Congress OKs Major Health, Pay Measures

Capping a frenetic week of legislative action, Congress passed major measures Friday that would make health insurance portable, give 10 million Americans a raise by increasing the minimum wage and tell families the contents of water from their taps.

A hastily drafted measure to fight terrorism won House approval, but it did not include provisions sought by President Clinton and anti-terrorism authorities. Disputes over those elements delayed action in the Senate, which failed to act on the measure before it followed the House into recess for the rest of August.

On virtually every other pending piece of major legislation, however, Congress acted Friday, ending months of partisan division just at the moment lawmakers return to their districts to begin campaigning in earnest for the November elections. The president has said he will sign all the measures into law.

The flurry of law-making, which included approval of sweeping welfare reform earlier this week, deadened accusations that the 104th Congress, billed as revolutionary by its Republican leaders, had instead turned into a “do-little Congress.”

Rep. Frank Riggs (R-Windsor) summed up the mood as members departed for home. This has been a “remarkable and historic week,” he said. “We’ve made it easier to move from welfare to work. We’re making work pay more than welfare by raising the federal minimum wage. We’re making it easier for American workers to get and keep acceptable insurance.”

The health care bill was passed by the Senate on Friday, 98 to 0. It would ensure Americans access to health insurance even if they lose their jobs or have the kinds of major illnesses that have prompted insurance companies in the past to deny them coverage.

The bill also would launch a four-year experimental program allowing as many as 750,000 families to establish medical savings accounts that could be used to set aside money tax free to pay for medical expenses. It also would allow self-employed individuals to deduct 80% of their medical insurance costs by the year 2006--up from the current 30%.

The scope of the measure passed Friday fell far short of reforms sought by the Clinton administration three years ago. Some lawmakers bemoaned the failure of Congress to include a provision forcing insurers to treat mental illness on a par with other medical afflictions, but even so, they were eager to praise the overall achievement.

“This is not small,” said Sen. John D. “Jay” Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.). “It’s not universal health coverage. But it is going to affect 25 to 30 million Americans . . . and it’s extraordinary it’s being done.”

Comparing the bill passed Friday to the Clinton proposal, which faced withering opposition in Congress, Republican Sen. William V. Roth Jr. of Delaware said: “This legislation does not harm the system in an effort to repair it.”

Health insurance analysts believe that at least 25 million people a year could benefit from having such “portable” health insurance. Without guarantees that they could keep their health insurance after a job loss or a change in employers, many of those Americans either have remained at their jobs, lost their health insurance policies or have taken their chances that they would be accepted by another insurer.

An even greater number of people--as many as 80 million--are believed to have ailments that could subject them to exclusion from coverage because of preexisting conditions.

“Across the landscape of America, there isn’t a family that has not been affected . . . by the kinds of fear and anxiety” raised by health insurance access addressed in the bill, said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), one of the bill’s authors. “We will be helping to lift that sense of anxiety and fear” when the legislation becomes law, he added.

“Although this is not all of what some of us want, this is a meaningful piece of legislation,” Kennedy declared. Vowing to continue the work of health care reform, Kennedy called the legislation “the beginning of a journey, not an end.”

The minimum wage hike, which passed the House, 354 to 72, and Senate, 76 to 22, was the first such increase in five years. The 90-cent raise, from $4.25 to $5.15 and hour, would take place in two 45-cent increments--the first on Oct. 1 and the second on Sept. 1, 1997.

The action was a clear victory for Democrats, who battled for months before persuading a number of moderate Republicans in the House to support the increase. The Democrats argued Friday that low-wage workers had lost $5.6 billion in the 18 months since Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) declared that he would fight an increase in the minimum wage with “every fiber of my being.”

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“Too bad it took 18 months to shame the Republicans into doing the right thing,” said Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco). “In the meantime, the American workers have paid the price for Republican extremism.”

For their part, Republicans stressed that only through their efforts was the wage increase legislation expanded to include provisions to help small businesses cut costs. Without those changes, they said, the increase would have forced business to cut jobs, throwing low-wage earners out of work.

“We knew that just raising the minimum wage could be devastating if you didn’t do the other things that are in this package,” argued Rep. Bill Goodling (R-Pa.). “When we got the whole package together we had a wonderful election-year package.”

The measure also would give parents adopting children a credit of as much as $5,000 for the next five years and would permit stay-at-home spouses to open individual retirement accounts, which had been available only to wage earners.

In another action with broad voter appeal, the House passed an anti-terrorism bill, 389 to 22, but it lacked provisions that Clinton sought after the explosion of Trans World Airlines Flight 800 off Long Island last month and the explosion last week of a pipe bomb at the Olympic park in Atlanta. Democrats said that the measure approved by the House is hollow because it would not give broader authority for wiretaps or authorize the Treasury secretary to study the effectiveness of chemical tracing elements in black and smokeless powder.

“The House leadership caved in to the right-wing extremists and the [National Rifle Assn.],” Rep. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) told reporters. The NRA opposes the provisions.

“What we’re doing here is an act at best of deception and at worse of cowardice,” he added later on the floor of the House.

But Armey argued that the measure would help fight terrorism by strengthening airport security without infringing on Americans’ civil liberties as the expansion of wire tapping authority would. “This is a time to show America that we are a nation with a government that understands and cares about the threat and understands and cares about our citizens’ liberties,” Armey said.

Among other things, the measure would require the Federal Aviation Administration to establish performance standards for security personnel, develop better methods for spotting terrorists and allow the use of airport improvement funds to go for security enhancements.

But Democrats blocked passage of the measure in the Senate because it fell short of Clinton’s goals.

The drinking water measure, which cleared the House on a vote of 392 to 30 and the Senate by 98 to 0, would require public utilities for the first time to disclose the type and amounts of bacteria and chemicals coming from their taps.

“Public health protection has been strengthened,” declared Sen. John H. Chafee (R-R.I.), chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, which crafted the legislation in the Senate.

The measure would create a $7.6-billion revolving loan fund--authorizing about $1 billion a year for seven years--from which local water agencies would be able to draw to improve decaying municipal and rural water systems.

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Sponsors of the legislation hope that the money will ease problems with decaying pipes and treatment facilities that have been blamed for drinking water contamination problems across the country. This summer, unhealthy levels of bacteria were found in water serving the nation’s capital because of aging pipes, forcing authorities to urge some citizens to boil their water.

While it is uncertain how much money Congress actually will appropriate for the fund each year, the amount of money available for improving water systems in both large cities and small communities should be significantly increased.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Carol Browner called the bill “a major step forward in ensuring safer drinking water for all Americans.” She said that many of the bill’s provisions had been sought by the Clinton administration.

For the first time, local water agencies will be required to disclose annually in easily understood reports to their customers what chemicals and bacteria are in the water coming out of their taps. They also must give 24-hour public notification when a contaminant poses a significant risk.

Some of the enthusiasm for the bill was tempered after Friday’s votes because of uncertainty over the first installment into the revolving fund--$725 million that was to have been made available this fiscal year. The money had been made contingent on the bill passing by July 31, a deadline that was not met.

Chafee said he is confident that the $725 million will be tacked onto the 1997 fiscal year budget when it is considered in September. But some Democratic lawmakers and most environmentalists, who otherwise praised the bill, were not as certain.

Times staff writers Janet Hook, Marc Lacey and Faye Fiore contributed to this story.

* RECIPIENTS’ VIEW

Welfare mothers see reform as chance for better life. A12