News Digest
‘One Hundred and Worst’ Congress adjourns
WASHINGTON - The Congress that ad
journed Sunday stumbled, stalled and scandal
ized but then passed dramatic national policy
changes for taxes, the environment, military
spending, foreign policy and child care.
“A Congress of significant accomplishment,”
bragged Senate Majority Leader George Mitch
ell, D-Maine.
The history books, making a cold, hard
assessment, may agree. But that wouldn’t do
justice to the raucous and ugly path this Con
gress took to get there.
The latest two-year lawmaking conclave
was America’s 101st. At the end, lawmakers
were referring to it as “The One Hundred and
Worst.”
“So many of us wasted so much time,”
House Republican Leader Robert H. Michel,
R-Ill., said. “What a horribly poor example of
Congress at its best.”
It started with Senate rejection of President
Bush’s nomination of John Tower for secretary
of Defense, because of his reputation as a
boozer and womanizer.
The House then weighed in with its own
ethics scandal, which culminated in the resig
nations of Speaker Jim Wright, D-Tcxas, and
Majority Whip Tony Coclho, D-Calif.
An attempt at a bipartisan budget deal in the
first year collapsed into a nasty, partisan fight
over Bush’s proposed cut in the capital gains
-44-;
So many of us wasted so much time. What a horribly poor
example of Congress at its best. Michel
House Republican leader
---99 -
tax rate.
The new House speaker, Thomas S. Foley,
D-Wash., received a black eye when his con
servative Democrats sided with the Republi
cans and passed the plan. Outvoted, Mitchell
was able to slop it in the Senate only through a
parliamentary blockade.
The first session passed a publicly sup
ported federal minimum wage increase, and
Bush and the Democrats agreed to end aid to
the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
Early in the year, Wright tried and failed
amid a storm of public outrage to protect for
mer President Ronald Reagan’s proposed 50
percent boost in congressional pay. But it
wouldn’t die.
After taking over as speaker at midyear,
Foley engineered a compromise: a big salary
boost in exchange for no more special-interest
money for making speeches.
The House approved it; the Senate didn’t
bite. House salaries, which were $89,500 last
year, will soar to roughly SI25,(XX) in January.
With only cost-of-living increases, the sena
tors will make just over S 100,000.
Congress returned this year to resume a
slow legislative pace with only mixed results.
A new law designed to reduce chances of
major oil spills was enacted. The Americans
With Disabilities Act, giving new rights to
people with impairments, became law.
Democrats succeeded in defeating Bush s
proposed constitutional amendment to ban flag
burning.
The Democratic Congress couldn’t over
ride the president’s veto of legislation guaran
teeing workers six weeks of paid leave for
childbirth or family medical emergencies.
The 101st Congress never overrode any of
16 Bush vetoes.
The ethics scandals continued. One House
member was disciplined and another quit fol
lowing sex-related charges.
In the Senate, a group of lawmakers became
known as me i\oaung nvc, an unucr investiga
tion for ties to the head of a failed California
savings and loan institution.
Meanwhile, all efforts tocontain the costsof
the S&L bailout were proving fruitless.
Major legislation including a historic revi
sion of the nation’s clean air laws, federal aid
for child care, civil rights, the farm bill, hous
ing, and anti-crime proposals languished while
Congress went from May to fall with no prog
ress on the budget.
At the end of September the White House
and congressional leaders signed a budget pact
calling fora S500 billion reduction in federal
deficits over the next five years. Rank-and-file
lawmakers, however, rebelled at the 12-cent
gasoline tax hike, deep cuts in Medicare subsi
dies and dozens of other new fees or service
reductions.
On Oct. 5, the day Congress had been sched
uled to adjourn, the House killed the deal in a
painful defeat for Bush and the Democratic
leadership. Hoping to put the onus on Congress
for the failure, Bush let the government shut
down for the weekend.
A new package emerged, one less to Bush’s
liking but still acceptable to him. It had higher
taxes on the wealthy, only a nickel in new gas
taxes and a lighter hit on Medicare. The Senate
gave it final congressional approval Saturday.
S&L letters reported missing
Congress members’ correspondence with regulators in files
WASHINGTON - Dozens of let
ters are missing from the special file
of correspondence from members of
Congress to savings and loan regula
tors, according to the Office of Thrift
Supervision.
