CONGRESS CRANKS OUT BILLS : MINIMUM WAGE, HEALTH INSURANCE, DRINKING WATER GET A BOOST.

Byline: David Espo Associated Press 

With the fall campaign beckoning, Congress approved legislation Friday to raise the minimum wage, broaden access to health insurance and safeguard the nation's drinking water.

President Clinton is expected to sign all three once they reach his desk.

The subject of months of political combat, the minimum wage measure cleared the Senate on a vote of 76-22 after a similarly lopsided vote in the House.

It called for a 90-cent hike over 13 months of the current federal floor of $4.25, a hard-won triumph for Democrats, Clinton and their allies in organized labor. The measure also included tax breaks for small businesses, homemakers, adoptive parents and others - provisions that majority Republicans demanded for permitting the bill to pass.

The two parties battled for political bragging rights. Beyond that, House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia said there was an ``underlying sense of both Democrats and Republicans wanting to be able to go home with things the American people want,'' an attitude he also said applied to Clinton.

The health care measure gained final passage in the Senate on a vote of 98-0, and supporters hailed it as the most important reform in the industry in a decade.

It would curb the insurance industry's practice of denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing health problems to those who switch or lose their jobs. It also creates new tax breaks for long-term care, easing a source of concern for the elderly and their families.

Eager to respond before the national political conventions to the loss of TWA Flight 800, the House passed a GOP-drafted bill to expand airport security. But the measure was stripped of anti-terrorism provisions Clinton sought in the wake of the bombing at the Olympics and the Senate put off action on it until Congress returns from a monthlong recess.

The minimum wage measure cleared the House earlier in the day on a vote of 354-72, with 70 Republicans and two Democrats in opposition. All 22 votes against the measure in the Senate were cast by Republicans.

Supporters said the minimum wage had fallen to a 40-year low in purchasing power, and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., said the wage hike and health measure marked a ``double-header win for working families.''

The health care measure included a provision setting up an experimental program for tax-deductible Medical Savings Accounts that Democrats long opposed. GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole of Kansas had championed that and the tax breaks for long-term care before he resigned his Senate seat.

Some lawmakers expressed regret that the measure did not mandate stronger insurance coverage for mental health. ``This issue is not going to go away,'' vowed Sen. Pete V. Domenici, R-N.M.

Partisanship erupted briefly during debate on the health measure, when Domenici challenged Kennedy for saying it took the Republicans far too long to bring the measure to passage.

``I would remind you that you had the Senate and the House for two years with the president and you didn't get anything done on health care,'' Domenici said.

Kennedy snapped back that whatever Democrats may have done, Republicans had tried to ``cut Medicare and cut Medicaid'' to provide tax cuts for the wealthy.

Off the floors of the House and Senate, the two parties engaged in a fierce battle for political credit for the spate of legislation.

Noting the landmark welfare reform bill that cleared Congress on Thursday and the bills passed Friday, Gingrich said, ``This is the most significant Congress in a generation.''

The Republican speaker was biting about Clinton's decision to sign the welfare measure, telling reporters, the president was doing so ``because he can't avoid it and get re-elected and that's the only reason.''

The GOP-controlled Congress has gone ``from gridlock to Olympic gold,'' exulted Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi.

Clinton and congressional Democrats countered that Republicans were trying to rewrite history.

``It's come like pulling teeth, right here before the election, and it's only come after the American people showed that they were bitterly opposed to the extremism that was the wont of the Congress,'' Clinton told reporters at the White House.

House Democratic Whip David Bonior of Michigan mocked House GOP leader Richard Armey, a Texan fond of quoting from country and western songs. Bonior said that after months of ``extremism,'' the Republicans were finally practicing moderation, and added that reminded him of a song: ``Walk out backward slowly so I think you're walkin' in.''

Whatever the political claims, a summer break beckoned for lawmakers, and the legislation was piling up.

The measure overhauling the laws governing drinking water breezed through the House and the Senate. It established a loan fund for local governments to upgrade their water facilities and, for the first time, would give consumers information about the contaminants in their drinking water.

Republicans battled the minimum wage measure for months, and relented only when defections from their moderate rank-and-file made it clear the measure would pass. The final bill will raise the hourly wage floor from $4.25 by 50 cents Oct. 1 and an added 40 cents Sept. 1, 1997.

Under the tax measure that was attached, homemakers could contribute up to $2,000 tax-deferred to an Individual Retirement Account, the same as spouses who work outside the home. A separate provision is designed to encourage small businesses to offer employees a pension account.

Republicans also wrote in tax breaks for adoptive parents, companies offering tuition benefits to employees, consumers buying luxury cars and small businesses.

Health care, too, had been ensnarled in legislative gridlock, only to break loose in the final days before the party conventions.

The measure had been held up by controversy over a Republican demand for the Medical Savings Accounts. The final compromise permits 750,000 such accounts to be set up as part of a four-year experimental program.

Such accounts permit individuals to set aside money in a tax-deferred account, with the proceeds to be used for health care costs, including the premiums for insurance coverage against catastrophic illness or injury.