Congress Plows Through Bills on Way to Adjournment

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

But before leaving for home, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) agreed that the House would debate campaign finance reform next year. He has prevented the House from taking up the issue this year. The Senate already had agreed that it would take up the issue in 1998.

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. The House moved toward action late Thursday on a $30-billion appropriation bill for the departments of State, Commerce and Justice.

Disagreement over abortion and family planning scuttled an earlier agreement between the administration and congressional leaders to begin repayment of the country’s debt to the United Nations, which totals almost $1 billion. The House approved the foreign aid bill that originally contained a plan to initiate the payments after midnight Wednesday. 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 final 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 would keep the board at seven members, all chosen by the president. Both chambers endorsed the plan Thursday.

Showing how much it wanted to leave Washington for the holidays, the Senate had voted in advance to accept the House version of the State, Commerce and Justice appropriations bill. House leaders continued to debate the legislation Thursday evening, including a contentious dispute over permitting the Census Bureau to use computer-aided statistical sampling as part of the national count in 2000.

An agreement delays a final decision on sampling. The method uses statistical projections to determine numbers of the most difficult 10% of the population to count. The method would supplement the standard census 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 would give Republicans--who oppose sampling--plenty of time to kill it before the census. However, the compromise calls for the method to be tested in Sacramento this spring.

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The appropriation bills were 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 the $276.9-billion bill providing funds for the Departments 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 be unable to develop them without Congress’ approval. The administration sees national testing as a cornerstone of its education reform agenda.

Signing the bill into law, 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.”

Since Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, there have been hard-fought partisan battles over appropriations bills. In late 1995 and early 1996, such disputes resulted in shutdowns of the federal government.

“This is the first normal session end with a Republican majority,” Gingrich told reporters Thursday night. Asked to grade the Congress’ achievements during the first half of the 105th Congress, Gingrich, a former college history professor, said: “Incomplete.”

Smiling, he quickly revised the grade. “I’d give us an A compared to most Congresses and a B- compared to our expectations,” he said.

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And, in a concession to Democratic pressure, Gingrich said he would permit a full-throated debate on campaign finance reform early in next year’s session. 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 the wake of revelations of campaign fund-raising irregularities in the 1996 elections, some 100 campaign finance reform measures were proposed this year. But not one was permitted to be debated or to come to a vote 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 1996 Loretta Sanchez-Robert K. Dornan race in Orange County. He said “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.” Democrat Sanchez beat veteran congressman Dornan in tight contest.

In other action Thursday, Congress 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 38 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.