Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, August 12, 1994 TAG: 9408120111
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The vote was a jolting setback to President Clinton, who had personally lobbied many wavering members to support the measure - and a victory for Republicans who complained that it was larded with social programs disguised as crime-prevention measures.
``I worked my heart out on it and I did everything I could,'' an angry Clinton said afterward. ``And on this day the NRA and the Republican leadership had their way.''
Clinton accused the crime bill opponents of engaging in a ``procedural trick'' that puts ``the protection of particular interests over the protection of ordinary Americans.''
The vote was 225-210 to block the bill from coming to the floor - with 58 Democrats joining 167 Republicans in voting to sidetrack the measure. In the Virginia delegation, only Reps. Leslie Byrne, D-Fairfax, and James Moran, D-Alexandria, voted to bring the bill to the floor.
What happens now is unclear.
One possibility is for House Democratic leaders to try again to bring up the measure. That would require changing the minds of at least eight House members who voted against the leadership Thursday.
Another possibility is for House and Senate negotiators to go back to work and try to come up with another, less controversial crime bill - perhaps by stripping the assault weapons ban from the legislation.
But Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph Biden, D-Del., said Thursday night he was not willing to reopen the conference committee to consider a revamped bill.
House leaders, he said, should send the bill back to the floor as many times as necessary to overcome the opposition.
``We can't let a small group of zealots deny the American people what they want and what they need,'' Biden said.
The most controversial item in the bill - the assault weapons ban - was the subject of intense lobbying by the NRA. The House Democrats who bolted from the president were largely from rural districts where gun ownership is considered an unbreachable right and the NRA is deeply entrenched.
But the opponents also included 10 of the Congressional Black Caucus's 38 Democratic members still angry that conferees had removed a ``racial justice'' provision that would have enabled defendants in death-penalty cases to appeal their sentences if they could show racial bias in their prosecutions or trials.
Rep. Peter Deutsch, D-Fla., said the bill was ``a victim of both the left and right in the House. The right opposed it because of the gun ban, the left because it didn't contain the racial justice language.''
Republicans were jubilant at defeating the president's initiative, but some insisted that the setback should not bury the bill.
``I hope they go back to conference on it,'' said Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., who led the fight to sidetrack the bill. ``The Democrats need to step back now, reconsider, then give us a slimmer version. The biggest problem I saw with the bill is that there was too much preventive stuff and too little punishment.''
Deutsch, who supported the gun ban, said the bill should go back to a House-Senate conference and the assault weapons provision removed so that it could pass the House.
House Minority Leader Bob Michel, R-Ill., called the measure ``an unholy trinity of pork, posturing and partisanship.''
But Democrats, smarting from the setback, said the partisanship was the coin of the Republicans.
by CNB