1996 SENATE KEY VOTES
Telecommunications
The Senate, like the House, adopted the conference report on legislation providing for a sweeping overhaul of the nation's telecommunications regulations (S652) Feb. 1 by an overwhelming margin. The Senate vote was 91-5; R 51-1; D 40-4 (ND 30-4, SD 10-0).
Yet the vote almost did not happen, as the Senate struggled to complete a years-long process of building the complicated legislation. The law's purpose was to tear down regulatory barriers that separate global telecommunications into several discrete industries -- long distance carriers, local telephone companies, cable and broadcast.
As 1996 began, the measure had been stalled in conference for five months and its problems seemed to be growing, not shrinking.
A deal negotiated between the White House and key lawmakers in late December had been halted by restive House Republicans; they complained that GOP negotiators had given up too much ground on issues being pushed by Democrats, such as limits on foreign ownership of American telecommunications companies and on the number of broadcast stations a single company could own.
Before those issues were resolved, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan., clouded the picture further.
Dole had long complained that television broadcasters were slated to receive access for free to spectrum frequencies -- allowing them to set up new channels worth billions of dollars. He noted that other telecommunication businesses, such as cellular phone and satellite television services, had to pay top dollar for their portions of the airwaves.
In January, Dole stepped up his opposition, insisting he would not allow a vote on the S652 conference report until the bill explicitly prohibited what he called a giveaway of electromagnetic spectrum to the television broadcasters. In doing so, however, Dole was going against clear majorities in both the House and Senate, which favored the free spectrum allocations.
It briefly appeared that the bill might face the same fate as a telecommunications overhaul bill that foundered at the end of the 103rd Congress. But that possibility acted as a wake-up call to the bickering parties, who Decided they were too close to closure to allow the bill to sink.
The House Republicans dropped their opposition to proceeding on the bill. Dole, whose focus had turned almost completely to his presidential campaign, said he would be happy to deal with the spectrum issue separately. (Hearings on the spectrum issue were held, but legislation never moved.)
Once it was given the green light to come to the Senate floor, S652 received almost universal praise. Unlike much of the major legislation in the 104th Congress, the telecommunications bill never provoked much partisan passion.
Its opposition was limited to a few isolated pockets. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., for instance, argued that the bill did not go far enough in deregulating telecommunications. Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., believed it went too far. Democratic Sens. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, Paul Simon of Illinois and Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin all expressed deep reservations about the constitutionality of the bill's provision restricting obscene material on computer on-line services, or "cyberpornography."
President Clinton pulled out all the stops when he signed the bill (PL 104-104). He held a signing ceremony at the Library of Congress on Feb. 8 and used a high-tech pen to write his name.
Farm Subsidies
The sweeping Republican proposal to overhaul federal farm subsidy programs received a major boost Feb. 7, when the Senate passed the seven-year farm bill (S1541) by a 2-1 ratio despite intense opposition from Midwestern Democrats.
The so-called Freedom to Farm bill was a top priority of many Republicans, who wanted to break the historic link between government subsidies and commodity prices. The measure aimed to move the nation's agricultural production toward the free market, giving farmers broad planting flexibility and setting up a system of fixed, Declining subsidies that could be phased out after 2002.
The proposal was derided by many Democrats, including Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota. They said it would give farmers too much money in times of high market prices and too little when prices dropped, thereby unraveling the government's historic safety net for farmers.
In the days leading up to the Senate vote, Daschle appeared to have the edge. His Democratic allies successfully tied up the Senate with a filibuster. Frustrated Republicans tried to invoke cloture and cut off debate, but fell seven votes short Feb. 1.
Two key Republicans, Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas and Agriculture Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, appeared to concede defeat. Under pressure to hit the campaign trail -- both men were running for president -- they quickly offered to let the Democrats dictate terms, as long as the resulting bill was passed by the evening of Feb. 1.
Eager Democrats began discussing a proposal to keep at least some of the traditional subsidies, while reauthorizing nutrition and conservation programs administered by the Agriculture Department.
Yet, as the evening of Feb. 1 wore on, the Democrats appeared to fumble away the initiative. Either because of unresolved technical issues, or because of a split in the caucus, they asked for a delay of several days.
Republicans accused Democrats of stalling. In the days that followed, GOP leaders withdrew their offer and focused instead on a divide-and-conquer strategy that would lure Democrats from the Daschle camp.
