Concern is also mounting about the mushrooming number of unrelated amendments that senators want to tack on to the bill.

But Republicans insisted it was the Democrats who were politicking, by demanding the right to attach unrelated amendments.

On Wednesday, however, Mr. Lott said he feared that Democrats would try to to attach a raft of unrelated amendments to the bill.

But they got bogged down this afternoon on an unrelated amendment aimed at blocking the Administration's plan to provide protection for Kuwaiti tankers in the Persian Gulf.

But they include unrelated amendments that, for example, curtail appeals by death row prisoners.

Several months later, the Senate voted, as an unrelated amendment to the drug bill, to guarantee rapid leglislative consideration of the committee's work when it was finished.

More support was gained by an agreement for a quick roll-call vote in which another unrelated amendment, to repeal the extra tax on oil income, was approved.

Senators had added a number of unrelated amendments to the spending bill.

In the final hours, however, one noteworthy amendment unrelated to taxation was purged; it would have ordered economic sanctions against Iraq for engaging in chemical warfare.

Democrats cannot complain too loudly about irrelevance because they sometimes like to tie up Administration-backed bills with unrelated amendments of their own.