House GOP, Angry at Democratic Tactics, Votes to Kill Contra Aid

House Republicans, in a topsy-turvy political maneuver, voted today to kill President Reagan’s $100-million plan to aid the contra rebels in Nicaragua as an expression of anger at the way the Democratic leadership had handled the issue.

The vote on a Democratic-sponsored amendment was 361 to 66, with only one Republican voting for the President’s plan.

The unexpected ploy was an attempt by the GOP minority in the House to free the aid plan from a link to an unrelated $1.7-billion, catch-all spending bill Reagan wants to veto and immediately threw scheduled consideration of the issue into turmoil.

‘Damn Charade’

“When you have a rotten rule to play by you are forced to take unconventional action,” said House Republican Leader Robert H. Michel of Illinois, who called the procedure under which the House was operating a “damn charade.”

The Democratic ground rules, he said, were “a variation of the old con game: Heads I win, tails you lose.”

Michel outlined a complicated procedure to revive the Reagan plan, unencumbered by an attachment to the spending bill.

But House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill Jr. (D-Mass.) said he had given his word to Democrats that there would be a vote on an amendment by Rep. David McCurdy (D-Okla.), which would have delayed all military aid to the contras and required direct negotiations between the United States and Nicaragua’s Sandinista government.

Military aid would have been permitted only by a second affirmative vote of both houses.

The Republican tactic prevented the House from voting on the McCurdy amendment, which is opposed by the White House.

Pulled From Consideration

The tactic forced the House Democratic leadership to pull the bill from consideration temporarily, fearing that an amendment by Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.) would lead to defeat of the entire spending bill.

The Hamilton amendment bars all aid to the contras but provides $27 million in assistance to Nicaraguan refugees.

“The basic proposition that we should somehow play by the fraudulent rule that the Speaker has devised is something we reject,” said Rep. Dick Cheney (R-Wyo.). “We demonstrated our contempt for his procedure by the vote we just cast.”

The development came only hours after Reagan had complained of “a back-door parliamentary maneuver” that threatened delivery of the funds even if approved.

Reagan made a last-minute appeal for the House to reverse a narrow decision Tuesday night linking the contra aid to the spending bill.

Reagan told a group of lawyers at the White House that--as it stood going into today’s debate--even if his forces won a vote to approve the aid, the money “will be tied to a pork barrel appropriations bill, a bill so brimming with waste and excess” that he likely will veto it.