Senators’ Plan Would Add $900 Million to Drug Fight

WASHINGTON —  Democratic and Republican senators tentatively agreed Monday to expand President Bush’s $7.9-billion anti-drug plan by $900 million and pay for it by a combination of across-the-board cuts in most federal programs and bigger reductions in defense spending than Bush wanted.

The compromise, worked out after a week of intensive, top-level negotiations, was announced by Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and Republican Mark O. Hatfield (R-Ore.), the committee’s ranking Republican.

They agreed that the negotiators were “90% of the way” toward a final package, and said they anticipated no further obstacles to agreement. Although Byrd’s original proposal for an additional $2.2 billion to fight the drug war was denounced by a White House spokesman as “price tag politics,” Hatfield said the Bush Administration has agreed to the basic provisions of the tentative pact.

It would require an across-the-board reduction of 0.30% in discretionary domestic and international programs, and make special allowances for selective cuts of an additional 0.13% in the Pentagon budget.

Byrd said budget authority for defense would be cut by $1.318 billion and outlays would be reduced by $797 million under the bipartisan agreement.

The President had proposed total cuts of $716 million in five federal programs--with only a single $320-million cut in defense spending--to offset the new outlays he advocated in his televised war-on-drugs speech last Sept. 5.

Hatfield said the deal still required formal approval by the Senate Republican leadership and the White House.

In political terms, the agreement would put a Democratic stamp on Bush’s plan by allocating an additional $800 million for education, treatment and prevention programs and $100 million more for law enforcement grants to state and local governments than Bush requested.

Byrd said he anticipated that the compromise, assuming it is ratified, may be voted upon today by the Senate as an amendment to the pending transportation appropriations bill.