Senate Opens Debate Over 1988 Budget

The Senate began debate today over a $1-trillion budget for next year, with Senate Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) calling for Republicans to support the plan.

As debate began, Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) made it clear that work on the spending plan would be difficult, calling the proposal “unacceptable to me and most of the members on this side of the aisle.” He aimed his toughest remarks at the measure’s proposed defense reductions.

“I would have to say that it is a revisitation of the past,” Domenici said, referring to the slowed defense spending. “In short, if we adopt it, in four years we will have undone all we accomplished in the ‘80s.”

Byrd predicted that work on the budget would go slowly.

“A bipartisan budget will probably be better received and supported by the American people,” Byrd told reporters before the lawmakers began debating the spending blueprint.

The majority leader said he hoped that work on the budget would be completed by Friday night.

While work commences on the $1-trillion spending plan, a Senate committee is scheduled to begin writing its version of a supplemental spending bill to supply the government with money it needs for programs this year.

That measure faces tangles of its own over arms-control language the House included in its $8.8-billion supplemental bill approved Friday. The Reagan Administration is strongly opposed to the provisions, which would ban most U.S. nuclear testing and force the Administration to heed arms limits set in the unratified SALT II treaty.