GOP Leaders Say They Can Block Anticipated Move to Halt Contras’ Military Aid

Even though the Democrats will take over the Senate in January, Republican leaders are expressing confidence that they can block an expected move by the Democrats to halt military assistance to the Nicaraguan rebels known as contras.

Senate Democrats, who emerged from last week’s elections with a 55-to-45 margin, have indicated that one of the first things they will attempt to do next year is block the remaining $40 million of $100 million in contra aid that was approved earlier this year.

The original funding measure deferred payment of the final $40 million until next year so that Congress, if it had a change of heart, could stop it through a resolution of disapproval.

Alan Cranston of California, the assistant Democratic leader in the Senate, has estimated that the new Senate will have a 51-to-49 majority against aid to the Nicaraguan rebels, reversing the 53-to-47 vote for the aid earlier this year.

Dole Expects Narrow Victory

But the Senate Republican leader, Bob Dole of Kansas, said he is confident that the President’s supporters will be able to retain the aid program. Dole reportedly believes that the Senate will have a 51-to-49 margin in favor of contra aid.

“We won the contra aid votes in the last Congress narrowly . . . with the help of some Democrats,” Dole said, “and looking at the voting records and public statements of the new members we’re getting, I think we can win again--maybe by an even narrower margin, but I believe we can win.”

Sources said Dole believes that the President will have the support of two Republicans who voted against the aid package earlier this year--Sens. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Bob Packwood of Oregon. He reportedly believes that the two were afraid at the time that support for the contra aid would hurt their reelection chances on Nov. 4.

In addition, Dole is known to believe that the President can pick up the support of at least one Democrat who voted against it, Sen. Dennis DeConcini of Arizona. DeConcini faces reelection in 1988, and GOP sources said that Dole intends to remind him that “this program is popular in Arizona.”

Anxious for Policy Test

In fact, Republican leaders appear to be anxious for this test of Reagan’s policy in the new Democratic-controlled Congress.

“We welcome it,” a GOP Senate source said. “We are hoping that this thing comes to a vote, and we hope it’s viewed as a big vote.”

Dole said he hopes a victory sustaining contra aid “will still some of the gleeful cries about Ronald Reagan being a lame duck.”

No matter who wins the first legislative showdown over contra aid next year, Senate Democrats have also pledged to use control of the Foreign Relations Committee to hold hearings into allegations that the contras have misused some of the U.S. money already received. Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), who has headed the committee for the past two years, has strongly resisted such hearings.

Even before the 99th Congress adjourned, Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee announced that their staff had begun taking depositions from people with knowledge about allegations of gun-running, money-laundering and drug-trafficking by the contras. And 11 members of the House Judiciary Committee formally asked the Justice Department to investigate allegations that Reagan Administration officials were illegally involved in supplying arms to the contras during the period of nearly three years when such assistance was banned by Congress.