Lawmakers Vote Non-Military Contra Aid : Senate OKs $600-Billion Spending Bill

The Senate early today approved $9 million in non-military aid to Nicaragua’s Contras as it passed a massive spending bill that also implements part of a deficit-reduction agreement reached last month between the White House and congressional leaders.

The vote to provide the additional funding for the Contras was one of several controversial foreign policy provisions attached to the wide-ranging spending bill. Members stood to record their votes, but the total was not announced.

The spending legislation, passed on a 72-21 vote after a marathon 16 hours of deliberations, rolls all of Congress’ regular 13 appropriations into one giant bill appropriating roughly $600 billion.

Tied to Peace Process

The humanitarian aid to the Contras--defined in the legislation as food, clothing, shelter and medical supplies and services--won passage only after its backers tied it to the peace process that began in Central America with the signing of a regional accord last August.

Since $100 million in aid expired last September, the rebels have received two relatively modest humanitarian aid packages. Lawmakers have disagreed over whether that amount is enough to tide them over until the peace process is given a chance to work.

“If we don’t resupply them between now and the end of this process, (the Contras) are literally dead,” said Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), the primary sponsor of the Contra-aid measure.

It passed after the Senate defeated, on a 56-38 vote, an alternative that would have released the Contra aid only with the approval of a majority of the leaders of the five Central American countries.

Hinge on Cease-Fire

The lawmakers stipulated that if Nicaragua is abiding by a cease-fire on Jan. 17, after regional leaders meet to review progress toward peace, any funds still unspent will be administered as much as possible by nonpolitical humanitarian organizations, rather than the CIA. The amendment also allows use of existing government funds to transport the aid.

The additional aid still may face stiff resistance in the House, where Democratic leaders had refused to include any such funding in a version of the spending bill that passed last week.

The overall spending measure also brings the budgets for most government agencies 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 spending levels in most government programs. Measured another way, it was a $2.6-billion reduction from the levels approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee before agreement was reached on the deficit-reduction package.

Part of Legislation

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.

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 recorded for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.

Over the next two years, the deficit-reduction plan is aimed at cutting 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.

Pakistan Aid Included

Also attached to the Senate bill was a provision allowing 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 allows 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.

Among the major provisions was one that would keep alive the mobile Midgetman single-warhead missile. 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.

Prospects Enhanced

The House had voted to spend almost $1.6 billion on the smaller truck-mounted missile, and the Senate vote was seen as enhancing its prospects in a House-Senate conference committee. At stake in the debate over the Midgetman are plans to build 500 of the mobile missiles by 1992.

Senators also included 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.

Staff writer John M. Broder contributed to this story.