Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 13, 1991 TAG: 9103130486
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/2 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Bush's version of the civil rights bill was alive for barely five hours after its introduction on Tuesday when the House Education and Labor Committee buried it and passed instead a more sweeping Democratic measure.
In both the House and Senate, Democrats signaled they were prepared to push their own gun-control bills, previously opposed by the president. They contended that Bush's anti-crime measures didn't do enough to limit firearms.
"It's not what the president has in his legislation that I oppose, it's what he doesn't propose," said Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He introduced his own crime bill that would ban 14 automatic weapons.
The moves were the first significant steps that legislators have taken on major domestic bills of this session. They followed by a week Bush's call for action within 100 days, which he delivered in his celebratory end-of-the-war speech to a joint session of Congress.
While they constituted a rebuff to the president, the actions had been planned before his speech. They were delayed by the nation's preoccupation with the Persian Gulf War and Congress' own normal slow start.
With passage in two House panels, Democrats signaled they intend to move quickly on an anti-discrimination bill similar to one that passed with 65 percent majorities in both chambers last year. Bush vetoed that bill, contending it would force employers to use quotas in hiring and promotion. Civil rights advocates dispute that argument.
The measure was approved by the House Education and Labor Committee and a similar version by a House Judiciary subcommittee.
Majority Leader Richard Gephardt, D-Mo., predicted action on the House floor by April or May. But he acknowledged that Democrats have not succeeded in blunting Bush's argument that it would lead to quotas.
"The polls would indicate that people do not perceive correctly yet what the bill can do and why it is important," Gephardt said. "Quotas, frankly, are illegal, but if you can characterize it that way, you can turn public opinion against a piece of legislation."
Reflecting sponsors' new emphasis on extending job protections for women, the Education and Labor Committee also voted to change the bill's title from the Civil Rights Act of 1991 to the Civil Rights and Women's Equity in Employment Act of 1991.
The bill would expand women's rights in job-bias claims by permitting them for the first time to collect punitive damages in cases of sexual discrimination or harassment. It would, in effect, put sex discrimination claims on equal legal footing with racial-bias cases.
Bush's alternative would set $150,000 limits on damage claims in cases of sexual discrimination or harassment in the work place. The Democratic version would set no such limits and would go further in overcoming 1989 Supreme Court decisions that sponsors say limited minority rights in job-bias cases.
Some Democrats and Republicans held out hope a compromise could be reached on a bill Bush would sign.
House Democrats also moved on the crime front, saying they were prepared to push passage of the so-called Brady Bill requiring a seven-day waiting period for all gun purchases.
The bill is named for former White House press secretary James Brady, severely wounded by a gunman trying to kill President Reagan in 1981. When Congress last voted on it in 1988, the measure failed 228-182 in the House.
Responding to Bush, Biden said items on the president's crime agenda that died in a conference committee last year failed because of his threat to veto any measure that banned assault weapons.
He said Democrats are ready to support the top items on Bush's agenda, including reviving the federal death penalty and making it harder for inmates on state prison death rows to delay their executions. But these proposals will have only a minor impact on the nation's crime problem without provisions to ban assault weapons, hire more police and curb violence against women, Biden said.
"We can have a bill in 15 minutes, 15 days, not 100 days, if there is a willingness to deal with what's not in this bill - assault weapons, available police officers and focusing on violence against women," he said.
by CNB