SENATE ENDORSES S&L OVERHAUL MEASURE.

Byline: Rob Wells Associated Press 

The Senate approved a wide-ranging banking bill Monday that eliminates the prospect of additional taxpayer financing for the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s.

The bill fixes a nagging problem from the S&L crisis: revival of the thrift industry's struggling deposit insurance fund. And it sets the stage for the eventual elimination of savings and loans.

The Savings Association Insurance Fund rescue plan now goes to President Clinton for his signature.

It cost taxpayers $480.9 billion to bail out the thrift industry, which is at near-record levels of financial strength. In fact, S&Ls are so healthy now that they agreed to pay $4.7 billion to bring the deposit insurance fund to its required funding level.

The thrift deposit insurance fund, which insures customer deposits up to $100,000, had been weakened due to a declining number of S&Ls as well as large debt payments on S&L rescue bonds.

Included in the large government spending legislation passed Monday evening, the banking bill paves the way for Congress to merge the S&L deposit fund into the healthier fund for banks, and merger of the S&L and banking charters.

``I think within five years, probably less, there will be one industry,'' said Rep. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.

Meantime, the nation's commercial banks will help thrifts make the annual $780 million payments on government bonds issued for the thrift bailout. For that contribution, lawmakers agreed to revise a number of banking regulations to reduce banks' paperwork costs.

Under the package, well-capitalized small banks will be examined less frequently - every 18 months instead of every year. Lending regulations are eased so banks can let their officers and directors borrow from employee benefit plans without running afoul of insider lending laws.

It also shields banks from pollution liability lawsuits when they foreclose on heavily polluted properties. Healthy banks won't have to get regulatory approval to establish automated teller machines.

And it prevents the Farm Credit System or other government-sponsored enterprises from sponsoring credit unions, which would compete with commercial banks.

A quirk in congressional budget accounting provided to be a force propelling the bill. The thrifts' one-time payment of $4.7 billion is counted as revenue under Congress' budget accounting, enabling lawmakers to spend an additional $3.1 billion without running afoul of budget deficit restrictions.

In the end, consumer groups hailed Senate negotiators' decision to drop language that would have enabled credit bureaus to sell information about consumers to catalog sales companies and ``junk mailers.''