Senate OKs $270-Billion Defense Bill : Congress: The measure retains most of the major weapons programs. Some lawmakers say it is packed with pork-barrel projects.

Congress gave final approval Saturday to a $270-billion military spending bill for 1992 that preserves most of the nation’s big weapons programs but leaves in doubt the future of the embattled B-2 Stealth bomber.

The Senate passed the defense appropriations bill on a 66-29 vote and sent it to President Bush, who is expected to sign it. The House had passed the measure on a voice vote Wednesday.

Right up until the final vote, senators bickered over specifics in the plan. Meanwhile, as cranky lawmakers anticipated the end of their year, work was under way in other rooms as House and Senate negotiators tried to hammer out agreement on transportation and crime bills that will clear the way for the holiday adjournment.

After working well into the evening to deal with essentially housekeeping matters, both the House and Senate adjourned until Monday.

Senate approval of the defense bill came despite bitter objections from members of the Armed Services Committee, including Chairman Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), that the bill had been loaded with pork-barrel spending.

In a dramatic and rare challenge to Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W. Va.), chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Nunn charged that an agreement between his committee, which authorizes defense programs, and Byrd’s panel, which provides the money, had been broken.

A companion 1992 Pentagon budget bill, a $291-billion blueprint produced by Nunn’s panel, had received final approval just a day earlier. The bill passed Saturday provides money to carry out the programs and policy set by Nunn’s bill.

The agreement not to fund programs that are not authorized “has not been lived up to,” Nunn said during a tense confrontation. The exchange was a sign of growing resentment toward the Appropriations Committee and Byrd, who has already more than made good on a pledge to take home $1 billion in federal projects to West Virginia.

The bill also contained up to $30 million to begin a consolidation of CIA offices that could create a large new complex for the agency in Byrd’s state. Byrd said he was confident that the selection of the site, which had been made in secret, would withstand public scrutiny.

Nunn also complained that the bill included no money to restart production of the F-117A fighter, a Stealth aircraft he called the star of the Persian Gulf War.

“I predict that we will see the day when we will regret this decision,” said Nunn, calling the fighter important for any future war in which the United States might become involved.

The overall measure boosts spending on the Strategic Defense Initiative, the anti-missile program commonly known as “Star Wars,” and continues production of the Navy’s most modern strategic nuclear missile. But it halts, for now, production of new radar-evading B-2 bombers.

The legislation also speeds up troop cuts, provides a 4.2% pay raise for all members of the military and offers new financial incentives for mid-career servicemen and women to make an early exit from the armed forces.

The bill provides the funds for military programs authorized in separate legislation that was sent to Bush this week after final House and Senate passage.

The two most controversial aspects of the 1992 military spending bill are the provisions for SDI and the B-2 bomber.

Bush had requested $5.15 billion for SDI. The House and Senate agreed to provide $4.15 billion and instructed the Pentagon to develop for deployment by 1996--or as soon as the technology is available--100 interceptors capable of destroying intercontinental ballistic missiles outside the atmosphere.

It is the first time the Congress has explicitly approved deploying any kind of strategic defense system under the SDI program, which was started in 1983.

The Senate had pushed for the 100-interceptor deployment; the House resisted. The proposal survived mainly because key House negotiators, led by Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), decided to concede on that issue to get their way on the B-2.

The Senate had backed Bush’s request for $3.2 billion to buy four new B-2 bombers. The House wanted to end the program at the 15 planes already authorized.

The defense bill contains $1.8 billion to keep the B-2 production line open, and it earmarks another $1 billion for possible purchase of one additional B-2. But the conditions on using the $1 billion are so strict as to make it highly unlikely that any new planes will be bought in 1992.

The defense measure also includes provisions directing defense research dollars to specific universities and $11 million to build museums for certain military bases, projects that drew Nunn’s ire.

Specifically, the bill includes $4 million for a D-Day museum in New Orleans; $4 million for an airborne and special operations museum at Ft. Bragg, N. C.; $2.1 million for a naval undersea museum at Keyport, Wash., and $1.6 million to refurbish a submarine for use as a museum in Portland, Ore.