Cheney, Lawmakers Agree on Revised Defense Budget

Congressional leaders, making concessions to avoid a presidential veto, reached agreement with Defense Secretary Dick Cheney on a $288.3-billion military budget Monday night.

Cheney called the compromise bill authorizing defense spending for this fiscal year “a pretty good deal” and said he would recommend that President Bush approve it.

The House and Senate Armed Services committees, responding to an earlier veto warning from Cheney, had agreed to make changes in details already tentatively worked out among lawmakers last week.

The revised agreement would soften a proposed troop cut by 20%, slightly reduce congressional say in military base closings, give the Pentagon more flexibility on “Star Wars” research and permit the possible shifting of funds for a new command, control and communications satellite system known as Milstar.

The controversial B-2 Stealth bomber still would receive $2.3 billion for procurement and $1.8 billion for research and development, but the long-term fate of the radar-eluding aircraft would remain unclear.

The House, which originally supported halting B-2 production, will assert in a report accompanying the bill that the funds can be spent only on the 15 planes previously approved. But the Senate will declare that Cheney is not precluded from asking Los Angeles-based Northrop Corp. to begin building two new planes requested by Bush for fiscal 1991.

The conflict is not expected to prevent congressional ratification of the compromise. But it promises to spark renewed warfare over the B-2 in next year’s budget battles.

Cheney agreed to final details of the package from his aircraft while returning from a 10-day trip to Europe and the Soviet Union. Much of the earlier bargaining involved his top deputy, Donald J. Atwood, and four leaders of the Armed Services committees: Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.) and Rep. William L. Dickinson (R-Ala.).

“I believe in a goodly number of ways that we met the concerns of the secretary,” Warner said in an interview.

While Cheney expressed satisfaction with a number of items, he told reporters that he was concerned about others.

He said that the $2.9-billion funding level for “Star Wars,” formally known as the Strategic Defense Initiative, would further delay the controversial anti-missile program.

“We’re going to have to go back to the drawing boards . . . to sort of ‘re-tweak’ the SDI program,” Cheney said.

“I’m not ready tonight to say exactly what that timetable will look like and what the composition of that program will be. . . . It’s pretty clear that at these funding levels we can’t keep the timetable we’d hoped for in terms of the 1992-93 decision” on whether to deploy a space-based SDI system dubbed “brilliant pebbles.”

For the first time, the compromise bill will place restrictions on management of the program, ordering that research be conducted in five broad areas. The effect is to shift research emphasis toward more limited air defense systems thought by Nunn and other lawmakers to be more achievable and practical than the wide-ranging brilliant pebbles plan.

But in a concession to Cheney, the lawmakers agreed that “certain ongoing SDI sensor programs are authorized to be pursued in a limited detection system,” Warner said.

In another major concession, troop levels would be cut by 80,000, instead of a figure of 100,000, in 1991 if American troops are still deployed in the Persian Gulf.

“The manpower level was crucial, and we got that,” Cheney said.

Another concession involved Milstar. Although the program will be funded at $600 million instead of the $1 billion sought by Bush, the Pentagon will be given the ability to transfer money from other programs if research is focused on tactical rather than strategic uses.

The multibillion-dollar program was conceived to provide communications during a nuclear war.

Cheney said that he was disappointed at the creation of a new commission to decide which U.S. military bases to close.

The commission would review recommendations from the Pentagon on which bases to close. Congress, which historically has been reluctant to close bases because of the jobs and economic benefits they generate, would have to act relatively quickly to approve or reject the proposed closings.

“I suppose that’s both good news and bad news,” Cheney said. “The bad news is you’ve got a complicated process. The good news is if you get through the hoops you get some bases closed.”

He said that he would resubmit to Congress the list of 36 bases he proposed closing earlier this year. Cheney said that he may add additional facilities to the new list, which would be sent to Capitol Hill in January and would have to be acted on by the end of the year.

The compromise bill would provide $19 billion less in overall defense spending than Bush requested last January and $28 billion less than 1990 spending levels, adjusted for inflation. The $288.3-billion total was worked out by White House and congressional negotiators at summit talks on a deficit-reduction package.