"And I think you can make the case that a change-oriented Democrat who will challenge Congress but work with it has the best chance to actually deliver real changes in the lives of the American people."

In his first extended remarks on Social Security since he challenged Congress last month to put aside any budget surplus until it has dealt with the retirement system's looming insolvency, Mr. Clinton asked Congress to "rise above partisanship" and return the program to financial soundness.

The move also underscores how little progress has been made on the issue since Mr. Clinton challenged Congress in February to tighten campaign-finance limits by the Fourth of July, a deadline that Congressional advocates of changes in financing say they are quite unlikely to meet.

Never again did Marshall directly challenge Congress.

(3) Trying to pre-empt a Republican campaign pledge to reduce Federal taxes, President Clinton challenged Congress last night to enact his more modest mix of tax credits and deductions for all but the richest Americans.

I challenge Congress.

It may be doubtful that the current ethically challenged Congress would consider such elementary controls.

It also challenges Congress and the country to a long-overdue debate about nuclear power.

Barely two months later, however, Johnson went further to challenge Congress than he had before: on Feb. 21, he discharged the Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, an ally of Johnson's enemies.

When President Clinton challenged Congress on Tuesday to "at last begin to outlaw poison gas from this earth," viewers of the State of the Union address may have envisioned conveyor belts feeding nerve gas rockets into furnaces.