House Votes Defense Bill Loaded With Arms Curbs

The Democrat-controlled House on Friday shrugged off a White House veto threat and approved a stripped-down Pentagon budget bill laced with unprecedented arms control measures and restrictions on the military’s power to build and test new weapons.

Passed by 255 to 152, the $286-billion bill would freeze fiscal 1987 Pentagon spending at 1986 levels, denying President Reagan the 8% after-inflation increase he had sought. It also reflected a growing frustration among many House members, including some moderate Republicans, with the slow pace of disarmament talks with the Soviet Union.

Conservatives, in the past strong backers of military spending legislation, urged rejection of the bill, while liberal Democrats, traditional foes, largely rallied behind it. Last year, when the House passed similar legislation, only 64 Republicans voted against it. This year, GOP opponents numbered 145.

“I feel like I’m strangling my own child,” said Alabama Rep. William L. Dickinson, the ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, as he argued in vain for the bill’s defeat. “ . . . We would be better off without a bill at all than with this bruised, mangled and maimed thing . . . that works to the disadvantage of the defense of this country.”

But Rep. Les AuCoin (D-Ore.) chided Republicans for being “sore losers” over their arms control losses and praised the legislation as “the most significant breakthrough in (defense) doctrine” approved by the House in years. “It says that in order to find security we won’t find it in an endless chase for a better bomb,” AuCoin said. “Real security is found in arms control.”

As finally approved, the measure would delay resumption of chemical weapons production now scheduled for later this year, renew a soon-to-end testing moratorium on anti-satellite weapons and impose a temporary ban on underground nuclear tests if the Soviets agreed to certain conditions.

It would roll back funding for research on the “Star Wars” missile defense system from Reagan’s requested $5.3 billion to the current $3.1-billion level. And it would forbid the President from proceeding with new weapon deployments that would exceed levels allowed by the unratified 1979 Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty.

Strong Condemnations

Both the White House and Pentagon have issued strong condemnations of the House measure, arguing that it would undercut the Administration’s position in arms reduction talks by giving the Soviets many of the concessions they seek before negotiations begin.

A White House spokesman said Friday that the bill “threatens to reduce national security and undermines prospects for arms control” at a critical juncture in U.S.-Soviet relations. Reagan is expected to assail the measure in his radio address today.

Although the vote was a clear victory for liberals, it could prove to be more symbolic than substantive. The bill must be reconciled with a competing $295-billion Senate version passed last week that is free of the controversial arms control provisions. Both measures envision military spending significantly below the $320 billion that Reagan had sought.

Omnibus Spending Bill

When House and Senate negotiators meet next month, they are expected to kill many or all of the House disarmament proposals. But even if some survive, Reagan could veto the measure without seriously imperiling military operations. As frequently happens, lawmakers will probably decide to roll Pentagon money for fiscal 1987 into an omnibus spending bill covering a wide range of government agencies.

In addition to its arms control imprint, the bill also was influenced by an internal political squabble in the House Armed Services Committee. Liberals on the Democrat-run panel have been sharply critical of its chairman, Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), for backing the Administration drive to continue development of the MX missile and to ship military aid to anti-Sandinista guerrillas in Nicaragua.

Aspin pressed for the arms control proposals in part to bolster his positions with liberal critics and head off a rumored move to depose him as committee head.