House Defeats Bush Rights Bill : Congress: The vote clears the way for passage of a more far-reaching Democratic measure on race and job bias. GOP senators unveil a compromise proposal.

WASHINGTON —  The House decisively rejected President Bush’s civil rights bill Tuesday night and cleared the way for approval today of a more far-reaching alternative backed by the Democratic leadership.

Bush’s proposal was defeated 266 to 162 following an angry, emotional debate over the President’s repeated charges that the legislation favored by most Democrats would compel employers to resort to racial quotas favoring blacks over whites.

Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) rejected Bush’s statements as “incredible,” and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) declared: “The President ought to be ashamed of himself.”

The emotionally charged confrontation in the House may foreshadow a sharp national debate over the issues of race and job bias during the 1992 elections.

In a related development, a group of nine Republican senators, led by Sen. John C. Danforth (R-Mo.), unveiled a compromise proposal that they said might break the stalemate between the President and Democratic congressional leaders.

The Senate will take up the civil rights bill after the House adopts its version of the legislation.

The Administration’s bill was attacked Tuesday in the House as inadequate to overcome setbacks for women and minorities resulting from recent Supreme Court rulings that narrowed the scope of laws dealing with job discrimination.

“The Administration bill is an attempt to capture the fairness issue by exploiting racial politics,” argued Rep. Ted Weiss (D-N.Y.).

Advocates said it would provide some relief without placing new burdens on employers or forcing them to give special preference in hiring and promotion to women and minorities.

“This bill stresses fairness over quotas, conciliation over litigation,” said House Minority Leader Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.) in defending the President’s plan.

A breakdown of the vote against the Bush bill indicated that advocates of the measure backed by the Democratic leadership remained short of a two-thirds majority that would be needed to override a threatened Bush veto of a Democratic leadership alternative plan. A total of 246 Democrats, 19 Republicans and one independent voted against the President’s proposal, but 16 Democrats and 146 Republicans supported Bush on the roll call.

As a result, opponents fell 22 votes short of the needed two-thirds majority on the first test of House sentiment on civil rights legislation.

All the Democrats in the California delegation voted against the Bush plan, except Rep. Pete Stark (D-Oakland), who did not vote. Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-Stockton) was the only Republican in the delegation to vote no.

Earlier Tuesday, the House also rejected, on a vote of 277 to 152, the most liberal civil rights measure before it, which was sponsored by Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, and Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.), a leader in the Congressional Women’s Caucus.

Democratic leaders opposed that measure, however, on the grounds that it could not attract enough support to build the two-thirds majority that would be needed to override a threatened Bush veto. Supporters said it was the only bill that would treat women, the disabled and religious minorities in the same way as racial minorities with regard to the right to win unlimited punitive damages for intentional discrimination.

A total of 145 Democrats, six Republicans and one independent voted for the Towns-Schroeder measure while 119 Democrats and 158 Republicans voted against it.

Once the Bush bill was defeated, the House put off until today action on the measure, co-sponsored by Rep. Jack Brooks (D-Tex.) and Rep. Hamilton Fish Jr. (R-N.Y.), that is favored by the House Democratic leadership.

It would reverse six Supreme Court rulings in 1989 that advocates said have chipped away at the ability of women and minorities to sue for job discrimination. In an effort to blunt Bush’s attacks, however, the Democrats added language to outlaw quotas and restrict the ability of women and other victims of deliberate job bias to collect damages.

Democrats were struggling to get a maximum vote for the Brooks-Fish bill, at least as many as the 273 they had in approving last year’s bill that Bush vetoed. It would require 288 votes in the House to override a second veto, if all House members cast ballots.

Debate in the House was acrimonious on the politically charged civil rights issue that has implications for the presidential and congressional elections next year.

“This bill will accomplish precisely what the 1964 civil rights bill stood four-square against--a color-conscious society,” said Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), a leader of the opposition to the Democratic leadership bill. “This bill codifies racial preference.”

Schroeder countered by saying, “What we’re trying to do is return civil rights to where they were before the ‘Reagan Court’ got hold of them.”

And Rep. David E. Price (D-N.C.) accused the Bush Administration of practicing “cheap racial politics.” He said the President apparently wanted an inflammatory issue rather than legislation to sign.

The opening of the House debate also capped weeks of intensive back-room negotiations on the contents of the Democratic leadership bill. The talks were an effort to reduce Democrats’ apprehensions over voting for legislation that was attacked repeatedly by the President as a “quota bill.”

Bush also appealed directly to a group of Southern Democrats to vote for his bill during a private meeting Monday at the White House as both sides fought hard for every possible vote.

The move by Sen. Danforth and eight moderate Republican colleagues could break the deadlock between the White House and Democratic congressional leaders and result in a compromise civil rights bill this year.

Once the House has passed legislation, the Senate is expected to take up the bill and pass its own version, with a final bill likely to be worked out in a Senate-House conference.

In a rebuff to the President, the GOP moderates turned their back on his proposal and presented a far more sweeping package of three bills that they said represented a “middle ground” between Bush and the Democratic-backed measure.

The group included Sen. Warren B. Rudman (R-N.H.), who voted to sustain Bush’s veto of a similar bill last year. He indicated that the moderate Republicans did not want to be associated with the Administration’s hard-line stance on the legislation.

“Civil rights should not be fodder for partisan cannons,” Danforth said. One of his bills would reverse five Supreme Court rulings that scaled back the scope of laws against job discrimination. Another bill would focus on employers’ job practices that have a disparate impact on minorities and women. A third bill would allow limited damages in cases of intentional discrimination, with a $50,000 lid on awards for workers in companies with fewer than 100 employees, and a $150,000 lid on those employed by larger companies.

“I think this offers the best possibility to get something passed,” Danforth said.

House Republicans insisted that the Democrats’ bill would result in hiring quotas regardless of a specific ban on such practices because employers would not want to risk costly lawsuits.

House Democratic leader Richard A. Gephardt said the country is in “a Republican recession” and the Administration “wants to blame quotas” for the jobs people are losing. “They’re willing to pit white working people against black working people because they do not want either of them to recognize that under this Administration the system works for a few, not for them.”