‘People’s Business’ to Go on, GOP Senators Vow

Caucusing behind closed doors, nervous Senate Republicans on Tuesday began crafting a legislative agenda for the new Congress, vowing to cut taxes and reform Social Security and Medicare even as they start the year with a trial to determine whether to remove President Clinton from office.

“The people’s business will go forward,” said Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho), chairman of the GOP policy committee. “You’re going to see a very busy Senate during the period of the impeachment [trial] and following that.”

But such work, at least for several weeks, will have to be scheduled around the trial, which is to start Thursday at 1O a.m. PST and may go well into the evening on most days.

With less than 48 hours before the trial’s opening arguments are to get underway, the Senate’s 55 Republicans met with some sense of urgency to talk issues--lest they come across as single-minded partisans out to remove a Democratic president from office.

The session, which had been scheduled for last Thursday but was delayed because of trial preparations, included a briefing from GOP pollster Linda DiVall.

She described post-election survey results indicating that, in the November vote, the GOP had failed to get a persuasive policy message across to voters. Republicans had expected to increase their majorities in Congress but instead lost five seats in the House and failed to gain any in the Senate.

“The message was we ought to have a message,” Craig said after her briefing.

“We didn’t do a good job in communicating,” added Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine). “We’re not going to allow our legislative agenda to be sidetracked by this trial.”

But in one ominous sign for the GOP, the caucus failed to reach a consensus on what has been the party’s perennial signature issue: tax cuts.

Although their leadership promised anew to enact a major tax cut, freshman Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) said after the session that he is dead-set against doing so.

“Can we be honest? There is no surplus,” he said in an interview, arguing that the appearance of extra money in the federal budget is created only by the fact that the Social Security program is currently taking in more money than it is paying out.

“There is really no room . . . for reducing taxes,” said Voinovich. “It’s not in the cards.”

There were other signs Tuesday of the inevitable collision of the impeachment trial and the legislative agenda.

By prior designation, senators are scheduled to introduce their legislative proposals and priorities on Jan. 19--the same day Clinton is scheduled to deliver his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress. But also on that day the president’s lawyers are scheduled to begin their formal defense in the trial.

Despite the trial disruptions, Craig argued that lawmakers actually could end up accomplishing more than in previous Januarys.

Normally, most congressional activity in the year’s first month is ceremonial in nature. “When this impeachment process is done, I think we will be able to tell all of you that the people’s business was advanced--maybe even more than it would have been in a normal year,” Craig said.

Times staff writer Janet Hook contributed to this story.