Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 22, 1991 TAG: 9102220121
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A2 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: The Baltimore Sun
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Once again the primary proposal, already before the House and scheduled to be introduced shortly in the Senate, will aim to offset six 1989 decisions of the Supreme Court that diluted federal statutes against discrimination in employment.
The initial proposal will be very similar to the measure Bush vetoed last year as a "quota bill," saying that it would have forced employers to use racial quotas in their employment practices in order to avoid discrimination suits.
Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., chief sponsor of last year's bill, will play the same role this year. An aide to the senator said that this year's version, which will be introduced "very soon," will vary little from last year's and again is likely to have a long bipartisan list of co-sponsors.
A Senate vote to override the president's veto failed by one vote.
On the House side, hearings before the Education and Labor Committee on a bill nearly identical to Kennedy's, already introduced by the committee chairman, Rep. Jack Brooks, D-Texas, are scheduled to open Wednesday.
John Dunne, assistant attorney general for civil rights, already has announced that that bill "is not legislation the [Bush] administration can support."
Meanwhile, the White House is planning a counterattack: an "omnibus" civil rights bill. Its most significant feature will be the addition of a new concept to the civil rights debate: "empowerment."
The essence of empowerment - the brainchild of Republican conservatives both inside and outside the White House - is to give the poor and minorities choices in such matters as what schools they attend and what housing they live in, rather than to force their "dependency" on federal laws.
Bush, in his State of the Union address to Congress, forecast the empowerment proposals by calling for a "new initiative" that would "focus on . . . giving power and opportunity to the individual."
Specific contents of the administration's bill are expected to be made public next week.
Nevertheless, proponents of the Kennedy and Brooks bills are aiming not merely to pass them but to build the two-thirds majority in Congress necessary to override another Bush veto. One way they see of doing that is to broaden pressures for the bills' passage this year by emphasizing that the measures would protect not only racial minorities, but women and the disabled.
by CNB