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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/15/politics/15REPU.html?tntemail0

Republicans in Senate Preparing Agenda With a Surgeon's Touch

By DAVID FIRESTONE

ASHINGTON, Feb. 14 — Republican Senate leaders unveiled a legislative agenda today that mixed tax cuts with an unusually wide variety of health issues, showing the influence of Senator Bill Frist, the surgeon who is their new majority leader.

Of the Top 10 bills that Republicans plan to introduce, half reflect Dr. Frist's medical background, particularly a measure to combat the spread of AIDS, which has also been championed by President Bush, and one that bans a form of late-term abortion. Other medical bills would add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare, limit medical malpractice insurance costs and make it easier for drug companies to manufacture vaccines.

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Party leaders also plan an energy bill that will probably include increased domestic oil drilling, an education bill that adds more local flexibility to federal requirements, and a bill matching one passed in the House on Thursday that adds stricter work requirements for welfare recipients. Another top-priority bill, already introduced, would repeal the estate tax.

Although issues like Medicare reform or limits on medical malpractice awards might have come up under the leadership of Dr. Frist's predecessor, Trent Lott, it is unlikely that so many health issues would have received such prominence.

The ceremonial unveiling of the list was about six weeks later than usual. The list of high-priority bills is normally presented by each party's leader on the first day of the Congressional session in January. But Dr. Frist took office after the turmoil of Mr. Lott's resignation and did not have time to assemble the agenda. Also, though they risked appearing tentative, several senators said they wanted to wait until after they received their "marching orders" from President Bush's State of the Union address, and the Senate then took a month to approve last year's unfinished spending bills.

Having helped shepherd the spending measure to approval late Thursday, Dr. Frist asserted that today was the first real day of the Congressional session.

"I am here today to declare that the 107th Congress is over," he said at a news conference, calling today a "pivot point" in the transition to a Congressional session led entirely by Republicans. Though he dutifully explained the party's belief that cutting taxes would create jobs, he reserved his most passionate language, as he always has, for the need to spend $15 billion to fight the spread of AIDS around the world.

"This little virus is only 22 years old but has killed 23 million people," Dr. Frist said. "And in the best of all worlds, it's going to kill another 45 million. And I want the history books 30 years from now to look back and say America stood up and changed the course of history, which will affect tens of millions of people, saving their lives."

Dr. Frist also said that the abortion bill, which was introduced today, was a strong personal interest. The measure would ban the late-term medical procedure that opponents call "partial birth abortion," a procedure that he described as "outside the practice of medicine today" and one that he said offended most Americans.

Any legislative agenda is only a vague outline of the following two years, because the details always change in political negotiation, and several of the bills on today's list consisted of little more than a title. With many Congressional Republicans disagreeing with the administration's plans to require seniors to join health maintenance organizations to get prescription drugs under Medicare, Senate leaders have not yet decided which direction to go in their drug bill, aides said. Dr. Frist said on Thursday that he wanted the Senate to write its own Medicare bill, implying a degree of independence from the White House's plans.

Similarly, few details were available about the party's energy plan, in part because several moderate Republicans oppose new oil drilling in Alaska.

But many of the proposals are familiar because they essentially match those of President Bush. The bill known as the American Jobs and Growth Package will include most, if not all, of the administration's proposed tax cuts, which several senators defended today despite suggestions from Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, that they could push the deficit too high.

Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, a member of the Finance Committee, said that even if the effect of the cuts was primarily long-term, they could still benefit the short-term economy.

"The best short-run impact is for a long-run program," Senator Kyl said, "because the market, the investors, the people who are trying to create capital to create jobs understand that it will be there, and therefore they react in the short run to the promise of good long-run policy."

Senator Kyl and Dr. Frist said they saw no need to ask for Mr. Greenspan's resignation, even as some Republicans said that Mr. Greenspan had undermined the administration's budget plan, which would create record deficits.

The estate tax bill was introduced last month by Mr. Kyl, but its bill number was moved up today to reflect the importance placed on it by party leaders. Though it is touted as a measure to protect family farmers and small-business owners from the tax, the bill says nothing about limiting the repeal to farms or businesses.

While Republicans control both the Senate and the House, many of the bills proposed today may be blocked by Democrats, who still have considerable power to oppose initiatives in the Senate. Even as the Senate recessed today for a week, it remained tied up in a Democratic filibuster over one of Mr. Bush's judicial nominees, and many Republicans have acknowledged that months of contentious negotiations between the parties lie ahead. The AIDS bill is the only one proposed today that is considered likely to pass without major changes.

Dr. Frist implicitly acknowledged that his reputation was riding on his ability to push through today's agenda and arrive at the necessary compromises. Though he said he did not know if the prescription drug plan, for example, could be approved by his target date of late summer, he all but invited skeptics to follow his progress.

"These are bills, as has been pointed out, that we feel strongly about," Dr. Frist said. "Two years from now, I want you and others and our colleagues to come back and say, `Did you accomplish all of this?' "

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