All work, no play for Congress before recess

WASHINGTON — So much to do, so little time.

No, we're not talking about Christmas shopping, but Congress. Members of the House and Senate have heaped their platter high with difficult issues that, in an ideal world, would be resolved by Friday. But lawmakers are scrambling to see which bills will be completed and which will have to wait until 2006.

Leaders are under intense pressure to adjourn by the week's end so the winter recess can begin, but they have not promised to do so.

The pending issues include some of the knottiest that Congress has debated all year: tax cuts, spending cuts, interrogation limits for foreign detainees, oil exploration in an Arctic wilderness and renewal of the USA Patriot Act.

The most pressing deadline involves the Patriot Act, enacted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to give federal agents greater leeway to secretly search the homes or businesses of suspected terrorists and to monitor their phone calls, business records and library usage. The law will expire Dec. 31.

The House appears poised to pass a measure today that emerged from a House-Senate conference committee, but it faces resistance from many Democrats and some Republicans in the Senate. The bill would extend key portions of the bill for four years, not the seven or 10 years that many House members wanted. It modifies the rules under which agents can surreptitiously gain various records, but civil libertarians and numerous lawmakers say it does not do enough to safeguard Americans' rights.

Democrats have vowed to filibuster the measure late this week. Top Senate aides in both parties say it is unclear whether the bill's proponents will have the 60 votes needed to shut off debate and pass the legislation.

House and Senate negotiators also face the difficult task of reaching accords on their very different tax-cut and budget-cut plans. The tax cuts should be the easy piece: Senate GOP leaders believe they can win the 51 votes needed to pass an extension of the 2003 dividend and capital-gains tax cuts, which expire in 2008.

The Senate Finance Committee could not pass that extension, due to the refusal of Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine. But with House passage secured last week, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., needs only a simple majority to pass a conference report, under parliamentary rules that protect the tax measure from a filibuster.

Before they get to the tax cut, however, negotiators will have to broker a deal on the budget cuts, and that will not be easy. Two negotiators, Sens. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, are determined to block any plan that does not open Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. But acting House Majority Leader Roy Blunt, R-Mo., says such a provision would doom a deal in the House.

Finally, the White House is trying to modify language that would draw tighter limits on techniques allowed in interrogating suspected terrorists. President Bush has threatened to veto a military spending or authorization bill if it includes the amendment — written by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and passed 90-9 in the Senate — that would require U.S. interrogators to abide by the Army Field Manual and to refrain from using cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.