Focus on Issues Senate Unit to Consider a Bill Making It Easier to Veto Arms Sales

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will soon be considering a bill making it easier for Congress to veto arms sales like the proposed deal with Jordan that can be expected to be taken up anew in February.

The bill, co-sponsored by Sens. Alan Cranston (D. Calif.), Frank Lautenberg (D. N.J.) and eight other Senator, would prevent the use of filibusters, now made possible by the adoption of new procedures for defeating arms sales in Congress. The procedures were made necessary by a recent Supreme Court ruling which effectively invalidated the legislative veto.

Under the Arms Export Control act of 1976, the two Houses of Congress can veto a weapons deal by passing concurrent resolutions of disapproval within 30 days of formal notification of the sale from the President. The disapproval resolution, which requires no Presidential signature, is the final word on the arms deal according to the act.

But the Supreme Court, in July 1983, knocked the underpinnings from this legislative veto by ruling that concurrent resolutions were not Constitutionally binding. In light of the ruling, Congress could prevent the Administration from carrying out a proposed sale only through a joint resolution, which is open to veto by the President.

USE OF FILIBUSTERS NO LONGER VALID

With the shift to the new system forced on Congress by the Supreme Court, a provision of the old procedure which barred the use of filibusters is no longer valid. Consequently, when the Jordan arms sale is taken up again — probably in February — a single Senator could conceivably block an attempt to defeat the proposed deal by prolonging debate until Congress has forfeited its right to block the sale.

In order to assure Congress the opportunity to be heard on the issue of the Jordan arms sale and future sales, Lautenberg said of the proposed Senate legislation preventing filibusters on bills to defeat weapons deals, “this bill provides for quick consideration of measures to block arms sales.” Congress passed a joint resolution last month preventing the President from offering his proposed arms package to Jordan before March I, unless “direct and meaningful peace negotiations” have begun between Israel and Jordan. The resolution was a compromise endorsed by the White House to avert what appeared to be certain defeat of the sale by Congress.

The Administration has indicated that, in spite of the 1983 Supreme Court ruling, it intends to abide by the provisions of the Arms Export Control Act requiring prior notification of a sale. But since the resolution postponing the deal does not call on the President to resubmit the notice he gave last October, the President can go ahead with the sale on March I if no resolution opposing it is passed earlier.

Sen. Christopher Dodd (D. Conn.) was the only legislator to oppose the postponement resolution on the grounds that it failed to require President Reagan to start the arms sale process from the beginning, in March.

AN IMPORTANT QUESTION

But in view of the President’s own tacit acknowledgement that his arms package was headed for certain defeat last month, and with the unlikelihood that “direct and meaningful negotiations” between Jordan and Israel will actually kick off in time for the resistant legislators to have a change of heart, the question is whether there really is a chance that a resolution of disapproval will be blocked if it is introduced as expected before March I.

“It’s not a completely spurious case and you don’t want to take any chances,” a spokesman of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Observing that a single Senator is all it would take to block a resolution in the absence of anti-filibuster legislation, the spokesman said “it could happen. I doubt it will, but it could.”

The Senate bill is up for consideration in the Foreign Relations Committee on December 3, and an aide in Cranston’s office said he expected it to be pushed quickly through Congress.