They picked up several Northeastern lawmakers by promising to back food stamps, conservation programs and Northeastern dairy supports. They also enticed the two Louisiana Democrats, J. Bennett Johnston and John B. Breaux, with higher rice subsidies, and swayed Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois with higher soybean loan rates.
Daschle, overwhelmed, dropped his filibuster and fell back instead on trying to amend the bill on the floor.
In a last-ditch effort to blunt the Republican measure, Democratic leaders tried to rally their troops behind an amendment by Byron L. Dorgan, D-N.D., that would have required farmers to plant a government-subsidized crop in order to receive the fixed payments. But the amendment failed on a tie vote, 48-48.
With 20 Democrats abandoning Daschle to vote for the farm bill, the measure passed by a vote of 64-32: R 44-6; D 20-26 (ND 13-23, SD 7-3).
Although Daschle and other Midwestern Democrats continued to hammer away at the farm bill's provisions, they never again got a chance to make substantial changes in the legislation, which was signed into law (PL 104-127) in April.
Cuba Sanctions
As 1995 drew to a close, congressional opponents of the Cuban regime of Fidel Castro had grown bitter and frustrated. Facing a Senate filibuster, they had been forced to scale back a package of harsh economic sanctions (HR927) aimed at punishing foreign companies that invest in Cuba.
But on Feb. 24, 1996, the bill received a tremendous boost from an unlikely source -- Castro's own military. That day, Cuban MiG fighters shot down a pair of U.S.-registered Cessna civilian aircraft, killing four Americans from an anti-Castro group.
After the incident, most opposition to the measure melted away. When House and Senate negotiators sat down to reconcile differing versions of the bill Feb. 28, they agreed to include a controversial section that had provoked the filibuster.
That provision permitted Americans to file suit in U.S. District Court against foreign companies that acquire or otherwise "traffic" in U.S.-owned properties that have been confiscated by Castro's government.
On March 5, the Senate, which had blocked the sanctions bill just four months earlier, easily adopted the conference report. The vote was 74-22: R 47-4; D 27-18 (ND 19-17, SD 8-1). Token opposition came from a handful of moderates and liberals.
There was no real mystery behind the Senate's turnaround. Anger at Castro was running so high that President Clinton, who opposed the bill in its earlier form, had little choice but to go along with the conference report. Although U.S. allies that trade with Cuba issued strong objections to the bill, there was a bipartisan desire to punish Castro.
"Farewell Fidel, that's the message of this bill," said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms, R-N.C., who sponsored the legislation along with Indiana Republican Rep. Dan Burton.
At the administration's behest, the conferees on the bill agreed to allow the president to delay implementation of the "right of action" indefinitely. But otherwise, the final bill was stronger than either the House or the Senate versions.
It barred executives with companies found to be trafficking in expropriated U.S.-owned properties, along with their families, from entering the United States. The legislation also codified the 34-year-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, which meant that the president could not lift the trade ban without the approval of Congress.
Given the supercharged atmosphere for Cuban issues and Clinton's desire to court conservative Cuban-American voters in advance of November's election, a presidential veto was out of the question. "It's fair to say that events made overriding a veto an imaginative exercise," Richard A. Nuccio, the president's special adviser for Cuba, said before the Senate vote.
The House adopted the conference report March 6. Clinton signed the measure into law (PL 104-114) on March 12.
Product Liability
Senate adoption of the conference report on a product liability bill (HR956) marked a striking, if short-lived, triumph for proponents of the sweeping legislation after years of failure.
For more than a Decade, advocates of overhauling the nation's laws on faulty or dangerous products had pushed for new national limits on legal damages that could be awarded to consumers. Manufacturers say that costly litigation stifles innovation and prevents them from bringing to market safe products that would benefit consumers.
When Democrats controlled Congress, all such measures had been bottled up by Democratic House committee chairmen or had run into filibusters led by Ernest F. Hollings, D-S.C., and other opponents.
In the 104th, with Republicans in charge of both chambers and public awareness of the issue growing, proponents believed their time had come.
Their efforts were rewarded March 21, when the Senate adopted the conference report on the legislation, which would have for the first time set a single national standard for faulty product lawsuits. The vote was 59-40: R 47-6; D 12-34 (ND 9-27, SD 3-7).
The path had been cleared the day before, when the Senate voted, 60-40, to end a filibuster of the conference report.
On final passage, Republican Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania was the only senator who voted to end the filibuster but voted against adoption of the conference report. Democrat Bob Kerrey of Nebraska voted against ending the filibuster but did not vote on adoption.
