g o v e r n m e n t & poliey
Money, Taxes Fill Congress' Agenda
T
he remaining weeks of this congressional session will be filled with considerable angst as Republican leaders strive to pass legislation that President Bill Clinton will sign but that will not appear to be a capitulation to the Democratic agenda. In addition to multiple appropriations bills, there are also tax, environmental, and trade issues still on the table. What can be accomplished before the Oct. 6 adjournment target is important because this activity will be fresh in voters' minds in November. The Republicans have only a 13-seat majority in the House of Representatives and are facing the possibility of being returned to the minority if they cannot convince voters they have been an effective party, according to numerous observers. The major task will be completion of the spending bills for 2001. When Congress returned from its Labor Day recess, only two of the 13 appropriations bills—military construction and defense—were signed by Clinton, and vetoes are threatened against at least eight of those remaining. In order to meet the Sept. 30 deadline for these measures, compromises will be made. In order to avoid vetoes, Republican leaders will probably abandon the budget restrictions imposed on discretionary spending, and Clinton likely will get most of the spending increases he has sought This could be good news for some of the science and development programs. The House has been trying to trim Clinton's spending proposals and has been doing much of it by cutting requests for R&D. The cuts include a $508 million decrease in the proposal for the National Science Foundation and elimination of the $176 million Advanced Technology Program from the National Institute of Standards & Technology. The House has also made serious cuts in the science budget at the Department of Energy (C&EN, Sept. 11, page 21). The reductions have not been as severe on the Senate side, although a number of the appropriations bills have not yet passed the Senate. Differences between the House and Senate versions will be ironed out in conference committees. But if the Republicans believe that Clinton holds the upper hand on these bills, it is expected that the final funding levels on most programs will be closer to Clinton's original proposals than the reduced levels approved by the House.
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SEPTEMBER 18, 2000 C&EN
The use of amendments in the appropriations legislation, so-called riders, to force policy changes on environmental or tax issues within the government is also a sore spot. Most of these riders will have to be removed from the spending bills in conference if the Republicans expect Clinton to sign them. Another major piece of legislation Congress will try to pass is establishment of permanent normal trade relations with China. Although there is bipartisan support for the bill (H.R. 4444) in the Senate, which debated it extensively last week, it may be returned to the House for reconsideration. In that case, the measure may be doomed, because opponents to liberalizing China trade are stronger in the House. And the addition of some controversial amendments to the trade bill may ensure its demise. Most of industry strongly supports passage of the trade bill because it paves the way for China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) and a U.S.-China trade agreement A hotly debated bill that Congress is trying to pass would increase the number of temporary visas issued to foreign science and technology workers. One proposed bill, H.R 4227, would lift most restrictions on the number of Hl-B visas that could be issued. The current limit is 115,000 each year. The increase for visas is especially sought after by the electronics industry, but it would permit more sci-
entists in all disciplines to come to work in the U.S. This bill may not actually come up for a separate vote in Congress, but it probably will come as an amendment to an omnibus spending bill that likely will be proposed at the end of the session. Congress' failure to override the President's veto of the elimination of the inheritance tax does not bode well for passage of other tax cuts on the Republican list. But a number of cuts are still to be considered. These include a repeal of the federal tax on telephone service, tax incentives for investors in lowincome communities, and a provision that would defer payment of capital gains taxes when companies are sold in installments. There is also a proposal to scale back unemployment taxes paid by businesses and send more federal funds to support state unemployment offices. One important change expected is in the way the U.S. taxes income earned abroad. The U.S. lost a WTO challenge leveled by the European Union over the U.S.'s present system, which allows some income to escape taxes. The U.S. has not yet come up with a proposal for change that would convince the Europeans to drop their challenge. WTO has set Oct 1 as the deadline for resolving the problem; after that date, the EU can begin billions of dollars' worth of trade sanctions against the U.S. (C&EN, Sept 11, page 17). Most legislation affecting environmental laws is expected to go nowhere this year, as Republican leaders and the Clinton Administration remain at loggerheads over almost every issue. Even a bipartisan bill narrowly focused to clean up Superfund sites in urban areas, called brownfields, has failed to move this year. One bill that is still alive would phase out use of methyl tert-butyl ether as a gasoline additive over four years while requiring increased use of renewable fuels. It does not call for MTBE to be replaced by ethanol. Introduced by Senate Environment & Public Works Committee Chairman Robert C. Smith (R-N.H.), the bill quickly passed his committee to move to the Senate floor. With so little time left in this Congress, most members are already looking ahead to 2001. The Republicans see their agenda moving ahead with a new Republican president in office, while the Democrats are thinking about how much they can accomplish when they have control of both the presidency and the House. Such thinking probably means little progress for the rest of this year. David Hanson
