Congress Plows Through Bills, Adjourns for the Year

Congress completed its 1997 session Thursday, resolving controversies over Amtrak reform and the next census and sending the last of its annual spending bills to President Clinton.

But before leaving for home until January, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) reversed course and said he would permit full-throated debate on campaign finance reform early in next year’s session. He has prevented the House from taking up the issue this year.

With the Senate already scheduled to take up the controversy early next year, Gingrich’s announcement sets the stage for what promises to be a knock-down, drag-out battle over a high-stakes issue on which members of Congress hold strong--but often clashing--views.

In a final flurry of votes, lawmakers approved expenditures of $13 billion for foreign aid and $855 million in federal assistance for the government of the District of Columbia. Late Thursday, the House approved the last piece of legislation, a $30-billion appropriation bill for the departments of State, Commerce and Justice.

Disagreement over abortion and family planning ended an earlier agreement between the administration and congressional leaders to begin repayment of the U.S. debt to the United Nations, which totals almost $1 billion. The House approved a foreign aid bill after midnight EST Wednesday after it scuttled a plan to begin the payments. The Senate passed the legislation Thursday--even as a U.N. showdown with Iraq, prompted by that country’s expulsion of U.S. weapon inspectors--continued to escalate.

In another provision that could have serious consequences, the foreign aid bill dropped a planned $3.5-billion credit line for the International Monetary Fund. The credit would have helped stabilize some foreign currencies at a time when Asian markets are in turmoil.

In a pair of unanimous voice votes, the House and Senate approved a deal to provide $3.4 billion to Amtrak for operations and improvements through 2000--if the troubled railroad makes changes in some of its labor agreements.

The Senate approved the measure last week, but some GOP House members demanded that Congress have a say in the composition of the railroad’s board. House Democrats, representing organized labor groups, had refused to yield on that point.

Late Wednesday, a deal emerged that saved the legislation. It would keep the board at seven members, all chosen by the president in consultation with Congress. The Senate would then have to approve the choices. Enactment would also release $2.3 billion for capital investment for the rail line, money that was set aside in the balanced-budget deal earlier this year.

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Showing how eager it was to end the session, the Senate had voted in advance to accept the House version of the State, Commerce and Justice appropriation bill. House leaders debated the legislation late Thursday after their Senate colleagues had departed, a debate that included a contentious dispute over permitting the Census Bureau to use computer-aided statistical sampling as part of the national count in 2000.

An agreement that allowed the bill to advance delays a decision on whether to use sampling to supplement the standard census head-count. The sampling method uses statistical projections to determine numbers of the most difficult 10% of the population to count. Minorities and urban poor are often undercounted by traditional census methods.

The undercount in the 1990 census hurt California more than most states because of its high proportion of these groups. Congressional districts and federal funds for many programs are apportioned to states according to the population count.

Democrats and minority groups tried without success to kill the bill because it does not guarantee that sampling will be used in the 2000 census. They maintained that the legislation gives Republicans--who oppose sampling--plenty of time to kill the measure before the census. However, the compromise calls for the method to be tested in Sacramento this spring.

The appropriation bill was the last of 13 spending bills that Congress must pass each year to keep the government functioning through the next fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

At the White House on Thursday, Clinton signed a $276.9-billion bill providing funds for the Department of Labor and the Department of Health and Human Services. Final approval of the bill had been stalled for more than a month as House and Senate conferees argued over a Clinton-sponsored provision for national testing of the nation’s schoolchildren in reading and math.

Under a compromise, the development of national tests will be delayed while experts study whether existing state and commercial exams can be used to determine whether students are performing adequately in reading and math. But even if the review ultimately concludes that uniform national tests are preferable, the administration would not be permitted to develop them without Congress’ approval.

The administration sees national testing as a cornerstone of its education reform agenda.

Signing the bill, Clinton said he had “the privilege of signing into the record books what is plainly the best year for American education in more than a generation.”

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Gingrich’s decision to allow debate on campaign finance reform comes after about 100 reform measures--introduced in the wake of revelations of campaign fund-raising irregularities in the 1996 elections--died without debate or votes in either chamber.

“There is really no consensus about where we should be going [on campaign reform], not even in our own party,” said Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-Ohio). “And so we have a lot of hard work ahead of us.”

But Gingrich, who has opposed most reform measures, was optimistic about the process if not the results. “It will be a thorough, exhaustive process,” he said. “We hope to have a very fair bipartisan process of voting when we bring the bills to the floor.”

On another matter, Gingrich cited allegations of voting by noncitizens in the disputed 1996 Orange County race in which Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) narrowly defeated former Rep. Robert K. Dornan.

The speaker said that “there is, in fact, growing support, I think, on the House floor for the idea of some kind of a . . . photograph or other identification [to identify] voters.”

Congress also authorized the Treasury to produce a gold-colored dollar coin to replace the Susan B. Anthony silver dollar, and President Clinton vetoed a bill that would have restored 38 items that he had pared from a military construction bill earlier this year using his line-item veto power.

The projects in 24 states would cost a total of $287 million. A two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress will be needed to override Clinton’s action.

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Times staff writers Edwin Chen, Janet Hook and Faye Fiore contributed to this story.