WASHINGTON -- It may look like Enron Corp. is the only game in town, but that would be far from the truth. A lot is going on these days, although Enron certainly has taken a big chunk of the capital's attention. There are hearings galore and press conferences in between. To what end? Good question. This fascinating story of greed and connivance begs to be told and retold. It appears that the lessons of the collapse of the energy giant will be applied to pension reforms and securities laws and regulations. There will be a light at the end of this tunnel, and American business will operate in a somewhat more controlled environment. Henceforth, auditors will not be consultants to the same clients.

The most important happening of early February is always the presentation of the president's budget. Taken at face value, the budget is the game plan for government spending, but in reality it is much more. It is the president's long-range vision for America. It is the president's political strategy -- the result of countless hours of considerations and debate among the bureaucrats who craft it and interested parties who seek to persuade them of the value of their causes.

The first direct benefit of the Enron scandal occurred in the early hours of Feb. 14, when the House of Representatives passed the Shays-Meehan Campaign Finance Reform bill. On final passage, 41 Republicans joined all but 12 Democrats in voting for the bill.

The House passed bill now goes to the Senate where it can fly or die. The Senate passed a very similar bill last summer under the sponsorship of Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain and Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Russell Feingold, but passage of the House bill there is no sure thing. It will appear on the floor for consideration as an amended version of the McCain-Feingold bill.

So far, so good, but lurking in the shrubbery is Kentucky Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, the staunch foe of any change in the finance law. He will try to filibuster the bill to keep it from a vote. He may, or may not, prevail.

The strategy is for the Senate to vote the bill up or down (up, hopefully) and avoid a conference with the House to iron out differences between it and the Senate's legislation. The bill would probably not emerge from a conference. If it clears the Senate hurdle, it still has a big jump to make at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Although the president really does not like it, he may sign it as a practical matter. He has kept his own counsel on that question. He wanted the House to kill it without his having to get involved. Now he may have one of those big decisions that give him gray hair. War and peace are easy for him, but taking soft money out of politics -- that's a tough one.

The bill is a good effort to take money out of the system. I like parts of it, but it tends to diminish the role of the national parties at the expense of special interests. If I had my way, I would do just the opposite.

In the House, the speaker and the Republican leadership threw everything they had at the bill but did not make any changes in it. They offered two substitutes and nine amendments aimed at changing the bill enough to force a House-Senate conference, where supporters feared the measure would be stalled indefinitely.

In the House action, I noted two items that show what interest groups seem to have the most clout:

First, the House voted 327-101 to remove a provision requiring television stations to give candidates the lowest possible rate for ads in the 60 days before an election -- score a big one for the broadcasters.

Second, the closest call on a "poison pill" amendment came when lawmakers on a 219-209 vote refused to exempt soft-money advertising restrictions on matters pertaining to the Second Amendment, which guarantees the right to bear arms. Give a point, but no cigar, to the gun lobby as they came closest.

But wait, this bill is not law yet. It has been dressed up for a march down the aisle of the Senate. The House approved two amendments that brought the bill in line with the previously passed Senate measure. One doubled the $1,000 limit on regulated, hard-money donations individuals can make to House and Senate candidates. A "millionaire's amendment" raised hard-money contribution ceilings for candidates running against wealthy opponents spending their own money.

Majority leader Sen. Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat, will push it hard. He will need 60 votes to pass it, but it got only 59 when it cleared the Senate last summer. South Carolina Democratic Sen. Ernest F. Hollings, who had opposed the bill, has agreed to vote against a filibuster, thus providing the 60th vote. But now Arkansas Republican Sen. Ted Stevens said he no longer supports the bill. That's the way it has gone: win one, lose one.

I think the bill will pass the Senate, and I think the president will sign it. The bill is actually good for him. The provision that raises the contribution limit from $1,000 to $2,000 per person is custom-made for Bush. He raised his money in $1,000 chunks last time without relying on federal matching funds. He is likely to do the same for 2004, and will be able to get twice as much per donor as last time. It will save him time and trouble and cut down on the amount of rubber chicken dispensed in the campaign.

It will take some time to judge just how the measure will change politics. It would not go into effect until after the hotly contested 2002 elections. The new campaign law will also be challenged in the courts. Kentucky Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, the archenemy of campaign finance reform, has promised to do that. So even if the Senate does pass it quickly and the president signs it, the effects are not going to be felt until 2004.

Who has the toughest job in Washington? I will always vote for the director of the Office of Management and Budget -- now Mitch Daniels -- who left the peace and quiet of Indianapolis life to re-enlist in the trenches of government in Washington to do this thankless task. Mitch originally came to town with Indiana Republican Sen. Richard Lugar and had returned home to enjoy a few years of private life. He is well-schooled in politics and will serve his president well.

The budget that he presented last week is the cornerstone of the Bush re-election campaign. Oh, sure, it does a few other things, such as define the way the United States will spend billions of dollars, but to Daniels and his team, the job of budgeting is to make sure that while the nation's business is being done, the president's top priority is taken care of first. It is far more a political document of the president's priorities and positions than a road map of how federal dollars will be allocated. Daniels is very good at that sort of strategic planning.

Let us take a case in point. It can be noted, for example, that there are some efficiencies being developed in NASA. Millions of dollars and hundreds of high paying technical jobs are being moved from far off California to the space center in Florida -- efficiencies, consolidation -- all of the right code words.

It can also be noted that Bush lost California by a wide margin in 2000 and the prospects for 2004 do not look much better. But who can forget how close Florida was? So, why not boost the central Florida economy. The move, being made at this time, will also give the governor of Florida (Bush's brother, Jeb) a chance to announce it during his re-election campaign this year.

Does that make all Republicans happy? Of course not! The NASA jobs from California come from a Republican District. Howard P. McKeon, the congressman who is seeing the NASA employees move out, believes that the move is "penny-wise and pound foolish."

And so it goes in many ways. The budget for the president's welfare in 2004 is not necessarily positive for the congressmen and senators who will be running in 2002. Gone will be many of the pork projects that line the way to re-election, but the economics are needed to make the president's budget look right. Nonetheless, the congressmen are likely to get the last word. They will have opportunities galore to put those projects back into play as the appropriations process moves through the Congress. The president won't have a chance to scuttle them when they arrive in packages.

The battle of the budget took on a rather nasty tone the other day. The Senate Appropriations Committee was taking testimony from Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill when West Virginia Democratic Senator Robert C. Byrd commented on the criticism of some regulations contained in this year's budget document. It so happens that Byrd authored the regulations. Byrd's comment sparked a response from O'Neil that began 10 minutes of the coldest, hardest colloquy in congressional memory.

O'Neill, who reportedly renounced more than $52 million in deferred compensation from aluminum company Alcoa to take his government job, described his humble beginnings: born in a house without running water or electricity. The senator responded with a similar remembrance, topping it with "a wooden outhouse down the way."

It was a riveting moment -- one that will not be forgotten by either man, unfortunately. When asked if he actually wiped a tear from his eye as he left, O'Neil said, "No, it was fire." Heavy stuff!

I believe that his pals from the Office of Management and Budget trapped O'Neill. For some unknown reason, they have turned the staid old annual report of the budget into a slick political document, complete with pictures, cartoons and hot rhetoric. Byrd objected to rhetorical criticism of regulations that he had crafted to require super majorities in the Senate to spend more money than is in the original budget authorization. The verbal war started when O'Neil tried to defend the OMB position.

Nobody reads the budget document other than its tables. Using the document as a propaganda piece is wasted energy.