Lame-Duck Congress May Flail About in Florida Fight

For weeks, Florida has been overrun with members of Congress flocking to join the postelection fracas over the presidency.

This week, the circus returns to Washington.

Congress reconvenes today for a lame-duck session already postponed once in hopes that the outcome of the presidential race would be settled. But with that contest still in turmoil, Capitol Hill will offer another raucous forum for the fight over who gets the keys to the White House.

That will add to the frenzy among lawmakers as they greet the arrival of Hillary Rodham Clinton, begin navigating the uncharted waters of an evenly divided Senate and try to jump-start stalled legislative issues that range from workplace safety to immigration policy.

“Ringling Brothers is moving from Florida to D.C.,” said John Feehery, spokesman for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.).

The lame-duck session poses the first real test of promises by many congressional leaders to pursue a more bipartisan path in the wake of the hard-fought election. Some remain hopeful that President Clinton can reach a valedictory budget deal with Congress that would boost education spending, increase the minimum wage and resolve other pending legislative issues.

“I think we can do maybe a small tax cut with the minimum wage,” and perhaps add back some funding for Medicare, Sen. John B. Breaux (D-La.) said Sunday on the CBS news show “Face the Nation.”

But others fear it may prove impossible for Congress to compromise in the middle of the presidential dust storm between Democratic candidate Al Gore and Republican nominee George W. Bush. One possibility is that lawmakers will pass a bill that essentially puts off any major decisions until after the inauguration of the president.

“I think we’re in for deadlock,” said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles). “It’s going to be very hard to move forward and get anything done if [the presidential election] is unresolved.”

Many of the legislators will be returning to Washington via Florida, where dozens of them have spent time on the front lines of the public relations war raging around the contested presidential election.

A key question is whether congressional Democrats, once they come together in Washington, will maintain their united public front in support of Vice President Gore’s legal challenge to the Florida results--or whether they will clamor for a concession. If Gore fights on, Republicans are planning to use Capitol Hill as a sound stage for their argument that he should accept defeat in Florida.

“I will do everything I can to use the bully pulpit of the House” to press that case, said Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.).

More than just speeches are being planned. Rep. Stephen Horn (R-Long Beach) plans a hearing today on whether the Bush team is being improperly denied access to taxpayer-funded offices for transition work. Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) is pushing legislation that would force Florida to count thousands of disputed absentee ballots from overseas military personnel.

Meanwhile, Congress will begin grappling with fallout from the results of the Senate elections. The new Congress that convenes in early January initially will include 50 Democratic senators and 50 Republicans--a balance that could be maintained, depending on which presidential ticket ultimately claims the White House. That would raise baffling new questions about how to run an institution that traditionally abides by majority rule. Republicans will still be nominally in charge--either because Republican Dick Cheney is vice president and casts the tie-breaking vote or because Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) leaves the Senate to be vice president and is succeeded by a GOP appointee, giving Republicans a 51-49 advantage.

But under either circumstance, Democrats are clamoring for more power. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) are expected this week to begin negotiations that could determine whether the chamber runs cooperatively or is paralyzed by gridlock.

Sen. Robert G. Torricelli (D-N.J.) said that power in the chamber should be shared.

“The division of these committees is going to have to be equal,” he said on “Face the Nation,” adding: “There’s going to have to be co-majority leaders. The leadership of the Senate is going to have to reflect the voting of the people of the states, and that was an evenly divided Senate.”

Adding to the pageantry will be the arrival of the nation’s first lady as the senator-elect from New York. Mrs. Clinton will join fellow Democrats on Capitol Hill as the two parties meet to elect leaders for the new Congress. Senators say that they will try to treat her as an equal, but her star power will be obvious: She will be trailed by Secret Service agents as well as packs of reporters and photographers.

The biggest headache for GOP leaders will be plotting an exit strategy for a holdover Congress that many people think has worn out its welcome.

“We are a leftover Congress doing a warmed-over agenda in conjunction with a lame-duck president,” said Eric Ueland, a top aide to Senate Assistant Majority Leader Don Nickles (R-Okla.).

Before election day, Congress adjourned without finishing work on four of the 13 appropriation bills needed to finance the government. A series of short-term spending bills have kept the government running. The latest runs out Tuesday. That deadline means there could be a quick answer to the basic question facing GOP leaders: Do they want to negotiate a budget deal with Clinton or do they want to pass a stopgap funding measure that extends into next year and leaves the dangling issues for the new president and Congress?

On that, Republican leaders have been divided. House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and others argue against compromise with Clinton, assuming that Texas. Gov. Bush will prevail in the presidential contest. Others, including House Speaker Hastert, have been more eager to seek compromises.

Bush, for his part, said last week that he had no intention of telling GOP leaders how to handle the lame-duck session.

“I think that [Lott and Hastert] are plenty capable themselves of figuring out how to end this legislative session,” Bush said. “And should Dick [Cheney] and I become the vice president and the president, we will have a strategy to deal with the Congress--the next Congress.”

Democrats, meanwhile, are seeking to turn up the pressure to finish the remaining legislation. Ranit Schmelzer, spokeswoman for Daschle, said Friday that the party’s congressional leaders and the White House have agreed on a strategy of seeking a stopgap spending bill of only 48 hours.

“What the Republicans have to realize is we have a president until Jan. 20,” said Senate Democratic Whip Harry Reid of Nevada.

The key issues before the lawmakers include:

Education: House and Senate budget negotiators agreed to a compromise on funding for the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and Education that included a funding increase of more than 20% for public schools--including at least $1 billion for a Clinton initiative to help repair school facilities. But the accord was scuttled by GOP leaders who criticized unrelated provisions on job safety rules. Some Republicans, including DeLay, now want to renegotiate the education funding. Democrats want to stick with the original deal and say that GOP backtracking would contradict Bush’s campaign pledge to make education a priority.

Ergonomics: The job safety issue that angered some GOP leaders centers on Clinton-backed regulations setting workplace ergonomic standards to prevent repetitive-motion injuries. After the Labor-HHS compromise collapsed, the Clinton administration went ahead and issued the rules. Republicans will renew their effort for a provision making it easier for the new president to junk the rules.

Immigration: Democrats have been demanding legislation that would grant amnesty to illegal immigrants who are longtime U.S. residents or more recent refugees from Central America and Haiti. Republicans proposed a more limited amnesty. Some Democrats say there is more room to compromise now than before the election, in which both parties viewed Latinos as a key constituency. “It had more preelection political significance than postelection policy significance,” said a senior Senate GOP aide. In addition, lawmakers are considering reforms to expand an agricultural guest-worker program and allow certain farm workers who are illegal immigrants to apply for residency.

Tax cuts: Most assume a stripped-down GOP tax cut bill is dead, in part because Republicans calculate they can get bigger and better reductions from a Bush administration. Likely to die with the current bill is a provision to restore $28 billion in Medicare funding to hospitals and other health care providers that have felt shortchanged by a 1997 budget-cutting law.

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Times staff writers Nick Anderson and Richard Simon contributed to this story.