ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, March 29, 1996 TAG: 9603290091
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: From The Associated Press and The Washington Post
Legislation raising the ceiling on the national debt to $5.5 trillion - enough for another year and a half of deficit spending - cleared Congress on Thursday.
GOP leaders packaged the politically distasteful measure with several planks of their ``Contract With America'' and it passed the House by a 328-91 vote. The Senate later nodded its approval with an unrecorded voice vote.
One of the bill's provisions was long sought by millions of older Americans who want to keep working after 65 but fear losing their Social Security benefits if they do. It would raise the amount of wages a Social Security recipient age 65 through 69 can earn and still not lose any Social Security benefits.
Under the new law, the earnings limit would rise from the current $11,520 to $30,000 by 2002, a major increase in how much can be earned without penalty and far above the $14,400 ceiling to which it would have automatically risen under previous law. For job earnings above the limit, Social Security benefits would be reduced $1 for each $3 earned under a provision already on the books. There is no earnings limit for those 70 and over.
The new bill does not change the earnings limit for beneficiaries under age 65, $8,280.
A second major provision of the bill would bar alcoholics and drug abusers from receiving disability benefits under Social Security or the federal Supplemental Security Income welfare program.
President Clinton's signature is needed by midnight today to avert a first-ever federal default. The Treasury Department has been juggling accounts since the government bumped up the present $4.9 trillion last fall.
``The president's prepared to act ... the minute the legislation's available,'' White House spokesman Mike McCurry said.
Meanwhile, House and Senate lawmakers worked in marathon sessions for a compromise on spending legislation appropriating roughly $160 billion to dozens of federal agencies and departments for the six months remaining in fiscal 1996.
A preliminary, 232-177 vote, setting the rules for debating the package, sent separate legislation to the White House giving the president veto authority to strip individual items from spending bills beginning Jan. 1.
Republicans had titled the debt-limit increase, ``The Contract With America Advancement Act of 1996,'' and said its passage represented their determination to enact as much of their 1994 campaign agenda as could escape Clinton's veto.
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