The House easily cleared the bill March 29. It would have rewritten the rules governing product liability suits in state and federal courts and placed limits on damage awards intended to punish negligent behavior.
For large businesses, the awards would have been limited to the greater of $250,000 or two times the total of economic damages, such as lost wages, and non-economic damages, such as pain and suffering. Awards for small businesses would be the lesser of the two limits.
Proponents' victory was only temporary, however. President Clinton vetoed the bill, which he said would have gone too far in restricting legal redress for damages caused by faulty products, and the House upheld the veto.
Trial lawyers and consumer groups said the bill would have barred the courthouse door to consumers with legitimate claims against manufacturers and would have taken away a deterrent to marketing faulty products.
Line-Item Veto
A historic bill to give the president the equivalent of the line-item veto was among the most significant new laws produced by the 104th Congress -- and among the very few upon which hard-line deficit-cutting Republicans and President Clinton could wholeheartedly agree.
But when the Senate prepared to vote on the conference report on the line-item veto bill (S4 -- PL 104-130) last March, the chamber faced other, more immediate, concerns, chiefly a critical bill (HR3136) to raise the federal government's borrowing authority. (House key vote 9, p. 3383)
As a result, the line-item veto measure became a pawn in a legislative chess match that seemed to drain the debate of much of its drama. That was extraordinary, considering that Congress was giving away a piece of its cherished power over the purse and handing Clinton enormous leverage in his dealings with Capitol Hill, should he choose to wield it.
Starting Jan. 1, Clinton will have the power to automatically rescind individual items in spending bills, certain targeted tax breaks and new entitlement programs included in bills that he has otherwise signed into law. It would, in effect, take a two-thirds vote in both houses to reverse such a presidential "veto."
The bill had a torturous journey into law.
House leaders had attached the line-item measure to the essential but very unpopular bill to raise the debt ceiling as a way to build support for the latter measure among conservatives. But Senate leaders wanted to bring the conference report on the line-item veto to the floor on its own, both for procedural protection and because of the importance of the measure. So the House orchestrated a situation in which the line-item measure was stripped from the debt-limit bill after the House received the combined conference report from the Senate. (The procedure automatically cleared the line-item bill for the president by "deeming" its adoption by the House.)
On March 27, the Senate adopted the line-item conference report on a vote of 69-31: R 50-3; D 19-28 (ND 16-21, SD 3-7). The debate was brief and devoid of suspense. The bill had considerable Democratic support and backing from Clinton, so it was clear that any potential filibuster by opponents such as Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., would have been easily quashed.
The maneuvering ended a difficult path into law for the bill, and the saga required some creative leadership from Majority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan. The final version of the measure followed the "enhanced rescissions" framework favored by the House and by Senate supporters such as John McCain, R-Ariz. But when the Senate first acted on the measure in March 1995, that framework was dropped because of opposition from key Republicans such as Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico and Ted Stevens of Alaska. Instead, the Senate originally passed a line-item veto bill that would have required each appropriations bill to be broken into hundreds or thousands of mini-bills that the president could veto -- an unwieldy and probably unworkable procedure.
It took grudging acquiescence by Domenici and Stevens to adopt the House's approach, and that came only after it was beginning to prove embarrassing to Republicans in general -- and presidential candidate Dole in particular -- that GOP foot-dragging was holding up the bill, a key plank of the House GOP's "Contract With America."
Health Insurance
Congress enacted a health care bill (PL 104-191) in 1996 after the Senate narrowly voted to exclude controversial medical savings accounts from the legislation. Had the Senate vote gone the other way, the health bill likely would have died.
President Clinton had made the health insurance portability bill a high priority. By itself, the measure -- which generally guaranteed that workers could maintain insurance coverage if they left or lost their jobs -- had unanimous support. But Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas and other Republicans wanted to add medical savings accounts, which would allow individuals with high-deductible health plans to accrue tax-deductible savings to be used for medical expenses. Dole introduced an amendment to add the accounts -- as well as other provisions -- to the underlying bill.
The tally on the Dole amendment was expected to be close, so Clinton dispatched Vice President Al Gore to the Senate to break a tie if necessary. The vote, besides Deciding the fate of the bill, also tested the leadership skills of Dole, who was running for president.
The vote was procedurally complicated: on whether to strip the medical savings accounts from the Dole amendment to the underlying bill (HR3103, formerly S1028).
