Senate Uses Ploy to Boost Funding for ‘Star Wars’; Defense Bill Voted

The Senate, just two days after voting to freeze funding for “Star Wars,” voted Thursday to add $600 million to the controversial missile defense program for the coming fiscal year.

Hours later, by a vote of 96 to 2, the Senate adopted the full $288-billion military spending bill. A House-Senate conference committee will meet next week to thrash out a final version of the appropriations bill.

The earlier vote had been widely interpreted as a setback for “Star Wars,” and, on the surface, the vote appeared to be a reversal of that defeat. But sponsors of the increase said that the new vote represents no change in the Senate’s basic reservations about the program.

Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), a leading advocate of Thursday’s move, described it as--in effect--a parliamentary ploy in the complex negotiations now going on between the House and the Senate over “Star Wars” funding.

Administration Silent

The Bush Administration, which opposed the Senate’s freeze, had no comment on Thursday’s action. “We’re still a long way from a completed budget cycle,” said Maj. Alan Freitag, a spokesman for the Pentagon’s Strategic Defense Initiative Office.

Nunn said that the 53-47 vote did not reflect a change of the Senate’s position. He said the additional $600 million would only help the Senate to achieve the goal of its earlier vote--a freeze.

“Only in America--only in the Senate . . . can we reach this kind of dilemma,” Nunn said, referring to the anomaly of voting an increase to achieve a freeze.

The current chapter in the saga of “Star Wars” funding began last Tuesday, when the Senate voted 66 to 34 to freeze funding for the program at slightly less than $4 billion in fiscal 1990, which begins Sunday.

Not only was it the first time that the Senate had ever rejected an increase in “Star Wars” funding, but the freeze represented about $600 million less than the Senate had approved earlier this year in setting a maximum ceiling on such spending.

The House, which is more hostile to “Star Wars” than the Senate, had voted to spend only $3.1 billion.

Tuesday’s Senate vote occurred as members of the House and Senate Armed Services committees were engaged in hard bargaining to determine what the final spending level would be in fiscal 1990. House members interpreted the Senate’s freeze vote as a sign of weakness on the part of the Senate.

As a result, Nunn said, House members are now demanding that the two chambers agree to something less than a freeze for “Star Wars”--or about $3.5 billion.

Nunn, in a Senate floor speech requesting the $600-million increase, warned his colleagues that he would be forced to cave in to the House demands for a cut unless the Senate bolstered his bargaining position by adding the extra money. His argument persuaded even some long-time “Star Wars” critics such as Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii) to vote for the increase.

But Nunn pledged that the goal of the second Senate vote was to hold next year’s “Star Wars” spending at this year’s level, not increase it. He said support for “Star Wars” is “eroding” in the Senate, which has always favored the program, even though the two votes may be sending a mixed signal about the true sentiment in the chamber.

Wants Goals Defined

Nunn said that Congress cannot continue to spend billions of dollars for the program unless President Bush more clearly defines the goals of what is known officially as the Strategic Defense Initiative.

“They are going to have to take a hard look at what they really want,” said Nunn, “ . . . and clearly their time is running out.”

Even though the Senate voted to bolster Nunn’s bargaining position, it was uncertain whether the ploy would persuade House negotiators to accept a freeze--particularly when the Senate vote was avowedly done only to affect the House-Senate conference.

In fact, Sen. J. Bennett Johnston (D-La.) argued against the vote on precisely those grounds. “We should not be trying to create a phony bargaining chip that House members can see through as clearly as they can a cloudless day,” he said.

Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and Nunn’s counterpart in the negotiations, was unavailable for comment, but a spokesman said that House members are still adamant about cutting back on the funding.

Unlike in past years, when former President Ronald Reagan threatened to veto the Pentagon spending bill if Congress cut “Star Wars” funding, Bush Administration officials have been silent on the subject in recent days.

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney acknowledged on Wednesday that “Star Wars” is competing for funds with other priority programs in Congress, such as anti-drug measures and aid to Poland.

The Senate voted also to require that $820 million of the money authorized for “Star Wars” in fiscal 1990 be used for research on lasers and particle beams. Supporters of the proposal said they were afraid that the Administration would sacrifice long-term research on such “directed energy weapons” in favor of shorter-term research.

The defense spending bill includes the following provisions:

--Elimination of all $1.8 billion for procurement of the Trident 2 missile but an increase of $70 million to Bush’s request of $216 million for research and development of the submarine-launched weapon.

--Endorsement of Bush’s request of $1.1 billion for the multiple-warhead, rail-garrison MX missile and $100 million for the single-warhead, Midgetman missile.

--Endorsement of a plan to shut down 86 domestic military bases and scale down five more.

--Funding of $255 million for research and development on the Marine Corps’ V-22 Osprey, the vertical-takeoff plane the Bush Administration sought to cancel.