Cabinet Scrambles For Fast-Track Votes As Session Nears End Congress Blocks Testing, Passes Bill To Overturn Line-Item Vetoes

Congress voted Saturday to block President Clinton’s national testing plan for now and plowed through a pile of other bills as Cabinet members scoured the Capitol for the decisive votes for the White House’s teetering trade initiative.

In their first weekend session of 1997, the House and Senate tidied up lingering business large and small in hopes of adjourning for the year tonight. Signaling that Congress has the muscle to overturn Clinton’s biggest single batch of line-item vetoes, the House voted overwhelmingly to revive 38 military construction projects Clinton erased last month.

Hoping to break a logjam that has stalled the last three spending bills for the new fiscal year, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted unanimously to combine them into a single $44 billion measure. The bill would finance the departments of Commerce, Justice and State, plus foreign aid and the District of Columbia’s local government.

But Republicans and Democrats alike in the House said they were unhappy with its provisions on overseas abortions and procedures for the 2000 census, and gridlock remained. Fearing that the administration would cut deals with Republicans on abortion and the census to win their support on trade, House Democratic leaders asked Clinton to halt such bargaining until after the trade vote.

“We know you share our concerns” on abortion and the census, the top Democrats wrote to Clinton.

Saturday’s main action was behind the scenes, where Republican leaders were cooperating with Clinton in the trade fight.

Amid opposition by House Democratic leaders, they were backing the president’s request for “fast-track” powers that would make it easier for him to win congressional approval of trade treaties. A climactic House vote was planned for today, and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, Commerce Secretary William Daley and other top administration officials prowled the corridors seeking support before the House adjourned Saturday evening.

“All of the focus now is how do we get the votes for that,” said House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas.

Both the House and Senate worked well into the night before adjourning, putting over the rest of their work for what lawmakers hoped would be he final day of the 1997 session.

Senators voted 91-4 to ship Clinton an $80 billion measure financing education and health programs that boosts spending for Head Start and biomedical research but gives Republicans a victory by postponing at least until 2000 the president’s proposed tests of fourth- and eighthgraders.

Across the Capitol, the House voted 352-64 to revive 38 military construction projects across the country that Clinton killed by line-item veto on Oct. 6. Lawmakers gave him that power only last year, but now that he’s used it against dozens of home-state projects, many say he’s wielded it unfairly.

“The fact is our committee did not pork up this bill,” said Rep. Ron Packard, R-Calif., chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that wrote the military construction measure.

Since the Senate approved a similar bill Oct. 30 by 69-30, Saturday’s House vote showed lawmakers are likely to have the two-thirds majorities required to override the vetoes.

Under the new law, Congress needs just simple majorities to send a measure to the president overturning his line-item votes. Should he veto that measure as Clinton has promised, the House and Senate would need two-thirds majorities to prevail.< Democratic and Republican negotiators in the Senate agreed on legislation overhauling the FDA and prepared to bring it to the floor. The bill is designed to speed the approval of drugs.

And by voice vote, the Senate approved a bill designed to move foster and other children to adopted families faster, including financial incentives for states as children are placed.

Even before the day’s first votes, Clinton used his weekly radio address to drum up support for his trade initiative.

But even though most House Republicans were ready to back Clinton, few Democrats were. Besides arguing that lowering trade barriers would cost some Americans their jobs, many Democrats worried that the White House was secretly securing GOP votes by bartering deals regarding overseas abortions and procedures for the 2000 census.

Black and Hispanic Democratic lawmakers said they were outraged that Clinton would consider a deal with Republicans to block scientific sampling in the 2000 census. The Census Bureau says sampling should help prevent anticipated undercounts of minorities, while Republicans say the technique could be used by the administration to create congressional districts prone to support Democrats.

“Mr. President, don’t sell us out over fast track,” Rep. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., said at a news conference.