Senate U S

Alan Greenspan's bid to serve another four years as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board was supposed to sail through the Senate faster than a hot tip on Wall Street. He is, after all, a reassuring, professorial figure exalted in financial circles, a true-blue Republican endorsed by a Democratic White House and a field-tested general in the war against inflation. That was more than three months ago.

As Congress prepares to bid Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole a grand farewell this week, Republicans hope they can put a capstone on his 35-year legislative career and give his presidential campaign a shot of energy it badly needs. Senate Republicans, rolling out the drums for Dole to march off into his full-time presidential campaign, are staging a week of votes designed to showcase his differences with President Clinton on issues from the budget to defense policy.

Bob Dole, in an updated autobiography, discloses that after receiving a clean bill of health following the removal of a cancerous prostate in 1991, he seriously considered whether he should "move on" and retire from the Senate. But he says that he changed his mind after President Bush urged him to run for reelection and the floor debate over the Persian Gulf War lent new energy to his legislative passions.

Citing evidence of "a series of abuses . . . that threatens the appropriate use of billions of taxpayer dollars," the chairman of a powerful U.S. Senate subcommittee announced Thursday that his panel will launch an investigation into the construction of Los Angeles' Metro Rail subway system. Sen. William V. Roth Jr. (R.-Del.

The U.S. Senate has rarely seen anyone quite like Trent Lott of Mississippi. The brash, ambitious Republican who is expected to become Senate majority leader this week has gotten where he is by means not often used in the genteel Senate: He steps on toes, lots of them. Lott seized his place as the second-ranking Senate Republican two years ago by deposing a popular incumbent to become majority whip. He climbed over his state's senior senator, a fellow Republican, in the process.

Republicans pressed ahead Wednesday for unlimited Senate Whitewater hearings, but Democrats temporarily blocked them by refusing to show up for a meeting. Overriding a Democratic proposal to limit extension of the Senate inquiry to five weeks, the Banking Committee voted, 9 to 7, to continue the probe indefinitely. Democrats then boycotted a meeting of the Rules Committee, leaving Republicans one short of a quorum, with Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) campaigning in South Carolina.

For an increasingly frustrated Bob Dole, it's beginning to look like the poet was right: April is indeed the cruelest month. Four weeks ago, as he sailed through the final round of primaries that would clinch the Republican presidential nomination, Dole looked toward April in Washington as something close to a "win-win" situation.

Republican predictions that the 1996 elections would sweep them to a powerful, filibuster-proof majority in the Senate have stalled in the face of political head winds, and Democrats are increasingly hopeful they can whittle away at the current six-vote GOP advantage. In state after state, Republican prospects have suffered in recent months. * In Maine, the unexpected retirement of a popular Republican incumbent turned a safe GOP seat into a cat fight between the parties.

In a friendly swap of political power, California Sen. Barbara Boxer will take over the Senate Appropriations Committee seat reserved for Democratic colleague Sen. Dianne Feinstein. The maneuver, announced Tuesday, gives Boxer an influential Senate position that should pay political dividends as she plots her reelection strategy to retain her seat two years from now. "It's a great day for California, and I am very pleased to take a seat on this powerful committee," Boxer said.

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) is the kind of guy who loves charts, lists and schedules. He likes his meetings to start on time, move briskly and end promptly. And he thinks people should walk the straight and narrow, in designated crosswalks, when they traverse the Capitol's broad plaza. Lott is, in short, a disciplined man for whom organization is a way of life.