The underlying bill's sponsors, Labor and Human Resources Committee Chairwoman Nancy Landon Kassebaum, R-Kan., and the panel's ranking Democrat, Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, strongly opposed including the controversial accounts. Kassebaum feared they would kill the health bill, and Kennedy contended that the special accounts would favor the healthy and wealthy at the expense of the poor and sick.
The Senate backed Clinton, Kassebaum and Kennedy, defying Dole. Senators voted April 18 to strip the medical savings accounts 52-46: R 5-46; D 47-0 (ND 37-0, SD 10-0).
Gore, sitting in the president's chair, allowed Dole to hold the vote open well past the standard 15 minutes while the majority leader worked to bring straying Republicans over to his side. Dole swayed William S. Cohen of Maine, who switched his vote, as well as Bill Frist of Tennessee, who withheld his vote until the end.
But Dole finally gave up, realizing that none of the five remaining Republicans who had voted to strip the savings accounts would switch to support him. The Dole amendment -- which included an increase in the deductibility of health insurance for the self-employed and provisions to make long-term care insurance and expenses tax deductible -- was then adopted, 98-0.
If the Senate had not voted to strip the special accounts from the Dole amendment, opponents appeared ready to mount a filibuster, possibly dooming the overall bill.
The vote was a clear defeat for Dole and a victory for Clinton.
The final version of the legislation did include medical savings accounts, but only a small demonstration project. Dole, who resigned from the Senate to run for president full time before Congress cleared the bill, received little credit for the popular legislation.
Budget Resolution
The Senate's defeat of a bipartisan budget plan proposed by a centrist coalition marked the coalition's strongest showing yet.
Although the group fell four votes short of winning a majority for its budget plan -- which sought to eliminate the deficit in seven years without deep cuts in social programs -- that was closer than even the coalition's leaders expected and amounted to more support than the group had ever received for its legislation.
The budget plan was offered on May 23 as an alternative to the Senate Republican budget resolution (SCONRES57). The GOP plan would have produced a balanced budget in six years, but it relied on deeper cuts than the bipartisan plan in social programs such as Medicare, the government's health insurance for the elderly, and in Medicaid, the government's health plan for the poor and disabled.
The final vote on the coalition's plan was 46-53: R 22-30; D 24-23 (ND 18-19, SD 6-4). While the core of the centrist support came from liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats, the plan drew a surprising amount of support from conservative Republicans and several Democrats generally considered liberals.
Among the more conservative Republicans who voted for the plan were Daniel R. Coats and Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, Lauch Faircloth of North Carolina, Thad Cochran of Mississippi, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Orrin G. Hatch of Utah.
Among the more liberal Democrats who voted for it were Daniel K. Akaka and Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii, Barbara Boxer of California, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, Patty Murray of Washington and Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island.
The bipartisan coalition Decided that the key to getting support from both parties was to make at least some of the spending cuts in programs benefitting the wealthy and to target the bulk of the tax cuts to middle-income taxpayers. To do that, the coalition's plan proposed increasing the amount that the wealthy would pay for Medicare and reducing the income-eligibility threshold for a $500-per-child tax credit that both parties were proposing in their budget plans. The centrist plan would have reduced projected spending on Medicare by $154 billion, on Medicaid by $62 billion and on discretionary spending by $268 billion, and would have given a net tax cut of $105 billion.
Another essential element of the bipartisan budget was the controversial Decision to change the way the government uses the Consumer Price Index to calculate the annual cost of living adjustments in Social Security payments. Under the centrist budget, $126 billion would have been saved primarily by reducing the annual Social Security benefit increases and allowing tax brackets, which are indexed for inflation, to rise more slowly. The tax bracket change would have had the effect of pushing more taxpayers into higher brackets.
The centrists' budget resolution was the result of months of discussions by a core group of fewer than a dozen members led by John H. Chafee, R-R.I., and John B. Breaux, D-La. Once the proposal was complete, both recruited other senators to join the group but neither expected that they would get support from nearly half the Senate. The strong showing for their budget resolution presaged the success the group had later in 1996 in getting portions of its welfare overhaul proposal accepted as compromise language in place of provisions offered by Republicans.
Balanced-Budget Amendment
As one of his last acts before leaving the Senate to run full time for president, Majority Leader Bob Dole held a revote on a constitutional amendment to require a balanced federal budget.
In sharp contrast to the initial debate -- the outcome of which gave the Kansas Republican perhaps his greatest disappointment in the 104th Congress -- the second time around had a perfunctory, going-through-the-motions feel.
