Panels Approve Defense Cuts of $19 Billion

House and Senate conferees today reached agreement on a defense budget of about $293 billion, a $19-billion reduction from President Reagan’s request and the third consecutive year of real cuts in defense spending.

Several cherished Administration programs--the Strategic Defense Initiative, the MX missile and the B-1 bomber--took substantial hits, while Congress boosted spending for conventional warfare programs.

Military spending is on a steep downward slope after five years of hefty increases. “The decline is a direct result of excessive increases early in the Administration,” said House Armed Service Committee Chairman Les Aspin (D-Wis.). “The Administration sowed a boom, and now will reap a bust.”

3% Pay Raise

The bill authorizes Pentagon programs for the fiscal year that started Oct. 1 and contains a 3% pay raise for men and women in uniform, $3.9 billion for “Star Wars” research and money for two new aircraft carriers.

The Administration had asked for $312 billion in Pentagon spending for fiscal year 1988.

Quiet negotiations between Congress and the White House on arms control issues produced an agreement--subject now only to approval by several House negotiators due back in town next week. Details were to be revealed after that approval.

Under the reported terms of the deal, the Administration in 1988 will not try to move the Strategic Defense Initiative “Star Wars” program into the disputed realm of a broad interpretation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty governing such work.

No Push on Limits Planned

No experiments taking the program past the narrower interpretation of what tests can be done had been planned in the year anyway, but the Administration has been pushing to expand the scope of the program. The effect of the agreement is to put off until next year any fight about experiments that might go beyond the narrow treaty interpretation.

In addition, the Administration reportedly will keep the United States at the weapons launcher limits of the unratified 1979 SALT 2 treaty by dismantling a Poseidon submarine. The United States has exceeded the limits since last fall when additional B-52s carrying nuclear cruise missiles were deployed.