Tougher Drunken Driving Law Staggered States’ Rights Cited As Panel Blocks Vote

A proposal to toughen drunken driving laws around the country was dealt a serious blow Tuesday night after a House panel voted to squelch the measure by keeping it from a vote on the floor.

The decision by a voice vote of the Rules Committee was a hard-fought lobbying victory for beer distributors and restaurant chains. They had argued that the proposal, which would have forced states to adopt a stricter definition of drunken driving or risk losing federal highway funds, would have cut into their sales of alcoholic beverages.

The proposal, already passed in the Senate, would have lowered the legal limit for intoxication to a blood-alcohol level of 0.08 percent, as opposed to most states’ standard of 0.10 percent.

The panel’s decision left millions of members of the group Mothers Against Drunk Driving, which has lobbied for the measure on Capitol Hill and in state legislatures for 14 years, wondering where they should turn next.

By keeping the proposal off the floor, Republicans sought to fend off an emotional debate on drunken driving and block a vote on an amendment that members may have found difficult to oppose. The Senate had approved an identical amendment to its highway bill on March 4 by a 62-32 vote. But with the House panel’s rejection of the amendment, its chances of survival through conference between the two houses grew dim.

The House is expected to take up the $218 billion highway bill today.

“One of the reasons why 17,000 Americans were killed on our roads last year is because the liquor industry writes our nation’s drunk driving laws,” said Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., who sponsored the amendment. “I’m absolutely disgusted.”

But Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., who pushed the measure in the Senate, said he would work to revive it in conference negotiations on the highway bill, and added that the battle was far from over.

Lowey’s provision would have caused states that did not adopt the lower blood-alcohol limit to risk losing 10 percent of federal highway aid. Fifteen states now use the 0.08 percent standard, and 33 set their limits at 0.10. Two states, Massachusetts and South Carolina, do not have numeric standards.

Lowey said she had gathered 120 co-sponsors for her amendment. But she faces a tough fight from many Republicans, including Rep. Bud Shuster of Pennsylvania, the chairman of the Transportation Committee, who vehemently oppose her amendment. They say it tramples on the rights of states to set their own drunken driving laws. Democrats, too, spoke against the measure, arguing that stricter blood-alcohol levels are not the only way to combat drunken driving.

As an alternative, Shuster submitted a less stringent measure as part of his highway bill. It would provide incentives for states to toughen drunken driving laws, with no strings attached. The Republican leadership backed that idea, which would provide grants to states that voluntarily adopted the 0.08 law.

The House majority leader, Rep. Dick Armey of Texas, said Tuesday that Republicans had a problem “telling the states in so many words, you either conform to this or you lose your funding.”

During a brief debate Tuesday in the Committee on Rules, it became apparent that states’ rights would serve as the rallying point against the amendment. Republican Rep. Scott McInnis, a Colorado conservative and a member of the panel, called it “federal blackmail,” a term also used by liquor and restaurant lobbyists in the advertisements they took out.

Lobbying on both sides of the issue was frenzied in recent weeks. Advocates said they were simply outgunned and outspent by the liquor and restaurant industries, which have contributed generously to Democrats and Republicans.