough money for education, environmental protection and other social programs that are Clinton priorities.

Bowing to growing political pressure on those issues, the Senate last week adopted an amendment that added back $2.7 billion for education programs.

Tuesday’s vote to restore $487 million for the Environmental Protection Agency was a bipartisan compromise that fell short of the $966 million in add-backs sought by Clinton.

Dole said Clinton had indicated in a Tuesday morning telephone conversation that he was encouraged by those additions. But the Senate majority leader stopped short of saying that Clinton would drop his veto threat if they were preserved in conference.

Dole, returning to the Capitol having all but sewn up his party’s presidential nomination, indicated a great desire to get the 1996 budget problems behind him.

“We need to sweep away this appropriations problem and get into 1997,” Dole said.

However, House and Senate negotiators face a daunting challenge in reconciling differences among Republicans themselves, let alone producing a bill that can pass both the House and Senate and be signed by the president.

For example, the Senate’s additional money for education and the environment may please the White House but it may also make it unacceptable among the more conservative Republicans in the House.

And antiabortion provisions included in the House version are opposed not only by the White House but by a majority in the Senate. House Republicans are far more insistent than their Senate counterparts on making additional funding for Clinton priorities contingent on his acceptance of a broader budget agreement--a linkage that the White House finds unacceptable.