In March 1995, with the amendment (H J Res 1) falling one vote short, Dole switched his "aye" to "nay," so he could call for another vote. At the time, supporters had real hopes of finding the 67th vote they needed to win adoption of the amendment and send it to the states for ratification.
But when Dole called the revote June 6, he lost ground. The Senate killed the amendment, 64-35: R 52-1; D 12-34 (ND 7-29, SD 5-5).
In 1995, Dole had assembled 66 votes. Since then, however, Rep. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., an opponent of the amendment, had succeeded GOP supporter Bob Packwood. And supporter Jim Exon, D-Neb., had angrily announced he was switching his vote in response to Republican efforts to repeal the 4.3-cents-per-gallon gasoline tax increase enacted by Democrats in 1993.
In the weeks before the vote, proponents such as Larry E. Craig, R-Idaho, reached out to Democrats such as Wyden and Ernest F. Hollings of South Carolina, who said they could support the amendment if it were modified to exempt Social Security taxes and payments from deficit calculations. (The Democrats wanted a "firewall" blocking Social Security surpluses from being used, in effect, to finance general government operations.)
Republican negotiators offered to meet Democrats halfway and segregate Social Security from the rest of the budget beginning in 2006, instead of 2002, as Democrats sought. But that wasn't enough to bring Wyden and Hollings on board.
Republicans had hoped to get a political boost from the second defeat, but the issue came and went with little fanfare, in part because the Senate was tied up in knots over politically resonant issues such as whether to increase the minimum wage. During the presidential campaign, Dole tried to blame President Clinton for killing the amendment, but the issue had little impact.
In retrospect, however, many Republicans say the debate over the constitutional amendment in fact produced results, even though the amendment itself failed. The GOP's successful effort to produce a balanced-budget bill flowed directly out of the first debate over the amendment. And, in the end, Republicans were successful in getting Clinton to agree to their goals and timetable, even if they were unable to reconcile their differences over substance.
Campaign Finance
The Senate's failure to vote on a campaign finance overhaul bill (S1219) reflected the shared ambivalence of Congress and President Clinton toward rewriting Watergate-era laws in an election year.
Despite the nearly universal view that the current system was out of control, a bipartisan campaign finance bill, sponsored by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Russell D. Feingold, D-Wis., was doomed from the start.
It languished for months in the Senate despite the sponsors' threats to attach it to other legislation. Finally in June, the new Senate majority leader, Republican Trent Lott of Mississippi, mollified the sponsors by allotting time for the Senate to consider the issue. Election year pressures and a crowded legislative schedule made it obvious to senators before the vote that campaign finance reform would not happen in 1996. Clinton's eleventh-hour endorsement failed to sway a single senator.
Prospects for the bill grew worse as the National Right to Life Committee and the Christian Coalition lobbied against the legislation, contending that its definition of advocacy and its limits on the practice would threaten their voting guides and education activities.
The last blow was administered by Lott, who opposed the bill and pressured GOP senators to do the same in a test of their loyalty.
On June 25, after three days of debate, the Senate rejected a motion to invoke cloture and thus limit debate on the bill, by a vote of 54-46: R 8-45; D 46-1 (ND 37-0, SD 9-1). Three-fifths of the total Senate (60) is required to invoke cloture.
After the vote, Lott immediately withdrew the bill from the Senate floor.
Four years earlier, Clinton had made campaign promises to overhaul the system, but the effort was relegated to the bottom of the presidential priority list. The new Republican majority of 1994 hoped to succeed where Democrats had failed, but the increased spoils for the victors quickly dampened any enthusiasm for change.
McCain and Feingold had portrayed their legislation as a starting point in overhauling a system many voters perceived as a means for special interests to buy influence.
The bill would have banned political action committees and would have provided incentives, such as free broadcast time and reduced postage rates, to candidates who complied with spending limits. The legislation also would have banned "soft money," the unlimited funds that national political parties raise from corporations, unions and other sources to spend on party-building activities.
Leading the opposition to the bill was Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who cast the legislation as an infringement on constitutional rights of free speech. He dismissed the notion that the bill would put challengers on par with incumbents in the money chase created by political campaigns.
"You cannot create a level playing field; it is impossible," McConnell said.
Minimum Wage
By the time a bill to raise the minimum wage reached the Senate floor, its passage should have been a cinch.
