The Michigan Daily-Friday, May 15, 1981-Page 17
Senate approves defense budget
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate
approved yesterday the Reagan ad-
ministration's request to spend $136.5
billion on a military buildup ranging
from resurrection of a World War II
battleship to space laser research.
The record defense authorization bill
for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 was
passed by a vote of 92-1 and sent to the
House, where the Armed Services
Committee has approved a slightly
smaller $135.6 billion version.
NO DATE HAS BEEN set for House
action.
The lone dissenting voice in the
Senate was cast by Sen. Mark Hatfield
(R-Ore.).
There were few moves to trim the
Reagan request. A motion by Sen. Carl
Levin (D-Mich.) to eliminate $200
million of what he described as
wasteful expenditures for support ac-
tivities at neighboring military bases
was rejected 66-29.
BUT SEN. JOHN STENNIS (D-
Miss.), the ranking Democrat on the
Senate Armed Services Committee,
warned, "The big test of the military, I
think, will come next year."
"We are going to find out more about
the difficulties of this added military
program, no matter how it is handled,"
Stennis said. "If inflation can't be
reduced, the cost of these weapons is
going to go out of the sky. Even with
moderate inflation, they-are going to
cost a lot of money."
By a vote of 87-9, the Senate agreed to
permit setting aside certain defense
vprocurement contracts, up to an
aggregate of $3.4 billion, for areas of
high unemployment. The Defense
Department has been exempt from
such set-asides since 1952.
THE BILL REFLECTS the convic-
tion of the Reagan administration and
the majority of the Republican-
dominated Senate that, in the words of
the Armed Services Committee's
report on the legislation, "a sustained
and increased defense effort is
required" to match the Soviet Union.
It calls for nearly $30 billion more
than President Jimmy Carter
requested before leaving office in
January and comes within a few million
dollars of the exact amount requested
by President Reagan.
It includes $158 million to reactivate
the battleship New Jersey and equip it
with cruise missiles. Opponents argued
that this money could be better spent on
new, smaller ship, but the Navy argued
that the New Jersey could be ready
sooner - in about 21 months.
AS AMENDED ON THE floor Wed-
nesday, the bill also includes $5 million
for research on the use of lasers to shoot
down enemy missiles as they enter
space. A laser is a device that can tran-
smit large amounts of energy at the
speed of light by sending a narrow
beam over great distances.
The bill rejected the Navy's
requests for $364 million to reactivate
the aircraft carrier Oriskany.
It also turned down funds for a 10th
Trident missile submarine, embodying
the conclusion of the Armed Services
Committee that it found "continuing
construction difficulties in the Trident
submarine program to be unaccep-
table." It approved $75 million to buy
prefabricated sections and components
for the vessel, which the committee
said would allow work to procedd with
little delay.
It approved $2.4 billion for the MX
mobile missile, but reserved to
Congress the right to disapprove, by a
vote of both houses, a presidential
decision on how to deploy the intercon-
tinental ballistic weapon. A blue-ribbon
panel is scheduled to make a recom-
mendation to the president by July 1 on
whether to base it in the Western
desert, as Carter proposed, or on sub-
marines or elsewhere.
It also called for $2.4 billion for
preliminary work on a new bomber to
replace the aging B-52 as a means of
penetrating Soviet air space. Here, too,
it voted Congress the power, by action
of both houses, to override an expected
presidential decision among several
alternatives being studied. They in-
clude a modification of the B-1 bomber
scrapped by Carter and a plane, which
would take longer to build, embodying
so-called Stealth technology capable of
dodging radar.
Congress urged to
control desegregation
WASHINGTON (UPI) - A social
scientist and two professors urged
Congress yesterday to take over school
desegregation enforcement because
they believe federal court-ordered
busing is doing more harm than good.
But busing proponents told the Senate
judiciary subcommittee that the prac-
tice has improved race relations and
academic achievement.
IT WAS THE FIRST of a series of
hearings panel chairman Orrin Hatch
(R-Utah) has scheduled to determine
whether Congress should take action to
bar busing.
David Armor, senior social scientist
of Rand Corp., Lino Graglia, University
of Texas law professor, and Nathan
Glazer, Harvard University education
professor, made almost identical
proposals.
They said the courts almost in-
variably require widespread busing
regardless of whether racial imbalance
in schools is caused by deliberate
discrimination or housing patterns.
Meanwhile, they said, the courts
remain blind to the fact that the busing
achieves little improvement in the
racial relations or academic
achievement while causing massive
"white-flight" to the suburbs.
MOM
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