GOP Abandons Filibuster on ‘Star Wars’ Testing Ban

Under intense pressure from Democrats, Senate Republicans on Friday abandoned their four-month filibuster against a $303-billion defense spending bill that would ban testing of President Reagan’s “Star Wars” missile defense system.

By a 79-4 vote, the Senate agreed to begin debating the measure, which would fund the Pentagon for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1. It was a tacit admission by the GOP minority that it could not win a scheduled showdown cloture vote Tuesday.

Republicans decided to end the filibuster after Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) threatened to block consideration of the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Robert H. Bork unless the GOP ended its filibuster of the defense bill.

At issue in the defense bill is a provision that would deny the President the right to test his space-based missile defense system, officially known as the Strategic Defense Initiative. Republicans now acknowledge that the bill, when passed by Congress, probably will contain this provision, forcing Reagan to make good on his promise to veto it.

A final Senate vote on the defense bill is not expected for at least 10 days.

The most controversial provision in the bill, originally co-authored by Nunn and Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), would require the President to defer to Congress on interpreting terms of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty as they apply to SDI testing.

Until last year, when Reagan disclosed a new, broader interpretation of the ABM treaty that would allow for SDI testing in space, it was generally understood that the pact prohibited such testing. Congress still appears to subscribe to that traditional interpretation.

As debate began on the defense measure, Nunn argued that the President cannot be permitted to unilaterally reinterpret a treaty long after it has been ratified by the Senate. “The President of the United States does not change the laws,” he said.

But Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, argued that arms control and East-West relations should not be debated in connection with the defense spending bill. “We do not want to move the negotiations on arms control from Geneva to the floor of the U.S. Senate,” he said.

GOP sources said that Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) decided to end the defense bill filibuster when he realized that he would not have enough votes to prevail on a cloture vote Tuesday. To cut off the filibuster, the Democrats needed 60 votes.

GOP Loses Advantage

Republicans had prevailed on previous cloture votes on the defense bill by only one vote. But the GOP lost its advantage, Senate sources said, when Sen. Mark O. Hatfield (R-Ore.) recently decided to vote with the majority.

The defense bill is one of several measures that the GOP minority has been filibustering. The massive logjam had prompted Nunn and Senate Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) to threaten to delay consideration of the Bork nomination until the defense bill and the other stymied measures come to a vote.

Nevertheless, Byrd seemed surprised when the pressure that he had applied on the Republicans suddenly created the desired effect.

“I’m intrigued and somewhat taken aback by the sudden show of a desire to work things out,” Byrd said. “I like seeing the other side squirm after putting up with their interminable delays.”

House Measure

Even after it passes, the Senate defense bill still must be reconciled with a $289-billion House-passed defense measure. The House bill contains a limit on “Star Wars” testing as well as other arms control provisions calling for a U.S.-Soviet nuclear test ban and seeking to force the Administration to abide by the unratified second strategic arms limitation treaty.

If the President vetoes the defense bill, as expected, the issue of defense spending for fiscal 1988 then likely will be decided as part of an omnibus spending measure passed by Congress next October. Republicans insist they will have sufficient strength to prevail on the SDI testing issue by then.

The GOP legislative strategy is based, in part, on the assumption that Reagan soon will conclude an intermediate-range missile treaty with the Soviet Union, generating more support in Congress for his approach to nuclear arms control.