‘GETTING TO NO’ ON SDI: CONGRESSIONAL STAFF DON’T LET CONSTITUTION, MEMBERS GET IN WAY OF DEFENSE BILL

(Washington, D.C.): A curious thing is
happening to the FY1993 Defense
Department authorization bill as it
awaits Senate floor action: Congressional
staff are secretly
negotiating compromises that will likely
make whatever the Senate does utterly
irrelevant.

What is more, by the time Members of
Congress are brought into the process,
most of the key deals will have been cut
by staffers. Unless the process is
promptly changed, elected officials in
the Senate will be relegated to the job
of rubber-stamping agreements reached
before the “world’s greatest
deliberative body” even finishes
debating and voting upon the FY ’93
defense bill.

How, one might ask, could Senators go
along with such a wholesale abdication of
responsibility — to say nothing of such
an egregious and unconstitutional
devolution of power? Perhaps some are
unaware that members of the House and
Senate Armed Services Committee staffs
are already conferencing a bill not yet
acted upon by the full Senate.

But One of Many Power Plays

Unfortunately, too many others —
including a number of Senators who are
deeply concerned about national security
matters — bear a measure of
responsibility for their present
disenfranchisement. It is, after all, a
product of their past acquiescence to the
domineering leadership of Armed Services
Committee chairman Sen. Sam Nunn (D-GA).

In recent years, Sen. Nunn and his
House counterpart, Rep. Les Aspin (D-WI)
have taken to deciding conference issues
on the Defense authorization bill between
themselves and their staffs.
When expedient to do so, they have
permitted the token participation of
their respective ranking minority
members, Sen. John Warner (R-VA) and Rep.
William Dickinson (R-AL), in an
arrangement known as the “Big
Four.” Other members of the
conference committees have generally been
reduced to spectators and kibitzers, as
often as not presented with faits
accomplis negotiated by the
leadership.

Unfortunately, the executive branch
has, if anything, encouraged this
phenomenon. In a manner not dissimilar
from its preference for disciplined
totalitarians over untidy democrats
overseas, the Bush Administration —
guided by a long-time Nunn crony,
National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft
— prefers to deal exclusively with the
autocratic committee chairmen or, at
their direction, the “Big
Four.” Alternative congressional
power centers are discouraged, even
when they advocate policies more consistent
with those nominally favored by the
Administration.

With Extreme Prejudice —
SDI’s Fate

Just how much is at stake in this
highly irregular,
conference-sans-Senate-action process can
be seen in the way the SDI program is
being adjudicated. Staffers are
reportedly hammering out a compromise
that would “split the
difference” between the
House-approved funding level of $4.3
billion and a Senate figure of $3.3
billion. The only problem is
that the U. S. Senate has not
formally adopted that cripplingly low
figure for the Global Protection
Against Limited Strikes (GPALS) system —
a reduction of $2.1 billion or 37%
from the President’s request.

In fact, the Senate’s position in
conference would be $3.3 billion only
if its Armed Services Committee’s
recommendation that SDI be funded at a
level of $4.3 billion is rejected by the
full body. While that is something Sens.
Dale Bumpers (D-AR) and Jim Sasser (D-TN)
have proposed in an amendment they
offered on 7 August and while the
Bumpers-Sasser amendment survived a
tabling motion on that date, it
has not yet been put to an up-or-down
vote.

In the absence of such a vote, staff
actions predicated on the assumption that
Bumpers-Sasser will pass
is a procedural slap in the
face for those who are opposed to it –including
Sen. Nunn. It also amounts
to a serious and preemptive capitulation
by staff on an issue about which
many members properly feel very strongly.

Worse yet, if permitted to stand, the
staff-adjudicated outcome of $3.8 billion
–combined with extremely
restrictive accompanying statutory
language which will likely further
constrain such funds as are made
available to SDI — would do
serious violence to the SDI deployment
program ordered by the Senate last
year at Sen. Nunn’s behest.
Such language probably would:
divert funds toward theater missile
defenses; slow work on reestablishing a
U.S. site for ground-based interceptors;
and effectively preclude concerted work
on the most promising global defense
system, i.e., Brilliant Pebbles
space-based interceptors. According to
the SDI program manager, Amb. Henry
Cooper, the effect of these actions would
be to disrupt, perhaps irreparably, the
nation’s efforts to field a near-term and
militarily and cost-effective strategic
defenses against missile attack.

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy calls
upon members of the United States Senate
to insist upon their prerogatives
and to exercise their constitutional
responsibilities with respect to
the FY1993 Defense authorization bill. Decisions
affecting the strategic defense of the
United States against ballistic missile
attack are much too important to permit
them to be made effectively by staff.

The Senate’s role in debating and
voting on such decisions is a critical
one, established under the Constitution
and abandoned only at the nation’s peril.
Unless and until such time as
the Senate completes action upon
S. 3114, it is inappropriate and
W-advised to have congressional
staff conferencing the bill.

For its part, the executive branch
should be actively discouraging this sort
of shortcircuiting of the legislative
process. That is especially true when a
program like strategic defense — to
which President Bush is ostensibly
committed — is on the line. Instead, the
Bush Administration
should be making every effort to ensure
the defeat of the Bumpers-Sasser
amendment and otherwise
creating conditions under which a
conference committee will approve an SDI
program compatible with the Missile
Defense Act enacted last year and its
requirement that effective U.S. defenses
against ballistic missile attack be
established at the earliest possible
moment. Absent such an outcome, Mr.
Bush should make it clear that the FY1993
Defense authorization
bill will meet the same fate — a certain
presidential veto — experienced
by another defense bill that attempted to
savage strategic defenses and Brilliant
Pebbles (among other critical programs)
and which had been adopted by
congressional Democrats on the eve of the
1988 presidential election.

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CORRECTION

Subsequent to
publication of the Center’s Decision
Brief entitled, “‘Getting
to No‘ on SDI: Congressional
Staff Don’t Let Constitution, Members Get
in Way of Defense Bill” (No. 92-D 106, 9
September 1992), we learned that it was
in error on a key point. The Center Brief
correctly indicated that congressional
staff are, at the direction of the House
and Senate Armed Services Committee
leaderships, engaged in a highly
irregular conference on the FY1993
Defense authorization bill before
the Senate finishes its consideration of
that legislation. Members of the Senate
committee have been consulted about this
practice and not objected to it.

The reports cited in the Decision
Brief to the effect that Armed
Services staffers have reached a
compromise on SDI funding are evidently
unfounded, however. In fact, the staff
conferees have properly been enjoined
from negotiating compromises on funding
for strategic defense and several other
key programs. Unfortunately, there is
reason to believe that the Senate Defense
Appropriations Committee —
scheduled to mark-up its version of the
Pentagon’s FY’93 spending bill on 15
September — has settled on the $3.8
billion figure of which we warned in the Brief.

While the Center very much regrets the
error on this point, its bottom line is
unchanged: The full Senate should
reject further, draconian cuts in the SDI
budget — cuts that will preclude
fulfillment of the Missile Defense Act it
pioneered last year. For its part, the
Bush Administration should make it clear
that such legislation faces a certain
veto.