Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 7, 1990 TAG: 9003071888
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
One source, speaking only on condition of anonymity, said Tuesday the committee would not be placing its "main focus" on the hearings if serious negotiations to settle the case were under way.
No date has been set for the hearings, sources said, because the committee is still conducting a preliminary investigation into Senate reimbursements Durenberger received for a condominium he partly owned.
The committee set the stage last week for the hearings, when it formally notified the Minnesota Republican there was "substantial credible evidence" of five specific rules violations and a sixth governing general conduct expected of a senator.
Durenberger, who has admitted mistakes in judgment but no willful wrongdoing, "may have" violated outside income limits and other rules in his promotion of two books he wrote, the committee said. He also potentially violated annual limits on receipt of gifts when he accepted nearly $5,000 worth of limousine trips for personal travel in 1985 and 1986, the panel said.
Also in Congress:
Republicans are renewing a 25-year-old fight to allow more older Americans to draw full Social Security pensions even if they continue to work.
A person age 62, 63 or 64 may earn $6,840 a year without penalty; for each $2 earned above that level, the person forfeits $1 in benefits. A person who has reached 65 but has not yet turned 70 gives up $1 for each $3 earned above $9,360. There is no restriction on those 70 and older.
The GOP bill would repeal the earnings limitation for those 65 and older.
A tax credit that encourages corporations to invest in low-income rental units is the "only game in town" to help ease the housing crunch for the poor, a lawmaker says.
Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., made that assessment Tuesday at a news conference called to dramatize the need to make the Low Income Housing Tax Credit permanent.
The Chicago-based National Equity Fund, a conduit for corporate investments using the credit, said it used the endangered tax credit last year to invest $77 million in rental housing for 2,000 families.
Rep. Richard Gephardt's proposal to offer direct U.S. aid to the Soviet Union is bringing responses ranging from wary approval to outright condemnation.
"We shouldn't be writing out checks to [Soviet President Mikhail] Gorbachev while he's propping up Castro" in Cuba and other communist regimes and insurgencies around the world, Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan., said.
Dole said it is time for the United States to aid Eastern European countries emerging from decades of Soviet domination, but that direct aid to Moscow of the sort proposed Tuesday by Gephardt, the House Democratic leader, would at best be premature.
Senators are scrambling to make changes in a compromise clean air bill, as a House panel considers whether Midwest utilities should get help in paying for sulfur dioxide emission controls.
The House and Senate clean air measures call for tougher controls on smog-causing pollution from automobiles and industrial sources, curbs on toxic chemical releases by industry and, for the first time, cuts in acid rain pollutants from coal-fired utility plants.
Conservative civil rights official Clarence Thomas is set to become a federal appeals judge after winning Senate confirmation despite criticism from senior citizens and liberal groups.
Thomas, 41, becomes a judge of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which because of the high-profile cases that come before it is sometimes called the nation's second-highest court behind the Supreme Court.
Union officials are counting on some Republican House members to desert President Bush and help override his veto of a bill that would have the government intervene in the year-old Eastern Airlines strike.
A House vote was possible this afternoon on Bush's veto of a measure creating a special panel to investigate and recommend possible solutions to the bitter dispute between the carrier and 8,500 mechanics and other ground service workers.
Elizabeth Taylor can still draw a crowd on Capitol Hill.
The movie star and outspoken advocate of more AIDS spending used her celebrity appeal Tuesday to help promote a new bill that would provide $600 million in emergency aid to care for people with the disease.
by CNB