To Pass Spending Bills, GOP Drops Abortion Pill Fight

Hoping to limit election-season budget clashes, Republicans dropped demands for a ban on abortion-inducing drugs and prepared Friday to jettison some other controversial items from must-pass spending bills.

In closed-door strategy sessions, GOP House and Senate leaders agreed to begin purging provisions that divide the two chambers and that in some cases were pitting Congress against President Clinton and could produce vetoes, participants said.

“Some of these things we won’t get this year, recognizing we’ll come back next year with stronger majorities” in Congress and achieve them, said House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas).

He was referring to Republicans’ expectations that they will gain seats in the House and Senate in the Nov. 3 elections.

“We will wind up these bills to the greatest extent possible to make them signable,” said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska).

Several participants said language would probably be dropped that would, in effect, oust the Federal Election Commission’s general counsel, Lawrence Noble. He has angered Republicans by steering his agency toward investigating the conservative Christian Coalition and GOPAC, the political action committee that supports Republican candidates.

In a victory for conservatives, also expected to be killed was a provision that would ease the way for about 40,000 Haitians who illegally entered the country to apply for residency.

Republicans were planning to hold on to other items so they could become part of high-level bargaining, probably next week, over about five spending bills for the new fiscal year bearing the most intractable disputes. These items included conservative demands to bar federal aid to groups that lobby to liberalize overseas abortion laws.

Minus the abortion pill restrictions, the House approved the $60-billion agriculture spending bill by a 333-53 roll-call vote, comfortably above the 290 votes lawmakers would need to override a veto.

Clinton has threatened to veto that measure because he says its $4.2 billion to help farmers battered by low grain prices and bad weather is too low.