DEFENSE: Coalition for Cuts

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It has been a quiet revolution, largely unpublicized because the procedures are complex and the subject matter is arcane. This week Congress is expected to pass and send to the White House a defense budget of $90.4 billion for the current fiscal year. This is $7.5 billion less than the Administration's request, but the reduction is not as important as the manner in which Congress decided to make the cuts. The bill was the first major test of Congress's will to live up to its bold ideal of setting its own spending ceilings and sticking to them.

The new system, which became law in 1974, does not officially go into effect until fiscal 1977, but Congress agreed to try it out this year.

As usual, the Administration presented its budget to Congress in February; included was a request to spend $97.9 billion for defense. Under the old system, Congress would have increased some items and reduced others. But this year, using its new approach, Congress developed its own budget, which included a ceiling on defense. It had the effect of setting a limit about $7 billion lower than the Pentagon wanted. Still, there was doubt that the ceiling would hold when the Pentagon's old and influential friends began pushing for the higher figure.

Unusual Step. The first crunch came in June. After each chamber passed a separate bill, a House-Senate conference committee settled on $25.8 billion for procurement of equipment. Democratic Senator Edmund Muskie, chairman of the Senate's new Budget Committee, called for rejection of the measure, pointing out that it was some $900 million over the targeted figure for that category. For help, Muskie turned to Oklahoma's Henry Bellmon, the committee's ranking Republican. Though Bellmon usually backs high defense spending, he is also a fiscal conservative. The two men made a deal: Bellmon agreed to work against the procurement bill and Muskie, in return, to oppose a school lunch program that was $392 million above the level set by Congress. Pulling together an unusual coalition of liberals and conservatives, Muskie and Bellmon got the Senate to send the procurement bill back to conference. The vote was 48-42. The two Senators got a reduction of $250 million, and their campaign to hold down spending picked up momentum.

No Rose Garden. In October, the House approved a defense budget of $90.2 billion, $7.7 billion less than the Pentagon's original request. James Schlesinger, then Defense Secretary, called the cuts "deep, savage and arbitrary." On the Senate side, Chairman John McClellan of the Senate Appropriations Committee, a longtime supporter of the Pentagon, said that he would add about $1 billion to the House's total, which would break the ceiling by $500 million. Muskie admitted that the struggle to stay within the guidelines was difficult. "Nobody promised us a rose garden when we undertook budget reform," he told the Senate. In the end, the Senate passed a budget of $90.7 billion and sent it off to a House-Senate conference committee to work out a final compromise.