Senate Votes to Keep Midgetman Alive

The Senate on Friday voted to keep the controversial Midgetman missile alive as it moved toward passing a huge and wide-ranging spending bill that also would implement part of a deficit-reduction agreement between the White House and Congress.

The Senate’s voice vote to include at least token funding--$100 million--for the mobile, single-warhead intercontinental ballistic missile was a repudiation of its own Appropriations Committee, which last week had voted to wipe out the Midgetman’s budget in favor of spending on the competing MX multiple-warhead missile system. The funding for the MX system also was in the bill.

Prospects Enhanced

The House had voted to spend almost $1.6 billion on the smaller truck-mounted Midgetman missile, and the Senate vote was seen as enhancing its prospects in a House-Senate conference committee.

The funding for the missile was attached to a $600-billion spending bill that rolls all of Congress’ regular 13 appropriations into one.

It also brings projected spending in line with the deficit-reduction agreement that the White House and congressional leaders reached last month after weeks of agonizing negotiations.

That meant cutting $7.6 billion from projected levels. Measured another way, it was a $2.6-billion reduction from the levels approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee before the President and Congress agreed on the deficit-reduction package.

The remainder of the deficit-reduction agreement--tax increases, asset sales and cuts in federal benefits programs--has been incorporated in legislation that passed the Senate shortly after midnight Thursday.

$30-Billion Cut Seen

Combined, the two measures claim to cut slightly more than $30 billion from this year’s projected $180-billion deficit--which would still leave it higher than the $148-billion deficit recorded for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.

Over the next two years, the deficit agreement claims to cut the projected federal shortfall by $76 billion.

The agreement, reached in the wake of a stock market crash blamed in part on the deficit, forced President Reagan to give up his adamant opposition to higher taxes. In return, Democrats in Congress agreed to higher defense-spending levels than they had wanted.

The House has passed its versions of both bills, and representatives of the two chambers will begin next week to try to negotiate a compromise on each.

Foreign Policy Provisions

The Senate also attached several controversial foreign policy provisions to the spending bill.

One would allow the President to waive a ban on economic and military aid to Pakistan, despite the fact that it has been accused of diverting nuclear materials from research to weapons development.

Lawmakers have been torn over the issue: While they want to discourage the spread of nuclear weapons, they see the aid as a means of rewarding Pakistan for its support of U.S.-backed rebels in Afghanistan.

Another amendment would allow the sale of shoulder-fired Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to Bahrain, despite a ban in the legislation on the sale of the state-of-the-art weapons to other countries in the Persian Gulf. Under a compromise, Bahrain would be allowed to keep the missiles for no more than 18 months.

Because it is top-priority legislation--the huge spending bill must be enacted into law to keep the government operating--senators also consider it an attractive vehicle for carrying unrelated measures that might not be enacted on their own.

Reprieve for Cities

Among the major provisions was an eight-month reprieve for cities that face penalties beginning Dec. 31 for failing to meet federal clean-air standards. Supporters hope the extension of the Clean Air Act will give the cities the time they need to remove pollutants from their air but keep the pressure on for them to do so.

Still ahead as the Senate worked into the night was a fight over adding renewed aid to the Nicaraguan Contras.

As their House counterparts had, the senators also peppered the legislation with special-interest amendments that ranged from spending $350,000 to spruce up Mt. Rushmore to allowing college football coaches to take their pension plans with them when they change jobs.

At stake in the debate over the Midgetman are plans to build 500 of the mobile missiles by 1992.

Sen. Albert Gore Jr. (D-Tenn.), the small missile’s most fervent supporter in the Senate, argued that killing Midgetman would send the wrong signal just as the United States and the Soviet Union are entering intensive talks on strategic nuclear weapons.

Cites Political Impact

“Nuclear weapons have always been political instruments as well as military instruments,” said Gore, who canceled presidential campaign appearances to be present for the Senate debate on Midgetman.