Senate Votes to Scale Back on ‘Star Wars’

In a major rebuff to President Bush, the Senate voted Saturday to overhaul the controversial “Star Wars” program and slow the President’s plans for a possible early deployment of the “Brilliant Pebbles” anti-missile system.

The unexpected setback for the White House came as the Senate gave final approval to a $289-billion defense bill for fiscal 1991 by a margin of 79 to 16 and departed on a monthlong summer recess. The House adjourned on Friday.

The defense spending measure adopted by the Senate is $18 billion less than sought by the President but $6 billion more than recently approved by the House Armed Services Committee. The House will take up the defense budget after it returns from its recess.

The Senate legislation represents a relatively modest adjustment to the dramatically reduced Soviet threat to Western Europe, and opponents said that they favored much larger cuts in next year’s military outlays.

In other actions, the Senate gave final congressional approval to a bill allocating $4 billion over five years for treatment of AIDS patients and grants to cities hard hit by the disease. It also passed a $29-billion appropriation bill that threatens to withhold highway funds from states that do not pass laws suspending the drivers’ licenses of convicted drug offenders.

In an early morning voice vote, the Senate adopted a 1991 intelligence budget that would eliminate U.S. support for a covert war in Cambodia and reduce funding for rebels in Afghanistan, sources told the Associated Press. Most of the bill’s provisions are secret.

The House, meanwhile, voted unanimously to increase the potential oil spill liability of shippers and require double hulls on all tankers by the year 2010. The measure now goes to Bush, who is expected to sign it.

The Senate-approved revisions in the Strategic Defense Initiative, also known as “Star Wars,” would impose considerably more congressional oversight on the futuristic missile defense program conceived during the Ronald Reagan Administration.

The Senate voted in favor of the restrictions despite opponents’ contentions that Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait last week had shown that SDI might be needed to defend against limited missile raids from smaller nations as well as possible major attacks by the Soviet Union.

Voting 54 to 44 along party lines, the Senate slashed $200 million from the President’s requested funding for research on Brilliant Pebbles, thousands of small rocket weapons that would be placed in orbit so they could seek out and destroy incoming missiles.

The Senate voted to freeze Brilliant Pebbles funding at its current level of $129 million and delay indefinitely a planned presidential decision in 1993 on whether to deploy the weapons. It also directed a greater focus on ground-based missile defense systems.

The Senate bill would limit overall spending on SDI to $3.7 billion next year, compared to current funding of about $3.8 billion. Bush is seeking $4.7 billion for the program, while the pending House defense measure would reduce it to $2.9 billion.

The “Star Wars” restrictions were endorsed by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), who noted that the Pentagon has proposed four different SDI systems in four years, while the Administration has not indicated where it would find the estimated $100 billion needed to pay for the first phase of the program over the next decade.

“What we really need to do is send them (the President and his aides) a message on phase one and tell them to get off this kick of a 1993 deployment decision, which doesn’t make any sense,” Nunn told the Senate.

Opponents of the changes, however, noted that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein possesses short-range missiles. “We need to support the President in taking decisive action against this kind of threat,” Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) said.

In another move affecting SDI, the Senate voted, 97 to 1, to earmark $300 million of SDI research funds for weapons that could be used against tactical missiles that might one day be fired by terrorists or outlaw countries.

The White House fought unsuccessfully to defeat an amendment by Sens. Jeff Bingaman (D-N. M.) and Richard C. Shelby (D-Ala.) that called for a restructuring of SDI, placing more emphasis on basic research rather than possible deployment in the 1990s.

In the end, 52 Democrats and two Republicans voted for the changes, while 42 Republicans and two Democrats sided with Bush in the dispute over exotic space weapons.

The Senate, however, killed separate attempts to trim $594 million and $400 million from SDI funds after Nunn indicated that he wanted to preserve the Senate’s bargaining position in a conference with the House on the controversial programs.

While some Administration officials have warned that Bush would veto the legislation if SDI priorities were altered, both Nunn and Sen. John W. Warner of Virginia, the Republican floor manager, said they had not been told that Bush would reject the measure as it now stands.

Sen. Howard M. Metzenbaum (D-Ohio), a liberal critic, voted against the bill, contending that it did not cut Pentagon spending enough. “We don’t need all this exotic weaponry,” he told the Senate. “I’d rather have brilliant students than Brilliant Pebbles.”

Nunn, however, insisted that the bill took into account the lessened Soviet threat without endangering the national security.

The bill would substantially reshape the nation’s conventional forces, recognizing that the threat of an invasion of Western Europe has nearly evaporated. But it proceeds more cautiously in trimming the strategic nuclear arsenal, reflecting a concern that the Soviets are continuing to modernize their own long-range bombers, missiles and submarines.

The bill would kill off most of the 13 weapons programs proposed by Defense Secretary Dick Cheney for termination. It also would cancel 15 other programs, the most significant being the MILSTAR communications satellite, saving $1.1 billion.

By a narrow margin, the Senate voted to continue production of the B-2 Stealth bomber, authorizing $4.6 billion to develop the radar-eluding plane and buy two more.

It also approved development funds for the two mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles, the Midgetman and the MX, but it denied $1.1 billion requested to begin buying launcher trains for the MX.

The Senate approved $1.2 billion for an 18th Trident missile-launching submarine. But it denied the entire $1.7 billion requested for two C-17 cargo planes and all the money--reported to be about $1.5 billion--requested to build A-12 bombers for the Navy.

It also reduced the amounts requested to develop the ATF fighter plane and the new armed helicopter designated LH.

The bill would steer the Pentagon toward a proportionally greater reliance on National Guard and reserve forces, rather than active-duty units.

Compared to the reduction of more than 38,000 military personnel recommended by Cheney, it would cut active-duty personnel by 100,000 from the current level of 2.1 million.

By 1995, active-duty personnel would be reduced to 1.6 million, a cut of more than 20%. The Army would absorb the biggest cuts, shrinking over five years by one-third, to 510,000, as its traditional mission of guarding Western Europe becomes less pressing.

The bill would require that the Pentagon remove 50,000 of the 311,000 Army and Air Force personnel stationed in Europe. The President could waive that requirement by certifying to Congress that it was not in the national security interest.