WASHINGTON, March 16 - On the eve of nationally televised hearings on steroids in baseball, leaders of the House investigation and last year's Senate hearing on the topic accused baseball executives and union officials of misleading Congress and the public about the strength of the new steroids policy.

House and Senate members reacted angrily on Wednesday to the first disclosure of details of the policy, which was subpoenaed last week by the House Government Reform Committee. The policy's language shows that it does not require a 10-day suspension for a first offense -- as baseball had promised -- and that the owners and the union were actively laying plans to frustrate any government investigation into steroids. Baseball created a steroids policy in 2002 and toughened it last year.

Representative Tom Davis, Republican of Virginia and chairman of the House committee, and Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California and the ranking minority member, sent a 10-page letter to Commissioner Bud Selig and to Donald Fehr, executive director of the players union.

Their letter said that baseball had excluded some steroids, human growth hormones and amphetamines for which Olympic athletes are tested, and had left policy decisions to an in-house board that could be vetoed by the union or the owners. The letter also said there were ways to cheat the testing, including leaving the room in the middle of a test.