Feinstein Desert Bill Hangs in Balance in Senate

WASHINGTON —  With 7.5 million acres of environmentally sensitive land hanging in the balance, the clock was running out Thursday on the California desert bill as supporters accused Republicans of sacrificing the landmark measure merely to deny Sen. Dianne Feinstein a legislative victory a month before the November election.

The House was expected early today to pass the bill that would create two national parks and dozens of wilderness areas in the ecologically fragile desert. But the measure was sure to slam into a wall in the Senate, where forces were lining up to prevent it from coming to a vote before Congress adjourns for the year, possibly today.

“The effort is to run the clock out on it,” said Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez), chairman of the Natural Resources Committee and prime backer of the desert bill in the House. “During debate Republicans were passing around news stories about (Feinstein’s) reelection. It’s pretty clear what the message was.”

Sen. Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) has vowed to keep the Senate in session until several pieces of legislation, including the desert bill, are passed.

“We are going to stay until we deal with the California desert bill,” he told reporters Thursday night, “whatever the date.”

But there will undoubtedly be formidable efforts, including possibly a filibuster, to stall the bill to death. After eight years of contentious debate, the desert bill was expected to become law this year.

Janis Williams, an aide to Sen. Malcolm Wallop (R-Wyo.), said: “The senator will do whatever it takes to defeat the bill. He is trying to get our forces together to debate this bill all weekend if that’s what we need to do.”

Versions of the measure--which would be the largest public lands act of its kind in the continental United States--have already passed with comfortable margins in the House and Senate. The compromise that emerged from conference committee Monday night was not vastly different from the versions that went in, and the votes are indisputably there to pass it again.

But with many lawmakers eager to adjourn, particularly those with difficult elections facing them in their home states or districts, time is the weapon that could kill it.

“There is not a problem with the substance of the bill. It is being denied the people of California because some members want to deny Sen. Dianne Feinstein this victory. What they are denying is an opportunity to protect incredible resources, biological, cultural and recreational resources,” said Norbert Reidy, spokesman for the Wilderness Society in San Francisco.

Feinstein, who has championed the legislation since she arrived in Washington in 1992, said this week that the bill’s greatest enemy is Republican unwillingness to hand her a victory a month before she faces Rep. Mike Huffington (R-Santa Barbara) at the polls. But she held out hope that it would still survive. “It isn’t over ‘til it’s over,” she said.

Opponents of the desert bill dismiss as nonsense the notion that Feinstein’s reelection bid has anything to do with their opposition to a measure that they say is bad law.

“California politics is not the point,” said Williams, Wallop’s aide. “The bill creates at least two new national parks the size of Yellowstone and no new funding to support them. . . . If Congress is going to have an appetite for creating huge new parks, it ought to have a similar appetite for creating the money.”

Wallop led other Republicans in an effort to stall the bill after the Senate passed its version in July. Critics say he tied it in procedural knots, prevented it from going to conference committee for two months and then doomed it to encounter end-of-session chaos that has been known to snuff even the healthiest legislation.

Supporters of the desert bill are faced with complex parliamentary problems to win passage. After it passes the House, congressional rules say the bill must wait 24 hours before it can be addressed by the Senate. That means that the Senate could not possibly take up the bill before Saturday--one day after Congress is scheduled to adjourn so that members can campaign in their districts.

Opponents in the Senate are bound to further delay a vote with a filibuster. Although it requires just 51 votes to pass a bill, it takes 60 to end a filibuster. The longer the votes are delayed, the more likely it is that senators will just leave town anyway, eroding support for legislation that earlier in the session would easily have gone over the top.

Even if passed, the bill will lack one of its original central goals, to make the East Mojave National Scenic Area a new national park. The version passed in the conference committee deemed the land only a preserve, where hunting is permitted, and there was no time left to argue the point without losing the bill entirely in the end-of-session crunch, sources said.

The conference version did include in the Mojave preserve 300,000 acres known as Lanfair Valley, considered a victory by environmentalists.