Most of the letters were written by
lawmakers on behalf of constituents
who complained about problems in
their dealings with S&Ls, such as
accounts that were transferred from
one thrift to another as the result of
mergers.
But some letters provide evidence
of members of Congress pressing
regulators on behalf of S&L opera
tors, some of whom contributed to the
lawmakers’ political campaigns.
There arc thousands of letters, all
maintained by the OTS and filed
alphabetically under the names of the
senators and representatives who sent
them. The thrift supervision office,
the federal agency created by last
year’s S&L bailout legislation, keeps
the letters for its own use and opens
them to members of the public by
appointment.
There is no supervision of people
perusing the letters, which arc kept in
an area of OTS’ Washington head
quarters that is out of view of agency
employees.
Nancy Cohen, OTS’ director of
congressional correspondence, said
she is aware of at least one entire file
that is missing. Each file contains
dozens of letters written by a member
of Congress arranged in chronologi
cal order.
Cohen declined to say w hat file is
missing or w ho may be suspected of
taking it.
The agency has only one copy of
each letter in the centralized archives,
although individual regulators may
have kept their own copies, Cohen
said.
“I know something’s missing and
it really bothers me,” she said. “1
think it’s real important to the agency”
to make the files secure, she added,
saying she has complained about the
situation to high-level OTS officials.
“There is a problem; we're trying
to address the problem,” said Robert
Schmcrmund, director of public af
fairs for OTS.
S&L contributions and the role of
some lawmakers has become a hot
issue in this election year. The esca
lating savings and loan crisis has made
the letter file a sought-after source of
information.
Reporters have been the most fre
quent users of the files, hut in recent
months congressional aides, political
consultants and law' firms also have
looked at them, Cohen said.
“It’s an election year; everyone
wants to see their own file,” she said.
Schmcrmund said the agency is
concerned about the vulnerability of
the current system but also wants to
continue to give the public quick access
to the files. OTS Director Timothy
Ryan wants the agency to be “as open
as possible,” Schmcrmund said.
Rival groups I
kill eight in
fight at mine
JOHANNESBURG, South
Africa - Rival black factions
battled through the night at a
gold mine compound outside
Johannesburg, and company
officials said Sunday that eight
men were killed and 37 hurl.
The fighting erupted Satur
day evening at a workers hostel
on Rand Mines’ Harmony Gold
Mine in Virginia, 160 miles
southwest of Johannesburg, the
company said.
Officials said they did not
know the cause of the fighting,
which went on through the night
despite attempts by security
officers to hall the battles.
No additional details were
immediately available.
About 800 blacks died in
factional violence around Johan
nesburg in August and Septem
ber.
The fighting between sup
porters of the African National
Congress and the Inkatha move
ment was mostly an extension
of their power struggle in the
eastern province of Natal. That
battle has claimed about 5,(KM)
lives since 1986.
Voters in Soviet Georgia
j face formal party choice
TBILISI, U.S.S.R. - Voters in
Georgia Hocked to the polls Sunday
for parliamentary elections expected
to pave the way for the southern Soviet
republic’s independence.
About 35 parties, most of them
grouped into coalitions, were taking
part in the contest, the first true multi
party elections in Soviet history. At
stake were 250 scats in the republic’s
Supreme Soviet legislature.
Non-Communists have been elected
in several cities and republics else
where in the Soviet Union. But Sun
day’s race marked the first lime that
formal parties, created under new
Soviet laws, have competed and were
listed on the ballot.
Long lines formed at ballot boxes
both in Tbilisi, the capital, and in the
surrounding countryside. There arc
about 3 million eligible voters.
Official results of the balloting were
notexpcctcd until the end of the week,
the official Soviet news agency Tass
reported.
Maguli La tan y a cast her ballot
dressed from head to food in black
mourning clothes. Her 16-year-old
daughter was one of 19 Georgians
killed on April 19,1989, when Soviet
troops used sharpened shovels to break
up a peaceful nationalist demonstra
tion in downtown Tbilisi.
The incident fired strong senti
ment for independence from Moscow.
Even the ruling Communist Party of
Georgia was forced to adopt inde
pendence as part of its political plat
form.
