To Hum Bush’s Tune, Congress Skips Notes

WASHINGTON — As next week’s GOP presidential convention nears, the Republicans who control Congress are tailoring their legislative agenda to fit the image that nominee-in-waiting George W. Bush wants to project: tax cuts for a classic conservative look, embroidered with some spending increases for a more centrist style.

But a close look at the votes the Senate and House are not taking this month underscores some issues party leaders fear could mar the look of their standard-bearer.

Consider the case of a bill to raise the number of visas allowed each year to bring skilled foreign workers into the country, an urgent priority of high-tech businesses. Democrats charge that Republicans have opted to delay a vote on the measure for fear they would be asked at the same time to address other proposed changes in immigration law--including amnesty for thousands of illegal immigrants from Latin America.

Republicans and Democrats both support raising the visa quota, but many GOP lawmakers are skeptical of amnesty.

That puts the party in a bind. No Republican leader wants any perceived anti-Latino vote on Capitol Hill to cause trouble for a presidential candidate who, more than any of his GOP predecessors, has courted the growing ranks of Latino voters.

On another front, leaders of the congressional majority have signaled a willingness to spend billions of dollars more than they had budgeted on education and other social programs in an effort to blunt the advantage that Democrats traditionally hold on such issues.

Those targeted spending increases and a major tax cut for married couples, which both houses of Congress approved last week and President Clinton has threatened to veto, are the sort of policies that dovetail with Bush’s slogan of “compassionate conservatism.” The convention in Philadelphia will be expected to help flesh out the theme.

The effort by congressional Republicans to work in harmony with Bush’s message contrasts with signs of discord during the early stages of the presidential primary season. Last year, for instance, Bush was critical of a proposal by some top Republicans on Capitol Hill to cut a poverty program to help balance the budget. Now those same congressional leaders are churning out legislation that appears to suit Bush’s aims.

“They’ve toned down the rhetoric and they’ve increased the action,” said Whit Ayres, a GOP pollster based in Atlanta who works on congressional campaigns. “It’s called the desire to win.”

Democrats, seeking to regain the offensive, belittle the series of bills that the Republicans have guided through Congress this month, including high-profile measures to repeal the federal estate tax, cut taxes for married couples and provide new incentives to bolster tax-favored retirement savings funds. Democrats dismiss most of these efforts as little more than “press releases” destined to be vetoed by President Clinton as fiscally irresponsible.

That criticism does not seem to bother the GOP leadership, which is confident it can avoid the label of a “do-nothing” Congress as Republicans seek to hold on to narrow majorities in the House and the Senate in the upcoming election.

John Feehery, a spokesman for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), said Monday that Republicans would be content to run on a record of passing the tax-related legislation and approving on time the massive spending bills that fund the federal government.

“First of all, what will help our guys most in October and November is getting our work done in July and September,” Feehery said. Congress will be in recess all of August.

But there is much more to the annual work of Congress than taxation and spending issues. Democrats charge that Republicans are stalling on other issues, including some that are high priorities for business lobbyists, in their calculated effort to help Bush.

One example is the controversial initiative to grant China permanent normal trade relations. After passing the House in May in a vote that revealed a deep rift among Democrats, Senate Republicans have postponed final action until at least September. That could hinder the efforts of Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore, a supporter of the trade bill, to make peace with labor unions opposed to it.

Another example crucial to some sectors of the high-tech community is legislation to raise the legal limit on the number of skilled foreign workers who can enter the country temporarily through what are known as “H-1B” visas.

Businesses, scrambling to hire qualified workers in a booming economy, say that the matter is urgent because the limit of 115,000 visas was reached in March for the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30. Legislation to raise the annual limit to 200,000 visas enjoys broad bipartisan support and would likely pass the House and the Senate. The question is when that might happen.

While Republicans are seeking a vote on the merits of the H-1B bill alone, Democrats want to hitch other immigration issues to the congressional agenda--either as amendments to the measure or as parallel legislation.

These other issues include two key priorities for many Latino groups:

* Changing immigration law to allow hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to apply for permanent residence if they can show they have been in the country continuously since at least 1986. Under current law, the eligibility cutoff is 1972.

* Granting immigration benefits to Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Hondurans and Haitians parallel to those enacted in 1997 to help Cubans and Nicaraguans obtain permanent residence. Democrats long have argued the Cubans and Nicaraguans were targeted for special treatment because they were fleeing turmoil caused by left-wing regimes.

Senate Democrats charge that Republicans who oppose such changes want to keep the debate on them separate from a vote on the H-1B issue for purely political reasons. Republicans “don’t want to alienate the Hispanic community,” Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) said recently. “Let’s put it on the table. That’s what it is about.”

A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) replied that Lott “is trying to go the extra mile” to get a vote on the H-1B legislation as soon as possible. But John Czwartacki, the spokesman, complained: “Democrats are not serious about passing this. They keep raising the bar” by wanting to complicate the debate with other issues.

In the House, Rep. David Dreier (R-San Dimas), chairman of the House Rules Committee and a key proponent of the H-1B legislation, said Monday that it would be difficult to act on the measure before the summer recess. “Quite frankly, the politicization that has taken place has obviously hurt the process,” Dreier said.