Word: mx
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Just two months ago, Ronald Reagan won a major round in his tireless fight for the MX missile when he persuaded Congress to release $1.5 billion to step up production of the controversial weapon. But in the long-running MX battle, victory can be fleeting. Last week the Senate forced the Administration to limit deployment of the MX to 50 missiles, half the number the White House wanted. The Defense Department, which had hoped to produce 48 more missiles in fiscal 1986, agreed to 21 and ultimately settled for twelve. Said Senate Democratic Leader Robert Byrd of the Administration...
...leading antagonist of the MX was Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. Nunn and others have criticized the Government's plan to place the highly accurate ten-warhead missiles in existing Minuteman missile silos. Critics say that the immobile basing system makes the MX vulnerable, and a likely target for Soviet attack. Since March, Nunn has proposed limiting the number of silo-based MX's to 40, and last week he offered an amendment to the pending $302 billion defense authorization bill. When Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole realized that Nunn had enough...
...McFarlane was dispatched to Dole's office on Capitol Hill to bargain with Nunn. Despite the aggressive lobbying effort, the Administration gave in to Nunn's insistence on only twelve additional missiles in fiscal '86. The twelve to be produced will give the Air Force a total of 54 MX's. Of those, 50 can be deployed and four used either as spares or test vehicles. Under the compromise, the Air Force can order production of twelve to 21 more MX's in fiscal 1987. The Nunn amendment also states that Congress could in the future reconsider deploying a larger...
However, whereas the national interest groups fight over such issues as Nicaragua and the MX missile, the violence at House Committee meetings usually rages over such issues as the cost effectiveness of Styrofoam cups...
Under the compromise, the rise in defense spending would be held to 3%, meaning that funding for many big-ticket items, from the MX missile to Star Wars research, would be pared or stretched out. The Senate Armed Services Committee last week drafted a proposal for a 3% military increase in fiscal 1986--a cut of almost $10 billion from Reagan's original budget that did not eliminate any major weapons programs. Instead, it deferred a scheduled military pay increase and scaled back by 60% a request for increased manpower...