Vote Switch Puts Veto in Jeopardy : Preliminary Ballot Gave Reagan Victory on Highway Legislation

President Reagan’s veto of major highway legislation was left hanging Wednesday after the senator who provided the crucial vote for the President in a preliminary ballot said that he plans to reverse his position today.

The Senate abruptly adjourned late Wednesday as Republicans scrambled to find another vote that could preserve their narrow victory--seen as a critical test of Reagan’s leadership--on the second tally. That preliminary victory was achieved on a 65-35 vote to override the President’s veto, just short of the required two-thirds majority.

However, senators on both sides tentatively predicted that the veto would be overridden, despite a flurry of last-minute lobbying by Reagan himself.

Democrats Hold Firm

“Every Democrat is holding firm and the 13 Republicans have withstood strong pressure from the Administration,” said Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), the Democrats’ chief vote-counter.

“I don’t know if the vote is going to change overnight,” Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) added. “Probably not, would be my guess.”

For many, the significance of the five-year, $88-billion measure has grown far beyond the scores of highway construction projects it would finance or the mass-transit systems it would fund, including Los Angeles’ proposed Metro Rail subway.

Reagan’s veto last Friday had transformed the issue into a barometer of how much influence the President can wield in the remaining months of a presidency that has been pummeled by the Iran- contra affair and the loss in last November’s elections of GOP control over the Senate.

The first vote was a dramatic cliffhanger in which first-term North Carolina Democrat Terry Sanford voted “present” and then switched his vote to Reagan’s side, leaving the Democrats one vote short of the two-thirds majority they needed.

Senate Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) quickly changed his vote, a move that allowed him to use a complicated parliamentary maneuver to reopen the issue later.

‘Broader Issue’ Cited

Although Sanford had complained that the bill did not provide enough money for his state, he announced several hours later that he would switch his vote because “I could not at that point help but reach out to the broader issue” of highway projects that would be built throughout the nation.

Reagan vetoed the bill on grounds that it is filled with special-interest projects that he considers expensive and unnecessary. The House had voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to override the veto, preparing the way for the crucial showdown in the Senate.

Dole warned his fellow Republicans that the vote came at a “critical moment” for Reagan and “may determine the strength of the President for the next 21 months.”

For Republicans, it was an agonizing choice between supporting their President and taking home the federal funds that would finance projects their voters have demanded. Also important to those from sprawling Western states was a provision that would allow states to raise the speed limit on rural interstate highways to 65 m.p.h.

“I love the President of the United States,” Sen. Larry Pressler (R-S.D.) declared, but he opted not to jeopardize the three special projects the bill would provide in his state.

Supporters of the bill repeatedly and pointedly reminded senators that the legislation would also create 800,000 jobs, though critics called that figure exaggerated.

“The job you lose may be your own,” Byrd warned. “You take one man’s job, he will remember, and his family will remember and he will make sure his friends remember.”

Late Wednesday, it appeared that 13 Senate Republicans remained unswayed by Reagan’s appeal, contrasted with 28 who had voted for the bill before Reagan vetoed it.

Dole made an emotional appeal to his fellow Republicans, urging them to remember how Reagan had reinvigorated their party and given it a six-year spell in control of the Senate.

Reagan ‘Picked Us Up’

“Keep in mind that Ronald Reagan is a Republican. Ronald Reagan is our President,” Dole said. “He came along in 1980 (and) picked us up off the street.”

Moreover, other Republicans said, Reagan was correct in arguing that the bill is bloated with projects that the nation cannot afford at a time when it is trying to reduce huge deficits.

“When Ronald Reagan stands up for what’s right for America, whether it’s popular or not, he’s not going to be standing alone because I am going to be standing with him,” Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) said.

As Reagan had done earlier, Gramm singled out Metro Rail as a particularly wasteful investment of federal funds. Saying it was “the biggest pork-barrel project of them all,” Gramm insisted that “Los Angeles does not even know what their final plan will be.”

Wilson Defends Project

However, Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) defended Metro Rail by quoting a 1986 Transportation Department survey ranking it as the most cost-effective proposed subway in the nation.

The bill would allow the federal government to spend up to $870 million on the subway, including the $108 million that Los Angeles has already received for the system this year.

California also would receive funding for 15 so-called “demonstration projects,” including a $29-million access road to Ontario Airport and a number of improvements to Los Angeles Harbor. These projects are especially attractive to states because the money spent for them does not count against funds that are provided the state through the regular federal funding formula.

States Contribute 20%

For such demonstration projects, states are required to come up with only 20% of the total spent.

Reagan and other critics insisted that these projects--originally meant to demonstrate new methods of constructing roads, bridges and parking lots--merely circumvented a fair system of allocating funds according to a formula based on state needs. Thus, they said, it marked a return to old-fashioned pork-barrel politics in which political clout of individual lawmakers determines a state’s share of federal largess.

The President had offered an alternative to the highway measure, but key leaders of both houses predicted that the White House legislation could not make it through the regular law-making process in time for this year’s construction season.

Countering Reagan’s complaints that the bill was a “budget buster,” supporters noted that the bulk of the funds--$76.4 billion out of a total $87.9 billion--come not from the general Treasury, but from the government’s Highway Trust Fund. The trust is fed by gasoline taxes and other revenues earmarked specially for highway and mass transit.