WASHINGTON — Maneuvering by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, ruined Democrats' plans for Vice President Al Gore to cast a dramatic, tie-breaking vote Wednesday on an abortion-related amendment.
With that, Hatch may have zinged Gore more through his regular Senate work than he did as a long-shot presidential candidate.
That came as Hatch, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, shepherded new bankruptcy reform through the Senate.
During debate, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., proposed an amendment he said would stop violent abortion-clinic demonstrators from evading fines and damages through bankruptcy.
With some counts showing the Senate could tie on that amendment, Democratic leaders persuaded Gore to leave his scheduled campaign stops to fly to Washington and possibly cast the tie-breaking vote for it.
That could have helped Gore's presidential campaign because he has been under fire on abortion. While he said he has always been pro-choice, letters from years ago emerged where he wrote that he favored several anti-abortion bills — causing Gore to revise and say his stands had evolved over time.
When Hatch and other GOP leaders saw Gore arrive in the Senate to possibly cast such a vote, Hatch quickly announced a change of strategy that robbed Gore of his moment. He simply asked Republicans to vote for the amendment.
"With this amendment accepted, nobody will be able to politically demagogue this issue," Hatch told the Senate. He added that concerns with it can be handled more quietly later in a House-Senate conference to work out differences in their versions of the bill.
With that, Gore — as president of the Senate — was able to do little more than announce an overwhelming 80-17 vote for the amendment.
"They were playing politics with that, and I didn't see any reason to let them get away with that," Hatch told the Deseret News. "It was just a phony amendment that went way beyond violence and into mind control. . . . We'll take care of it in conference."
Still, Gore used the opportunity to tell reporters he interrupted his campaigning because "clinic violence is an offense to our democracy. It's an offense to the American spirit. We cannot allow this kind of violence, deprivation of rights."
Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, also derided Gore's appearance as political theater. But Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said, "If you have a doubt about Al Gore's commitment to women's choice, today is proof positive."
Later, the Senate passed the overall bankruptcy bill on an 83-14 vote. The House last year passed a similar bill, and the two bodies will hold a conference to try to work out differences.
The Senate included a proposal to increase the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $6.15 over three years — and GOP support of it may also defuse another big Democratic issue during the presidential election year.
The bill is designed to make it more difficult for people with some ability to pay debts to escape them totally through bankruptcy.
Hatch said, "Under the present system, it is all too easy for debtors who have the ability to repay some of what they owe to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and erase all their debts."
He added, "As a result, the rest of us end up footing the bill through higher prices and higher interest rates. The Bankruptcy Reform Act provides a remedy for many of these abuses by adopting a needs-based approach to bankruptcy reform."