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Subject: Foley Pledges Early Action on Three Bills That Were Vetoed by Bush<By David S.
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 92 04:42:49 EST
Message-ID: <40.1992Nov24.044249@AmeriCast.com>
Lines: 93

Foley Pledges Early Action on Three Bills That Were Vetoed by
Bush<By David S.  Broder<Washington Post Staff Writer=

Speaker of the House Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.), expressing opti-
mism about the working relationship between Congress and
President-elect Clinton, yesterday said he planned early action
on three bills that drew vetoes from President Bush.

Foley told a group of reporters that the House would take up fam-
ily and medical leave legislation, the "motor-voter" registration
bill and campaign finance law revision, "probably in that order,"
when it starts work next year.

All three bills were vetoed by Bush and on all three, the Demo-
crats failed to override.

Foley, who met with Clinton in both Little Rock, Ark., and Wash-
ington last week, declined to set a specific timetable for action
on what are expected to be the major Clinton initiatives on jobs,
health care and the federal budget deficit.

But he said the meetings had left him "very impressed" that Clin-
ton was approaching his dealings with Congress, "not with a sense
of competition but with the sense that we succeed or fail togeth-
er."

Foley said he thought that attitude would be reciprocated by a
wide spectrum of legislators, including Republicans and liberal
Democrats. He said the president-elect's meetings last week with
key congressional Republicans "could not have gone better." As
for the liberals, Foley said, "They may want more" spending on
some domestic programs than Clinton proposes, "but they're very
anxious for action. They won't quarrel with anything that moves
it forward."

While drawing an optimistic picture of the prospects for
Clinton's program in the House, Foley flagged several potential
problems in the Senate.

He said that his own proposal to increase the president's ability
to block specific spending items had drawn a rebuff from influen-
tial Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert C. Byrd (D-
W.Va.).

During the campaign, Clinton had called for a line-item veto -
something Bush and President Ronald Reagan had sought in vain.
Foley recently offered to support a modified version that would
let the president get an up-or-down majority vote on any part of
an omnibus spending bill that he questioned.

Clinton quickly embraced the compromise, but Foley said he had
received a letter from Byrd last week making it clear that Byrd
"doesn't like my proposal any better" than the authority Reagan
and Bush had requested.

Byrd declined to release the letter but said in a statement that
he had cautioned Foley against "any new legislation (that) would
merely raise false hopes about its ability to reduce the defi-
cit."

Foley also said it was possible, in his view, for the House to
pass a bill granting statehood to the District of Columbia and
guaranteeing the right to abortion, but he said the former would
likely be defeated and the other rewritten by amendment in the
Senate - raising questions about the feasibility of redeeming two
other Clinton campaign promises.

But Foley was upbeat enough about the legislative prospects that
he told reporters he was not seeking any increased authority for
the speaker's office over House committee chairmen.

Rejecting arguments from inside and outside Congress that he
needs more power to move the agenda, Foley said such authority
"would have been more important" if Bush had been reelected. With
a Democrat in the White House, he said, "the president will have
the first option as agenda-setter."

Foley's comments seemed to signal caution toward those in the
Democratic caucus who want to enhance the speaker's power to re-
move recalcitrant committee chairmen or assume more control of
the House schedule.

"I'm not bashful about giving more power to the speaker," he
said, "but I don't feel the need to supervise the chairmen. I
haven't been frustrated or annoyed" by the pace of legislation.<
02:31 11-24C9999-----

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

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