
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, January 30, 1995                   TAG: 9502010014
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

FIRST BILL OF '95

OK, SO THE title oversells the content. Nevertheless, the first bill out of the new Republican-majority Congress, signed Monday by President Clinton, was a good one.

The Congressional Accountability Act is not some sort of open-records law or campaign-audit requirement as its name might imply, but a piece of labor legislation that extends to Congress' 38,000 employees the protection of the same federal laws on civil rights, overtime pay, workplace safety and collective bargaining that apply to other workers.

Despite support in both parties, the bill last year fell victim to partisan wrangling over who'd get credit. This year, after House Republicans included it in their "Contract With America," the measure sailed through to the president's desk.

One virtue of the new law is its substance. A worker for Congress will now enjoy the same legal protections that other workers enjoy. Another virtue is its symbolism: It erases one of the ways in which Congress comes across to the public as elitist, unresponsive and disconnected from the rest of the country.

The bill's most important impact, however, may be on the lawmakers themselves. As employers, they will, many for the first time, feel directly the impact of some of the regulatory laws they write. It might concentrate their minds better the next time regulatory legislation is fashioned.

by CNB