Basic but Divisive Issues Loom for Congress as It Reconvenes : Lawmaking: Budget surpluses, health care and gun control top agenda that highlights parties’ differences.

Social Security. Health care. Tax cuts. School safety. Congress’ looming agenda is packed with kitchen-table concerns that reach deep into the lives of average Americans--a far cry from the more arcane legislative matters that sometimes preoccupy the nation’s capital.

But as lawmakers return this week from their summer recess, President Clinton and Republican congressional leaders must grapple with deep divisions in their approaches to these gut-level issues. Stalemate has reigned so far, and whether the two sides can bridge their differences is Washington’s preeminent guessing game.

Should emerging budget surpluses be used to cut taxes, increase government spending or shore up Social Security and Medicare? How should Washington respond to the health care revolution that has thrust most Americans into managed care plans? What does the spate of violence in California, Colorado and elsewhere around the country say about U.S. culture and gun laws and what, if anything, should be the federal response?

Agreement on such far-reaching questions will be difficult in a climate in which leaders of both parties are hampered by serious political liabilities: Republicans have only a tenuous hold on Congress, with the GOP controlling the House by just a five-vote margin. Clinton, meanwhile, is in the twilight of a presidency marred by impeachment.

“There is very little steam left,” said David Mayhew, a political science professor at Yale University. “No president beyond his sixth year has much clout.”

“This is not a major reform kind of Congress,” said Ed Gillespie, a Republican political consultant.

But in coming weeks, lawmakers may not have the luxury of treading water. Annual spending bills have to be passed by Oct. 1 or the government grinds to a halt. GOP leaders have promised House action this month on a divisive bill to increase regulation of health maintenance organizations. House-Senate negotiators are under pressure to decide whether to push ahead with new gun safety regulations, an issue that continues to be highlighted by incidents such as the August shooting at the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills.

Predicting Congress’ Course Is Risky Task

All this is supposed to happen before Congress’ scheduled adjournment for the year in late October. And what is decided in the next two months may go a long way toward writing the legacy of this legislative session, even though technically it does not end until late next year. Many lawmakers assume that once 2000 begins, election-year politics will make it far more difficult to take action on major issues.

Still, predicting Congress’ course even weeks in advance is a risky business, if the twists and turns of the last year are any indication. At this time last year, no one in Congress had read Kenneth W. Starr’s eye-popping report on Clinton’s affair with intern Monica S. Lewinsky, Newt Gingrich was still speaker of the House, the landscape of Kosovo was unmarred by North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombing and few people outside Colorado had heard of Columbine High School.

Since then, Congress’ agenda has been shaped and reshaped by Clinton’s impeachment, big changes in the leadership of the fragile Republican majority in the House, the war in Kosovo and fallout from school shootings throughout the country.

Although the aftershocks of these surprises still reverberate, Congress is returning to an agenda more reflective of issues deliberately promoted by the two political parties to define their differences.

The gauntlet throwing will begin almost immediately. One of the GOP’s first orders of business will be to send to the White House the $792-billion, 10-year tax cut that Congress passed before its summer break.

Clinton, in his weekly radio address Saturday, repeated his promise to veto the bill. “I don’t think we should do something that would imperil our prosperity or jeopardize our children’s future by forcing crippling cuts in Social Security and Medicare, by failing to seize this opportunity to get America out of debt for the first time since 1835,” Clinton said.

Republicans pointedly postponed sending the tax cut to Clinton to allow GOP lawmakers to use the August recess to promote the bill and, they hoped, drum up support among voters who have seemed blase about the tax-cut plan. Helping Republicans with the message was a platoon of conservative groups, including Americans for Tax Reform, which is running $4 million worth of television ads supporting the GOP tax cut in seven states (California not being among them).

As the recess ends, Republicans are encouraged by some polls that indicate their push is giving the tax-cut issue more prominence. But Democrats say the issue is a washout. Jim Jordan, spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said that polls show the party’s U.S. Senate candidate in Michigan, Rep. Debbie Stabenow, pulling ahead of Sen. Spencer Abraham for the first time--just after Abraham and other Republicans had spent the month advocating the tax cut.

Once Clinton vetoes the tax-cut bill, Republicans will have to decide whether to come back with a more modest proposal--possibly linked to Clinton’s call for a new Medicare drug benefit or other domestic spending--that actually might become law.

But many GOP lawmakers have said that they would rather let their tax-policy differences with Clinton remain unbridgeable, thus spotlighting what is at stake in the choice between the parties in the 2000 election.

Although Republicans could choose to do nothing further on the tax cut, doing nothing is not an option in government spending. Congress must pass 13 annual appropriation bills by the time the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1 or key elements of the government will shut down.

Work on those bills will dominate much of September and will determine the fate of a wide range of programs. For instance, there have been proposals to cut spending for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and for transportation subsidies in California. Seven of the 13 appropriation bills in the works already are facing the threat of presidential vetoes.

The most contentious spending bill is yet to come: Republicans have not even written the one that funds education, health and other social programs that are among Clinton’s top priorities. The GOP bill is expected to propose big cuts in job training, health and safety regulation and Clinton’s plan to hire 100,000 new teachers. The president, in turn, will denounce these cuts as unacceptable and use the leverage of a potential government shutdown to try to force the Republicans to capitulate.

Issues Open Deep Fissures in the GOP

This fall’s agenda is also packed with issues that Republican leaders are addressing somewhat reluctantly. They are politically potent subjects that open deep fissures within the party. Among them:

HMO reform. House GOP leaders have promised action this month on legislation to give patients new rights in dealing with their health maintenance organizations.

More than half the House--a coalition of most Democrats and a sizable faction of renegade Republicans--supports a version of the legislation that is broader than the one passed this year by the Senate. The bipartisan House bill would, among other things, expand patients’ right to sue an HMO, a provision vehemently opposed by health insurers and GOP leaders. Some conservative Republicans are scrambling to find an alternative that they would consider less objectionable.

Campaign finance reform. House and Senate leaders have promised to take up legislation to impose new limits on special-interest campaign contributions. Although GOP leaders oppose the bill, they have agreed to a campaign finance debate to appease renegade Republicans who have joined forces with Democrats in support of the legislation.

The House is expected to approve the bill when it comes up in mid-September, but a filibuster is expected to kill the issue in the Senate, where a companion bill is supposed to come up by mid-October.

Gun control. After the Columbine High School shootings in Littleton, Colo., that left 15 dead, the Senate in May passed an anti-crime bill that includes a number of additional gun regulations, including proposals to require new background checks for people who purchase firearms at gun shows, to ban the import of big ammunition clips and to require trigger locks or other safety devices to be sold with every handgun.

The House version does not include those provisions. Republican leaders are seeking a compromise. The whole issue could die, because some fear that any bill that has enough gun control to pass the Senate would die in the House.

Clinton, in his Saturday address, said he has sent a letter to GOP leaders calling on Congress to pass the juvenile crime bill. Invoking the fatal shootings at Columbine High, Clinton said of Congress: “It shouldn’t take another tragedy to shake them from the summer slumber.”