Democrats Block Vote on Gas-Tax Repeal

WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats blocked a vote on repealing the 4.3-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax Tuesday after Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) sought to link the rollback to an unrelated GOP priority that is vehemently opposed by labor unions.

The stalemate, entangled in legislative arcana that baffled even leading senators and their aides, also prevented a vote on raising the minimum wage that is being pushed by Democrats.

The impasse plunged Senate leaders into private negotiations aimed at untangling matters. It was unclear Tuesday night when the dispute would be resolved and the various issues brought up for debate--and for votes.

The repeal of the added federal gas tax began to unravel in midafternoon, as Dole took the floor and asked for unanimous consent to bring up the issue.

At that point, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) won an agreement from Dole to also allow a vote on raising the minimum hourly wage to $5.15 from $4.25, a step that the majority leader has prevented for weeks through the use of legislative tactics at his disposal. Both items are widely expected to pass if they come to a vote.

Matters ground to a halt, however, when Dole introduced a third element into the equation. The Republican presidential candidate proposed linking another, unrelated piece of legislation: the “teamwork for employees and managers act,” a GOP-promoted bill that would expand the ability of employers to create “employee involvement programs.”

Democrats say that the measure would undermine unions and other worker protection programs because it would give management authority to chose employees to represent workers in certain situations without union approval.

The measure was approved by the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee on a strictly party-line vote in mid-April.

Dole’s proposal apparently would have combined all three issues into one bill, according to Senate aides, who were reduced to studying a transcript of Dole’s remarks to determine precisely what he had said.

Thus, if the three-pronged measure had passed, President Clinton would have been forced to agree to--or veto--all three elements. His administration is strongly opposed to the labor legislation, advocates the minimum wage increase and has not stated a clear preference on the rollback of the gas tax.

To make up for the estimated $6 billion a year in lost revenues from a gas-tax repeal, Senate Republicans proposed cutting the budget of the Department of Energy’s travel office and applying some of the income from the sale of broadcast frequencies.

After Democrats blocked action on the gas-tax repeal, Dole snapped: “I thought the priority was passing the minimum wage.” The teamwork act is “just one small, one little amendment.”

But Daschle said that Democrats strongly object to it because it “gives companies license to set up rump organizations to negotiate with themselves.”

Dole’s attempt to inject the issue into two otherwise popular measures is reminiscent of another recent gambit in which he sought to influence the outcome of Senate-House negotiations over a health insurance reform bill.

In that case, Dole had been narrowly defeated in his attempt to add to the insurance bill a provision creating tax-exempt medical savings accounts. So he sought to revive the issue in a House-Senate conference panel attempting to reconcile House and Senate versions of the insurance legislation.

Dole tried to stack the committee with enough senators who favor the medical accounts to ensure that it would be considered. But Democrats objected and the House-Senate negotiations are currently dead in the water.