Political Play in Senate Leaves 3 Bills in Wings

WASHINGTON —  The legislative process came to a sudden halt in the Senate on Wednesday as Republicans and Democrats divided into hostile factions behind the two leaders poised to represent their parties in the presidential election this fall.

President Clinton and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, the rival candidates, traded acrimonious charges in the debate over a proposed increase in the minimum wage and a cut in the gasoline tax. Efforts to find common ground collapsed under election-year politics.

The partisan tension in the chamber was palpable throughout the afternoon. Nerve ends were raw and the ritualistic courtesy of the Senate broke down repeatedly.

“Maybe we should hire a band too,” said a disgusted Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.), fuming at the state of paralysis. “It’s like a campaign event in there, or maybe a convention.”

Clinton called a short-notice White House press conference in the early afternoon, ostensibly to offer the hand of bipartisan cooperation to congressional Republicans.

But with the other hand, he delivered a sharp partisan slap, accusing Dole of Kansas and House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) of inserting “deadly poison pill” provisions into popular bills to provoke him to veto them.

He offered to work with his political antagonists on the minimum wage and gas tax relief, along with welfare reform, immigration, health care and balanced-budget legislation.

But then he quickly changed his tone and accused Dole and Gingrich of promoting an agenda consisting solely of “extremism, deadlock and government shutdowns.”

Dole immediately called a press conference to mock Clinton’s “bipartisan, whatever, statement.” He urged Clinton to order his chief Democratic operatives in the Senate--Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts--to abandon the filibusters and other parliamentary maneuvers that are blocking GOP initiatives.

“We think what we’ve offered is good medicine,” not poison pills, Dole said, addressing himself directly to the president he wants to unseat.

“We’ll continue to send you common-sense legislation,” Dole said, daring Clinton to veto the bills and provide fodder for campaign advertisements in the fall.

With the election only six months away, the capital was prepared for a congressional session heavily freighted with campaign politics.

But the stage production of acid-laced partisanship, enveloping virtually all business moving through the political process, still made for an impressive spectacle.

As senators heatedly haggled over votes on the minimum wage, a gas tax rollback and a labor law repeal, tensions were so high that at one point Sen. John McCain of Arizona chided a fellow Republican, Conrad Burns of Montana, the acting presiding officer, for an apparent slight by erroneously allowing Kennedy to continue speaking when McCain thought he should have been recognized.

And for Kennedy to have knowingly violated Senate rules, McCain continued, “doesn’t help comity”--as if there were any courtesy in evidence Wednesday on Capitol Hill.

Said McCain: “It’s getting very polarized around here. . . . Things are getting rather tense.”

When business finally ground to a halt Wednesday morning, Dole’s lined but well-tanned countenance was a study in frustration.

This was to have been the week that he marshaled through the Senate a gas tax repeal and a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget. These may be relatively small victories in themselves, but they would be huge boosts for a campaign that has wandered since Dole clinched the GOP presidential nomination in March.

Instead, the Democrats once more thwarted the will of Dole and the GOP majority in the Senate through a variety of parliamentary maneuvers and a refusal to bargain on the two items that Dole wanted most badly: the 4.3-cent federal gas tax repeal and a labor law measure that would allow creation of worker-management “teams” outside formal union channels.

Kennedy denounced the labor measure, the so-called TEAM act, as the “anti-workplace democracy act” and called it a thinly disguised effort by business interests to bust unions.

Dole wanted to attach the measure to the 90-cents-an-hour increase in the minimum wage that Clinton wants, thus Clinton’s charge that Dole is lacing legislation with poison pills and his angry insistence that Congress send him “clean” bills to raise the $4.25-an-hour minimum wage and rescind the 4.3-cent gas tax.

Clinton said that if he gets the minimum wage and gas tax bills in simple form, he will sign them. But he pointedly refused to say whether he would accept a gas tax cut unless accompanied by the minimum wage increase.

“If they want a temporary reduction in the gas tax, the way to do it is to end the logjam; give us a clean vote on the minimum wage increase,” Clinton said, implying that the two are inextricably linked.

“I will be glad to sign both bills,” Clinton said later in the 15-minute session with reporters. “They ought to vote them out clean. At least they should give us a clean vote on the minimum wage.”

Dole on Tuesday proposed that the Senate vote on a single package combining the TEAM bill, the minimum wage increase and the repeal of the 1993 gas tax, which was imposed as part of Clinton’s 1993 deficit-reduction package. He seemed to waver on severing the three measures Wednesday.

Asked at his press conference whether he would permit three votes on the three “clean” measures, Dole responded: “Three separate bills? I might even subscribe to that, but they [Democrats] won’t let that happen. They’ll filibuster the TEAM act. If we can get an agreement to vote on three separate bills, that’s one thing. I’ve already given that agreement, to have three separate bills--divide the amendment three ways.”

White House Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta immediately seized upon Dole’s statement and said that the White House accepted Dole’s proposal to vote separately on the three bills.

The White House believes that the minimum wage measure and the gas tax repeal would pass--and give Clinton a golden opportunity to please Democratic constituencies while claiming credit for a gas tax cut for consumers.

Dole, realizing his tactical error, backtracked later on the Senate floor.

Challenged by Kennedy to bring the three measures to separate votes, Dole replied that he would not negotiate through the press. “I said I might. I might not. I won’t,” the majority leader declared.