GOP leaders were eager to end four months of Democratic attacks and legislative guerrilla warfare that had tied the Senate in knots. The battle over the minimum wage had slowed work on 1997 spending bills to a crawl. And the wage raise -- bitter to conservative Republicans, who said it would reduce employment -- had been sweetened considerably by a package of business tax cuts likely to be the only significant tax legislation to pass the 104th Congress.
But with all that going for it, the minimum wage increase -- which the House passed May 23 -- still faced a major hurdle when it reached the Senate floor July 9. Republicans planned to attach a conservative amendment that had been denounced by Democrats as a poison pill.
The wage bill (HR3448) sought to raise the federal mandatory minimum from $4.25 an hour to $5.15 in two stages, with 50 cents going into effect July 1, 1996, and another 40 cents added July 1, 1997. The outcome of a straight up-or-down vote on raising the minimum wage was not in doubt. Democrats said that a raise in the wage, which had not been increased since 1991, was overdue; enough moderate Republicans, primarily from the Northeast, sided with the Democrats to ensure passage.
But an amendment by Christopher S. Bond, R-Mo., threatened to derail legislation that even conservative opponents were ready to accept. The provision would have exempted businesses with less than $500,000 in annual sales from the wage raise. It also would have delayed the bill's effective date until Jan. 1, 1997, and allowed employers to pay all new employees a sub-minimum training wage of $4.25 an hour for the first six months, twice as long as the 90 days stipulated in the House version of the wage bill.
Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., made it clear that liberal Democrats would vote against any wage increase that included the Bond provisions. Their defections, coupled with "no" votes from conservative Republicans adamantly opposed to raising the minimum wage, would have ensured its defeat -- and a resumption of Democratic warfare. President Clinton had also issued a veto threat.
But it was not clear how moderate Republicans would vote on Bond's amendment. After all, the amendment was less sweeping than a 1991 bill introduced by Dale Bumpers, D-Ark., that would have exempted some very small businesses from paying any minimum wage at all. That bill, which ultimately failed, had been cosponsored by 14 Democrats who were still in the Senate in 1996.
Bond's amendment ultimately failed, 46-52: R 46-5; D 0-47 (ND 0-37, SD 0-10). The five Republicans who crossed the aisle to vote with a united Democratic front against the amendment were Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado, Alfonse M. D'Amato of New York, Mark O. Hatfield of Oregon, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and James M. Jeffords of Vermont.
When a subsequent amendment by Kennedy failed by the same margin, passage of the wage raise and tax cut package was assured. Kennedy's amendment would have shortened by half the time that teenage workers could be paid a sub-minimum training wage and extended wage increases to waiters and other tip-earners. Had the amendment been adopted, it could have discouraged moderate Republicans from voting for final passage. The vote on final passage was 74-24.
The final version of the minimum wage legislation (PL 104-188) raised the hourly minimum wage to $4.75 on Oct. 1. The wage will reach $5.15 on Sept. 1, 1997.
Nuclear Waste Dump
The July 31 Senate vote to establish a temporary nuclear waste dump in the Nevada desert appeared to be a blow to the bill's most fervent opponents: the state's Democratic senators, Richard H. Bryan and Harry Reid. The passage of S1936 came after a dogged three-month filibuster mounted by the Silver State's senators.
But in defeat, Bryan and Reid were able to claim victory. President Clinton was on their side, and the Senate vote to pass S1936 was short of the two-thirds that supporters would need to override a threatened veto. That fact alone was enough to dissuade House Republican leaders from even taking up the bill for consideration.
The Senate vote was 63-37: R 50-3; D 13-34 (ND 7-30, SD 6-4).
The bill was the latest chapter in Congress' effort to find a repository for the highly hazardous waste products that have been piling up in temporary holding areas at the nation's nuclear facilities.
The measure would have instructed the Department of Energy to begin taking possession of some of the nation's spent nuclear reactor fuel within six months of enactment. Electric utilities would have begun shipping up to 60,000 metric tons of waste to a temporary dump at Nevada's "Yucca Mountain" site, 100 miles outside Las Vegas, before the end of the century.
Supporters -- including utilities, other elements of the nuclear power industry and most congressional Republicans -- said the legislation was vital, if the federal government was to live up to the 1982 law requiring it to take responsibility for civilian nuclear waste by 1998.
But the nuclear waste threat apparently had not reached critical mass in 1996. Along with 34 Democratic senators, three Republicans -- John H. Chafee of Rhode Island, Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado and Daniel R. Coats of Indiana -- provided crucial votes to keep the waste out of Nevada.
