House Rejects Contras Aid Measure, 222-210 : Late Reagan Offer Fails to Avert Setback

Despite a fierce lobbying drive and a dramatic last-minute compromise offer, President Reagan’s policy in Central America suffered a sharp setback Thursday as the House narrowly defeated his request for $100 million in aid to the Nicaraguan rebels.

The President called it “a dark day for freedom,” even though the 222-210 vote was not expected to be Congress’ final judgment on the proposed aid to the rebels, known as contras. A bipartisan compromise providing some military assistance is likely to emerge from the Senate, perhaps as early as next Tuesday.

It was, nevertheless, an embarrassing defeat for Reagan because he had invested several weeks of his time and used virtually all of the prerogatives of his presidency--including a nationally televised speech and pork-barrel pledges to individual lawmakers--in pursuit of victory. He even talked separately to 20 undecided representatives by telephone just before the vote.

Lost 16 GOP Votes

Although the President characterized the vote as a matter of patriotism and party loyalty, he lost the support of 16 Republicans and won only 46 Democrats--most of them from border states affected by the current influx of immigrants from Central America.

Emotions ran high on the House floor as the voting began with perhaps as many as a dozen members of both parties still wavering. House Minority Leader Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.) concluded 10 hours of floor debate by shouting at his chief opponent, House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill Jr. (D-Mass.): “You’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong!”

O’Neill succeeded in holding onto many wavering members by promising that he would schedule a vote on April 15 on a variety of legislative alternatives to Reagan’s request, including one similar to the nonbinding compromise that the President offered as part of his last-ditch appeal for votes Wednesday night.

The Speaker also delivered an emotional speech predicting that Reagan’s policy would lead to the commitment of U.S. troops in Central America. “When it comes to the crunch, we will find ourselves with only two options: Either we go in ourselves or see our trained contingents face a bloodbath,” he said.

Pledges From Reagan

There was no firm pattern in the voting of those lawmakers who held out until the end, although many who waited to embrace the President were believed to have won his personal pledge for urban development grants and public works projects in their districts.

California Rep. Tony Coelho (D-Merced) said that some wavering members were even offered the services of the Army Band’s “strolling strings” at future fund-raising events.

Democrats hailed the outcome as a repudiation of a lobbying strategy designed by White House Communications Director Patrick J. Buchanan that sought to portray a vote against the aid package as a vote in favor of the Marxist government in Nicaragua.

“It hardened and embittered the debate and cost the President votes,” Assistant Democratic Leader Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) said.

House Republicans strongly disagreed. “I can’t find a vote that Pat Buchanan lost us,” Rep. Richard B. Cheney (R-Wyo.) said. “I think that’s a bad rap on Buchanan.”

Instead, Republicans portrayed the vote as a sign that the President’s policy is gaining strength in the Democratic-controlled House. Cheney noted that Reagan has never previously gotten as many as 210 House votes in favor of military aid for the rebels.

‘Winning Converts’

“We are gaining ground; we are winning converts,” the President said in a statement issued after the vote. “The next battle will bring us the victory this just and good cause rightly deserves.”

The Reagan Administration covertly funneled about $80 million in military assistance to the contras between 1982 and 1984. That year, Congress halted the aid flow after learning that the Central Intelligence Agency had assisted in mining a Nicaraguan harbor. In 1985, Congress appropriated $27 million in strictly humanitarian assistance.

The President’s request would have brought about a dramatic escalation in U.S. participation in Nicaragua. Not only was he seeking an increase to $100 million-- $30 million in humanitarian and $70 million in military aid--but he was also asking for the first time in two years that the Congress lift a prohibition against CIA involvement in the conflict.

The compromise offered by Reagan sought to answer one of the biggest complaints heard from members of Congress--that he had failed to seek a diplomatic solution. It promised that an executive order would mandate that all money for guns and bullets would be withheld from the contras for 90 days while the Administration tried to foster peace talks among all factions warring over Nicaragua.

But the President’s compromise offer picked up fewer than 20 votes, in part because of the suspicion among many Democrats and some Republicans that the Administration intended to make only a half-hearted effort at diplomacy. Instead, these skeptics favor a popular alternative to be offered next month by Rep. Dave McCurdy (D-Okla.) that would make the offer binding and require a second vote of Congress at the end of 90 days.

Senate OK Predicted

Meeting after the House vote with Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the President suggested that the concessions he had offered to the House should be incorporated into the Senate legislation. Both Dole and Lugar predicted that the measure will get Senate approval.

But Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) predicted that the House vote would bolster sentiment against contra aid in the Senate. According to Cranston, whose job it is to count votes for the Democrats in the Senate, there are currently 48 votes in favor of military aid and 41 against it, with 11 still undecided.

Democrats and Republicans alike suggested that Reagan could have avoided Thursday’s setback had he agreed to write his compromise into legislation in the House instead of insisting on the original package without amendments.

“It’s a big defeat because the President decided not to come up here and work with Congress on a compromise,” Coelho said. “Now they will have to come here to negotiate to get something else.”

But conservative Republicans who fought tirelessly for the President’s request indicated that they would resist compromise and vowed to use the vote as part of their campaign to defeat Democrats in conservative districts next November.

“You don’t shoot down the President’s policy and get a freebie,” Cheney said.

But Coelho, who heads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, noted that all of the 16 Republicans who voted against the President are facing tough Democratic challengers in the fall. “It’s the Republicans who are panicking--not the Democrats,” he said.

In a Managua news conference for Nicaraguan reporters, President Daniel Ortega lashed out at Reagan but did not discuss the House vote directly. “Reagan is talking about sending military advisers--part of an escalation that would be the Vietnamization of the conflict,” he said.

He added that Nicaragua will continue to “struggle against the terrorist policy of the United States, and he claimed that Nicaragua’s “policy of peace . . . is supported by the American people as well as by most Latin American countries.”