WASHINGTON -- The Senate turned out the lights Friday night on a tumultuous session of Congress that lurched from the crucible of impeachment to a bruising budget fight but barely changed the face of government.
Boxed in by budget caps and a delicate balance of power, President Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress struggled to a near standoff that ended with both sides claiming victory over a $390 billion spending package that all but ensured the status quo.The Senate passed the measure, 74-24, and sent it to Clinton to sign into law.
Moments earlier, the Senate gave final approval, 95-1, to one of the most significant changes in social policy this year: an $800 million program to provide health coverage and other services over five years to help the disabled find work and keep it.
Other than the disabilities measure, members of both parties agreed, the only major legislation that survived the first session of the 106th Congress was a sweeping overhaul of the financial services industry.
"With rare exceptions, this has been a Congress of lost causes," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, a prime sponsor of the disabilities bill with Sen. James M. Jeffords, a Vermont Republican. "This bill survived but too many others died."
Left unresolved on Capitol Hill were major issues that are likely to emerge as central themes in the election battle next year for control of Congress and the White House.
Republicans were foiled in their bid for massive tax cuts by Clinton's veto of their $792 billion package of reductions. And Democrats were stymied on nearly every major element of their agenda: overhauling the managed care industry, expanding hate crime laws, tightening gun controls, increasing the minimum wage and changing the campaign finance system.
Amid the stalemate, the White House and leaders of both parties in Congress scurried to take credit for paying down the federal debt and protecting the Social Security surplus even as they acknowledged using a number of unusual accounting techniques to exceed the balanced-budget caps they set in 1997. More than $6 billion was added to the spending package in the final hours of negotiations to secure the votes needed to pass the measure.
Sen. Bob Smith of New Hampshire, one of several conservative Republicans to vote against the measure, said Congress used "fancy footwork and budget gimmicks" to help provide "a victory for the liberal social agenda."
But, most of all, party leaders sought praise for fostering some minor changes and killing others.
"I do think this has been a very good year for the American people," said Senate majority leader Trent Lott. "This administration, the Democrats, if they had their way they would have spent more, raised taxes and increased regulations across the board. We stopped all of that."
Stopping things was a priority of both sides, Sen. John F. Kerry said, citing the GOP tax cut that Clinton's veto message described as a "reckless" threat to the government's fiscal stability.
"But we should not be reduced to measuring victories by stopping them from doing something bad," Kerry said. "This has been a session of missed opportunities and a lack of leadership."
Republicans avoided a repeat of the 1995 government shutdown that backfired against them. They did so by compromising on demands to cut $41 billion in non-defense spending and by continuing to fund several of Clinton's signature priorities, such as hiring 100,000 new teachers and 50,000 new police officers.
But the White House also gave ground, agreeing to increase defense spending by $17 billion and to cut every federal agency's budget by 0.038 percent, for a total savings of about $1.3 billion. Clinton had vetoed a 0.97 percent across-the-board cut as "mindless."
Under the final agreement, each agency has flexibility in how to reduce spending rather than requiring cuts across the board. The Pentagon, for example, is exempt from reducing military personnel.
"I'm sure there will be some discomfort," said Jack Lew, Clinton's budget director. "There will be winners and losers, but we won't be cutting high priority items."
In one of the most controversial compromises of the budget talks, GOP leaders agreed to pay $927 million of the government's long-overdue United Nations obligations after the White House accepted some abortion restrictions on international family planning groups funded by the United States.
In the end, the final spending package was nearly blocked by a group of Midwestern senators who were irate that the bill includes a provision to extend the New England Dairy Compact another two years. The compact sets federal dairy prices that favor milk producers from the Northeast over those from the Midwest.
After Lott vowed to address the issue next year, the Midwestern senators dropped their plan to filibuster as late as 5 a.m. Saturday. Sen. Russell D. Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, had even prepared a document, "All About Cheese: Dairy Filibuster."
Relieved, Lott said, "The Senate teaches you patience. If there's anything in the world like a good wine, it's the Senate."
By the time the final vote was tallied, the $1.8 trillion federal budget for 2000 was complete, 50 days past the Oct. 1 start of the fiscal year. And the acrimony of the impeachment case had receded a bit, though tensions lingered.
Jeffords urged his colleagues to take consolation from their passage of the disabilities measure. "We are tired and some tempers are frayed," he said on the Senate floor. "But as we return to our districts, this is legislation we can be proud of."
Lott, who helped lead the effort in January to remove Clinton from office, said in a news conference Friday, "Democrats still are chafing over the fact that they are in the minority."
But in his final words on the Senate floor, Lott turned toward the Democratic side of the chamber and wished departing members a "Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas."