House OKs $268 Billion for Military : Defense: Cuts are rejected on grounds that they would hurt Mideast deployment. The fate of the B-2 still is undecided.

The House approved a $268-billion defense spending bill Friday after rejecting across-the-board cuts that key lawmakers argued would harm the U.S. military deployment in the Persian Gulf.

“We surely can’t cut the defense budget at this point and have (U.S. troops) believe we don’t support their deployment,” said Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), who headed efforts to fend off separate proposals to impose cuts of 10%, 5% or 2% in the fiscal year that began Oct. 1.

Murtha, chairman of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, was joined by ranking Republican Joseph M. McDade (R-Pa.), who said the trims might prevent troops from receiving desert training for “that startlingly harsh environment” in Saudi Arabia.

Proponents of the cuts protested that the waning of Cold War tensions and the need to reduce the federal deficit justified the proposed reductions in Pentagon spending.

“It is the deficit that is going to crush us, not the Russians,” Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez) declared in supporting a cut of 2%, or $5.3 billion, in proposed spending.

The 2% amendment, offered by Reps. Timothy J. Penny (D-Minn.) and Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) was defeated, 215 to 201. Proposals for deeper cuts were rejected overwhelmingly.

Later, the House approved the overall bill, 322 to 97. The measure, combined with two other defense-related money bills, brings 1991 Pentagon spending approved by the House to $288 billion.

President Bush requested $307 billion last January but agreed to $288 billion in a budget summit accord last month. However, he has threatened to veto any bill that provides insufficient funding for the Strategic Defense Initiative anti-missile program, known as “Star Wars,” or that terminates the B-2 Stealth bomber.

Both the House-passed money bill and a companion military programs measure call for cancellation of the B-2 program. But the issue remains unsettled, with the bomber clinging to tenuous support in the Senate.

“We’re hanging on by stealthy fingers,” said Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), a key Stealth proponent. On Thursday, the Senate defense appropriations panel narrowly voted to fund two more of the radar-evading planes in fiscal 1991.

Nunn and House Armed Services Committee Chairman Les Aspin (D-Wis.) were battling over the B-2’s fate in a closed Senate-House conference on differing military bills.

The House has called for halting B-2 production at 15 aircraft, but the Senate has backed building two more in 1991 as part of a Pentagon plan to reduce the total program to 75 planes from 132.

Facing increasing congressional discontent with the Stealth bomber and its manufacturer, Los Angeles-based Northrop Corp., the Administration has stepped up its effort to save the aircraft.

In a letter to members of the House and Senate Armed Services committees, Bush said the bomber is a crucial factor in U.S.-Soviet negotiations to limit strategic weapons.

Besides terminating the B-2, the House bill would cut the President’s $4.6-billion proposal for “Star Wars” by half, impose limits on “Star Wars” to delay early deployment and cut the total number of U.S. troops by 77,000. The Pentagon has proposed a 40,000 troop cut.

“We’re moving in the right direction, stressing more conventional weapons, less strategic weapons,” Murtha said in debate.

The legislation does not include specific funds for Operation Desert Shield. A report accompanying the bill estimated that Desert Shield costs in fiscal 1991 would total $15 billion, assuming no combat.

Donations from foreign governments are expected to cover about half of those costs. The other half will have to be financed in supplemental appropriations bills.

But Murtha argued that substantial funds to support the Desert Shield operation are contained in the regular spending measure approved Friday. In large part, those funds are for training, maintenance activities and even medical benefits, he said.

“No way you can divorce Desert Shield from the operation of the armed services,” Murtha said in fighting off the cutback amendments.

Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. (D-Ohio) offered amendments to cut 10% and 5%, saying that “if Congress fails to cut the defense budget, we’re going to have a depression.”

Using characteristically crude language, he angered colleagues--but elicited applause from the spectators’ gallery--by shouting that they were “a damn house of political prostitutes” and the “best Congress money can buy.”

Rep. Dave McCurdy (D-Okla.) retorted indignantly, to a standing ovation by lawmakers, “It’s an absolute damned lie and you owe us an apology.”

Facing the possibility of a rare ban on further speech-making that day, Traficant apologized and asked that any words that might “denigrate the integrity and character of any member of the House” be eliminated from the official record.