Congressional Republicans continued to struggle Tuesday to come up with a disaster relief bill that might break the deadlock with the White House, as Senate GOP leaders seemed inclined to take a stripped-down bill to the floor.
And on the House side, Republicans were leaning toward a measure that does not include the continuing resolution language over which President Clinton vetoed the bill.
"I'm ready," Senate Majority Leader Lott told Democrats on the floor Tuesday. "Help me."
But by the end of the day, Senate Republicans and Democrats could not even come to agreement on how to debate the disaster relief issue and adjourned.
House Republican leaders met for several hours and decided to take a new bill to the House Rules Committee today and then to the floor Thursday.
House Republicans Tuesday narrowly prevailed on a procedural vote that prevented the Democrats from offering a clean disaster relief bill on the House floor.
Throughout Tuesday, House and Senate Republicans were discussing options that would have dropped proposals important to the other body.
Lott said he was willing to put census language, a provision important to House GOP members, on hold.
House Republicans were willing to dump CR language that Senate Republicans consider vital.
On Tuesday afternoon, Lott floated an idea that first surfaced before the Memorial Day recess, a stripped down supplemental spending bill that contains a portion of the money but does not include the CR and census language the president dislikes.
That would allow legislators and the White House to continue work on those thorny issues.
"I have been an advocate for that for two or three weeks," Lott said.
Lott said he was not sure of the exact cost of such a bill, but estimated it would include between $2 billion and $3 billion of the $8.6 billion in the original bill.
Lott said the bill, as passed by the conference committee, contained some non-emergency money, including $33 million for the Botanical Gardens. "These may all be good things, but I wonder how they found themselves into a supplemental spending bill," he said.
Democrats initially seemed intrigued by the idea, but later said the funding was not large enough.
Lott "suggests an approach that I certainly can support," Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said initially.
However, after Lott said he could not specify the amount of funding in the bill, Dorgan and other Democrats said they were concerned.
Senate Minority Leader Daschle said $7.6 billion of the $8.6 billion in the disaster relief bill is considered emergency funding. "I want to see what a stripped-down bill looks like," he said.
A House Republican aide said appropriators worked hard on the bill, adding that "people are thinking about a stripped-down bill. I don't know what that means."
On the House side, GOP leaders decided to take a bill to the Rules Committee that includes all the funding in the original bill.
But the bill does not include the CR language, according to a House GOP leadership aide said.
The aide added that House Republican leaders were trying to work with the White House on acceptable census language.
Throughout Tuesday, Democrats blocked all progress on the Senate floor.
Lott attempted to bring up a birth defects bill and requested that committees be permitted to meet, requests with which Democrats refused to comply.
Lott also said the Senate could stay in session until midnight to debate the disaster relief issue, but Democrats declined to go along with Lott's plans.
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