Where the Shrinkage Stopped

No sooner had the Senate ratified the nuclear test ban treaty than Georgia Democrat Richard Russell, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, rose before the chamber to push through the huge defense appropriations bill for fiscal 1964. "His timing was perfect," marveled a Defense Department official. "Having just voted for the treaty, the Senate was ready to prove that it was not about to dismantle the military strength of this country."

But Russell found several colleagues in a dismantling mood, and foremost among them was South Dakota Democrat George McGovern. Warning that "excessive" military spending was "distorting our economy, wasting our human resources and restricting our leadership in the world," McGovern called for a flat 10% cut from the $22.8 bil lion allotted to weapons procurement and research and development. The measure, blasted by Barry Goldwater as equal to unilateral disarmament, was opposed by 74 Senators, supported by three Democrats besides McGovern:

West Virginia's Jennings Randolph, Oregon's Wayne Morse, Wisconsin's Gaylord Nelson. Trying a similar tactic, though on a smaller scale, Massachusetts Republican Leverett Saltonstall came within a whisper of succeeding. He proposed a straight 1%, or $158 million, cut in procurement spending, lost by a bare two votes, 45 to 43.

In the end, the Senate, instead of subtracting money, added $258 million to the House-approved version. Among the items restored after House cuts were $60 million for the Air Force's mobile medium-range ballistic missile, whose range would be somewhere between the Army's 400-mile Pershing and the Navy's 2,800-mile Polaris; $29.5 million for the Navy's Intruder attack bomber; and $25 million for the Air Force's C-141 jet transport.

More than $1 billion under last year's record peacetime appropriation, the Senate-approved spending bill reflects some of the most severe shrinkage since the days before Sanforized shirts. Originally, the Joint Chiefs asked for a dizzying $67 billion; Defense Secretary McNamara sweated off $14 billion and the Administration wound up asking for $49 billion ($4 billion for such items as military assistance, military construction and civil defense is covered in separate bills); and the House whacked $2 billion off that. Only in the freer-spending Senate did the shrinkage stop, and then only by a barely perceptible amount. Final Senate-approved total of the bill: $47.3 billion.

>The House Appropriations Subcommittee last week cut the National Aero nautics and Space Administration appropriation to $5.1 billion, some $600 million less than the Administration had requested. The action closely followed President Kennedy's United Nations speech proposing a joint moon venture with the Russians, which prompted many dollar-conscious Congressmen to ask whether there was still any real need to conduct the Apollo moon shot as a cash-eating crash venture (see SCIENCE). And further slashes may be in prospect. The subcommittee, reconsidering its vote, wound up in a 4 to 4 deadlock on a later move to pare the appropriation to a bare-bones $4.2 billion. The measure now goes before the full committee, where Missouri Democrat Clarence Cannon, the chairman, aims to cut out as much as he can.

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