VOTING TOUGH

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000302350013-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 24, 2012
• Sequence Number: 13
• Publication Date: July 16, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302350013-8
ARTICLE APPEALED
ON PAGE AID/5
WASHINGTON POST
16 July 1985 *
Philip Geyelin
Voting Tough
"People are just kind of knee-jerk-
ing," said Rep. Howard Wolpe (D-
Mich.) of the foreign-aid authorization
bill pealed by the House. "There is,
something in there for everyone," said
Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman
Dante Fascell (1)-Fla.). Quite ss. As
with Winston Churchill's rejected pud-
- eng, whatever comes of the melding
of the House aid bill with an earlier
Senate version, it will probably have
no theme:
Or, looked at another way, its
theme will have less to do with con-
tent than with method. The mish-
mash to emerge from a joint House-
Senate conference will likely stand as
another example of the congressional
malpractice that Secretary of State
George Shultz regularly and rightly
deplores: the attempt by 535 mem-
bers of Congress, playing to as many
galleries, to micromanage the exact
conduct of this or that particular piece
of foreign policy.
Not that a doctrinal theme won't be
claimed. There has to be a "trend";
mere incoherence is not acceptable for
great deliberative bodies. Hence the
talk of a new, pervasive, "angry"
mood?something on the order of a
bipartisan congressional consensus be-
hind a Reagan Doctrine. The idea of
sticking it to Marx and Lenin by sup-
porting resistance movements around
the world, it is said, has taken root
even among the Democrats on Capitol
HilL
Now that may be so, if the Reagan
Doctrine is defined as looking and talk-
ing tough as distinct from acting
tough. If the Reagan record is distin-
guished from the Reagan rhetoric in,
say, Lebanon, or in countering terror-
ism when confronted by it, or even in
Central America, then it may be so
that Reaganism is catching on in Con-
gm
But a closer look at the way votes
were registered?and at what the
House was voting on?raises serious
questions about the depth of any con-
gressional conversion to anticommir
nut interventionism. This was a so-
called "authorization" bill, an open in-
vitation to striking poses and making
"statements" to the electorate.
The money to back up the spending
authorizations will have to be appro-
priated in separate legislation later in
the year. As often as not, the process
bogs down when you are talking
money. Then, Congress falls back on a
"continuing resolution" to maintain
spending at the previous year's level.
Thus last week's "statements" buy -
time and protection. They are not nec-
essarily the measure of a lasting
mood.
What they said about the current
mood, according to Rep. Vin Weber
(R-Minn.), is that "members of Con-
gress don't want to look weak right
now." Lingering frustration over the
hostage crisis apparently helped make
the lawmakers combative. But con-
gressional sources cite a deeper future
concern. Many Democrats were look-
ing ahead to what they think could be
their area of greatest vulnerability in
the congressional elections next year.
Soft-on-Freedom-Fighters is an
issue a lot of Democrats figure they
don't need. It is also an issue that Ron-
ald Reagan is well positioned to exploit
on behalf of Republican candidates.
Hence the turnaround last month by
House Democrats on "covert" aid for
the Nicaraguan counterrevolutionaries
(contras).
And hence the clear voting pattern
by the Democrats on aid for resistance
forces in Cambodia, Afglumistan?and
Angola. You will note in each instance
a triumph of showing-the-flag over
substance.
The k.5 million in overt aid for anti-
communist rebels in Cambodia is as
=compared to the sums that are
about for covert assistance.
The same ma be said for the ;15 mil-
lion ot aid to rebels in A!-
There was much ado about
mg a nin
conaressionale ban ron assistance to in-
ticonununist forces in Angola. ilut the
practical effilifor the moment,
amounts to assuniing the ad-
ministration's of any immediate
designs for AngeKcan be taken on its
face.
The Angola vote removes a vestige
of the so-called Vietnam Syndrome?a
symbol of supposed American irresolu-
tion. But any U.S._ intervention in the
Angolan atrug& that requires money
will still be subject to congressional
control of the purse strings. In each of
these instances, the Democrats were
taker, wins to nertidgete-m what one
legislative aide demand as "raising
the American flag over the battle-
Democrats were also making it
impossible for Republicans to oppose a
foreign aid bill that the administration
thinks is too lotig on economic aid and
too short on weapons of war. Perhaps
the surest sign that last week's House
action on foreign aid is something less
than a clarion call for a more activist,
interventionist campaign against com-
munism around the world is that, in
the end, the omnibus bill was passed
by an unrecorded voice vote.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302350013-8