What else Congress did this summer

Beyond last week's high-visibility bills, the House quietly passed significant legislation.

Last week was a tough one for many congressional staffers. They toiled long hours in the brutal heat of high Washington summer as lawmakers finished important work before their August recess.

But all that labor may not go unrewarded. The House voted congressional staff a 4.6 percent pay raise as it rushed for the exits. The Senate had previously approved staff raises - meaning all those loyal secretaries, legislative assistants, and chiefs of staff are virtually certain to receive bigger pay packets next year.

Didn't hear about that vote? Didn't think so. Every year, as it approaches some self-imposed deadline, Congress rips through dozens of votes in a last-minute frenzy of legislating.

Lawmakers themselves - much less the media - have a hard time keeping track of all of them. Yet many have long-lasting fiscal or policy effects.

Coverage of the just-passed House energy bill focused on its Arctic drilling provisions, for instance. But the legislation also included $33.5 billion in energy tax incentives - considerably more than the Bush administration had requested.

"There really isn't any money left for any more tax cuts, so it's interesting that they keep passing them," says Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a fiscal watchdog group.

Congress never plans to cram much of its work into a few days as recesses loom. Almost every year, leaders say that this time, they will do better.

They vow that the annual appropriations process will be a smooth one, with votes occurring throughout the spring and summer, and all money bills passed by the end of the fiscal year in October.

That's the position in March, anyway. By July, legislation is typically backed up like airplanes circling LaGuardia. October? Don't ask.

This summer's pre-break period has been relatively typical. Several major pieces of legislation reached important stages, particularly the energy bill and a patients' bill of rights in the House.

Both votes received much publicity as representing triumphs - short-lived or no - for Bush administration positions.

But some second-tier bills arguably represent more long-term change. The Senate's passage of a $5.5 billion farm-relief package, for instance, may sound the end of a long-standing congressional effort to wean US agriculture off extensive government price supports.

That was the point of the 1996 "Freedom to Farm Act," anyway. It was supposed to phase out existing subsidy programs and give farmers more flexibility in deciding which crops to plant.

Didn't work. Crop prices kept dropping, and farm state legislators pushed for money as hard as ever. Congress has now passed "emergency" farm-aid bills for four years running.

Lawmakers may well now drop the pretense that aid is year -to-year, and again look at an annual solution.

The current system "is woefully inadequate, and 'Freedom to Farm' ... did a lot to create it," says Barry Piatt, an aide to Sen. Byron Dorgan (D) of North Dakota.

Then there's the third tier of legislation - the bills passed with little debate or provisions tucked in larger bills.

Besides the staff pay raise, for instance, the House has passed a so-called Federal Flier bill that would allow federal employees to keep the airline frequent-flier miles they accumulate on work travel.

"A federal employee perk sneak attack," says Gary Ruskin, director of the Congressional Accountability Project.

As always, some appropriations bills have become festivals of individual projects. The House version of this year's transportation bill contains some 900 member earmarks totaling $1.6 billion. The Senate version has 700, at $2.2 billion.

Among them: $1.6 million for an Olympic Discovery Trail in Washington state, and $100,000 for a space museum in Nevada.

In other action, the House has voted to move $15 billion now held by the Treasury for railroad retirees to a government board that would invest the money in stocks and bonds.

This technical-sounding shift presents an interesting precedent for any privatization of Social Security.

The Bush administration has opposed any government investment of Social Security funds in the stock or bond markets. Instead, it supports creation of individual private accounts to supplement the current Social Security structure, with investments controlled by the individual.

Staff writers Gail Russell Chaddock and Liz Marlantes contributed to this report.