Election Influences Congress’ Agenda

Congress takes up several bills this week that may have little chance of becoming law but hold huge election-year potential for energizing each party’s political base and stimulating special-interest donors.

The Senate is expected to vote today on the “Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Access to Care Act,” a GOP-backed bill that would curb medical malpractice judgments, but that neither party believes will pass.

Later in the week, the House is expected to pass -- for the third time since 1999 -- a bill that would make a crime in which a pregnant woman was harmed a separate crime against the fetus as well. Called “Laci and Conner’s Law”-- after Laci Peterson, the Modesto woman who was slain, along with her unborn son, Conner -- the bill faces an uphill battle in the Senate.

And the Senate may begin debating a bill to limit the ability of victims of gun violence to sue gun makers and dealers. That bill has a chance of becoming law -- because Democrats are eager not to alienate gun owners in an election year -- but only in a heavily altered form.

As this week’s business is likely to show, Congress in an election year can have more to do with politics and campaign fundraising than with legislation.

“Most of these bills play to the social conservative base or the business base,” said Larry Noble, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, a campaign watchdog group.

The Republicans, who hold majorities in the House and the Senate, “will highlight these [bills] in fundraising appeals and get-out-the-vote drives on how the party has worked hard for issues you care about,” Noble said. In this politically charged environment, he said, “in one sense, it doesn’t really matter whether the bill passes.”

That is expected to hold true through much of the rest of what is scheduled to be a short and light session, with lawmakers recessing early to campaign.

“Both sides in even-numbered years find provisions that they know aren’t going to go anywhere but will have a lot of meaning to their constituency groups,” said a senior Republican Senate aide, speaking on condition that he not be named.

Democrats return to the fray pumped up by a primary season that has showcased their criticisms of President Bush’s record and by an unexpected win in a special election in the South.

Last Tuesday, Democrat Ben Chandler captured a seat vacated by a Republican in Kentucky, beating Alice Forgy Kerr, a Republican who had tied herself closely with Bush. The win fed Democrats’ hopes of narrowing the gap in the GOP-held House in November. Republicans hold 228 seats to the Democrats’ 205, with one independent.

But for now, Democrats are in the minority in both chambers. This largely limits their options to blocking bills in the Senate, where Republicans have a majority of only 1, far short of the 60 votes needed to force a vote.

“Democrats are prepared to work constructively on important issues, but we will not stand by while the majority passes laws that reward their corporate benefactors at the expense of ordinary Americans,” said Todd Webster, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.).

But Democratic filibusters, said Richard Lessner, executive director of the American Conservative Union, raise the question: “Why are all the Democrats stopping so much good legislation from passing the Senate?”

Republicans point out that they accomplished the key elements of their agenda last year: expanding Medicare benefits; boosting funding for the Pentagon to finance the Iraq war and reconstruction; restricting late-term abortions; cutting taxes; relaxing some clean air requirements; and allowing more logging in national forests.

The first item of business this week is a slimmed-down version of a malpractice bill that Senate Democrats blocked from consideration after it passed overwhelmingly in the House. The bill limits punitive damages against obstetricians and gynecologists to $250,000 or twice the amount of economic damages, whichever is greater.

Republicans who support the bill say Democrats should be forced to take a stand on an issue that the GOP says highlights their ties to trial lawyers, who are often big contributors to Democratic campaigns. But many of the strongest proponents of malpractice reform -- including the American Medical Assn., numerous medical specialty groups, insurance companies and large manufacturers -- are among the GOP’s top contributors.

Supporters of caps say they are necessary to hold down malpractice insurance premiums, which they say have skyrocketed because of frivolous lawsuits and multimillion-dollar awards. Opponents argue that insurance companies, which increased premiums in recent years to compensate for a downturn in the stock market, are responsible for any shortages of doctors who left their specialties because of higher rates.

The Senate is expected to vote today on a motion to take an up-or-down vote on the bill. The motion, which requires 60 votes, is expected to fail.

Later in the week, the Senate is expected to take up “Laci and Conner’s Law” if the House, as expected, passes its version.

Many Democrats oppose the bill as a disguised effort to infringe on abortion rights, although supporters say it is merely a crime bill. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) is offering a substitute amendment that would increase the penalty for harming or killing a pregnant woman without designating the fetus as a separate individual.

The Senate may also begin debating a bill this week that would exempt weapons manufacturers from civil lawsuits, a bill the National Rifle Assn. says is its top legislative priority this session. In a measure of how the Democratic stance on gun control has changed since the last presidential election, they are not expected to filibuster the bill.

Instead, Democrats are expected to support amendments to the bill to extend the 1994 assault weapons ban and tighten regulations on purchases at gun shows. But in the House, a number of Republicans have said they would oppose the bill if it included gun control measures.

“I think the votes are clearly there to pass the bill,” said Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the NRA. Describing the bill as necessary to protect gun manufactures and dealers from “a small group of lawyers, politicians and anti-firearms activists that want a blizzard of lawsuits,” he said the NRA was focused on beating back proposed amendments.

But Dennis Henigan, legal director of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said his group was hoping for a filibuster in the Senate. “The gun industry is asking for an exemption from probably the oldest principle of our liability law: that when individuals or industries act negligently, they should be liable for the damage,” he said.

Times staff writer Vicki Kemper contributed to this report.