Congress takes up final issues

WASHINGTON -- In the final hours of Republican rule, the Senate on Wednesday put forward an all-purpose bill covering everything from normalized trade with Vietnam and tax breaks for millions of taxpayers to an expansion of offshore oil drilling.\nThe House, meanwhile, gave conservatives perhaps their last chance for awhile to vote on an abortion bill. It was defeated.\nAs of late Wednesday, negotiators from the two chambers were still struggling to come up with a common approach to a tax and trade package that could bring the 109th session of Congress to a close. House Majority Leader John Boehner informed lawmakers that they wouldn't be able to adjourn on Thursday as earlier planned.\nWith talks on a compromise plan making little headway, Senate Finance Committee leaders introduced their own 500-page bill that would renew expired or expiring tax breaks for businesses and middle income individuals and trade items affecting economic relations with Vietnam, Haiti, Africa and Andean nations.\nThe tax portion, said committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, gives "continued tax relief to families paying college, teachers buying classroom supplies and producers of clean energy from sources such as wind."\nThe package would also open up 8 million acres off the Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas drilling, postpone a planned cut in Medicare reimbursements to physicians and extend an abandoned coal mine reclamation program.\nIt remained uncertain whether the House and Senate could come together on a package that would not be so laden with expensive programs that it becomes unpassable.\nThe fix on Medicare payments is estimated to cost more than $10 billion over a one-year period. The abandoned mine bill could cost $5 billion over 10 years.\nAmong the tax breaks, a research and development deduction extension through 2006 and 2007 would cost $16.5 billion. Extending tuition deductions through the end of 2007 would cost $3.3 billion. Another provision allowing taxpayers in states without income taxes to deduct state and local sales taxes would cost $5.5 billion.\nHouse Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas, R-Calif., said they were working to keep Medicare payments within budgetary limits. "It will be revenue neutral if you squint."\nHouse GOP leaders, in a parting gesture to their conservative base, brought up a bill that would require abortion providers to inform a woman 20 weeks into her pregnancy that an abortion would cause pain to the fetus. The 250-162 vote was well short of the two-thirds majority needed under a procedure that limited debate.\nThe bill defined a 20-week-old fetus as a "pain-capable unborn child." That's a controversial threshold among scientists, with debate over whether a fetus at that stage of development feels pain or reflectively draws back from stimuli.\nHad it passed, the legislation had almost no chance of advancing in the Senate, while the new Democratic Congress is expected to have little appetite for abortion-related bills.\nThe Senate on Wednesday approved a measure to renew the $2.1 billion-a-year Ryan White CARE Act for prevention and treatment of AIDS. The bill still needs House consideration.\nIt also voted 95-2 to confirm Robert Gates as defense secretary, replacing Donald H. Rumsfeld.\nOn the to-do list before Congress departs is approval of legislation to continue paying for most federal programs, at last year's budget levels, through Feb. 15. The legislation is necessary because this Congress was unable to pass any of the annual spending bills for the current budget year, which started Oct. 1, except for the Defense and Homeland Security departments.\nThis funding bill also passes off to the new Democratic majority the tough questions of how to meet spending demands for health and education programs while tackling the budget deficit.\nThe Vietnam bill would end Cold War-era requirements of annual reviews of trade with the communist nation. The House rejected the bill before the Nov. 7 election when the measure came up through an expedited procedure requiring a two-thirds majority.