Chafee's vote swung on the environmental issue. Environmental groups said the bill set too low a safety standard for the Nevada waste site and exposed the nation to potential disasters during transportation of nuclear waste.
Coats' vote was more personal. He was trying to win passage of legislation to permit state and local governments to bar the dumping of garbage from other states. Under the circumstances, he could hardly vote to foist nuclear waste on Nevada.
Democratic unity was maintained in part because of presidential politics. Clinton -- who was influenced on the issue by Nevada's Democratic governor, Bob Miller -- said he opposed the bill because Yucca Mountain is the only location currently being considered for a permanent nuclear-waste repository; the siting of a temporary storage facility, he said, would compromise ongoing scientific studies of the site's suitability.
But Clinton also wanted to win Nevada's four electoral college votes. A threatened veto of a bill considered public enemy No. 1 by Nevada residents could only help. Clinton went on to carry the state by a narrow margin.
Generally, Democrats who voted for the temporary dump -- such as Carol Moseley-Braun and Paul Simon of Illinois, Carl Levin of Michigan, Patty Murray of Washington and Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont -- had serious nuclear waste problems in their states. Many faced strong pressure from their home-state utilities.
But the nuclear power industry failed to make the waste disposal issue resonate beyond those states in which it was most pressing.
Welfare Overhaul
The Senate on Aug. 1 cleared a bill that replaced six Decades of federal welfare policy with a new reliance on the states, ending the government's guarantee of providing welfare checks to all eligible low-income mothers and children. The lopsided vote came only after previous attempts to enact similar measures went down amid partisan disagreements.
President Clinton had announced the day before that he would sign the bill (HR3734) despite his reservations, and the House easily adopted the conference report shortly thereafter. The Senate, which had lurched to and from bipartisanship on the issue in the 104th Congress, concluded its action with Republicans unanimously favoring the legislation and Democrats split. The vote to adopt the conference report was 78-21: R 53-0; D 25-21 (ND 17-20, SD 8-1).
The Senate's bipartisan interest in enacting welfare legislation had been thwarted before. After House Republicans passed a bitterly contested welfare bill (HR 4) in March 1995, a Senate coalition of moderate Republicans and Democrats trimmed some of the more radical elements from it, picking up significant Democratic support. But Democratic backing largely vanished when GOP conferees ignored them while working out differences between the House and Senate versions.
As a result, Clinton twice vetoed GOP welfare plans -- on Dec. 6, 1995, as part of the deficit-reducing budget-reconciliation bill (HR2491), then on Jan. 9, as a free-standing welfare bill (HR 4). He complained that they were too harsh, more likely to hurt children than to help welfare recipients get jobs.
There seemed to be little enthusiasm in either party to revive the legislation until Feb. 6, when the National Governors' Association endorsed recommendations to overhaul welfare and Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for the poor. Medicaid provisions had been part of the reconciliation measure.
The welfare bill still seemed unlikely to be enacted, however. While Clinton was willing to end an individual's entitlement to welfare, he was strongly opposed to ending the entitlement for Medicaid, which Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan., insisted upon.
But when Dole left the Senate in June to campaign for the presidency full time, GOP leaders succumbed to pressure from their own ranks and dropped the Medicaid portion of the bill. A growing number of Republicans wanted to give Clinton a clean shot at the welfare bill and were prepared to either share credit with him for overhauling the system or blast him for defending the existing program.
Once again, a coalition of moderate Republicans and Democrats massaged the welfare bill a bit in the Senate. Their biggest victories were making sure that welfare recipients would remain eligible for Medicaid and ensuring that states could not gain control over their food stamp programs by choosing to receive their federal money in a block grant.
Even so, some Democratic opponents spoke in almost apocalyptic terms when describing the measure's potential impact on poor children. And as the Senate vote began, about 10 protesters shouted, "Shame! Shame!" and blew whistles from the visitors' gallery until police removed them.
Throughout the final debate, Republicans placed less emphasis on the bill's savings -- $54.6 billion through fiscal 2002, mainly from cutting food stamps and aid to legal immigrants -- than on their revolutionary attempt to end welfare as an entitlement and push welfare recipients into the work force.
Gay Rights
The socially conservative 104th Congress cast a surprisingly close vote on a civil rights bill for homosexuals. On Sept. 10, the Senate narrowly defeated a bill (S2056) that would have outlawed workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation. The vote likely would have gone the other way if Sen. David Pryor, D-Ark., had been in town to vote. Pryor's vote for the bill would have allowed Vice President Al Gore to cast the tie-breaking vote in favor of it.