Latariya wept as she cast her bal
lot. It was “as if my daughter’s voice
was telling me what to do,” she said.
The head of the Round Table, Zviad
Gamsakhurdia, standing near Latariya,
nodded with approval as she spoke to
reporters in School No. 50 in Tbilisi’s
Mtatsminda district.
Gamsakhurdia predicted that his
coalition of seven political parlies
would win up to 70 percent of the
legislative scats if the elections are
fair.
Tass quoted election officials as
saying the elections were being ob
served by experts from the United
States, France, Belgium, Germany,
Sweden, Austria, Spain and Finland.
A poll released by the Sociologi
cal Center of the Georgian Academy
of Sciences a week before the elec
tion suggested the Communist Party
was supported by 32 percent of the
voters, with 21-percent backing the
Round Table and the rest divided
amongothcr non-Communist groups.
Many voters, interviewed as they
left polling stations Sunday, said the
Communists had gained ground in
recent months because they repre
sented stability.
Israeli officials re-open
Palestinian West Bank
JERUSALEM - Most Palestini
ans returned to work in Israel on
Sunday after a four-day ban, but
some found they had lost their jobs
to Jews and others were turned
back at roadblocks.
Police had new orders barring
Arabs with a record of hostile ac
tivity against Israel. About 8,000
Palestinians carry green identity
cards that ban them from Israel as
security risks, according to the daily
Haarclz.
“We will increase the list of
those not allowed into Israel,”
Shmuel Goren, government coor
dinator in the territories, said on
Israel radio.
The Cabinet, meanwhile, left
its police minister to decide the
fate of senior police officers criti
cized by an official inquiry into the
Oct. 8 killings of 20 Palestinians.
The killings on Jerusalem’s
hallowed Temple Mount prompted
a wave of Arab-Jewish clashes inside
Israel, leading to the four-day clo
sure of the West Bank and Ga/a
Strip.
The closure was lifted Sunday.
But Defense Minister Moshc Ar
ens warned he might rcimposc it if
violence continues.
“I hope we won’t have to take
such a step,” he said on army
radio. ‘There arc tens of thousands
who work in Israel who are trustw or
thy ... and we want to allow them
to make an honorable living.”
Tel Aviv car wash owner Nis
sim Ahbari said he hired two re
cently discharged Israeli soldiers
while his Arab worker was con
lined to the Ga/a Strip.
I prefer that Jews work instead
of Arabs,” he said. “I am ready to
pay them more money. These guys
are getting 15 shekels ($7.50) more
a day than the Arabs got.”
A Jerusalem restaurant owner,
however, said his hired Jewish
replacements were temporary. He
said his Arab workers had been
with him for 17 years and were like
family.
An Arab construction laborer in
east Jerusalem said most of his
friends were looking for other jobs.
“There is always work, but the
situation is different now. There is
a lot of fear and everyone is tense. ‘
he said on Israel radio, without
giving his name.
Three Jews were killed in Arab
attacks, and two Arabs were killed
by Jews in the random violence
that prompted Wednesday’s clo
sure.
Israel radio said the attacks fueled
a wave of applications by Israelis
for weapons licenses, most of which
were rejected by the Interior Min
istry.
Up to 150,000 of the 1.7 million
Palestinians in the occupied West
Bank and Gaza Strip have jobs in
Israel, mostly as blue-collar work
ers.
The closure was welcomed in
Israel, with many Jews saying it
would vacate jobs for unemployed
Israelis and Soviet Jewish immi
grants, as well as free Israel from
its dependence on Arab labor.
The Cabinet, mcanw hilc, said it
accepted the conclusions of the
three-man investigative team ap
pointed by Prime Minister Yitzhak
Shamir.
Police killed 20 Palestinians and
injured 140 after Arab protesters
on the Mount, known in Arabic as
Haram es-Sharif, threw rtx.ks at
Jews praying below at the Western
Wall.
The panel said the shooting was
in self-defense but chastised senior
police officers for failing to pre
pare for violence and being absent
when it began.
The U.N. Security Council has
passed two resolutions condemn
ing Israel: one for the shooting and
one for rejecting a U.N. investiga
tive team. Israel has said its own
investigation was sufficient.
_—i
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