The near-miss may mean the bill will pass sometime soon, though supporters would have their hands full. The incoming Senate is slightly more conservative than the one that narrowly rejected S2056. It has two more Republicans, and two GOP moderates who supported the bill have been replaced by more conservative lawmakers.
House leaders, meanwhile, have never shown any interest in the bill, and House rules do not give members of the minority party the leverage they have in the Senate to bring things to the floor.
Nevertheless, the near-victory in one chamber, even in a conservative Congress, was hailed by gay rights organizations as a significant victory. The vote was 49-50: R 8-45; D 41-5 (ND 35-2, SD 6-3). To be sure, it was taken at the end of the Congress when it was clear the bill would go no further than the Senate.
The workplace rights bill was offered as a quid pro quo for bringing another bill, HR3396 -- PL 104-199, to the Senate floor. That bill, which restricted same-sex marriages, had overwhelming support and passed easily. Its opponents, led by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., could not block the measure, but did get a separate vote on the workplace bill.
The workplace vote, in conjunction with HR3396, served several functions. It suggested that while lawmakers opposed sanctioning marriage -- and all the rights and privileges that come with it -- for gay couples, they were more divided on how civil rights issues should apply to gay individuals.
The vote gave gay rights groups something to cheer about in what for them was a clearly unfriendly Congress. And it saved President Clinton from some of the heat he would have taken from gay Democrats.
Clinton supported the same-sex marriage bill. The position made political sense for winning moderate and swing voters, but ran the risk of alienating his base. The workplace bill gave Clinton a gay rights bill to champion and provided an escape valve for gay rights groups that did not want to start a fight with Clinton.
After the vote, when gay rights activists were asked about Clinton's support of the same-sex marriage bill, they generally changed the subject to his support for workplace rights. Clinton also played down the same-sex marriage bill, signing it into law over a weekend, with little fanfare.
Abortion Curbs
By sustaining President Clinton's veto of legislation banning so-called partial-birth abortions, the Senate halted abortion opponents' efforts to outlaw a specific abortion procedure for the first time.
Congress often votes on abortion-related issues, but they usually involve a variation on the basic question of a woman's right to have one, as guaranteed by the Supreme Court in the landmark 1973 case, Roe v. Wade. The debate on the late-term abortion bill (HR1833) was unique. It forced senators to Decide whether to protect a specific abortion procedure that much of the public finds unacceptable.
Anti-abortion lobbyists mounted an extensive nationwide campaign -- using graphic descriptions -- to pressure lawmakers to support the ban. They contended that the procedure was abhorrent, with some saying it amounted to killing babies. They used direct mail, advertising and church leaflets, and enlisted religious leaders, including key Roman Catholic clerics and other high-profile public figures. Opponents of the ban called upon women who had had the procedure to explain why it was necessary, as Clinton had done when he vetoed the bill. They said it was relatively rare, and was needed to protect the life or health of the woman -- sometimes to protect her ability to have a child later.
The Senate was the last barrier to enactment of the controversial legislation. Both chambers had passed the bill, and the House on Sept. 19 had overridden the president's April 10 veto. The Senate on Sept. 26 rejected the override attempt 57-41: R 45-6; D 12-35 (ND 7-30, SD 5-5)
The vote lacked suspense because the initial Senate vote to pass the bill did not draw enough support to override a threatened presidential veto. On Dec. 7, 1995, the Senate passed the legislation 54-44, many votes short of the two-thirds majority needed for an override.
The measure would have made it a federal crime for a doctor to perform a type of late-term abortion known in the legislation as a "partial-birth" abortion, except to save the woman's life. Clinton said the exemption should have been broader: It should have allowed the abortion to protect the woman's health, as well as her life. As the bill defined it, the partial-birth procedure takes place when a doctor partially "vaginally delivers a living fetus before killing the fetus and completing delivery."
Under the bill, doctors who performed these late-term abortions would have faced fines and up to two years in prison. The measure exempted the woman from criminal penalties and would have allowed the woman's parents and the prospective father to sue the doctor for damages if the woman was a minor.
Though the bill was not enacted, abortion opponents Declared victory in the debate, satisfied that they had trained public attention on the discomfiting specifics of abortion and away from the more philosophical question of the right to have one. Both abortion opponents and abortion rights supporters expect the next Congress to refight the issue.